James Fraser (1713-1754)
by Wikisource
Accessed: 8/26/20
[from Preface and appendix to Fraser's History of Nadir Shah; manuscript notes, written about 1754 by S. Smalbroke (son of Dr. Richard Smalbroke [q. v.], bishop of Lichfield and Coventry) in a copy of that work now in the possession of W. Irvine, esq.; Note on James Fraser in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1899, pp. 214-20, by W. Irvine; Burke's Landed Gentry; Macray's Annals of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, 1890, pp. 216, 372, note 1; Aufrecht's Bodleian Sanskrit Catalogue, pp. 358, 403-4.]
FRASER, JAMES (1713–1754), author and collector of oriental manuscripts, born in 1713, was the son of Alexander Fraser (d. 1733) of Reelick, near Inverness. He paid two visits to India, where he resided at Surat. During his first stay (1730-40) he acquired a working knowledge of Zend from Parsi teachers and of Sanskrit from a learned Brahman. He also collected materials for an account of Nadir Shah, who invaded India in 1737-8. Coming home for about two years, he published his book. He then went out again as a factor in the East India Company's service, and became a member of the council at Surat, where he remained for six years. After his return in 1749 he expressed the intention of compiling an ancient Persian (Zend) lexicon, and of translating the Zendavesta from the original. He also spoke of translating the 'Vedh' (Veda) of the Brahmans; he seems, however, to have had no direct knowledge of the Vedas, but to have been acquainted with post-Vedic works only. Nothing came of these plans owing to his premature death, which took place at his own house, Easter Moniack, Inverness-shire, on 21 Jan. 1754 (Scots Mag. 1754, p. 51).
Fraser married in London, in 1742, Mary, only daughter of Edward Satchwell of Warwickshire, by whom he had issue one son and three daughters. A portrait of him is still in the possession of his descendants at Reelick House. James Baillie Fraser [q. v.] and William Fraser (1784?-1835) [q. v.] were his grandsons.
Fraser's book is entitled 'The History of Nadir Shah, formerly called Thamas Kuli Khan, the present Emperor of Persia; to which is prefixed a short History of the Moghol Emperors' (London, 1742). It contains a map of the Moghul empire and part of Tartary. It was the first book in English treating of Nadir Shah, 'the scourge of God.' It is important not only as a first-hand contribution to the history of contemporary events, but also for the number of original documents which it alone has preserved.
At the end of his book the author gives a list of about two hundred oriental manuscripts, including Zend and Sanskrit, which he had purchased at Surat, Cambay, and Ahmedabad. His claim that his 'Sanskerrit' manuscripts formed 'the first collection of that kind ever brought into Europe' appears to be valid, though single Sanskrit manuscripts had reached England and France even earlier. After his death his oriental manuscripts were bought from his widow for the Radclifte Library at Oxford; they were transferred to the Bodleian on 10 May 1872. One of Fraser's manuscripts, containing 178 portraits of Indian kings down to Aurengzebe, found its way directly into the Bodleian as early as 1737, in which year it was presented to the library by the poet Alexander Pope, its then possessor. Fraser's Sanskrit manuscripts, forty-one in number and all post-Vedic, were the earliest collection in that language which came into the possession of Oxford University: the first Sanskrit manuscript, however, which the Bodleian acquired was given to it in 1666 by John Ken, an East India merchant of London. It was in order to inspect Fraser's Zend manuscripts that the famous French orientalist, Anquetil Duperron, visited Oxford in 1702, when brought a prisoner of war to England.
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Utopian socialism
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/26/20
Utopian socialism is the first current of modern socialism and socialist thought as exemplified by the work of Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Étienne Cabet,...
Robert Owen and Henry George.[1][2] Utopian socialism is often described as the presentation of visions and outlines for imaginary or futuristic ideal societies, with positive ideals being the main reason for moving society in such a direction. Later socialists and critics of utopian socialism viewed utopian socialism as not being grounded in actual material conditions of existing society and in some cases as reactionary. These visions of ideal societies competed with Marxist-inspired revolutionary social democratic movements.[3]
As a term or label, utopian socialism is most often applied to, or used to define, those socialists who lived in the first quarter of the 19th century who were ascribed the label utopian by later socialists as a pejorative in order to imply naiveté and to dismiss their ideas as fanciful and unrealistic.[4] A similar school of thought that emerged in the early 20th century which makes the case for socialism on moral grounds is ethical socialism.[5]
One key difference between utopian socialists and other socialists such as most anarchists and Marxists is that utopian socialists generally do not believe any form of class struggle or social revolution is necessary for socialism to emerge. Utopian socialists believe that people of all classes can voluntarily adopt their plan for society if it is presented convincingly.[3] They feel their form of cooperative socialism can be established among like-minded people within the existing society and that their small communities can demonstrate the feasibility of their plan for society.[3]
Definition
See also: Utopia
The thinkers identified as utopian socialist did not use the term utopian to refer to their ideas. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were the first thinkers to refer to them as utopian, referring to all socialist ideas that simply presented a vision and distant goal of an ethically just society as utopian. This utopian mindset which held an integrated conception of the goal, the means to produce said goal and an understanding of the way that those means would inevitably be produced through examining social and economic phenomena can be contrasted with scientific socialism which has been likened to Taylorism.[citation needed]
This distinction was made clear in Engels' work Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1892, part of an earlier publication, the Anti-Dühring from 1878). Utopian socialists were seen as wanting to expand the principles of the French revolution in order to create a more rational society. Despite being labeled as utopian by later socialists, their aims were not always utopian and their values often included rigid support for the scientific method and the creation of a society based upon scientific understanding.[6]
Development
The term utopian socialism was introduced by Karl Marx in "For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything" in 1843 and then developed in The Communist Manifesto in 1848, although shortly before its publication Marx had already attacked the ideas of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in The Poverty of Philosophy (originally written in French, 1847). The term was used by later socialist thinkers to describe early socialist or quasi-socialist intellectuals who created hypothetical visions of egalitarian, communalist, meritocratic, or other notions of perfect societies without considering how these societies could be created or sustained.
In The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx criticized the economic and philosophical arguments of Proudhon set forth in The System of Economic Contradictions, or The Philosophy of Poverty. Marx accused Proudhon of wanting to rise above the bourgeoisie. In the history of Marx's thought and Marxism, this work is pivotal in the distinction between the concepts of utopian socialism and what Marx and the Marxists claimed as scientific socialism. Although utopian socialists shared few political, social, or economic perspectives, Marx and Engels argued that they shared certain intellectual characteristics. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote: "The undeveloped state of the class struggle, as well as their own surroundings, causes Socialists of this kind to consider themselves far superior to all class antagonisms. They want to improve the condition of every member of society, even that of the most favored. Hence, they habitually appeal to society at large, without distinction of class; nay, by preference, to the ruling class. For how can people, when once they understand their system, fail to see it in the best possible plan of the best possible state of society? Hence, they reject all political, and especially all revolutionary, action; they wish to attain their ends by peaceful means, and endeavor, by small experiments, necessarily doomed to failure, and by the force of example, to pave the way for the new social Gospel".[7]
Marx and Engels associated utopian socialism with communitarian socialism which similarly sees the establishment of small intentional communities as both a strategy for achieving and the final form of a socialist society.[8] Marx and Engels used the term scientific socialism to describe the type of socialism they saw themselves developing. According to Engels, socialism was not "an accidental discovery of this or that ingenious brain, but the necessary outcome of the struggle between two historically developed classes, namely the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Its task was no longer to manufacture a system of society as perfect as possible, but to examine the historical-economic succession of events from which these classes and their antagonism had of necessity sprung, and to discover in the economic conditions thus created the means of ending the conflict". Critics have argued that utopian socialists who established experimental communities were in fact trying to apply the scientific method to human social organization and were therefore not utopian. On the basis of Karl Popper's definition of science as "the practice of experimentation, of hypothesis and test", Joshua Muravchik argued that "Owen and Fourier and their followers were the real 'scientific socialists.' They hit upon the idea of socialism, and they tested it by attempting to form socialist communities". By contrast, Muravchik further argued that Marx made untestable predictions about the future and that Marx's view that socialism would be created by impersonal historical forces may lead one to conclude that it is unnecessary to strive for socialism because it will happen anyway.[9]
Since the mid-19th century, Marxism and Marxism–Leninism overtook utopian socialism in terms of intellectual development and number of adherents. At one time almost half the population of the world lived under regimes that claimed to be Marxist.[10] Currents such as Saint-Simonianism and Fourierism attracted the interest of numerous later authors but failed to compete with the now dominant Marxist, Proudhonist, or Leninist schools on a political level. It has been noted that they exerted a significant influence on the emergence of new religious movements such as spiritualism and occultism.[11][12]
In literature and in practice
Perhaps the first utopian socialist was Thomas More (1478–1535), who wrote about an imaginary socialist society in his book Utopia, published in 1516. The contemporary definition of the English word utopia derives from this work and many aspects of More's description of Utopia were influenced by life in monasteries.[13]
Saint-Simonianism was a French political and social movement of the first half of the 19th century, inspired by the ideas of Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825). His ideas influenced Auguste Comte (who was for a time Saint-Simon's secretary), Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill and many other thinkers and social theorists.
Robert Owen was one of the founders of utopian socialism
Robert Owen (1771–1858) was a successful Welsh businessman who devoted much of his profits to improving the lives of his employees. His reputation grew when he set up a textile factory in New Lanark, Scotland, co-funded by his teacher, the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham and introduced shorter working hours, schools for children and renovated housing. He wrote about his ideas in his book A New View of Society which was published in 1813 and An Explanation of the Cause of Distress which pervades the civilized parts of the world in 1823. He also set up an Owenite commune called New Harmony in Indiana. This collapsed when one of his business partners ran off with all the profits. Owen's main contribution to socialist thought was the view that human social behavior is not fixed or absolute and that humans have the free will to organize themselves into any kind of society they wished.
Charles Fourier (1772–1837) rejected the Industrial Revolution altogether and thus the problems that arose with it. Fourier made various fanciful claims about the ideal world he envisioned. Despite some clearly non-socialist inclinations,[clarification needed] he contributed significantly even if indirectly to the socialist movement. His writings about turning work into play influenced the young Karl Marx and helped him devise his theory of alienation. Also a contributor to feminism, Fourier invented the concept of phalanstère, units of people based on a theory of passions and of their combination. Several colonies based on Fourier's ideas were founded in the United States by Albert Brisbane and Horace Greeley.
Many Romantic authors, most notably William Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote anti-capitalist works and supported peasant revolutions across early 19th century Europe. Étienne Cabet (1788–1856), influenced by Robert Owen, published a book in 1840 entitled Travel and adventures of Lord William Carisdall in Icaria in which he described an ideal communalist society. His attempts to form real socialist communities based on his ideas through the Icarian movement did not survive, but one such community was the precursor of Corning, Iowa. Possibly inspired by Christianity, he coined the word communism and influenced other thinkers, including Marx and Engels.
Utopian socialist pamphlet of Swiss social medical doctor Rudolf Sutermeister (1802–1868)
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) published Looking Backward in 1888, a utopian romance novel about a future socialist society. In Bellamy's utopia, property was held in common and money replaced with a system of equal credit for all. Valid for a year and non-transferable between individuals, credit expenditure was to be tracked via "credit-cards" (which bear no resemblance to modern credit cards which are tools of debt-finance). Labour was compulsory from age 21 to 40 and organised via various departments of an Industrial Army to which most citizens belonged. Working hours were to be cut drastically due to technological advances (including organisational). People were expected to be motivated by a Religion of Solidarity and criminal behavior was treated as a form of mental illness or "atavism". The book ranked as second or third best seller of its time (after Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben Hur). In 1897, Bellamy published a sequel entitled Equality as a reply to his critics and which lacked the Industrial Army and other authoritarian aspects.
William Morris (1834–1896) published News from Nowhere in 1890, partly as a response to Bellamy's Looking Backwards, which he equated with the socialism of Fabians such as Sydney Webb. Morris' vision of the future socialist society was centred around his concept of useful work as opposed to useless toil and the redemption of human labour. Morris believed that all work should be artistic, in the sense that the worker should find it both pleasurable and an outlet for creativity. Morris' conception of labour thus bears strong resemblance to Fourier's, while Bellamy's (the reduction of labour) is more akin to that of Saint-Simon or in aspects Marx.
The Brotherhood Church in Britain and the Life and Labor Commune in Russia were based on the Christian anarchist ideas of Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910).
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) and Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) wrote about anarchist forms of socialism in their books. Proudhon wrote What is Property? (1840) and The System of Economic Contradictions, or The Philosophy of Poverty (1847). Kropotkin wrote The Conquest of Bread (1892) and Fields, Factories and Workshops (1912). Many of the anarchist collectives formed in Spain, especially in Aragon and Catalonia, during the Spanish Civil War were based on their ideas. While linking to different topics is always useful to maximize exposure, anarchism does not derive itself from utopian socialism and most anarchists would consider the association to essentially be a marxist slur designed to reduce the credibility of anarchism amongst socialists.[14]
Many participants in the historical kibbutz movement in Israel were motivated by utopian socialist ideas.[15]
Augustin Souchy (1892–1984) spent most of his life investigating and participating in many kinds of socialist communities. Souchy wrote about his experiences in his autobiography Beware! Anarchist!
Behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) published Walden Two in 1948. The Twin Oaks Community was originally based on his ideas.
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018) wrote about an impoverished anarchist society in her book The Dispossessed, published in 1974, in which the anarchists agree to leave their home planet and colonize a barely habitable moon in order to avoid a bloody revolution.
Related concepts
Some communities of the modern intentional community movement such as kibbutzim could be categorized as utopian socialist.
Some religious communities such as the Hutterites are categorized as utopian religious socialists.[16]
Classless modes of production in hunter-gatherer societies are referred to as primitive communism by Marxists to stress their classless nature.[17]
A related concept is that of a socialist utopia, usually depicted in works of fiction as possible ways society can turn out to be in the future and often combined with notions of a technologically revolutionized economy.
Notable utopian socialists
• Edward Bellamy
• Tommaso Campanella
• Etienne Cabet
o Icarians
• Victor Considérant
• David Dale
• Charles Fourier
o North American Phalanx
o The Phalanx
• Henry George
• Jean-Baptiste Godin
• Laurence Gronlund
• Matti Kurikka
• John Lennon
• Thomas Moore
• John Humphrey Noyes
• Robert Owen
• Vaso Pelagić
• Henri de Saint-Simon
• William Thompson
• Wilhelm Weitling
• Gerrard Winstanley
Notable utopian communities
Utopian communities have existed all over the world. In various forms and locations, they have existed continuously in the United States since the 1730s, beginning with Ephrata Cloister, a religious community in what is now Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.[18]
Owenite communities
• New Lanark
• New Harmony, Indiana
Fourierist communities
• Brook Farm
• La Reunion (Dallas)
• North American Phalanx
• Silkville
• Utopia, Ohio
Icarian communities
• Corning, Iowa
Anarchist communities
• Home, Washington
• Life and Labor Commune
• Socialist Community of Modern Times
• Whiteway Colony
Others
• Kaweah Colony
• Llano del Rio
• Los Mochis
• Nevada City, Nevada
• New Australia
• Oneida Community
• Ruskin Colony
• Rugby, Tennessee
• Sointula
See also
• Christian socialism
• Communist utopia
• Diggers
• Ethical socialism
• Futurism
• History of socialism
• Ideal (ethics)
• Intentional communities
• Kibbutz
• List of anarchist communities
• Marxism
• Nanosocialism
• Post-capitalism
• Post-scarcity
• Ricardian socialism
• Scientific socialism
• Socialism
• Socialist economics
• Syndicalism
• Utopia for Realists
• Yellow socialism
• Zero waste
References
1. "Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism". Public Broadcasting System. Retrieved December 15, 2011.
2. "Utopian socialism". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved July 12, 2020.
3. Draper, Hal (1990). Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution, Volume IV: Critique of Other Socialisms. New York: Monthly Review Press. pp. 1–21. ISBN 978-0853457985.
4. Newman, Michael. (2005) Socialism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-
19-280431-6.
5. Thompson, Noel W. (2006). Political Economy and the Labour Party: The Economics of Democratic Socialism, 1884–2005 (2nd ed.). Abingdon, England: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-32880-7.
6. Frederick Engels. "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (Chpt. 1)". Marxists.org. Retrieved July 3,2013.
7. Engels, Friedrich and Marx, Karl Heinrich. Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei. Edited by Sálvio M. Soares. MetaLibri, October 31, 2008, v1.0s.
8. Leopold, David (2018). "Marx, Engels and Some (Non-Foundational) Arguments Against Utopian Socialism". In Kandiyali, Jan (ed.). Reassessing Marx's Social and Political Philosophy: Freedom, Recognition and Human Flourishing. Routledge. p. 73.
9. Muravchik, Joshua (8 February 1999). "The Rise and Fall of Socialism". Bradley Lecture Series. American Enterprise Institute. Archived 3 May 1999 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 21 August 2020.
10. Steven Kreis (January 30, 2008). "Karl Marx, 1818-1883". The History Guide.
11. Strube, Julian (2016). "Socialist religion and the emergence of occultism: a genealogical approach to socialism and secularization in 19th-century France". Religion. 46 (3): 359–388. doi:10.1080/0048721X.2016.1146926.
12. Cyranka, Daniel (2016). "Religious Revolutionaries and Spiritualism in Germany around 1848". Aries. 16 (1): 13–48. doi:10.1163/15700593-01601002.
13. J. C. Davis (28 July 1983). Utopia and the Ideal Society: A Study of English Utopian Writing 1516-1700. Cambridge University Press. p. 58. ISBN 978-0-521-27551-4.
14. Sam Dolgoff (1990). The Anarchist Collectives: Workers' Self-Management in the Spanish Revolution, 1936–1939. Black Rose Books.
15. Sheldon Goldenberg and Gerda R. Wekerle (September 1972). "From utopia to total institution in a single generation: the kibbutz and Bruderhof". International Review of Modern Sociology. 2 (2): 224–232. JSTOR 41420450.
16. Donald E. Frey (2009). America's Economic Moralists: A History of Rival Ethics and Economics. SUNY Press. p. 61. ISBN 9780791493663.
17. "Primitive communism: life before class and oppression". Socialist Worker. May 28, 2013. Retrieved December 27, 2019.
18. Yaacov Oved (1988). Two Hundred Years of American Communes. Transaction Publishers. pp. 3, 19.
Further reading[edit]
• Taylor, Keith (1992). The political ideas of Utopian socialists. London: Cass. ISBN 0714630896.
External links
• Media related to Utopian socialism at Wikimedia Commons
• Be Utopian: Demand the Realistic by Robert Pollin, The Nation, March 9, 2009.
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/26/20
Utopian socialism is the first current of modern socialism and socialist thought as exemplified by the work of Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Étienne Cabet,...
Étienne Cabet (French: [kabɛ]; January 1, 1788 – November 9, 1856) was a French philosopher and utopian socialist who founded the Icarian movement. Cabet became the most popular socialist advocate of his day, with a special appeal to artisans who were being undercut by factories. Cabet published Voyage en Icarie in French in 1839 (and in English in 1840 as Travels in Icaria), in which he proposed replacing capitalist production with workers' cooperatives. Recurrent problems with French officials (a treason conviction in 1834 resulted in five years' exile in England), led him to emigrate to the United States in 1848. Cabet founded utopian communities in Texas and Illinois, but was again undercut, this time by recurring feuds with his followers.
-- Étienne Cabet, by Wikipedia
Robert Owen and Henry George.[1][2] Utopian socialism is often described as the presentation of visions and outlines for imaginary or futuristic ideal societies, with positive ideals being the main reason for moving society in such a direction. Later socialists and critics of utopian socialism viewed utopian socialism as not being grounded in actual material conditions of existing society and in some cases as reactionary. These visions of ideal societies competed with Marxist-inspired revolutionary social democratic movements.[3]
As a term or label, utopian socialism is most often applied to, or used to define, those socialists who lived in the first quarter of the 19th century who were ascribed the label utopian by later socialists as a pejorative in order to imply naiveté and to dismiss their ideas as fanciful and unrealistic.[4] A similar school of thought that emerged in the early 20th century which makes the case for socialism on moral grounds is ethical socialism.[5]
One key difference between utopian socialists and other socialists such as most anarchists and Marxists is that utopian socialists generally do not believe any form of class struggle or social revolution is necessary for socialism to emerge. Utopian socialists believe that people of all classes can voluntarily adopt their plan for society if it is presented convincingly.[3] They feel their form of cooperative socialism can be established among like-minded people within the existing society and that their small communities can demonstrate the feasibility of their plan for society.[3]
Definition
See also: Utopia
The thinkers identified as utopian socialist did not use the term utopian to refer to their ideas. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were the first thinkers to refer to them as utopian, referring to all socialist ideas that simply presented a vision and distant goal of an ethically just society as utopian. This utopian mindset which held an integrated conception of the goal, the means to produce said goal and an understanding of the way that those means would inevitably be produced through examining social and economic phenomena can be contrasted with scientific socialism which has been likened to Taylorism.[citation needed]
This distinction was made clear in Engels' work Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1892, part of an earlier publication, the Anti-Dühring from 1878). Utopian socialists were seen as wanting to expand the principles of the French revolution in order to create a more rational society. Despite being labeled as utopian by later socialists, their aims were not always utopian and their values often included rigid support for the scientific method and the creation of a society based upon scientific understanding.[6]
Development
The term utopian socialism was introduced by Karl Marx in "For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything" in 1843 and then developed in The Communist Manifesto in 1848, although shortly before its publication Marx had already attacked the ideas of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in The Poverty of Philosophy (originally written in French, 1847). The term was used by later socialist thinkers to describe early socialist or quasi-socialist intellectuals who created hypothetical visions of egalitarian, communalist, meritocratic, or other notions of perfect societies without considering how these societies could be created or sustained.
In The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx criticized the economic and philosophical arguments of Proudhon set forth in The System of Economic Contradictions, or The Philosophy of Poverty. Marx accused Proudhon of wanting to rise above the bourgeoisie. In the history of Marx's thought and Marxism, this work is pivotal in the distinction between the concepts of utopian socialism and what Marx and the Marxists claimed as scientific socialism. Although utopian socialists shared few political, social, or economic perspectives, Marx and Engels argued that they shared certain intellectual characteristics. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote: "The undeveloped state of the class struggle, as well as their own surroundings, causes Socialists of this kind to consider themselves far superior to all class antagonisms. They want to improve the condition of every member of society, even that of the most favored. Hence, they habitually appeal to society at large, without distinction of class; nay, by preference, to the ruling class. For how can people, when once they understand their system, fail to see it in the best possible plan of the best possible state of society? Hence, they reject all political, and especially all revolutionary, action; they wish to attain their ends by peaceful means, and endeavor, by small experiments, necessarily doomed to failure, and by the force of example, to pave the way for the new social Gospel".[7]
Marx and Engels associated utopian socialism with communitarian socialism which similarly sees the establishment of small intentional communities as both a strategy for achieving and the final form of a socialist society.[8] Marx and Engels used the term scientific socialism to describe the type of socialism they saw themselves developing. According to Engels, socialism was not "an accidental discovery of this or that ingenious brain, but the necessary outcome of the struggle between two historically developed classes, namely the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Its task was no longer to manufacture a system of society as perfect as possible, but to examine the historical-economic succession of events from which these classes and their antagonism had of necessity sprung, and to discover in the economic conditions thus created the means of ending the conflict". Critics have argued that utopian socialists who established experimental communities were in fact trying to apply the scientific method to human social organization and were therefore not utopian. On the basis of Karl Popper's definition of science as "the practice of experimentation, of hypothesis and test", Joshua Muravchik argued that "Owen and Fourier and their followers were the real 'scientific socialists.' They hit upon the idea of socialism, and they tested it by attempting to form socialist communities". By contrast, Muravchik further argued that Marx made untestable predictions about the future and that Marx's view that socialism would be created by impersonal historical forces may lead one to conclude that it is unnecessary to strive for socialism because it will happen anyway.[9]
Since the mid-19th century, Marxism and Marxism–Leninism overtook utopian socialism in terms of intellectual development and number of adherents. At one time almost half the population of the world lived under regimes that claimed to be Marxist.[10] Currents such as Saint-Simonianism and Fourierism attracted the interest of numerous later authors but failed to compete with the now dominant Marxist, Proudhonist, or Leninist schools on a political level. It has been noted that they exerted a significant influence on the emergence of new religious movements such as spiritualism and occultism.[11][12]
In literature and in practice
Perhaps the first utopian socialist was Thomas More (1478–1535), who wrote about an imaginary socialist society in his book Utopia, published in 1516. The contemporary definition of the English word utopia derives from this work and many aspects of More's description of Utopia were influenced by life in monasteries.[13]
Saint-Simonianism was a French political and social movement of the first half of the 19th century, inspired by the ideas of Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825). His ideas influenced Auguste Comte (who was for a time Saint-Simon's secretary), Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill and many other thinkers and social theorists.
Robert Owen was one of the founders of utopian socialism
Robert Owen (1771–1858) was a successful Welsh businessman who devoted much of his profits to improving the lives of his employees. His reputation grew when he set up a textile factory in New Lanark, Scotland, co-funded by his teacher, the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham and introduced shorter working hours, schools for children and renovated housing. He wrote about his ideas in his book A New View of Society which was published in 1813 and An Explanation of the Cause of Distress which pervades the civilized parts of the world in 1823. He also set up an Owenite commune called New Harmony in Indiana. This collapsed when one of his business partners ran off with all the profits. Owen's main contribution to socialist thought was the view that human social behavior is not fixed or absolute and that humans have the free will to organize themselves into any kind of society they wished.
Charles Fourier (1772–1837) rejected the Industrial Revolution altogether and thus the problems that arose with it. Fourier made various fanciful claims about the ideal world he envisioned. Despite some clearly non-socialist inclinations,[clarification needed] he contributed significantly even if indirectly to the socialist movement. His writings about turning work into play influenced the young Karl Marx and helped him devise his theory of alienation. Also a contributor to feminism, Fourier invented the concept of phalanstère, units of people based on a theory of passions and of their combination. Several colonies based on Fourier's ideas were founded in the United States by Albert Brisbane and Horace Greeley.
Many Romantic authors, most notably William Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote anti-capitalist works and supported peasant revolutions across early 19th century Europe. Étienne Cabet (1788–1856), influenced by Robert Owen, published a book in 1840 entitled Travel and adventures of Lord William Carisdall in Icaria in which he described an ideal communalist society. His attempts to form real socialist communities based on his ideas through the Icarian movement did not survive, but one such community was the precursor of Corning, Iowa. Possibly inspired by Christianity, he coined the word communism and influenced other thinkers, including Marx and Engels.
Utopian socialist pamphlet of Swiss social medical doctor Rudolf Sutermeister (1802–1868)
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) published Looking Backward in 1888, a utopian romance novel about a future socialist society. In Bellamy's utopia, property was held in common and money replaced with a system of equal credit for all. Valid for a year and non-transferable between individuals, credit expenditure was to be tracked via "credit-cards" (which bear no resemblance to modern credit cards which are tools of debt-finance). Labour was compulsory from age 21 to 40 and organised via various departments of an Industrial Army to which most citizens belonged. Working hours were to be cut drastically due to technological advances (including organisational). People were expected to be motivated by a Religion of Solidarity and criminal behavior was treated as a form of mental illness or "atavism". The book ranked as second or third best seller of its time (after Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben Hur). In 1897, Bellamy published a sequel entitled Equality as a reply to his critics and which lacked the Industrial Army and other authoritarian aspects.
William Morris (1834–1896) published News from Nowhere in 1890, partly as a response to Bellamy's Looking Backwards, which he equated with the socialism of Fabians such as Sydney Webb. Morris' vision of the future socialist society was centred around his concept of useful work as opposed to useless toil and the redemption of human labour. Morris believed that all work should be artistic, in the sense that the worker should find it both pleasurable and an outlet for creativity. Morris' conception of labour thus bears strong resemblance to Fourier's, while Bellamy's (the reduction of labour) is more akin to that of Saint-Simon or in aspects Marx.
The Brotherhood Church in Britain and the Life and Labor Commune in Russia were based on the Christian anarchist ideas of Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910).
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) and Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) wrote about anarchist forms of socialism in their books. Proudhon wrote What is Property? (1840) and The System of Economic Contradictions, or The Philosophy of Poverty (1847). Kropotkin wrote The Conquest of Bread (1892) and Fields, Factories and Workshops (1912). Many of the anarchist collectives formed in Spain, especially in Aragon and Catalonia, during the Spanish Civil War were based on their ideas. While linking to different topics is always useful to maximize exposure, anarchism does not derive itself from utopian socialism and most anarchists would consider the association to essentially be a marxist slur designed to reduce the credibility of anarchism amongst socialists.[14]
Many participants in the historical kibbutz movement in Israel were motivated by utopian socialist ideas.[15]
Augustin Souchy (1892–1984) spent most of his life investigating and participating in many kinds of socialist communities. Souchy wrote about his experiences in his autobiography Beware! Anarchist!
Behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) published Walden Two in 1948. The Twin Oaks Community was originally based on his ideas.
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018) wrote about an impoverished anarchist society in her book The Dispossessed, published in 1974, in which the anarchists agree to leave their home planet and colonize a barely habitable moon in order to avoid a bloody revolution.
Related concepts
Some communities of the modern intentional community movement such as kibbutzim could be categorized as utopian socialist.
Some religious communities such as the Hutterites are categorized as utopian religious socialists.[16]
Classless modes of production in hunter-gatherer societies are referred to as primitive communism by Marxists to stress their classless nature.[17]
A related concept is that of a socialist utopia, usually depicted in works of fiction as possible ways society can turn out to be in the future and often combined with notions of a technologically revolutionized economy.
Notable utopian socialists
• Edward Bellamy
• Tommaso Campanella
• Etienne Cabet
o Icarians
• Victor Considérant
• David Dale
• Charles Fourier
o North American Phalanx
o The Phalanx
• Henry George
• Jean-Baptiste Godin
• Laurence Gronlund
• Matti Kurikka
• John Lennon
• Thomas Moore
• John Humphrey Noyes
• Robert Owen
• Vaso Pelagić
• Henri de Saint-Simon
• William Thompson
• Wilhelm Weitling
• Gerrard Winstanley
Notable utopian communities
Utopian communities have existed all over the world. In various forms and locations, they have existed continuously in the United States since the 1730s, beginning with Ephrata Cloister, a religious community in what is now Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.[18]
Owenite communities
• New Lanark
• New Harmony, Indiana
Fourierist communities
• Brook Farm
• La Reunion (Dallas)
• North American Phalanx
• Silkville
• Utopia, Ohio
Icarian communities
• Corning, Iowa
Anarchist communities
• Home, Washington
• Life and Labor Commune
• Socialist Community of Modern Times
• Whiteway Colony
Others
• Kaweah Colony
• Llano del Rio
• Los Mochis
• Nevada City, Nevada
• New Australia
• Oneida Community
• Ruskin Colony
• Rugby, Tennessee
• Sointula
See also
• Christian socialism
• Communist utopia
• Diggers
• Ethical socialism
• Futurism
• History of socialism
• Ideal (ethics)
• Intentional communities
• Kibbutz
• List of anarchist communities
• Marxism
• Nanosocialism
• Post-capitalism
• Post-scarcity
• Ricardian socialism
• Scientific socialism
• Socialism
• Socialist economics
• Syndicalism
• Utopia for Realists
• Yellow socialism
• Zero waste
References
1. "Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism". Public Broadcasting System. Retrieved December 15, 2011.
2. "Utopian socialism". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved July 12, 2020.
3. Draper, Hal (1990). Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution, Volume IV: Critique of Other Socialisms. New York: Monthly Review Press. pp. 1–21. ISBN 978-0853457985.
4. Newman, Michael. (2005) Socialism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-
19-280431-6.
5. Thompson, Noel W. (2006). Political Economy and the Labour Party: The Economics of Democratic Socialism, 1884–2005 (2nd ed.). Abingdon, England: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-32880-7.
6. Frederick Engels. "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (Chpt. 1)". Marxists.org. Retrieved July 3,2013.
7. Engels, Friedrich and Marx, Karl Heinrich. Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei. Edited by Sálvio M. Soares. MetaLibri, October 31, 2008, v1.0s.
8. Leopold, David (2018). "Marx, Engels and Some (Non-Foundational) Arguments Against Utopian Socialism". In Kandiyali, Jan (ed.). Reassessing Marx's Social and Political Philosophy: Freedom, Recognition and Human Flourishing. Routledge. p. 73.
9. Muravchik, Joshua (8 February 1999). "The Rise and Fall of Socialism". Bradley Lecture Series. American Enterprise Institute. Archived 3 May 1999 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 21 August 2020.
10. Steven Kreis (January 30, 2008). "Karl Marx, 1818-1883". The History Guide.
11. Strube, Julian (2016). "Socialist religion and the emergence of occultism: a genealogical approach to socialism and secularization in 19th-century France". Religion. 46 (3): 359–388. doi:10.1080/0048721X.2016.1146926.
12. Cyranka, Daniel (2016). "Religious Revolutionaries and Spiritualism in Germany around 1848". Aries. 16 (1): 13–48. doi:10.1163/15700593-01601002.
13. J. C. Davis (28 July 1983). Utopia and the Ideal Society: A Study of English Utopian Writing 1516-1700. Cambridge University Press. p. 58. ISBN 978-0-521-27551-4.
14. Sam Dolgoff (1990). The Anarchist Collectives: Workers' Self-Management in the Spanish Revolution, 1936–1939. Black Rose Books.
15. Sheldon Goldenberg and Gerda R. Wekerle (September 1972). "From utopia to total institution in a single generation: the kibbutz and Bruderhof". International Review of Modern Sociology. 2 (2): 224–232. JSTOR 41420450.
16. Donald E. Frey (2009). America's Economic Moralists: A History of Rival Ethics and Economics. SUNY Press. p. 61. ISBN 9780791493663.
17. "Primitive communism: life before class and oppression". Socialist Worker. May 28, 2013. Retrieved December 27, 2019.
18. Yaacov Oved (1988). Two Hundred Years of American Communes. Transaction Publishers. pp. 3, 19.
Further reading[edit]
• Taylor, Keith (1992). The political ideas of Utopian socialists. London: Cass. ISBN 0714630896.
External links
• Media related to Utopian socialism at Wikimedia Commons
• Be Utopian: Demand the Realistic by Robert Pollin, The Nation, March 9, 2009.
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Étienne Cabet
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/26/20
Étienne Cabet
Born: January 1, 1788, Dijon, Côte-d'Or
Died: November 9, 1856 (aged 68), St. Louis, Missouri, United States
Occupation: philosopher
Known for: founder of the Icarian movement
Notable work: "Travel and Adventures of Lord William Carisdall in Icaria" (1840)
Étienne Cabet (French: [kabɛ]; January 1, 1788 – November 9, 1856) was a French philosopher and utopian socialist who founded the Icarian movement. Cabet became the most popular socialist advocate of his day, with a special appeal to artisans who were being undercut by factories. Cabet published Voyage en Icarie in French in 1839 (and in English in 1840 as Travels in Icaria), in which he proposed replacing capitalist production with workers' cooperatives. Recurrent problems with French officials (a treason conviction in 1834 resulted in five years' exile in England), led him to emigrate to the United States in 1848. Cabet founded utopian communities in Texas and Illinois, but was again undercut, this time by recurring feuds with his followers.
Early and family life
Cabet was born in Dijon, Côte-d'Or, the youngest son of a cooper from Burgundy, Claude Cabet, and his wife Francoise Berthier. He was educated as a lawyer.[1] Cabet married Delphine Lasage on March 25, 1839 at Marylebone, London, during his exile in England, who bore a child.[2][3]
Career in France
Cabet secured an appointment as attorney-general in Corsica. He represented the government of Louis Philippe, despite having headed an insurrectionary committee during the July Revolution of 1830 which led to the ouster of the "Republican Monarch" King Charles X (and the ascent of Louis Philippe). However, Cabet lost this position for his attack upon the conservatism of the government in his Histoire de la révolution de 1830.[4] Nonetheless, in 1831, Cabet was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in France as the representative of Côte d'Or, and sat with the extreme radicals.[5] Accused of treason in 1834 because of his bitter attacks on the government both in the history book and subsequently, Cabet was convicted and sentenced to five years' exile.[6] He fled to England and sought political asylum. Influenced by Robert Owen, Thomas More and Charles Fourier, Cabet wrote Voyage et aventures de lord William Carisdall en Icarie ("Travel and Adventures of Lord William Carisdall in Icaria", 1840), which depicted a utopia in which a democratically elected governing body controlled all economic activity and closely supervised social life. "Icaria" is the name of his fictional country and ideal society. The nuclear family remained the only other independent unit. The book's success prompted Cabet to take steps to realize his Utopia.[5]
In 1839, Cabet returned to France to advocate a communitarian social movement, for which he invented the term communisme.[7] Some writers ignored Cabet's Christian influences, as described in his book Le vrai christianisme suivant Jésus Christ ("The real Christianity according to Jesus Christ", in five volumes, 1846). This book described Christ's mission to be to establish social equality, and contrasted primitive Christianity with the ecclesiasticism of Cabet's time to the disparagement of the latter. In it, Cabet argued that the kingdom of God announced by Jesus was nothing other than a communist society.[8] The book also contained a popular history of the French Revolutions from 1789 to 1830.[5]
In 1841 Cabet revived the Populaire (founded by him in 1833), which was widely read by French workingmen, and from 1843 to 1847 he printed an Icarian almanac, a number of controversial pamphlets as well as the above-mentioned book on Christianity. There were probably 400,000 adherents of the Icarian school.[5]
Emigration to the United States of America
In 1847, after realizing the economic hardship caused by the depression of 1846, Cabet gave up on the notion of reforming French society.[9] Instead, after conversations with Robert Owen and Owen's attempts to found a commune in Texas, Cabet gathered a group of followers from across France and traveled to the United States to organize an Icarian community.[10] They entered into a social contract, making Cabet the director-in-chief for the first ten years, and embarked from Le Havre, February 3, 1848, for New Orleans, Louisiana. They expected to settle in the Red River valley in Texas. However, the Peters Land Company gave them deeds to only 320 acres of land in Denton County, Texas near what became Dallas, Texas rather than the million acres of land in the Red River Valley they expected (more than 200 miles away).[9] The first group of emigrants ultimately returned to New Orleans; Cabet came later at the head of a second and smaller band. Neither Texas nor Louisiana proved the looked-for Utopia, and, ravaged by disease, about one-third of the colonists returned to France.[5]
The remainder (142 men, 74 women and 64 children, although 20 died of cholera en route), moved northward along the Mississippi River to Nauvoo, Illinois, where they purchased twelve acres recently vacated by the Mormons in 1849.[11][9] Cabet was unanimously elected leader, for a one-year term. The improved location enabled the experiment to develop into a successful agricultural community. Education and culture were highly valued by members. By 1855, the Nauvoo Icarian community had expanded to about 500 members with a solid agricultural base, as well as shops, three schools, flour and sawmills, a whiskey distillery, English and French newspapers, a 39 piece orchestra, choir, theater, hospital and the state's largest library (4000 volumes).[11] Members met on Saturdays to discuss community affairs and problems, with universal male suffrage; women were allowed to speak but not vote. On Sundays members talked about ethical and moral issues, but there were no denominational religious services, only members had espoused Christianity before joining the community. Based on this success, some even considered expanding the community 200 miles west to Adair County, Iowa.[12]
However, Cabet was forced to return to France in May 1851 to settle charges of fraud brought up by his previous followers in Europe.[11][13] Although found not guilty by a French jury in July 1851, when Cabet returned to Nauvoo in July 1852, the community had changed. Some men were using tobacco and abusing alcohol, many women were adorning themselves with fancy dresses and jewelry, and families claimed land as private property. Cabet responded by issuing "Forty-Eight Rules of Conduct" on November 23, 1853, forbidding "tobacco, hard liquor, complaints about the food, and hunting and fishing 'for pleasure'" as well as demanding absolute silence in workshops and submission to him.[13] Some described him as authoritarian or emotionally unstable; internal problems arose and worsened.[14]
In the spring of 1855, Cabet tried to revise the colony's constitution to make him president for life, but was instead relieved of the presidency, so his followers went out on strike, and were in turn temporarily barred from the communal dining hall.[14] Although the colony by then had 526 members and 57 more across the Mississippi River at Montrose, Iowa, it was suffering economically—dependent upon money brought by new members and subsidies from the "Le Populaire" home office in France.[13][14]
Moreover, split regarding the work division and food distribution worsened during the summer and following year.[11] Cabet published his final book, Colonie icarienne aux États-Unis d'Amérique (1856), but that failed to solve the internal problems. In October 1856, about 180 supporters and Cabet left Nauvoo in three groups for New Bremen, Missouri near St. Louis, Missouri.
Death and legacy
Cabet suffered a stroke on November 8, 1856, a few days after moving to Missouri with the last group of his followers, and soon died.[15] He was buried at the Old Picker's Cemetery, but his remains were moved during construction of a high school on the site, and now rest at New Saint Marcus Cemetery and Mausoleum in Affton, St. Louis County, Missouri, with a gravestone funded by the French Embassy.[2]
On February 15, 1858, the remaining Icarians settled in Cheltenham on the western edge of St. Louis, under the leadership of a lawyer named Mercadier, whom Cabet had designated as his successor. That colony would disband in 1864 (with several young men fighting in the American Civil War) and two families rejoined the Icarians in Corning, Iowa discussed below (the Cheltenham area became a neighborhood within St. Louis).[16] Before his death, Cabet sued the Nauvoo Icarians in a local court, as well as petitioned the Illinois legislature to repeal the act that incorporated the community.[11][17] The Nauvoo colony relocated to Corning, Adams County, Iowa, about 80 miles southwest of Des Moines, Iowa between 1858 and 1860, because of Illinois crop failures as well as the end of financial support from France following the Panic of 1857. The Corning Icarians prospered until another factional split in 1878, prompted by new emigrants from France, who left to establish a community in Cloverdale, California in 1883 (but "Icaria Speranza" lasted only four years). The colony at Corning disbanded in 1898, but by that time it had existed for 46 years, making it the longest non-religious communal living experiment in American history.[16]
The library at Western Illinois University has a Center for Icarian Studies, as well as Icarian archives and papers. The Nauvoo Historical Society also has some papers and artifacts on display, and some in the town remember the Icarians during the Labor Day Grape Festival, through a historical play. Although the growing of Concord grapes in the Nauvoo area began in the 1830s based on the efforts of a French Catholic priest and expanded in 1846 when a Swiss vintner named John Tanner brought the Norton grape to the area, Baxter's Vineyards and Winery (founded Icarians Emile and Annette Baxter in 1857) continues as a 5-generation old family business and is Illinois' oldest winery.[16]
References
1. Soland 2017, p. 57.
2. "Etienne Cabet (1788-1856) Find A Grave-herdenking".
3. British parish records on ancestry.com; the child may have been Gentilly Cabet, who married Eugene Dagousset in Paris in 1891 according to another ancestry.com database
4. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Cabet, Étienne" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
5. Gilman, D. C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). "Cabet, Etienne" . New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.
6. Soland 2017, p. 58.
7. "CABET, Etienne (1788-1856) Fondateur du communisme en France". Recherches sur l’anarchisme. Retrieved 2007-02-27.
8. Paul Bénichou, Le Sacre de l'écrivain : Doctrines de l'âge romantique (Paris: Gallimard, 1977), p. 402 n.63.
9. Soland 2017, p. 59.
10. Friesen, John W.; Friesen, Virginia Lyons (2004). The Palgrave Companion to North American Utopias. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 137.
11. Friesen, John W.; Friesen, Virginia Lyons (2004). The Palgrave Companion to North American Utopias. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 139.
12. Soland 2017, p. 63.
13. Pitzer, Donald (1997). America's Communal Utopias. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press. p. 283.
14. Soland 2017, p. 64.
15. Ancestry.com's Missouri Registry of Deaths for the week of November 10, 1856, p. 122
16. Soland 2017, p. 65.
17. Some miscellaneous handwritten records of the Hancock County, Illinois court relative to "E. Cabbett" are available in ancestry.com's library edition, images 1117-1119 of 1825-1858 records
Further reading
• Johnson, Christopher H (1974). Utopian communism in France : Cabet and the Icarians, 1839-1851. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press. ISBN 9780801408953. OCLC 1223569.
• Soland, Randall (2017). Utopian communities of Illinois : heaven on the prairie. Charleston, SC: History Press. ISBN 9781439661666. OCLC 1004538134.
• Sutton, Robert P. (1994). Les Icariens : the utopian dream in Europe and America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 9780252020674. OCLC 28215643.
External links
• Étienne Cabet from the Handbook of Texas Online
• Encyclopædia Britannica Etienne Cabet
• Archive of Etienne Cabet Papers at the International Institute of Social History
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/26/20
Étienne Cabet
Born: January 1, 1788, Dijon, Côte-d'Or
Died: November 9, 1856 (aged 68), St. Louis, Missouri, United States
Occupation: philosopher
Known for: founder of the Icarian movement
Notable work: "Travel and Adventures of Lord William Carisdall in Icaria" (1840)
Étienne Cabet (French: [kabɛ]; January 1, 1788 – November 9, 1856) was a French philosopher and utopian socialist who founded the Icarian movement. Cabet became the most popular socialist advocate of his day, with a special appeal to artisans who were being undercut by factories. Cabet published Voyage en Icarie in French in 1839 (and in English in 1840 as Travels in Icaria), in which he proposed replacing capitalist production with workers' cooperatives. Recurrent problems with French officials (a treason conviction in 1834 resulted in five years' exile in England), led him to emigrate to the United States in 1848. Cabet founded utopian communities in Texas and Illinois, but was again undercut, this time by recurring feuds with his followers.
Early and family life
Cabet was born in Dijon, Côte-d'Or, the youngest son of a cooper from Burgundy, Claude Cabet, and his wife Francoise Berthier. He was educated as a lawyer.[1] Cabet married Delphine Lasage on March 25, 1839 at Marylebone, London, during his exile in England, who bore a child.[2][3]
Career in France
Cabet secured an appointment as attorney-general in Corsica. He represented the government of Louis Philippe, despite having headed an insurrectionary committee during the July Revolution of 1830 which led to the ouster of the "Republican Monarch" King Charles X (and the ascent of Louis Philippe). However, Cabet lost this position for his attack upon the conservatism of the government in his Histoire de la révolution de 1830.[4] Nonetheless, in 1831, Cabet was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in France as the representative of Côte d'Or, and sat with the extreme radicals.[5] Accused of treason in 1834 because of his bitter attacks on the government both in the history book and subsequently, Cabet was convicted and sentenced to five years' exile.[6] He fled to England and sought political asylum. Influenced by Robert Owen, Thomas More and Charles Fourier, Cabet wrote Voyage et aventures de lord William Carisdall en Icarie ("Travel and Adventures of Lord William Carisdall in Icaria", 1840), which depicted a utopia in which a democratically elected governing body controlled all economic activity and closely supervised social life. "Icaria" is the name of his fictional country and ideal society. The nuclear family remained the only other independent unit. The book's success prompted Cabet to take steps to realize his Utopia.[5]
In 1839, Cabet returned to France to advocate a communitarian social movement, for which he invented the term communisme.[7] Some writers ignored Cabet's Christian influences, as described in his book Le vrai christianisme suivant Jésus Christ ("The real Christianity according to Jesus Christ", in five volumes, 1846). This book described Christ's mission to be to establish social equality, and contrasted primitive Christianity with the ecclesiasticism of Cabet's time to the disparagement of the latter. In it, Cabet argued that the kingdom of God announced by Jesus was nothing other than a communist society.[8] The book also contained a popular history of the French Revolutions from 1789 to 1830.[5]
In 1841 Cabet revived the Populaire (founded by him in 1833), which was widely read by French workingmen, and from 1843 to 1847 he printed an Icarian almanac, a number of controversial pamphlets as well as the above-mentioned book on Christianity. There were probably 400,000 adherents of the Icarian school.[5]
Emigration to the United States of America
In 1847, after realizing the economic hardship caused by the depression of 1846, Cabet gave up on the notion of reforming French society.[9] Instead, after conversations with Robert Owen and Owen's attempts to found a commune in Texas, Cabet gathered a group of followers from across France and traveled to the United States to organize an Icarian community.[10] They entered into a social contract, making Cabet the director-in-chief for the first ten years, and embarked from Le Havre, February 3, 1848, for New Orleans, Louisiana. They expected to settle in the Red River valley in Texas. However, the Peters Land Company gave them deeds to only 320 acres of land in Denton County, Texas near what became Dallas, Texas rather than the million acres of land in the Red River Valley they expected (more than 200 miles away).[9] The first group of emigrants ultimately returned to New Orleans; Cabet came later at the head of a second and smaller band. Neither Texas nor Louisiana proved the looked-for Utopia, and, ravaged by disease, about one-third of the colonists returned to France.[5]
The remainder (142 men, 74 women and 64 children, although 20 died of cholera en route), moved northward along the Mississippi River to Nauvoo, Illinois, where they purchased twelve acres recently vacated by the Mormons in 1849.[11][9] Cabet was unanimously elected leader, for a one-year term. The improved location enabled the experiment to develop into a successful agricultural community. Education and culture were highly valued by members. By 1855, the Nauvoo Icarian community had expanded to about 500 members with a solid agricultural base, as well as shops, three schools, flour and sawmills, a whiskey distillery, English and French newspapers, a 39 piece orchestra, choir, theater, hospital and the state's largest library (4000 volumes).[11] Members met on Saturdays to discuss community affairs and problems, with universal male suffrage; women were allowed to speak but not vote. On Sundays members talked about ethical and moral issues, but there were no denominational religious services, only members had espoused Christianity before joining the community. Based on this success, some even considered expanding the community 200 miles west to Adair County, Iowa.[12]
However, Cabet was forced to return to France in May 1851 to settle charges of fraud brought up by his previous followers in Europe.[11][13] Although found not guilty by a French jury in July 1851, when Cabet returned to Nauvoo in July 1852, the community had changed. Some men were using tobacco and abusing alcohol, many women were adorning themselves with fancy dresses and jewelry, and families claimed land as private property. Cabet responded by issuing "Forty-Eight Rules of Conduct" on November 23, 1853, forbidding "tobacco, hard liquor, complaints about the food, and hunting and fishing 'for pleasure'" as well as demanding absolute silence in workshops and submission to him.[13] Some described him as authoritarian or emotionally unstable; internal problems arose and worsened.[14]
In the spring of 1855, Cabet tried to revise the colony's constitution to make him president for life, but was instead relieved of the presidency, so his followers went out on strike, and were in turn temporarily barred from the communal dining hall.[14] Although the colony by then had 526 members and 57 more across the Mississippi River at Montrose, Iowa, it was suffering economically—dependent upon money brought by new members and subsidies from the "Le Populaire" home office in France.[13][14]
Moreover, split regarding the work division and food distribution worsened during the summer and following year.[11] Cabet published his final book, Colonie icarienne aux États-Unis d'Amérique (1856), but that failed to solve the internal problems. In October 1856, about 180 supporters and Cabet left Nauvoo in three groups for New Bremen, Missouri near St. Louis, Missouri.
Death and legacy
Cabet suffered a stroke on November 8, 1856, a few days after moving to Missouri with the last group of his followers, and soon died.[15] He was buried at the Old Picker's Cemetery, but his remains were moved during construction of a high school on the site, and now rest at New Saint Marcus Cemetery and Mausoleum in Affton, St. Louis County, Missouri, with a gravestone funded by the French Embassy.[2]
On February 15, 1858, the remaining Icarians settled in Cheltenham on the western edge of St. Louis, under the leadership of a lawyer named Mercadier, whom Cabet had designated as his successor. That colony would disband in 1864 (with several young men fighting in the American Civil War) and two families rejoined the Icarians in Corning, Iowa discussed below (the Cheltenham area became a neighborhood within St. Louis).[16] Before his death, Cabet sued the Nauvoo Icarians in a local court, as well as petitioned the Illinois legislature to repeal the act that incorporated the community.[11][17] The Nauvoo colony relocated to Corning, Adams County, Iowa, about 80 miles southwest of Des Moines, Iowa between 1858 and 1860, because of Illinois crop failures as well as the end of financial support from France following the Panic of 1857. The Corning Icarians prospered until another factional split in 1878, prompted by new emigrants from France, who left to establish a community in Cloverdale, California in 1883 (but "Icaria Speranza" lasted only four years). The colony at Corning disbanded in 1898, but by that time it had existed for 46 years, making it the longest non-religious communal living experiment in American history.[16]
The library at Western Illinois University has a Center for Icarian Studies, as well as Icarian archives and papers. The Nauvoo Historical Society also has some papers and artifacts on display, and some in the town remember the Icarians during the Labor Day Grape Festival, through a historical play. Although the growing of Concord grapes in the Nauvoo area began in the 1830s based on the efforts of a French Catholic priest and expanded in 1846 when a Swiss vintner named John Tanner brought the Norton grape to the area, Baxter's Vineyards and Winery (founded Icarians Emile and Annette Baxter in 1857) continues as a 5-generation old family business and is Illinois' oldest winery.[16]
References
1. Soland 2017, p. 57.
2. "Etienne Cabet (1788-1856) Find A Grave-herdenking".
3. British parish records on ancestry.com; the child may have been Gentilly Cabet, who married Eugene Dagousset in Paris in 1891 according to another ancestry.com database
4. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Cabet, Étienne" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
5. Gilman, D. C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). "Cabet, Etienne" . New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.
6. Soland 2017, p. 58.
7. "CABET, Etienne (1788-1856) Fondateur du communisme en France". Recherches sur l’anarchisme. Retrieved 2007-02-27.
8. Paul Bénichou, Le Sacre de l'écrivain : Doctrines de l'âge romantique (Paris: Gallimard, 1977), p. 402 n.63.
9. Soland 2017, p. 59.
10. Friesen, John W.; Friesen, Virginia Lyons (2004). The Palgrave Companion to North American Utopias. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 137.
11. Friesen, John W.; Friesen, Virginia Lyons (2004). The Palgrave Companion to North American Utopias. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 139.
12. Soland 2017, p. 63.
13. Pitzer, Donald (1997). America's Communal Utopias. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press. p. 283.
14. Soland 2017, p. 64.
15. Ancestry.com's Missouri Registry of Deaths for the week of November 10, 1856, p. 122
16. Soland 2017, p. 65.
17. Some miscellaneous handwritten records of the Hancock County, Illinois court relative to "E. Cabbett" are available in ancestry.com's library edition, images 1117-1119 of 1825-1858 records
Further reading
• Johnson, Christopher H (1974). Utopian communism in France : Cabet and the Icarians, 1839-1851. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press. ISBN 9780801408953. OCLC 1223569.
• Soland, Randall (2017). Utopian communities of Illinois : heaven on the prairie. Charleston, SC: History Press. ISBN 9781439661666. OCLC 1004538134.
• Sutton, Robert P. (1994). Les Icariens : the utopian dream in Europe and America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 9780252020674. OCLC 28215643.
External links
• Étienne Cabet from the Handbook of Texas Online
• Encyclopædia Britannica Etienne Cabet
• Archive of Etienne Cabet Papers at the International Institute of Social History
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Young Men's Indian Association
by Theosophy Wiki
Accessed: 8/27/20
Entrance to YMIA Building, Chennai
The Young Men's Indian Association (YMIA) is a youth organization that was founded by Annie Besant in 1914 in support of the Indian independence movement. It continues to be a prominent institution in Chennai, offering Indian youth opportunities to improve in body, mind, moral character, and citizenship.[1][2] It offers recreational facilities, lectures, library and reading room, and residences. The YMIA has a web page and a presence in Facebook.
Early history
By 1914, Annie Besant had already been working for some years on establishment of schools and organizations to support Indian education and nationalism. In a 1908 address at Central Hindu College, she said, "Our work is the training of thousands of India's sons into noble manhood into worthiness to become free citizens in a free land." [3] Her political activity reached greatest intensity in the years 1914-1917. She worked with several other nationalist leaders to demand home rule for India, and formation of the YMIA was one aspect of this movement.
Mrs. Besant sponsored the construction of a building in Madras (now Chennai) for the YMIA, which was completed in 1915. A large public meeting hall in the building, designed to seat 1500 people, was given the name Gopal Krishna Gokhale Hall after the Indian leader. When she announced the formation of the Home Rule League in 1916, it was at Gokhale Hall. Many other nationalistic events took place there. The Indian Society of Oriental Art held an exhibition at the YMIA building in 1916, organized by Theosophist James Cousins.[4]
In his introduction to The Besant Spirit, George S. Arundale wrote of Dr. Besant's daily routine in Adyar during the time of her great activism in the Indian independence movement. Each evening at 5:30,
Objects of the Association
According to its web page, the Association has these objects:
• To provide a building or buildings as a Young Men’s Club, with gymnasium, lecture hall, library, reading-room, recreation-rooms and residential quarters, mainly for students.
• To draw together students of all classes and creeds under a common roof so that they may recognize their common interests as citizens, to enable them to have lectures discussions and classes, and so to train and develop their bodies that they may grow into strong and healthy men.
• To do all such things as are incidental or conducive to the attainment of the above objects or any of them.
• To promote the physical, social, intellectual and well being of young people of all classes, creeds and communities, to undertake and conduct social service schemes, to provide, equip, conduct and maintain residential, educational and social institution, activities facilities and amenities for its members and others, to co-operate with other organizations working with similar objects for the welfare of humanity and to stimulate the development of movements for the higher advancement of society.
• To establish, equip maintain and conduct branches, departments, center, offices refreshment rooms, hostels boarding houses, tourist homes, homes for destitute children, libraries, reading and lecture rooms, congresses, conferences, study classes, canteen, gymnasium swimming pool, social service centers, educational or social institutions activities, functions works facilities and amenities which may be necessary or convenient for the advancement of the purpose or objects of the Association or for the advantage or convenient of its members and others connected with the Association but no intoxicants of any whatsoever shall be provided, used, sold kept or allowed in or upon any premises belonging to or in the occupation of the Association.
• To establish, provide, organize, maintain, supervise, control and conduct institution for the study and appreciation of indigenous and foreign languages and literature, are and science, studies research centers, laboratories, conferences and lecture halls, scientific, industrial and art exhibition, demonstrations, congresses and exchanges, art galleries, music and halls, television and dramatic performances, debates, symposia, concerts, sports and competitions and generally any undertaking, scheme work or activity whatsoever for the mental, moral or physical improve or benefit of the members or other connected with the Association.
• To provide, organize, equip maintain and conduct premises holding classes and competitions to arrange for and give prizes in respect thereof, delivery of lectures, giving of demonstrations and holding of other functions in connection with scientific and artistic subjects and for examinations and awards of diplomas and certificates and to institute, administer and undertake grants scholarships, rewards and other beneficiaries.
• To investigate, collect and circulate any knowledge or information on any subject deemed desirable to the purposes of the Association and to print, publish and issue journals, periodicals, books, leaflets, advertisements, reports, lectures and other reading matter which may be deemed useful or expedient for any such purpose.
• To solicit accept, hold and d\administer any donations, gifts legacies grants, subscription contributions or funds from members the public institutions, public trusts, universities, municipalities governments and other persons or bodies and whether subjects to any trust or otherwise for the furtherance of the objects of the Association.
• To promote education, research training and development on habit and human settlement, environment and other related issues of human value.
Governance
YMIA is a society registered under the provisions of Act 21 of 1860. Mr. R. Nataraj serves as President of the Governing body, which includes three Vice Presidents, Honorary Secretary, Honorary Treasurer, Honorary Join Secretary, and 17 members. In addition to an Executive Committee, there are committees for International YMIA Affiliation; Library and Internet; Gym and Sports; Students and Youth Activities; and Legal matters.
Facilities
YMIA has two locations in Chennai: the registered office at New India Buildings at No.49 Moore Street, and the administrative office at 54-57/2 Royapettah High Road in Mylapore. Gokhale Hall was partially demolished, but is now being renovated. Two hostels are now serving about 150 youth. Over the years additional hostels were operated in George town, Triplicane, Mylapore, and Nungambakkam, but these had to be closed despite their popularity.[6]
YMIA celebrating Annie Besant's birthday, October 1, 2014.
Activities
The organization has established a Facebook page and is developing a member page with individual photos and email addresses. YMIA is seeking to launch affiliated branches in all major cities of India, with each having a lecture hall, gymnasium, library, reading room, recreation, and residences. Internships are offered to students who would like to develop a career in services and development of youth programs.[7]
These are some recent activities and services of the YMIA:
• Sports, boxing, karate, and body building
• Fine arts competitions
• Carrom (a tabletop game) and chess
• Oratorical contests in 4 languages ( English, Tamil, Hindi, Telugu)
• Blood drive
• Republic Day celebrations
• Celebration of Swami Vivekananda's 150th birthday
• Memorial lectures and elocution contests honoring Dr. Annie Besant
• CDs of Annie Besant’s speeches
Notes
1. YMIA web page
2. Madras High Court document. 1962. Citation: AIR 1964 Mad 63, 1963 14 STC 1030 Mad Available at IndianKanoon.org.
3. Annie Besant, The Besant Spirit Volume 7: The India that Shall Be: Articles from New India.
4. Kathleen Taylor, Sir John Woodroffe Tantra and Bengal: 'An Indian Soul in a European Body?' (Surrey: Routledge, 2012), 70.
5. George S. Arundale, Introduction to The Besant Spirit: Volume III Indian Problems (Adyar, Madras, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1939), 13-14. The Besant Spirit is a compilation of writings by Annie Besant.
6. Young Men's Indian Association web page.
7. Young Men's Indian Association web page.
by Theosophy Wiki
Accessed: 8/27/20
Entrance to YMIA Building, Chennai
The Young Men's Indian Association (YMIA) is a youth organization that was founded by Annie Besant in 1914 in support of the Indian independence movement. It continues to be a prominent institution in Chennai, offering Indian youth opportunities to improve in body, mind, moral character, and citizenship.[1][2] It offers recreational facilities, lectures, library and reading room, and residences. The YMIA has a web page and a presence in Facebook.
Early history
By 1914, Annie Besant had already been working for some years on establishment of schools and organizations to support Indian education and nationalism. In a 1908 address at Central Hindu College, she said, "Our work is the training of thousands of India's sons into noble manhood into worthiness to become free citizens in a free land." [3] Her political activity reached greatest intensity in the years 1914-1917. She worked with several other nationalist leaders to demand home rule for India, and formation of the YMIA was one aspect of this movement.
Mrs. Besant sponsored the construction of a building in Madras (now Chennai) for the YMIA, which was completed in 1915. A large public meeting hall in the building, designed to seat 1500 people, was given the name Gopal Krishna Gokhale Hall after the Indian leader. When she announced the formation of the Home Rule League in 1916, it was at Gokhale Hall. Many other nationalistic events took place there. The Indian Society of Oriental Art held an exhibition at the YMIA building in 1916, organized by Theosophist James Cousins.[4]
In his introduction to The Besant Spirit, George S. Arundale wrote of Dr. Besant's daily routine in Adyar during the time of her great activism in the Indian independence movement. Each evening at 5:30,
She would be seen having a cup of coffee at the Young Men's Indian Association, a fine building in Armenian Street given by herself to the youth of the city. It would have to be very important business which could cause her to forego this solemn and happy ritual. But often there was very important business. So many people had to be seen, committees to be attended, and above all those wonderful meetings in the Gokhale Hall, itself part of the Association premises. Most young people of to-day [note that this was written in 1939] are too young to remember those meetings of twenty years ago. The Hall packed to the brim with youth and a sprinkling of the older generation sedately seated on the platform. Enters the white-robed figure of the Editor of New India, almost gorgeously arrayed in silken sari, with an H. R. pendant in green and gold enamel – green and gold being the then Home Rule colours... A torrent of applause. A cheery smile... Wave upon wave of cheers. A bow to the audience with folded hands. A rustle of chairs and a general fussification as the entourage settled itself down. And then a Hall-wide hush of expectancy, with everybody impatient to hear the world's greatest orator demand freedom for India in language that no one could possibly mistake.[5]
Objects of the Association
According to its web page, the Association has these objects:
• To provide a building or buildings as a Young Men’s Club, with gymnasium, lecture hall, library, reading-room, recreation-rooms and residential quarters, mainly for students.
• To draw together students of all classes and creeds under a common roof so that they may recognize their common interests as citizens, to enable them to have lectures discussions and classes, and so to train and develop their bodies that they may grow into strong and healthy men.
• To do all such things as are incidental or conducive to the attainment of the above objects or any of them.
• To promote the physical, social, intellectual and well being of young people of all classes, creeds and communities, to undertake and conduct social service schemes, to provide, equip, conduct and maintain residential, educational and social institution, activities facilities and amenities for its members and others, to co-operate with other organizations working with similar objects for the welfare of humanity and to stimulate the development of movements for the higher advancement of society.
• To establish, equip maintain and conduct branches, departments, center, offices refreshment rooms, hostels boarding houses, tourist homes, homes for destitute children, libraries, reading and lecture rooms, congresses, conferences, study classes, canteen, gymnasium swimming pool, social service centers, educational or social institutions activities, functions works facilities and amenities which may be necessary or convenient for the advancement of the purpose or objects of the Association or for the advantage or convenient of its members and others connected with the Association but no intoxicants of any whatsoever shall be provided, used, sold kept or allowed in or upon any premises belonging to or in the occupation of the Association.
• To establish, provide, organize, maintain, supervise, control and conduct institution for the study and appreciation of indigenous and foreign languages and literature, are and science, studies research centers, laboratories, conferences and lecture halls, scientific, industrial and art exhibition, demonstrations, congresses and exchanges, art galleries, music and halls, television and dramatic performances, debates, symposia, concerts, sports and competitions and generally any undertaking, scheme work or activity whatsoever for the mental, moral or physical improve or benefit of the members or other connected with the Association.
• To provide, organize, equip maintain and conduct premises holding classes and competitions to arrange for and give prizes in respect thereof, delivery of lectures, giving of demonstrations and holding of other functions in connection with scientific and artistic subjects and for examinations and awards of diplomas and certificates and to institute, administer and undertake grants scholarships, rewards and other beneficiaries.
• To investigate, collect and circulate any knowledge or information on any subject deemed desirable to the purposes of the Association and to print, publish and issue journals, periodicals, books, leaflets, advertisements, reports, lectures and other reading matter which may be deemed useful or expedient for any such purpose.
• To solicit accept, hold and d\administer any donations, gifts legacies grants, subscription contributions or funds from members the public institutions, public trusts, universities, municipalities governments and other persons or bodies and whether subjects to any trust or otherwise for the furtherance of the objects of the Association.
• To promote education, research training and development on habit and human settlement, environment and other related issues of human value.
Governance
YMIA is a society registered under the provisions of Act 21 of 1860. Mr. R. Nataraj serves as President of the Governing body, which includes three Vice Presidents, Honorary Secretary, Honorary Treasurer, Honorary Join Secretary, and 17 members. In addition to an Executive Committee, there are committees for International YMIA Affiliation; Library and Internet; Gym and Sports; Students and Youth Activities; and Legal matters.
Facilities
YMIA has two locations in Chennai: the registered office at New India Buildings at No.49 Moore Street, and the administrative office at 54-57/2 Royapettah High Road in Mylapore. Gokhale Hall was partially demolished, but is now being renovated. Two hostels are now serving about 150 youth. Over the years additional hostels were operated in George town, Triplicane, Mylapore, and Nungambakkam, but these had to be closed despite their popularity.[6]
YMIA celebrating Annie Besant's birthday, October 1, 2014.
Activities
The organization has established a Facebook page and is developing a member page with individual photos and email addresses. YMIA is seeking to launch affiliated branches in all major cities of India, with each having a lecture hall, gymnasium, library, reading room, recreation, and residences. Internships are offered to students who would like to develop a career in services and development of youth programs.[7]
These are some recent activities and services of the YMIA:
• Sports, boxing, karate, and body building
• Fine arts competitions
• Carrom (a tabletop game) and chess
• Oratorical contests in 4 languages ( English, Tamil, Hindi, Telugu)
• Blood drive
• Republic Day celebrations
• Celebration of Swami Vivekananda's 150th birthday
• Memorial lectures and elocution contests honoring Dr. Annie Besant
• CDs of Annie Besant’s speeches
Notes
1. YMIA web page
2. Madras High Court document. 1962. Citation: AIR 1964 Mad 63, 1963 14 STC 1030 Mad Available at IndianKanoon.org.
3. Annie Besant, The Besant Spirit Volume 7: The India that Shall Be: Articles from New India.
4. Kathleen Taylor, Sir John Woodroffe Tantra and Bengal: 'An Indian Soul in a European Body?' (Surrey: Routledge, 2012), 70.
5. George S. Arundale, Introduction to The Besant Spirit: Volume III Indian Problems (Adyar, Madras, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1939), 13-14. The Besant Spirit is a compilation of writings by Annie Besant.
6. Young Men's Indian Association web page.
7. Young Men's Indian Association web page.
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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#2)
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Gopal Krishna Gokhale
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/27/20
Gopal Krishna Gokhale CIE
Gokhale in 1909
Born: 9 May 1866, Kotluk, Dist. Ratnagiri, Bombay Presidency, British India
Died: 19 February 1915 (aged 48), Bombay, Bombay Presidency, British India
Alma mater: Elphinstone College
Occupation: Professor, Politician
Political party: Indian National Congress
Movement: Indian Independence movement
Spouse(s): Savitri Bai (1880-1887); Rishibama (1887-1899)
Children: Kashi Bai, Godhu Bai
Parent(s): Father: Krishna Rao Gokhale; Mother: Sathyabama Bai
Gopal Krishna Gokhale CIE (9 May 1866 – 19 February 1915)[1][2][3][4] was an Indian liberal political leader and a social reformer during the Indian Independence Movement. Gokhale was a senior leader of the Indian National Congress and the founder of the Servants of India Society.
Through the Society as well as the Congress and other legislative bodies he served in, Gokhale campaigned for Indian self-rule and for social reforms. He was the leader of the moderate faction of the Congress party that advocated reforms by working with existing government institutions.
Early life
Gopal Krishna Gokhale was born on 9 May 1866 in Kotluk village of Guhagar taluka in Ratnagiri district, in present-day Maharashtra (then part of the Bombay Presidency) in a Chitpavan Brahmin family. Despite being relatively poor, his family members ensured that Gokhale received an English education, which would place Gokhale in a position to obtain employment as a clerk or minor official in the British Raj. He studied in Rajaram College in Kolhapur. Being one of the first generations of Indians to receive a university education, Gokhale graduated from Elphinstone College in 1884. Gokhale's education tremendously influenced the course of his future career – in addition to learning English, he was exposed to Western political thought and became a great admirer of theorists such as John Stuart Mill and Edmund Burke.[1][3][4]
Indian National Congress, Tilak and the Split at Surat
Portrait
Gokhale became a member of the Indian National Congress in 1889, as a protégé of social reformer Mahadev Govind Ranade.
Along with other contemporary leaders like Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Dadabhai Naoroji, Bipin Chandra Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai and Annie Besant, Gokhale fought for decades to obtain greater political representation and power over public affairs for common Indians. He was moderate in his views and attitudes, and sought to petition the British authorities by cultivating a process of dialogue and discussion which would yield greater British respect for Indian rights.[1][2][3][4] Gokhale had visited Ireland[1][3][4] and had arranged for an Irish nationalist, Alfred Webb, to serve as President of the Indian National Congress in 1894.
The following year, Gokhale became the Congress's joint secretary along with Tilak. In many ways, Tilak and Gokhale's early careers paralleled – both were Chitpavan Brahmin, both attended Elphinstone College, both became mathematics professors and both were important members of the Deccan Education Society. However, differences in their views concerning how best to improve the lives of Indians became increasingly apparent.[1][3][4][5]
Both Gokhale and Tilak were the front-ranking political leaders in the early 20th century. However, they differed a lot in their ideologies. Gokhale was viewed as a well-meaning man of moderate disposition, while Tilak was a radical who would not resist using force for the attainment of freedom.[1][3][4] Gokhale believed that the right course for India to give self-government was to adopt constitutional means and cooperate with the British Government. On the contrary, Tilak's messages were protest, boycott and agitation.[3][1][4]
The fight between the moderates and extremists came out openly at Surat in 1907, which adversely affected political developments in the country. Both sides were fighting to capture the Congress organisation due to ideological differences. Tilak wanted to put Lala Lajpat Rai in the presidential chair, but Gokhale's candidate was Rash Behari Ghosh. The tussle begun and there was no hope for compromise. Tilak was not allowed to move an amendment to the resolution in support of the new president-elect. At this the pandal was strewn with broken chairs and shoes were flung by Aurobindo Ghosh and his friends. Sticks and umbrellas were thrown on the platform. There was a physical scuffle. When people came running to attack Tilak on the dais, Gokhale went and stood next to Tilak to protect him. The session ended and the Congress split.[1][3][4] The eyewitness account was written by the Manchester Guardian's reporter Nevison.[1][3][4][6]
In January 1908, Tilak was arrested on charge of sedition and sentenced to six years imprisonment and dispatched to Mandalay. This left the whole political field open for the moderates. When Tilak was arrested, Gokhale was in England. Lord Morley, the Secretary of State for India, was opposed to Tilak's arrest. However, the Viceroy Lord Minto did not listen to him and considered Tilak's activities as seditious and his arrest necessary for the maintenance of law and order.[1][3][4][6]
Gokhale’s one major difference with Tilak centred around one of his pet issues, the Age of Consent Bill introduced by the British Imperial Government, in 1891–92. Gokhale and his fellow liberal reformers, wishing to purge what they saw as superstitions and abuses in their native Hinduism, supported the Consent Bill to curb child marriage abuses. Though the Bill was not extreme, only raising the age of consent from ten to twelve, Tilak took issue with it; he did not object to the idea of moving towards the elimination of child marriage, but rather to the idea of British interference with Hindu tradition. For Tilak, such reform movements were not to be sought under imperial rule when they would be enforced by the British, but rather after independence was achieved, when Indians would enforce it on themselves. The bill however became law in the Bombay Presidency.[1][3][4][7] The two leaders also vied for the control of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha and the founding of the Deccan Sabha by Gokhale in 1896 was the consequence of Tilak coming out ahead.[1][3][4][8]
Gokhale was deeply concerned with the future of Congress after the split in Surat. He thought it necessary to unite the rival groups, and in this connection he sought the advice of Annie Besant. Gokhale died on 19February 1915. On his deathbed, he reportedly expressed to his friend Sethur a wish to see the Congress united.[1][3][4][6] Despite their differences, Gokhale and Tilak had great respect for each other's patriotism, intelligence, work and sacrifice. Following Gokhale's death, Tilak wrote an editorial in Kesari paying glowing tributes to Gokhale.[1][3][4]
Economist with liberal policy
Gokhale's mentor, justice M.G. Ranade started the Sarvajanik Sabha Journal. Gokhale assisted him.[1][3][4] Gokhale's deposition before the Welby Commission on the financial condition of India won him accolades. His speeches on the budget in the Central Legislative Council were unique, with thorough statistical analysis. He appealed to the reason. He played a leading role in bringing about Morley-Minto Reforms, the beginning of constitutional reforms in India.[1][3][4] A comprehensive biography of Gopal Krishna Gokhale by Govind Talwalkar portrays Gokhale's work in the context of his time, giving the historical background in the 19th century.[1][9][10] Gokhale was a scholar, social reformer, and a statesman, arguably the greatest Indian liberal.[1][3][4]. VG Kale has provided an account of the economic reforms pursued by Gokhale in the Vicerory's Legislative Council and outside till 1916.[11]
Servants of India Society
Statue of Gokhale in Churchgate
In 1905, when Gokhale was elected president of the Indian National Congress and was at the height of his political power, he founded the Servants of India Society to specifically further one of the causes dearest to his heart: the expansion of Indian education. For Gokhale, true political change in India would only be possible when a new generation of Indians became educated as to their civil and patriotic duty to their country and to each other. Believing existing educational institutions and the Indian Civil Service did not do enough to provide Indians with opportunities to gain this political education, Gokhale hoped the Servants of India Society would fill this need. In his preamble to the SIS's constitution, Gokhale wrote that "The Servants of India Society will train men prepared to devote their lives to the cause of country in a religious spirit, and will seek to promote, by all constitutional means, the national interests of the Indian people."[1][2][3][4][12] The Society took up the cause of promoting Indian education in earnest, and among its many projects organised mobile libraries, founded schools, and provided night classes for factory workers.[13] Although the Society lost much of its vigour following Gokhale’s death, it still exists to this day, though its membership is small.
Involvement with British Imperial Government
Gokhale on a 1966 stamp of India
Gokhale, though now widely viewed as a leader of the Indian nationalist movement, was not primarily concerned with independence but rather with social reforms; he believed such reforms would be best achieved by working within existing British government institutions, a position which earned him the enmity of more aggressive nationalists such as Tilak. Undeterred by such opposition, Gokhale would work directly with the British throughout his political career to further his reform goals.
In 1899, Gokhale was elected to the Bombay Legislative Council. He was elected to the Imperial Council of the Governor-General of India on 20 December 1901,[1][3][4][14] and again on 22 May 1903 as non-officiating member representing Bombay Province.[1][3][15][4][16]
The empirical knowledge coupled with the experience of the representative institutions made Gokhale an outstanding political leader, moderate in ideology and advocacy, a model for the people's representatives.[1][3][15][4] His contribution was monumental in shaping the Indian freedom struggle into a quest for building an open society and egalitarian nation.[1][3][15][4] Gokhale's achievement must be studied in the context of predominant ideologies and social, economic and political situation at that time, particularly in reference to the famines, revenue policies, wars, partition of Bengal, Muslim League and the split in the Congress at Surat.[1][3][15][4]
Mentor to Gandhi
Gokhale and Gandhi in Durban, South Africa, 1912
Gokhale was famously a mentor to Mahatma Gandhi in the latter's formative years.[1][2][3][15][4] In 1912, Gokhale visited South Africa at Gandhi's invitation. As a young barrister, Gandhi returned from his struggles against the Empire in South Africa and received personal guidance from Gokhale, including a knowledge and understanding of India and the issues confronting common Indians. By 1931 , Gandhi emerged as the leader of the Indian Independence Movement. In his autobiography, Gandhi calls Gokhale his mentor and guide. Gandhi also recognised Gokhale as an admirable leader and master politician, describing him as "pure as crystal, gentle as a lamb, brave as a lion and chivalrous to a fault and the most perfect man in the political field".[17][15] Despite his deep respect for Gokhale, however, Gandhi would reject Gokhale's faith in western institutions as a means of achieving political reform and ultimately chose not to become a member of Gokhale's Servants of India Society.[1][3][15][4][18]
Family
Gokhale married twice. His first marriage took place in 1880 when he was in his teens to Savitribai, who suffered from an incurable ailment. He married a second time in 1887 while Rishibama was still alive. His second wife died after giving birth to two daughters in 1899. Gokhale did not marry again and his children were looked after by his relatives.[1][3][15][4][19][20]
His eldest daughter, Kashi (Anandibai), married Justice S.B. Dhavle ICS. She had three children – Gopal Shankar Dhavle, Balwant Shankar Dhavle and Meena Rajwade. Out of these three children, two of them had children. Balwant Shankar Dhavle and Nalini Dhavle (née Sathe) have three children: Shridhar Balwant Dhavle FCA, Vidyadhar Balwant Dhavle IFS and Jyotsna Balwant Dhavle. Vidyadhar Balwant Dhavle and Aabha Dixit have two sons Abhishek Vidyadhar Dhavle and Jaidev Vidyadhar Dhavle, who are the most recent direct descendants of Gopal Krishna Gokhale.[citation needed] The ancestral house was constructed by Gopal Krishna Gokhale for his family in Pune, and it continues to be the residence of the Gokhale-Dhavle descendants to this day. Also, the native village of G.K Gokhale, Tamhanmala, a remote village in Ratnagiri, has his paternal house even today. It is located 25 km away from Chiplun, Ratnagiri. Other paternal relatives of Gokhale still reside at the same.[citation needed]
Works
• English weekly newspaper, The Hitavad (The people's paper)
References
1. Talwalkar, Govind (2015). Gopal Krishna Gokhale : Gandhi's political guru. New Delhi: Pentagon Press. ISBN 9788182748330. OCLC 913778097.
2. Sastri, Srinivas. My Master Gokhale.
3. Talwalkar, Govind (2006). Gopal Krishna Gokhale: His Life and Times. Rupa & Co,.
4. Talwalkar, Govind (2003). Nek Namdar Gokhale (in Marathi). Pune, India: Prestige Prakashan.
5. Masselos, Jim (1991). Indian Nationalism: An History. Sterling Publishers. p. 95. ISBN 978-81-207-1405-2.
6. Datta, V.N. (6 August 2006). "A Gentle Colossus". Tribune India.com.
7. Brown, D. Mackenzie (1961) Indian Political Thought from Ranade to Bhave, Los Angeles: University of California Press, p. 77.
8. Bandyopadhyay, Sekhar (2015). From Plassey to Partition and After. Orient Blackswan Private Limited. p. 248. ISBN 978-81-250-5723-9.
9. Guha, Ramchandra (24 March 2018). "In Praise of Govind Talwalkar". Hindustan Times.
10. Narasiah, K. R. A. (1 August 2015). "A reformer's life". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 9 August 2019.
11. Gokhale and Economic Reforms, 1916, Aryabhushan Press, Poona
12. Wolpert, Stanley (1962) Tilak and Gokhale: Revolution and Reform in the Making of Modem India, Berkeley, U. California, pp. 158–160.
13. Watt, Carey A. (1997). "Education for National Efficiency: Constructive Nationalism in North India, 1909-1916". Modern Asian Studies. 31 (2): 339–374. doi:10.1017/S0026749X00014335. JSTOR 313033.
14. Nanda, Bal Ram (8 March 2015). Gokhale: The Indian Moderates and the British Raj. Princeton University Press. p. 133. ISBN 978-1-4008-7049-3.
15. Talwalkar, Govind (2015) Gopal Krishna Gokhale:Gandhi's Political Guru, Pentagon Press. p. 22. ISBN 818274833X
16. India List and India Office List for 1905. Harrison and Sons, London. 1905. p. 213.
17. Cite error: The named reference :69 was invoked but never defined (see thehelp page).
18. Masselos, Jim (1991). Indian Nationalism: An History. Sterling Publishers. p. 157. ISBN 978-81-207-1405-2.
19. Hoyland, John S. (1933). Gopal Krishna Gokhale: His life and Speeches (PDF). Calcutta: Y.M.C.A. Publishing House. p. 29. Archived from the original (PDF) on 13 December 2013. Retrieved 13 December 2013.
20. Sastri, V.S. Srinivasa (1937). Life of Gopal Krishna Gokhale (PDF). Bangalore India: The Bangalore Press. Archived from the original (PDF) on 13 December 2013. Retrieved 13 December2013.
Further reading
• Govind Talwalkar, Gopal Krishna Gokhale: Gandhi's Political Guru, Pentagon Press, New Delhi, 2015
• Govind Talwalkar, Gopal Krishna Gokhale: his Life and Times , Rupa Publication, Delhi, 2005
• Govind Talwalkar, Nek Namdar Gokhale (In Marathi Language), Prestige Prakashan, Pune, 2003
• J. S. Hoyland, Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1933)
External links
• "Gokhale, Gopal Krishna" . Encyclopædia Britannica (12th ed.). 1922.
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/27/20
Gopal Krishna Gokhale CIE
Gokhale in 1909
Born: 9 May 1866, Kotluk, Dist. Ratnagiri, Bombay Presidency, British India
Died: 19 February 1915 (aged 48), Bombay, Bombay Presidency, British India
Alma mater: Elphinstone College
Occupation: Professor, Politician
Political party: Indian National Congress
Movement: Indian Independence movement
Spouse(s): Savitri Bai (1880-1887); Rishibama (1887-1899)
Children: Kashi Bai, Godhu Bai
Parent(s): Father: Krishna Rao Gokhale; Mother: Sathyabama Bai
Gopal Krishna Gokhale CIE (9 May 1866 – 19 February 1915)[1][2][3][4] was an Indian liberal political leader and a social reformer during the Indian Independence Movement. Gokhale was a senior leader of the Indian National Congress and the founder of the Servants of India Society.
The Servants of India Society was formed in Pune, Maharashtra, on June 12, 1905 by Gopal Krishna Gokhale, who left the Deccan Education Society to form this association. Along with him were a small group of educated Indians, as Natesh Appaji Dravid, Gopal Krishna Deodhar and Anant Patwardhan who wanted to promote social and human development and overthrow the British rule in India. The Society organized many campaigns to promote education, sanitation, health care and fight the social evils of untouchability and discrimination, alcoholism, poverty, oppression of women and domestic abuse. The publication of The Hitavada, the organ of the Society in English from Nagpur commenced in 1911.
Prominent Indians were its members and leaders. It chose to remain away from political activities and organizations like the Indian National Congress.
The base of the Society shrank after Gokhale's death in 1915, and in the 1920s with the rise of Mahatma Gandhi as president of Congress, who launched social reform campaigns on a mass scale throughout the nation and attracted young Indians to the cause. However, it still continues its activities albeit with a small membership. It has its H.Q. in the city of Pune, Maharashtra. It has its branches in various other states like Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and Uttarakhand. It has its Branch office at Allahabad, U.P.. It runs Primary Schools, Residential Hostel for Tribal Boys, Ashram Type Schools for tribal girls, creche centres etc. in U.P.Shri Atma Nand Mishra is the Member Taking Care of all the schemes under U.P branch. Shri Atma Nand Mishra is also the Ex-President of the Servants of India Society and the former Chairman of the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune. Shri Mishra devoted his almost 45 years of life as a social worker in the service of poor, weak and struggling people. Shri Mishra helped to overcome from many of challenging issue which society faced earlier and still contributing actively.
In Uttarakhand the affairs of the Servants of India Society is managed by Shri P.K Dwivedi, who is a senior member and former president of the society. Primary Schools, Ashram Type School for girls, Buxa Boys Hostel for tribal boys, a Secondary School, a Senior Secondary School, creche centres etc. is run by the society in the area. In Uttarakhand its central office is in the town of Bazpur, in the Udham Singh Nagar District.
In Odisha it has its centres at Cuttak, Choudwar and Rayagada. It runs an orphanage in Odisha.
-- Servants of India Society, by Wikipedia
Through the Society as well as the Congress and other legislative bodies he served in, Gokhale campaigned for Indian self-rule and for social reforms. He was the leader of the moderate faction of the Congress party that advocated reforms by working with existing government institutions.
Early life
Gopal Krishna Gokhale was born on 9 May 1866 in Kotluk village of Guhagar taluka in Ratnagiri district, in present-day Maharashtra (then part of the Bombay Presidency) in a Chitpavan Brahmin family. Despite being relatively poor, his family members ensured that Gokhale received an English education, which would place Gokhale in a position to obtain employment as a clerk or minor official in the British Raj. He studied in Rajaram College in Kolhapur. Being one of the first generations of Indians to receive a university education, Gokhale graduated from Elphinstone College in 1884. Gokhale's education tremendously influenced the course of his future career – in addition to learning English, he was exposed to Western political thought and became a great admirer of theorists such as John Stuart Mill and Edmund Burke.[1][3][4]
Indian National Congress, Tilak and the Split at Surat
Portrait
Gokhale became a member of the Indian National Congress in 1889, as a protégé of social reformer Mahadev Govind Ranade.
Mahadev Govind Ranade (18 January 1842 – 16 January 1901) was an Indian scholar, social reformer, judge and author. He was one of the founding members of the Indian National Congress party and owned several designations as member of the Bombay legislative council, member of the finance committee at the centre, and judge of the Bombay High Court, Maharashtra.
As a well known public figure, his personality as a calm and patient optimist influenced his attitude towards dealings with Britain as well as reform in India. During his life he helped to establish the Vaktruttvottejak Sabha, the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, Maharashtra Granthottejak Sabha, and the Prarthana Samaj, and edited a Bombay Anglo-Marathi daily paper, the Induprakash, founded on his ideology of social and religious reform.
He was given the title of Rao Bahadur...
His efforts to "Spiritualize" Indian society flowed from his reading that the Hindu religion laid too much stress on rituals and on the performance of family and social duties, rather than on what he called 'Spiritualism.' He viewed the reformed Christian religion of the British as being more focused on the spiritual. Towards making the Hindu religion more akin to the reformed Protestant church, he co-founded and championed the activities of the Prarthana Samaj, a religious society which, while upholding the devotional aspect of Hinduism, denounced and decried many important Hindu social structures and customs, including the Brahmin clergy. Critics of Ranade's activities as relating to religion point out that he missed the insight that Hindu religion, prolific of sects, is nevertheless free from all sectarian strife because it is accepting of diversity of belief while insisting on conformity with social norms. In other words, Hinduism is a way of life rather than a narrow religion because it emphasises orthopraxy over orthodoxy; what matters is not what you believe about God but rather what you do as a good parent, child or spouse. Salient in this paradigm is the inherent liberalism and tolerance of Hinduism.
-- Mahadev Govind Ranade, by Wikipedia
Along with other contemporary leaders like Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Dadabhai Naoroji, Bipin Chandra Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai and Annie Besant, Gokhale fought for decades to obtain greater political representation and power over public affairs for common Indians. He was moderate in his views and attitudes, and sought to petition the British authorities by cultivating a process of dialogue and discussion which would yield greater British respect for Indian rights.[1][2][3][4] Gokhale had visited Ireland[1][3][4] and had arranged for an Irish nationalist, Alfred Webb, to serve as President of the Indian National Congress in 1894.
Alfred John Webb (1834–1908) was an Irish Quaker from a family of activist printers. He became an Irish Parliamentary Party politician and Member of Parliament (MP), as well as a participant in nationalist movements around the world. He supported Butt's Home Government Association and the United Irish League. At Madras in 1894, he became the third non-Indian (after George Yule and William Wedderburn) to preside over the Indian National Congress...
He was inspired by the Fenians, although he believed in non-violence and the Fenians of that time believed that Ireland could only gain independence through an armed revolution...
His family had taken an interest in the welfare of British colonies and had been outspoken opponents of the opium traffic into China. Webb was a close friend of Dadabhai Naoroji, a key member of the Indian National Congress, who was also a friend of other Irish nationalists including Michael Davitt and Frank Hugh O’Donnell. He was elected, as a member of the Liberal party, in 1892, the year of the Liberal landslide to the Finsbury Central Westminster seat. While O'Donnell attempted to involve Naoroji in Irish politics, Webb was invited by Naoroji to preside over the Indian National Congress in 1894...
Webb and Dadabhai Naoroji co-signed a letter with others to request support for a new association: ‘The Society for the Furtherance of Human Brotherhood’.
-- Alfred Webb, by Wikipedia
The following year, Gokhale became the Congress's joint secretary along with Tilak. In many ways, Tilak and Gokhale's early careers paralleled – both were Chitpavan Brahmin, both attended Elphinstone College, both became mathematics professors and both were important members of the Deccan Education Society. However, differences in their views concerning how best to improve the lives of Indians became increasingly apparent.[1][3][4][5]
Both Gokhale and Tilak were the front-ranking political leaders in the early 20th century. However, they differed a lot in their ideologies. Gokhale was viewed as a well-meaning man of moderate disposition, while Tilak was a radical who would not resist using force for the attainment of freedom.[1][3][4] Gokhale believed that the right course for India to give self-government was to adopt constitutional means and cooperate with the British Government. On the contrary, Tilak's messages were protest, boycott and agitation.[3][1][4]
The fight between the moderates and extremists came out openly at Surat in 1907, which adversely affected political developments in the country. Both sides were fighting to capture the Congress organisation due to ideological differences. Tilak wanted to put Lala Lajpat Rai in the presidential chair, but Gokhale's candidate was Rash Behari Ghosh. The tussle begun and there was no hope for compromise. Tilak was not allowed to move an amendment to the resolution in support of the new president-elect. At this the pandal was strewn with broken chairs and shoes were flung by Aurobindo Ghosh and his friends. Sticks and umbrellas were thrown on the platform. There was a physical scuffle. When people came running to attack Tilak on the dais, Gokhale went and stood next to Tilak to protect him. The session ended and the Congress split.[1][3][4] The eyewitness account was written by the Manchester Guardian's reporter Nevison.[1][3][4][6]
In January 1908, Tilak was arrested on charge of sedition and sentenced to six years imprisonment and dispatched to Mandalay. This left the whole political field open for the moderates. When Tilak was arrested, Gokhale was in England. Lord Morley, the Secretary of State for India, was opposed to Tilak's arrest. However, the Viceroy Lord Minto did not listen to him and considered Tilak's activities as seditious and his arrest necessary for the maintenance of law and order.[1][3][4][6]
Gokhale’s one major difference with Tilak centred around one of his pet issues, the Age of Consent Bill introduced by the British Imperial Government, in 1891–92. Gokhale and his fellow liberal reformers, wishing to purge what they saw as superstitions and abuses in their native Hinduism, supported the Consent Bill to curb child marriage abuses. Though the Bill was not extreme, only raising the age of consent from ten to twelve, Tilak took issue with it; he did not object to the idea of moving towards the elimination of child marriage, but rather to the idea of British interference with Hindu tradition. For Tilak, such reform movements were not to be sought under imperial rule when they would be enforced by the British, but rather after independence was achieved, when Indians would enforce it on themselves. The bill however became law in the Bombay Presidency.[1][3][4][7] The two leaders also vied for the control of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha and the founding of the Deccan Sabha by Gokhale in 1896 was the consequence of Tilak coming out ahead.[1][3][4][8]
Gokhale was deeply concerned with the future of Congress after the split in Surat. He thought it necessary to unite the rival groups, and in this connection he sought the advice of Annie Besant. Gokhale died on 19February 1915. On his deathbed, he reportedly expressed to his friend Sethur a wish to see the Congress united.[1][3][4][6] Despite their differences, Gokhale and Tilak had great respect for each other's patriotism, intelligence, work and sacrifice. Following Gokhale's death, Tilak wrote an editorial in Kesari paying glowing tributes to Gokhale.[1][3][4]
Economist with liberal policy
Gokhale's mentor, justice M.G. Ranade started the Sarvajanik Sabha Journal. Gokhale assisted him.[1][3][4] Gokhale's deposition before the Welby Commission on the financial condition of India won him accolades. His speeches on the budget in the Central Legislative Council were unique, with thorough statistical analysis. He appealed to the reason. He played a leading role in bringing about Morley-Minto Reforms, the beginning of constitutional reforms in India.[1][3][4] A comprehensive biography of Gopal Krishna Gokhale by Govind Talwalkar portrays Gokhale's work in the context of his time, giving the historical background in the 19th century.[1][9][10] Gokhale was a scholar, social reformer, and a statesman, arguably the greatest Indian liberal.[1][3][4]. VG Kale has provided an account of the economic reforms pursued by Gokhale in the Vicerory's Legislative Council and outside till 1916.[11]
Servants of India Society
Statue of Gokhale in Churchgate
In 1905, when Gokhale was elected president of the Indian National Congress and was at the height of his political power, he founded the Servants of India Society to specifically further one of the causes dearest to his heart: the expansion of Indian education. For Gokhale, true political change in India would only be possible when a new generation of Indians became educated as to their civil and patriotic duty to their country and to each other. Believing existing educational institutions and the Indian Civil Service did not do enough to provide Indians with opportunities to gain this political education, Gokhale hoped the Servants of India Society would fill this need. In his preamble to the SIS's constitution, Gokhale wrote that "The Servants of India Society will train men prepared to devote their lives to the cause of country in a religious spirit, and will seek to promote, by all constitutional means, the national interests of the Indian people."[1][2][3][4][12] The Society took up the cause of promoting Indian education in earnest, and among its many projects organised mobile libraries, founded schools, and provided night classes for factory workers.[13] Although the Society lost much of its vigour following Gokhale’s death, it still exists to this day, though its membership is small.
Involvement with British Imperial Government
Gokhale on a 1966 stamp of India
Gokhale, though now widely viewed as a leader of the Indian nationalist movement, was not primarily concerned with independence but rather with social reforms; he believed such reforms would be best achieved by working within existing British government institutions, a position which earned him the enmity of more aggressive nationalists such as Tilak. Undeterred by such opposition, Gokhale would work directly with the British throughout his political career to further his reform goals.
In 1899, Gokhale was elected to the Bombay Legislative Council. He was elected to the Imperial Council of the Governor-General of India on 20 December 1901,[1][3][4][14] and again on 22 May 1903 as non-officiating member representing Bombay Province.[1][3][15][4][16]
The empirical knowledge coupled with the experience of the representative institutions made Gokhale an outstanding political leader, moderate in ideology and advocacy, a model for the people's representatives.[1][3][15][4] His contribution was monumental in shaping the Indian freedom struggle into a quest for building an open society and egalitarian nation.[1][3][15][4] Gokhale's achievement must be studied in the context of predominant ideologies and social, economic and political situation at that time, particularly in reference to the famines, revenue policies, wars, partition of Bengal, Muslim League and the split in the Congress at Surat.[1][3][15][4]
Mentor to Gandhi
Gokhale and Gandhi in Durban, South Africa, 1912
Gokhale was famously a mentor to Mahatma Gandhi in the latter's formative years.[1][2][3][15][4] In 1912, Gokhale visited South Africa at Gandhi's invitation. As a young barrister, Gandhi returned from his struggles against the Empire in South Africa and received personal guidance from Gokhale, including a knowledge and understanding of India and the issues confronting common Indians. By 1931 , Gandhi emerged as the leader of the Indian Independence Movement. In his autobiography, Gandhi calls Gokhale his mentor and guide. Gandhi also recognised Gokhale as an admirable leader and master politician, describing him as "pure as crystal, gentle as a lamb, brave as a lion and chivalrous to a fault and the most perfect man in the political field".[17][15] Despite his deep respect for Gokhale, however, Gandhi would reject Gokhale's faith in western institutions as a means of achieving political reform and ultimately chose not to become a member of Gokhale's Servants of India Society.[1][3][15][4][18]
Family
Gokhale married twice. His first marriage took place in 1880 when he was in his teens to Savitribai, who suffered from an incurable ailment. He married a second time in 1887 while Rishibama was still alive. His second wife died after giving birth to two daughters in 1899. Gokhale did not marry again and his children were looked after by his relatives.[1][3][15][4][19][20]
His eldest daughter, Kashi (Anandibai), married Justice S.B. Dhavle ICS. She had three children – Gopal Shankar Dhavle, Balwant Shankar Dhavle and Meena Rajwade. Out of these three children, two of them had children. Balwant Shankar Dhavle and Nalini Dhavle (née Sathe) have three children: Shridhar Balwant Dhavle FCA, Vidyadhar Balwant Dhavle IFS and Jyotsna Balwant Dhavle. Vidyadhar Balwant Dhavle and Aabha Dixit have two sons Abhishek Vidyadhar Dhavle and Jaidev Vidyadhar Dhavle, who are the most recent direct descendants of Gopal Krishna Gokhale.[citation needed] The ancestral house was constructed by Gopal Krishna Gokhale for his family in Pune, and it continues to be the residence of the Gokhale-Dhavle descendants to this day. Also, the native village of G.K Gokhale, Tamhanmala, a remote village in Ratnagiri, has his paternal house even today. It is located 25 km away from Chiplun, Ratnagiri. Other paternal relatives of Gokhale still reside at the same.[citation needed]
Works
• English weekly newspaper, The Hitavad (The people's paper)
References
1. Talwalkar, Govind (2015). Gopal Krishna Gokhale : Gandhi's political guru. New Delhi: Pentagon Press. ISBN 9788182748330. OCLC 913778097.
2. Sastri, Srinivas. My Master Gokhale.
3. Talwalkar, Govind (2006). Gopal Krishna Gokhale: His Life and Times. Rupa & Co,.
4. Talwalkar, Govind (2003). Nek Namdar Gokhale (in Marathi). Pune, India: Prestige Prakashan.
5. Masselos, Jim (1991). Indian Nationalism: An History. Sterling Publishers. p. 95. ISBN 978-81-207-1405-2.
6. Datta, V.N. (6 August 2006). "A Gentle Colossus". Tribune India.com.
7. Brown, D. Mackenzie (1961) Indian Political Thought from Ranade to Bhave, Los Angeles: University of California Press, p. 77.
8. Bandyopadhyay, Sekhar (2015). From Plassey to Partition and After. Orient Blackswan Private Limited. p. 248. ISBN 978-81-250-5723-9.
9. Guha, Ramchandra (24 March 2018). "In Praise of Govind Talwalkar". Hindustan Times.
10. Narasiah, K. R. A. (1 August 2015). "A reformer's life". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 9 August 2019.
11. Gokhale and Economic Reforms, 1916, Aryabhushan Press, Poona
12. Wolpert, Stanley (1962) Tilak and Gokhale: Revolution and Reform in the Making of Modem India, Berkeley, U. California, pp. 158–160.
13. Watt, Carey A. (1997). "Education for National Efficiency: Constructive Nationalism in North India, 1909-1916". Modern Asian Studies. 31 (2): 339–374. doi:10.1017/S0026749X00014335. JSTOR 313033.
14. Nanda, Bal Ram (8 March 2015). Gokhale: The Indian Moderates and the British Raj. Princeton University Press. p. 133. ISBN 978-1-4008-7049-3.
15. Talwalkar, Govind (2015) Gopal Krishna Gokhale:Gandhi's Political Guru, Pentagon Press. p. 22. ISBN 818274833X
16. India List and India Office List for 1905. Harrison and Sons, London. 1905. p. 213.
17. Cite error: The named reference :69 was invoked but never defined (see thehelp page).
18. Masselos, Jim (1991). Indian Nationalism: An History. Sterling Publishers. p. 157. ISBN 978-81-207-1405-2.
19. Hoyland, John S. (1933). Gopal Krishna Gokhale: His life and Speeches (PDF). Calcutta: Y.M.C.A. Publishing House. p. 29. Archived from the original (PDF) on 13 December 2013. Retrieved 13 December 2013.
20. Sastri, V.S. Srinivasa (1937). Life of Gopal Krishna Gokhale (PDF). Bangalore India: The Bangalore Press. Archived from the original (PDF) on 13 December 2013. Retrieved 13 December2013.
Further reading
• Govind Talwalkar, Gopal Krishna Gokhale: Gandhi's Political Guru, Pentagon Press, New Delhi, 2015
• Govind Talwalkar, Gopal Krishna Gokhale: his Life and Times , Rupa Publication, Delhi, 2005
• Govind Talwalkar, Nek Namdar Gokhale (In Marathi Language), Prestige Prakashan, Pune, 2003
• J. S. Hoyland, Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1933)
External links
• "Gokhale, Gopal Krishna" . Encyclopædia Britannica (12th ed.). 1922.
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Mahadev Govind Ranade
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/27/20
Mahadev Govind Ranade
Born: 18 January 1842, Nashik district, Bombay Presidency, British India
Died: 16 January 1901 (aged 58)
Citizenship: British Raj
Alma mater: University of Bombay
Occupation: Scholar, social reformer, author
Known for: Co-founder of Indian National Congress
Political party: Indian National Congress
Spouse(s): Ramabai Ranade
Mahadev Govind Ranade (18 January 1842 – 16 January 1901) was an Indian scholar, social reformer, judge and author. He was one of the founding members of the Indian National Congress party[1][2] and owned several designations as member of the Bombay legislative council, member of the finance committee[1] at the centre, and judge of the Bombay High Court, Maharashtra.[3]
As a well known public figure, his personality as a calm and patient optimist influenced his attitude towards dealings with Britain as well as reform in India. During his life he helped to establish the Vaktruttvottejak Sabha, the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, Maharashtra Granthottejak Sabha, and the Prarthana Samaj, and edited a Bombay Anglo-Marathi daily paper, the Induprakash, founded on his ideology of social and religious reform.
He was given the title of Rao Bahadur.[4]
Early life and family
Statue of Justice Ranade in Mumbai
Mahadev Govind Ranade was born into a Chitpavan Brahmin family in Niphad, a taluka town in Nashik district.[5] He studied in a Marathi school in Kolhapur and later shifted to an English-medium school. At age 14, he went to study at Elphinstone College, Bombay. He belonged to the first batch of students at the University of Bombay. He obtained a BA degree in 1862 and four years later, obtained his LLB.
Career
Judge
After getting his law degree (LLB) in 1866, Ranade became a subordinate judge in Pune in 1871. Given his political activities, the British colonial authorities delayed his promotion to the Bombay high court until 1895.[6]
Social activism
Ranade was a social activist whose activities were deeply influenced by western culture and the colonial state. His activities ranged from religious reform to public education to reform within the Indian family, and in every area, he was prone to see little virtue in Indian custom and tradition and to strive for re-forming the subject into the mould of what prevailed in the west. He himself summarized the mission of the Indian Social Reform Movement as being to "Humanize, Equalize and Spiritualize," the implication being that existing Indian society lacked these qualities.[7]
Prarthana Samaj
His efforts to "Spiritualize" Indian society flowed from his reading that the Hindu religion laid too much stress on rituals and on the performance of family and social duties, rather than on what he called 'Spiritualism.' He viewed the reformed Christian religion of the British as being more focused on the spiritual. Towards making the Hindu religion more akin to the reformed Protestant church, he co-founded and championed the activities of the Prarthana Samaj, a religious society which, while upholding the devotional aspect of Hinduism, denounced and decried many important Hindu social structures and customs, including the Brahmin clergy. Critics of Ranade's activities as relating to religion point out that he missed the insight that Hindu religion, prolific of sects, is nevertheless free from all sectarian strife because it is accepting of diversity of belief while insisting on conformity with social norms. In other words, Hinduism is a way of life rather than a narrow religion because it emphasises orthopraxy over orthodoxy; what matters is not what you believe about God but rather what you do as a good parent, child or spouse. Salient in this paradigm is the inherent liberalism and tolerance of Hinduism.
Female Emancipation
His efforts to "Humanize and Equalize" Indian society found its primary focus in women. He campaigned against the 'purdah' system (keeping women behind the veil).He was a founder of the Social Conference movement, which he supported till his death,[1] directing his social reform efforts against child marriage, the tonsure of Brahmin widows, the heavy cost of weddings and other social functions, and the caste restrictions on traveling abroad, and he strenuously advocated widow remarriage and female education.[1] In 1861, when he was still a teenager, Ranade co-founded the 'Widow Marriage Association' which promoted marriage for Hindu widows and acted as native compradors for the colonial government's project of passing a law permitting such marriages, which were forbidden in Hinduism.[8] He chose to take prayaschitta (religious penance) in the Panch-houd Mission Case rather than insisting on his opinions.[9][10]
Girls' education
In 1885 Ranade, Vaman Abaji Modak, and historian Dr. R. G. Bhandarkar established the Maharashtra Girls Education Society and Huzurpaga, the oldest girls' high school in Maharashtra.[11][12][13]
Politics
Personal life
Ranade was already into his 30s when his first wife died. His family wanted him to marry again, especially since he had no children. His reform-minded friends expected that Ranade, who had co-founded the 'Widow Marriage Association' as far back as 1861, would certainly act in accordance with his own sermons and marry a widow. This did not happen. Ranade yielded to his family's wishes and confirmed with convention to marry Ramabai, a girl who was barely, ten years old and who was fully twenty-one years younger than him. Indeed, Ramabai was born in 1863, while Ranade had founded his 'Widow Marriage Association' in 1861. Ranade did what he did because he knew the realities of his society: he knew that if he married an already married woman, any children born to her would be treated like illegitimate outcasts by his society. The really poignant thing about the whole affair is that, after facing so much ridicule and so many accusations of hypocrisy, Ranade was not fated to receive the blessing he craved so ardently: his second marriage also remained childless.
In any case, the wedding was held in full compliance with tradition and the marriage was certainly a happy one. Ramabai was a daughter of the Kurlekar family, which belonged to the same caste and social strata as Ranade.[14] The couple had an entirely harmonious and conventional marriage. Ranade ensured that his wife receive a high education, something about which she herself was initially not keen. However, like all Indian women of that era, she complied with her husband's wishes and grew into her new life. Indeed, after Ranade's death, Ramabai Ranade continued the social and educational reform work initiated by him.
Published Works
• Ranade, Mahadev Govind (1900). Rise of the Maráthá Power. Bombay: Punalekar & Co. OL 24128770M.; reprinted in 1999 as ISBN 81-7117-181-8
• Ranade, Mahadev Govind (1990). Bipan Chandra (ed.). Ranade’s Economic Writings. New Delhi: Gyan Books Pvt. Ltd. ISBN 81-212-0328-7. OL 364195W..
• Ranade, Mahadev Govind (1899). Essays on Indian Economics. Bombay: Thacker & Company. OL 11994445W.
• Ranade, Mahadev Govind (1900). Introduction to the Peishwa's Diaries: A Paper Read Before the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. Poona: the Civil Military Orphanage Press. OL 14015196M.; reprinted by CHIZINE PUBN as ISBN 9781340345037
In popular culture
A television series on Zee Marathi named Unch Maaza Zoka (roughly translated as 'I have leapt high in Life') based on Ramabai's and Mahadevrao's life and their development as a 'women's rights' activist was broadcast in March 2012. It was based on a book by Ramabai Ranade titled Amachyaa Aayushyaatil Kaahi Aathavani. In the book, Justice Ranade is called "Madhav" rather than Mahadev[note 1].
See also
• Revolutionary movement for Indian independence
• List of Indian independence activists
Footnotes
1. He himself is quoted as saying that "I am Vishnu (Madhav) and not Shiva (Mahadev)" (see pages 12, 121). This anomaly was discovered by Ms. Vibhuti V. Dave, while translating the book into Gujarati, under the title Amaaraa naa Sambhaaranaa[15]"
References
1. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Ranade, Mahadeo Govind" . Encyclopædia Britannica. 22 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 884.
2. "Mahadev Govinde Ranade". Retrieved 22 August 2015.
3. "Encyclopaedia Eminent Thinkers (Vol. 22 : The Political Thought of Mahadev Govind Ranade)", p. 19
4. Mahadev Govind Ranade (Rao Bahadur) (1992). The Miscellaneous Writings of the Late Hon'ble Mr. Justice M.G. Ranade. Sahitya Akademi.
5. Wolpert, Stanley A. (April 1991). Tilak and Gokhale: Revolution and Reform in the Making of Modern India By. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 302. ISBN 978-0195623925.
6. Stanley A. Wolpert (1962). Tilak and Gokhale: Revolution and Reform in the Making of Modern India. University of California Press. p. 12. GGKEY:49PR049CPBX.
7. Hulas Singh (25 September 2015). Rise of Reason: Intellectual history of 19th-century Maharashtra. Routledge. pp. 303–. ISBN 978-1-317-39874-5.
8. "THE GROWTH OF NEW INDIA, 1858-1905". Astrojyoti.com. 17 May 2012. Retrieved 7 July 2012.
9. Bakshi, SR (1993). Mahadev Govind Ranade. p. 42. ISBN 978-81-7041-605-0.
10. "Loss of Caste". Retrieved 22 August 2015. He and a few other notables including Bal Gangadhar Tilak attended a meeting with the missionaries of the Panch Houd Mission, which still exists in Pune. Tea was offered to them. Some of them drank it and others did not. Poona in those days - late 19th century - was a very orthodox place and the bastion of Brahminism. Gopalrao Joshi made the affair public and all offenders were ordered to undergo prayashchitta for their offense of drinking the tea of Christian missionaries.
11. Bhattacharya, edited by Sabyasachi (2002). Education and the disprivileged : nineteenth and twentieth century India (1. publ. ed.). Hyderabad: Orient Longman. p. 239. ISBN 978-8125021926. Retrieved 12 September 2016.
12. "Huzurpaga". Huzurpaga.
13. Ghurye, G. S. (1954). Social Change in Maharashtra, II. Sociological Bulletin, page 51.
14. Mukherjee, M., 1993. Story, history and her story. Studies in History, 9(1), pp.71-85.
15. Dave, Vibhuti (6 December 2014). Amaaraa Sahajivan naa Sambhaaranaa. Vadodara, Gujarat, India: Self. pp. 12, 121.
• Brown, D. Mackenzie. Indian Political Thought: From Ranade to Bhave. (Berkeley: University of California, 1961).
• Mansingh, Surjit. Historical Dictionary of India. vol. 20, Asian Historical Dictionaries. s.v. "Shivaji". (London: Scarecrow Press, 1996).
• Masselos, Jim. Indian Nationalism: A History. (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1985).
• Wolpert, Stanley. India. (Berkeley: University of California, 1991). 57.
• Wolpert, Stanley. Tilak and Gokhale: Revolutions and Reform in the Making of Modern India. (Berkeley: University of California, 1962). 12.
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/27/20
Mahadev Govind Ranade
Born: 18 January 1842, Nashik district, Bombay Presidency, British India
Died: 16 January 1901 (aged 58)
Citizenship: British Raj
Alma mater: University of Bombay
Occupation: Scholar, social reformer, author
Known for: Co-founder of Indian National Congress
Political party: Indian National Congress
Spouse(s): Ramabai Ranade
Mahadev Govind Ranade (18 January 1842 – 16 January 1901) was an Indian scholar, social reformer, judge and author. He was one of the founding members of the Indian National Congress party[1][2] and owned several designations as member of the Bombay legislative council, member of the finance committee[1] at the centre, and judge of the Bombay High Court, Maharashtra.[3]
As a well known public figure, his personality as a calm and patient optimist influenced his attitude towards dealings with Britain as well as reform in India. During his life he helped to establish the Vaktruttvottejak Sabha, the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, Maharashtra Granthottejak Sabha, and the Prarthana Samaj, and edited a Bombay Anglo-Marathi daily paper, the Induprakash, founded on his ideology of social and religious reform.
He was given the title of Rao Bahadur.[4]
Early life and family
Statue of Justice Ranade in Mumbai
Mahadev Govind Ranade was born into a Chitpavan Brahmin family in Niphad, a taluka town in Nashik district.[5] He studied in a Marathi school in Kolhapur and later shifted to an English-medium school. At age 14, he went to study at Elphinstone College, Bombay. He belonged to the first batch of students at the University of Bombay. He obtained a BA degree in 1862 and four years later, obtained his LLB.
Career
Judge
After getting his law degree (LLB) in 1866, Ranade became a subordinate judge in Pune in 1871. Given his political activities, the British colonial authorities delayed his promotion to the Bombay high court until 1895.[6]
Social activism
Ranade was a social activist whose activities were deeply influenced by western culture and the colonial state. His activities ranged from religious reform to public education to reform within the Indian family, and in every area, he was prone to see little virtue in Indian custom and tradition and to strive for re-forming the subject into the mould of what prevailed in the west. He himself summarized the mission of the Indian Social Reform Movement as being to "Humanize, Equalize and Spiritualize," the implication being that existing Indian society lacked these qualities.[7]
Prarthana Samaj
His efforts to "Spiritualize" Indian society flowed from his reading that the Hindu religion laid too much stress on rituals and on the performance of family and social duties, rather than on what he called 'Spiritualism.' He viewed the reformed Christian religion of the British as being more focused on the spiritual. Towards making the Hindu religion more akin to the reformed Protestant church, he co-founded and championed the activities of the Prarthana Samaj, a religious society which, while upholding the devotional aspect of Hinduism, denounced and decried many important Hindu social structures and customs, including the Brahmin clergy. Critics of Ranade's activities as relating to religion point out that he missed the insight that Hindu religion, prolific of sects, is nevertheless free from all sectarian strife because it is accepting of diversity of belief while insisting on conformity with social norms. In other words, Hinduism is a way of life rather than a narrow religion because it emphasises orthopraxy over orthodoxy; what matters is not what you believe about God but rather what you do as a good parent, child or spouse. Salient in this paradigm is the inherent liberalism and tolerance of Hinduism.
Female Emancipation
His efforts to "Humanize and Equalize" Indian society found its primary focus in women. He campaigned against the 'purdah' system (keeping women behind the veil).He was a founder of the Social Conference movement, which he supported till his death,[1] directing his social reform efforts against child marriage, the tonsure of Brahmin widows, the heavy cost of weddings and other social functions, and the caste restrictions on traveling abroad, and he strenuously advocated widow remarriage and female education.[1] In 1861, when he was still a teenager, Ranade co-founded the 'Widow Marriage Association' which promoted marriage for Hindu widows and acted as native compradors for the colonial government's project of passing a law permitting such marriages, which were forbidden in Hinduism.[8] He chose to take prayaschitta (religious penance) in the Panch-houd Mission Case rather than insisting on his opinions.[9][10]
Girls' education
In 1885 Ranade, Vaman Abaji Modak, and historian Dr. R. G. Bhandarkar established the Maharashtra Girls Education Society and Huzurpaga, the oldest girls' high school in Maharashtra.[11][12][13]
Politics
Personal life
Ranade was already into his 30s when his first wife died. His family wanted him to marry again, especially since he had no children. His reform-minded friends expected that Ranade, who had co-founded the 'Widow Marriage Association' as far back as 1861, would certainly act in accordance with his own sermons and marry a widow. This did not happen. Ranade yielded to his family's wishes and confirmed with convention to marry Ramabai, a girl who was barely, ten years old and who was fully twenty-one years younger than him. Indeed, Ramabai was born in 1863, while Ranade had founded his 'Widow Marriage Association' in 1861. Ranade did what he did because he knew the realities of his society: he knew that if he married an already married woman, any children born to her would be treated like illegitimate outcasts by his society. The really poignant thing about the whole affair is that, after facing so much ridicule and so many accusations of hypocrisy, Ranade was not fated to receive the blessing he craved so ardently: his second marriage also remained childless.
In any case, the wedding was held in full compliance with tradition and the marriage was certainly a happy one. Ramabai was a daughter of the Kurlekar family, which belonged to the same caste and social strata as Ranade.[14] The couple had an entirely harmonious and conventional marriage. Ranade ensured that his wife receive a high education, something about which she herself was initially not keen. However, like all Indian women of that era, she complied with her husband's wishes and grew into her new life. Indeed, after Ranade's death, Ramabai Ranade continued the social and educational reform work initiated by him.
Published Works
• Ranade, Mahadev Govind (1900). Rise of the Maráthá Power. Bombay: Punalekar & Co. OL 24128770M.; reprinted in 1999 as ISBN 81-7117-181-8
• Ranade, Mahadev Govind (1990). Bipan Chandra (ed.). Ranade’s Economic Writings. New Delhi: Gyan Books Pvt. Ltd. ISBN 81-212-0328-7. OL 364195W..
• Ranade, Mahadev Govind (1899). Essays on Indian Economics. Bombay: Thacker & Company. OL 11994445W.
• Ranade, Mahadev Govind (1900). Introduction to the Peishwa's Diaries: A Paper Read Before the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. Poona: the Civil Military Orphanage Press. OL 14015196M.; reprinted by CHIZINE PUBN as ISBN 9781340345037
In popular culture
A television series on Zee Marathi named Unch Maaza Zoka (roughly translated as 'I have leapt high in Life') based on Ramabai's and Mahadevrao's life and their development as a 'women's rights' activist was broadcast in March 2012. It was based on a book by Ramabai Ranade titled Amachyaa Aayushyaatil Kaahi Aathavani. In the book, Justice Ranade is called "Madhav" rather than Mahadev[note 1].
See also
• Revolutionary movement for Indian independence
• List of Indian independence activists
Footnotes
1. He himself is quoted as saying that "I am Vishnu (Madhav) and not Shiva (Mahadev)" (see pages 12, 121). This anomaly was discovered by Ms. Vibhuti V. Dave, while translating the book into Gujarati, under the title Amaaraa naa Sambhaaranaa[15]"
References
1. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Ranade, Mahadeo Govind" . Encyclopædia Britannica. 22 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 884.
2. "Mahadev Govinde Ranade". Retrieved 22 August 2015.
3. "Encyclopaedia Eminent Thinkers (Vol. 22 : The Political Thought of Mahadev Govind Ranade)", p. 19
4. Mahadev Govind Ranade (Rao Bahadur) (1992). The Miscellaneous Writings of the Late Hon'ble Mr. Justice M.G. Ranade. Sahitya Akademi.
5. Wolpert, Stanley A. (April 1991). Tilak and Gokhale: Revolution and Reform in the Making of Modern India By. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 302. ISBN 978-0195623925.
6. Stanley A. Wolpert (1962). Tilak and Gokhale: Revolution and Reform in the Making of Modern India. University of California Press. p. 12. GGKEY:49PR049CPBX.
7. Hulas Singh (25 September 2015). Rise of Reason: Intellectual history of 19th-century Maharashtra. Routledge. pp. 303–. ISBN 978-1-317-39874-5.
8. "THE GROWTH OF NEW INDIA, 1858-1905". Astrojyoti.com. 17 May 2012. Retrieved 7 July 2012.
9. Bakshi, SR (1993). Mahadev Govind Ranade. p. 42. ISBN 978-81-7041-605-0.
10. "Loss of Caste". Retrieved 22 August 2015. He and a few other notables including Bal Gangadhar Tilak attended a meeting with the missionaries of the Panch Houd Mission, which still exists in Pune. Tea was offered to them. Some of them drank it and others did not. Poona in those days - late 19th century - was a very orthodox place and the bastion of Brahminism. Gopalrao Joshi made the affair public and all offenders were ordered to undergo prayashchitta for their offense of drinking the tea of Christian missionaries.
11. Bhattacharya, edited by Sabyasachi (2002). Education and the disprivileged : nineteenth and twentieth century India (1. publ. ed.). Hyderabad: Orient Longman. p. 239. ISBN 978-8125021926. Retrieved 12 September 2016.
12. "Huzurpaga". Huzurpaga.
13. Ghurye, G. S. (1954). Social Change in Maharashtra, II. Sociological Bulletin, page 51.
14. Mukherjee, M., 1993. Story, history and her story. Studies in History, 9(1), pp.71-85.
15. Dave, Vibhuti (6 December 2014). Amaaraa Sahajivan naa Sambhaaranaa. Vadodara, Gujarat, India: Self. pp. 12, 121.
• Brown, D. Mackenzie. Indian Political Thought: From Ranade to Bhave. (Berkeley: University of California, 1961).
• Mansingh, Surjit. Historical Dictionary of India. vol. 20, Asian Historical Dictionaries. s.v. "Shivaji". (London: Scarecrow Press, 1996).
• Masselos, Jim. Indian Nationalism: A History. (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1985).
• Wolpert, Stanley. India. (Berkeley: University of California, 1991). 57.
• Wolpert, Stanley. Tilak and Gokhale: Revolutions and Reform in the Making of Modern India. (Berkeley: University of California, 1962). 12.
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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#2)
by admin » Fri Aug 28, 2020 2:18 am
Alfred Webb
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/27/20
Alfred John Webb (1834–1908) was an Irish Quaker from a family of activist printers. He became an Irish Parliamentary Party politician and Member of Parliament (MP), as well as a participant in nationalist movements around the world. He supported Butt's Home Government Association and the United Irish League. At Madras in 1894, he became the third non-Indian (after George Yule and William Wedderburn) to preside over the Indian National Congress.[1]
Early life
Alfred Webb was the first child and only son of the three children of Richard Davis Webb and Hannah Waring Webb (1810–1862). The family ran a printing shop in Dublin and belonged to a Quaker group that supported reforms such as suffrage, the abolition of slavery and anti-imperialism. The family press printed booklets for many of these causes and, in turn, their regular customers grew to include other similar organisations, including the Irish Protestant Home Rule Association and the Ladies’ Land League, an organisation founded by Fanny and Anna Parnell in 1880 that advocated on behalf of poor tenant farmers.[2]
Career
Alfred Webb was interested in literature and history and began to write A Compendium of Irish Biography. In 1865, he began to take a more active interest in Irish politics. He was inspired by the Fenians, although he believed in non-violence and the Fenians of that time believed that Ireland could only gain independence through an armed revolution.[3] He was first elected to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom on 24 February 1890, when he won a by-election for the West Waterford constituency. He was again returned for West Waterford in the 1892 general election, this time as an anti-Parnellite MP. In December, 1883, he resigned from the position of Land League treasurer, complaining of Parnell's 'autocratic management of funds'.[4]
His family had taken an interest in the welfare of British colonies and had been outspoken opponents of the opium traffic into China. Webb was a close friend of Dadabhai Naoroji, a key member of the Indian National Congress, who was also a friend of other Irish nationalists including Michael Davitt...
and Frank Hugh O’Donnell.
He was elected, as a member of the Liberal party, in 1892, the year of the Liberal landslide to the Finsbury Central Westminster seat. While O'Donnell attempted to involve Naoroji in Irish politics, Webb was invited by Naoroji to preside over the Indian National Congress in 1894.[3]
Webb was a supporter of Anti-Caste, Britain's first anti-racism journal which fellow Quaker activist Catherine Impey founded in 1888. Webb was able to rally subscribers and activists for the journal around the world.[5] For example, although he was not a regular subscriber, Webb and Dadabhai Naoroji co-signed a letter with others to request support for a new association: ‘The Society for the Furtherance of Human Brotherhood’.
He was laid to rest in the Quaker burial ground in Temple Hill, Monkstown, Dublin.
See also
• Catherine Impey
• William Wedderburn
Notes
1. "Alfred Webb President - Madras, 1894". Past Presidents of Indian National Congress. Indian National Congress. Retrieved 5 April 2010.
2. Broderick, Marian. Wild Irish Women Extraordinary Lives from History. New York: O'Brien, 2002. ISBN 0-86278-703-3 (p.169)
3. Regan-Lefebvre, Jennifer (2009). Cosmopolitan Nationalism in the Victorian Empire Ireland, India and the Politics of Alfred Webb. Palgrave Macmillan.
4. Paul Bew, The Politics of Emnity, 1789-2006, Oxford, 2007, 347
5. Dr Caroline Bressey, Anti-Caste: Britain’s First Anti-racist Journal, synopsis on ESRC website Archived 2007-03-12 at the Wayback Machine (RES-000-22-0522). Retrieved 26 July 2006.
References
• Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "W" (part 1)
Further reading[edit]
• A Compendium of Irish Biography (Dublin, 1878)
• Legg, Mary-Louise Alfred Webb: the Autobiography of a Quaker Nationalist, Cork University Press, 1999 ISBN 1-85918-202-X (See also information from publishers accessed at [1][permanent dead link] 26 July 2006)
External links
• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Alfred Webb
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/27/20
Alfred John Webb (1834–1908) was an Irish Quaker from a family of activist printers. He became an Irish Parliamentary Party politician and Member of Parliament (MP), as well as a participant in nationalist movements around the world. He supported Butt's Home Government Association and the United Irish League. At Madras in 1894, he became the third non-Indian (after George Yule and William Wedderburn) to preside over the Indian National Congress.[1]
George Yule (1829–1892) was a Scottish merchant in England and India who served as the fourth President of the Indian National Congress in 1888 at Allahabad, the first non-Indian to hold that office. He was founder of George Yule & Co. of London,...Synthomer plc (LSE: SYNT), formerly known as Yule Catto & Co, is a British-based chemicals business. It is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.
The company traces its roots back to 1863, when Andrew Yule founded a trading house known as Andrew Yule & Co. in Calcutta. At the same time Andrew's brother, George Yule, set up George Yule & Co. in London, which acted as British agency arm of Andrew Yule & Co.
When in 1919 Andrew Yule & Co. and George Yule & Co. were sold to the US banking group J.P. Morgan & Co. and its British merchant banking affiliate Morgan Grenfell & Co., both were turned from a partnership into a private limited company. That same year Thomas Catto (1879–1959) was sent to India to take over the management of the firm from Sir David Yule (1858–1928), a nephew of Andrew Yule. David Yule continued to hold the title of Chairman but had no active part in the operations of the business.
-- Synthomer [Yule Catto & Co.] [Andrew Yule & Co.], by Wikipedia
and headed Andrew Yule & Co., of Calcutta. He served as Sheriff of Calcutta and as President of the Indian Chamber of Commerce.
He killed almost 400 tigers during his tenure as Administrator.
-- George Yule (businessman), by Wikipedia
Sir William Wedderburn, 4th Baronet, JP DL (25 March 1838 – 25 January 1918) was a Scottish civil servant and politician who was a Liberal Party member of Parliament (MP). Wedderburn was one of the founding members of the Indian National Congress. He was also the president of Congress in 1889 and 1910, Allahabad session.Sir William Wedderburn
President: 1838-1918 (Bombay, 1889, Allahabad, 1910)
by Indian National Congress
Accessed: 8/27/20
Sir William Wedderburn was born in March 1838 in Edinburgh, Scotland. The Wedderburns of the Scottish Border were a family of great antiquity. In 1859 Weddeburn appeared for the Indian Civil Service examination.
He left for India in 1860 and began official duty at Dharwar as an Assistant Collector. He was appointed Acting Judicial Commissioner in Sind and Judge of the Sadar Court in 1874. In 1882 he became the District and Sessions Judge of Poona. At the time of his retirement in 1887, he was the Chief Secretary to the Government of Bombay.
During his service in India, Wedderburn's attention was focussed on famine, the poverty of the Indian peasantry, the problem of agricultural indebtedness and the question of reviving the ancient village system. His concern with these problems brought him in touch with the Indian National Congress.
After his retirement, Wedderburn threw his heart and soul into it. He presided over the fourth Congress held in Bombay in 1889. Meanwhile, after the death of his brother David, Sir William succeeded to the baronetcy in 1879.
He entered Parliament in 1893 as a Liberal member and sought to voice India's grievances in the House. He formed the Indian Parliamentary Committee with which he was associated as Chairman from 1893 to 1900.
In 1895, Wedderburn represented India on the Welby Commission (i.e. Royal Commission) on Indian Expenditure. He also began participating in the activities of the Indian Famine Union set up in June 1901, for investigation into famines and proposing preventive measures.
He came to India in 1904 to attend the 20th session of the Indian National Congress in Bombay, which was presided over by Sir Henry Cotton. He was again invited in 1910 to preside over the 25th session.
He remained the Chairman of the British Committee of the Congress from July 1889 until his death. As a liberal, William Wedderburn believed in the principle of self-government. Along with the founders of the Indian National Congress, he believed in the future of India in partnership with the British Commonwealth and welcomed the formal proclamation made by the British Government on 20 August 1917, that the goal of British policy in India was the progressive establishment of self-government.
Some members of the old order condemned him as a disloyal officer, for his continual tirades against the bureaucracy, his incessant pleading for the Indian peasant and for his stand on constitutional reforms for India. Wedderburn's main contribution to the promotion of national consciousness was his life -- long labour on behalf of the Indian Reform Movement. The Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms were regarded by him as the crowning glory of his life's work.
“What are the practical objects of the Congress movement? They are, to revive the national life, and to increase the material prosperity of country; and what better objects could we have before us? Lastly, as regards our methods, they are open and constitutional, and based solely on India's reliance upon British justice and love of fair play.”
--From the Presidential Address - William Wedderburn I.N.C. Session, 1889, Bombay
Born in Edinburgh, the fourth and youngest son of Sir John Wedderburn, 2nd Baronet and Henrietta Louise Milburn, he was educated at Hofwyl Workshop, then Loretto School and finally at Edinburgh University. He joined the Indian Civil Service as his father and an older brother had done. His older brother John had been killed in the 1857 uprising and William joined the service in 1860 after ranking third (of 160 applicants) in the entrance exam of 1859. His elder brother David was the 3rd baronet.
He entered the Indian Civil Service in Bombay in 1860, served as District Judge and Judicial Commissioner in Sind; acted as secretary to Bombay Government, Judicial and Political Departments; and from 1885 acted as Judge of the High Court, Bombay. He retired when acting Chief Secretary to the Government of Bombay in 1887. During his work he noted the troubles of peasantry arising from moneylending and he suggested that co-operative agricultural banks be established to provide credits at reasonable rates. The proposal was supported in India but was blocked by the India Office. Wedderburn supported reforms suggested by Lord Ripon to develop local self-government and equality to Indian judges. He was seen as supporting the aspirations of Indians and was denied a judge position in the Bombay high court. This led him to retire early in 1887. Along with Allan Octavian Hume he was a founder of the Indian National Congress and served as its president in 1889 and 1910. He worked along with influential Congress leaders in Bombay and in 1890 he chaired the British committee of the Indian National Congress, helped publish the journal India and attempted to support the movement through parliamentary action in Britain. He developed a close working relationship with G. K. Gokhale of the Congress. He was an unsuccessful parliamentary candidate in North Ayrshire in 1892 and served as Liberal Member of Parliament for Banffshire from 1893 to 1900.
He was a member of the Royal Commission on Indian Expenditure in 1895 and chairman of Indian Parliamentary Committee. He was considered a great friend of the Indian Progressive Movement and presided at the Indian National Congress, 1889, later Chairman, British Committee of the Indian National Congress. In 1910 he returned to India as Congress president and tried to solve the rift between Hindus and Muslims and attempted to reconcile the differences between those who wished to work constitutionally and those who wanted to use more militant actions. He wrote a biographical memoir of A. O. Hume who died in 1912.
-- William Wedderburn, by Wikipedia
Early life
Alfred Webb was the first child and only son of the three children of Richard Davis Webb and Hannah Waring Webb (1810–1862). The family ran a printing shop in Dublin and belonged to a Quaker group that supported reforms such as suffrage, the abolition of slavery and anti-imperialism. The family press printed booklets for many of these causes and, in turn, their regular customers grew to include other similar organisations, including the Irish Protestant Home Rule Association and the Ladies’ Land League, an organisation founded by Fanny and Anna Parnell in 1880 that advocated on behalf of poor tenant farmers.[2]
Besant would go on to make much of her Irish ancestry and supported the cause of Irish self-rule throughout her adult life. Her cousin Kitty O'Shea (born Katharine Wood) was noted for having an affair with Charles Stewart Parnell, leading to his downfall.
-- Annie Besant, by Wikipedia
Career
Alfred Webb was interested in literature and history and began to write A Compendium of Irish Biography. In 1865, he began to take a more active interest in Irish politics. He was inspired by the Fenians, although he believed in non-violence and the Fenians of that time believed that Ireland could only gain independence through an armed revolution.[3] He was first elected to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom on 24 February 1890, when he won a by-election for the West Waterford constituency. He was again returned for West Waterford in the 1892 general election, this time as an anti-Parnellite MP. In December, 1883, he resigned from the position of Land League treasurer, complaining of Parnell's 'autocratic management of funds'.[4]
His family had taken an interest in the welfare of British colonies and had been outspoken opponents of the opium traffic into China. Webb was a close friend of Dadabhai Naoroji, a key member of the Indian National Congress, who was also a friend of other Irish nationalists including Michael Davitt...
Michael Davitt (25 March 1846 – 30 May 1906) was an Irish republican activist for a variety of causes, especially Home Rule and land reform. Following an eviction when he was four years old, Davitt's family emigrated to England. He began his career as an organiser of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which resisted British rule in Ireland with violence. Convicted of treason felony for arms trafficking in 1870, he served seven years in prison. Upon his release, Davitt pioneered the New Departure strategy of cooperation between the physical-force and constitutional wings of Irish nationalism on the issue of land reform. With Charles Stewart Parnell, he co-founded the Irish National Land League in 1879, in which capacity he enjoyed the peak of his influence before being jailed again in 1881.
Davitt travelled widely, giving lectures around the world, supported himself through journalism, and served as Member of Parliament (MP) for the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) during the 1890s. When the party split over Parnell's divorce, Davitt joined the anti-Parnellite Irish National Federation. His Georgist views on the land question put him on the left wing of Irish nationalism, and he was a vociferous advocate of alliance between the Radical faction of the Liberal Party and the IPP.
-- Michael Davitt, by Wikipedia
and Frank Hugh O’Donnell.
Frank Hugh O'Donnell (also Frank Hugh O'Cahan O'Donnell), born Francis Hugh MacDonald (9 October 1846 – 2 November 1916) was an Irish writer, journalist and nationalist politician...
Leaving Galway, O'Donnell moved to London, where he embarked on a career in journalism, following his college contemporary T. P. O'Connor. O'Connor's knowledge of modern European languages had helped him to establish himself as a correspondent on European affairs, and he assisted O'Donnell in developing a similar reputation; he spent a brief period on the staff of the London Morning Post...
In 1875, he was a founding member of the Constitutional Society of India, a group promoting political autonomy for India. In 1877, O'Donnell secured a more permanent election to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom as MP for Dungarvan, County Waterford; he held the seat until 1885, when the constituency was abolished. He struck a colourful and controversial figure in parliament and became renowned for his declamatory speech-making. He was a prominent obstructionist and claimed credit for inventing the tactic of obstructionism which was to yield such results for the Home Rule League under Charles Stewart Parnell. Indeed, O'Donnell saw himself as a natural leader and became disillusioned when Parnell was selected in May 1880 to succeed William Shaw as leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party. He called the British 'Imperial pirates' and inaugurated the Constitutional Society of India. Its aim was Home Rule for India, 'Mr O'Donnell's grand passion in politics was a confederation of all the discontented races of the Empire under the lead of the Irish party. He once brought down some scores of dusky students of all the races and creeds of Hindustan to the House of Commons.' [2]
-- Frank Hugh O'Donnell, by Wikipedia
He was elected, as a member of the Liberal party, in 1892, the year of the Liberal landslide to the Finsbury Central Westminster seat. While O'Donnell attempted to involve Naoroji in Irish politics, Webb was invited by Naoroji to preside over the Indian National Congress in 1894.[3]
Webb was a supporter of Anti-Caste, Britain's first anti-racism journal which fellow Quaker activist Catherine Impey founded in 1888. Webb was able to rally subscribers and activists for the journal around the world.[5] For example, although he was not a regular subscriber, Webb and Dadabhai Naoroji co-signed a letter with others to request support for a new association: ‘The Society for the Furtherance of Human Brotherhood’.
He was laid to rest in the Quaker burial ground in Temple Hill, Monkstown, Dublin.
See also
• Catherine Impey
• William Wedderburn
Notes
1. "Alfred Webb President - Madras, 1894". Past Presidents of Indian National Congress. Indian National Congress. Retrieved 5 April 2010.
2. Broderick, Marian. Wild Irish Women Extraordinary Lives from History. New York: O'Brien, 2002. ISBN 0-86278-703-3 (p.169)
3. Regan-Lefebvre, Jennifer (2009). Cosmopolitan Nationalism in the Victorian Empire Ireland, India and the Politics of Alfred Webb. Palgrave Macmillan.
4. Paul Bew, The Politics of Emnity, 1789-2006, Oxford, 2007, 347
5. Dr Caroline Bressey, Anti-Caste: Britain’s First Anti-racist Journal, synopsis on ESRC website Archived 2007-03-12 at the Wayback Machine (RES-000-22-0522). Retrieved 26 July 2006.
References
• Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "W" (part 1)
Further reading[edit]
• A Compendium of Irish Biography (Dublin, 1878)
• Legg, Mary-Louise Alfred Webb: the Autobiography of a Quaker Nationalist, Cork University Press, 1999 ISBN 1-85918-202-X (See also information from publishers accessed at [1][permanent dead link] 26 July 2006)
External links
• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Alfred Webb
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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#2)
by admin » Fri Aug 28, 2020 3:25 am
James Cousins [Mac Oisín] [Jayaram]
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/27/20
James Henry Cousins
Born: 22 July 1873, 18, Kevor Street in Belfast, Ireland
Died: 20 February 1956 (aged 82), Madanapalle, Andhra Pradesh, India
Pen name: Mac Oisín, Jayaram
Spouse: Margaret Elizabeth Cousins
James Henry Cousins (22 July 1873 – 20 February 1956) was an Anglo-Irish writer, playwright, actor, critic, editor, teacher and poet. He used several pseudonyms including Mac Oisín and the Hindu name Jayaram.[1]
Life
Cousins was born at 18, Kevor Street in Belfast, Ireland, the descendant of Huguenot refugees. Largely self-educated at night schools, he worked some time as a clerk became private secretary and speechwriter to Sir Daniel Dixon, 1st Baronet, the Lord Mayor of Belfast.
In 1897 he moved to Dublin where he became part of a literary circle which included William Butler Yeats, George William Russell and James Joyce. He is believed to have served as a model for the Little Chandler character in Joyce's short story collection Dubliners. Cousins was significantly influenced by Russell's ability to reconcile mysticism with a pragmatic approach to social reforms and by the teachings of Madame Blavatsky.
He had a lifelong interest in the paranormal and acted as reporter in several experiments carried out by William Fletcher Barrett, Professor of physics at Dublin University and one of the founders of the Society for Psychical Research.
Cousins produced several books of poetry whilst in Ireland as well as acting in the first production of Cathleen Ní Houlihan (under the stage name of H. Sproule) with the famous Irish revolutionary and beauty Maud Gonne in the title role. His plays were produced in the first years of the twentieth century in the Abbey Theatre, the most famous being "the Racing Lug". After a dispute with W.B. Yeats, who objected to 'too much Cousins' the Irish National Theatre movement split with two-thirds of the actors and writers siding with Cousins against Yeats. He also wrote widely on the subject of Theosophy and in 1915 travelled to India with the voyage fees paid for by Annie Besant the President of the Theosophical Society. He spent most of the rest of his life in the sub-continent, apart from a year as Professor of English Literature at Keio University in Tokyo and another lecturing in New York. Towards the end of his life he converted to Hinduism. At the core of Cousins's engagement with Indian culture was a firm belief in the "shared sensibilities between Celtic and Oriental peoples".
Whilst in India he became friendly with many key Indian personalities including poet Rabindranath Tagore, Indian classical dancer Rukmini Devi Arundale, painter Abdur Rahman Chughtai and Mahatma Gandhi. He was the person who brought change into the life of poetry of the Great Renowned Kannada Poet and Writer Kuvempu. He wrote a joint autobiography with his wife Margaret Elizabeth Cousins (formerly Gretta Gillespie), a suffragette and one of the co-founders of the Irish Women's Franchise League and All India Women's Conference (AIWC).
In his The Future Poetry Sri Aurobindo has acclaimed Cousins' New Ways in English Literature as "literary criticism which is of the first order, at once discerning and suggestive, criticism which forces us both to see and think." He has also acknowledged that he learnt to intuit deeper being alerted by Cousins' criticisms of his poems. In 1920 Cousins came to Pondicherry to meet the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. The appreciation is palpable in the following citations:
From The Future Poetry by Sri Aurobindo:
Works
• POEMS BY JAMES H. COUSINS
The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. Ed. Nicholson & Lee. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1917.
Padraic Colum (1881–1972).
Anthology of Irish Verse. 1922.
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Legend of the Blemished King and Other Poems (1897)
The Quest (1906)
The Bell-Branch (1908)
The Wisdom of the West (1912)
Etain the Beloved and Other Poems (1912)
The Renaissance in India (1918)
The King's Wife (1919)
Sea-Change (1920)
The Cultural Unity of Asia (1922)
Work and Worship: Essays on Culture and Creative Art (1922)
The New Japan: Impressions and Reflections (with 74 illustrations) (1923)
Heathen Essays (1925)
A Tibetan Banner (1926)
Above the Rainbow and Other Poems (1926)
A Wandering Harp: Selected Poems (1932)
A Bardic Pilgrimage (1934)
Collected Poems (1940)
The Faith Of The Artist. (1941)
The Work Promethean (1970)
• BIOGRAPHIES/CRITICISM
A Wandering Harp: James H. Cousins, a Study. C.N. Mangala. (B.R. Publishing, 1995).
James Henry Cousins: A Study of His Works in the Light of Theosophical Movement. Dilip Kumar Chatterjee. (South Asia Books, 1994).
James Cousins. William A. Dumbleton. (Twayne Publishing, 1980).
• RELATED LINKS
James H. Cousins: Poems – An index of poems.[2]
See also
• Poetry portal
• List of Irish writers
References
1. Cousins at Ricorso
2. [1], [2]
External links
• Works by James Henry Cousins at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about James Cousins at Internet Archive
• Works by James Cousins at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• The Future Poetry by Sri Aurobindo
• Renaissance in India by Sri Aurobindo
****************************
James H. Cousins
by Theosophy Wiki
Accessed: 8/28/20
James Henry Cousins (July 22, 1873- February 20, 1956) was an Irish writer, poet, playwright, actor, critic, editor, and educator who with his wife Margaret Cousins was active in the Theosophical Society based in Adyar, India.
Cousins was significantly influenced by the teachings of Madame Blavatsky and G. S. [George William (AE)] Russell's ability to reconcile mysticism with a pragmatic approach to social reforms. He had a life-long interest in the paranormal and acted as reporter in several experiments carried out by William Fletcher Barrett, Professor of physics at Dublin University and one of the founders of the Society for Psychical Research. He also wrote widely on the subject of Theosophy and in 1915 Cousins travelled to India with the voyage fees paid for by Annie Besant the President of the Theosophical Society (Adyar).
Work in education
Indian friends called him by the high title "Kulapathi," a term used in ancient Indian educational systems to indicate a man who supervised 10,000 people.[1] G. Venkatachalam summarized his life:
Writings
• James H. Cousins and Margaret Cousins. We Two Together. Madras: Ganesh and Co, 1950. Joint autobiography.
Additional resources
1. Suvarna Nalapat, Education in Ancient India: Valabhi and Nalanda Universities Kottayam: D C Books, 2012. Electronic book available at Google.
2. G. Venkatachalam, My Contemporaries (Bangalore: Hosali Press, 1966), 323.
• James H. Cousins.
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/27/20
James Henry Cousins
Born: 22 July 1873, 18, Kevor Street in Belfast, Ireland
Died: 20 February 1956 (aged 82), Madanapalle, Andhra Pradesh, India
Pen name: Mac Oisín, Jayaram
Spouse: Margaret Elizabeth Cousins
James Henry Cousins (22 July 1873 – 20 February 1956) was an Anglo-Irish writer, playwright, actor, critic, editor, teacher and poet. He used several pseudonyms including Mac Oisín and the Hindu name Jayaram.[1]
Life
Cousins was born at 18, Kevor Street in Belfast, Ireland, the descendant of Huguenot refugees. Largely self-educated at night schools, he worked some time as a clerk became private secretary and speechwriter to Sir Daniel Dixon, 1st Baronet, the Lord Mayor of Belfast.
Sir Daniel Dixon, 1st Baronet, PC (Ire), DL (28 March 1844 – 10 March 1907) was an Irish businessman and politician.
Dixon was born on 28 March 1844 the son of Thomas and Sarah Dixon of Larne, County Antrim, his father was a merchant and shipowner. He was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. He joined his father's timber business, Thomas Dixon and Sons, becoming a partner in 1864.
He served as Mayor of Belfast in 1892 and as Lord Mayor of Belfast in three terms; 1893, 1901 to 1903, and 1905 to 1906. He was also a Member of Parliament for Belfast North as an Irish Unionist from 1905 to 1907.
Dixon was appointed to the Privy Council of Ireland in the 1902 Coronation Honours list published on 26 June 1902, and was sworn in by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Earl Cadogan, at Dublin Castle on 11 August 1902. In October 1903 he was created a Baronet, of Ballymenock in the County of Antrim.
Dixon was head of one of the largest shipowning companies in Ireland.
-- Sir Daniel Dixon, 1st Baronet, by Wikipedia
In 1897 he moved to Dublin where he became part of a literary circle which included William Butler Yeats, George William Russell and James Joyce. He is believed to have served as a model for the Little Chandler character in Joyce's short story collection Dubliners. Cousins was significantly influenced by Russell's ability to reconcile mysticism with a pragmatic approach to social reforms and by the teachings of Madame Blavatsky.
George William Russell (10 April 1867 – 17 July 1935) who wrote with the pseudonym Æ (sometimes written AE or A.E.), was an Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, painter and Irish nationalist. He was also a writer on mysticism, and a central figure in the group of devotees of theosophy which met in Dublin for many years.
-- George William Russell, by Wikipedia
He had a lifelong interest in the paranormal and acted as reporter in several experiments carried out by William Fletcher Barrett, Professor of physics at Dublin University and one of the founders of the Society for Psychical Research.
Cousins produced several books of poetry whilst in Ireland as well as acting in the first production of Cathleen Ní Houlihan (under the stage name of H. Sproule) with the famous Irish revolutionary and beauty Maud Gonne in the title role. His plays were produced in the first years of the twentieth century in the Abbey Theatre, the most famous being "the Racing Lug". After a dispute with W.B. Yeats, who objected to 'too much Cousins' the Irish National Theatre movement split with two-thirds of the actors and writers siding with Cousins against Yeats. He also wrote widely on the subject of Theosophy and in 1915 travelled to India with the voyage fees paid for by Annie Besant the President of the Theosophical Society. He spent most of the rest of his life in the sub-continent, apart from a year as Professor of English Literature at Keio University in Tokyo and another lecturing in New York. Towards the end of his life he converted to Hinduism. At the core of Cousins's engagement with Indian culture was a firm belief in the "shared sensibilities between Celtic and Oriental peoples".
Whilst in India he became friendly with many key Indian personalities including poet Rabindranath Tagore, Indian classical dancer Rukmini Devi Arundale, painter Abdur Rahman Chughtai and Mahatma Gandhi. He was the person who brought change into the life of poetry of the Great Renowned Kannada Poet and Writer Kuvempu. He wrote a joint autobiography with his wife Margaret Elizabeth Cousins (formerly Gretta Gillespie), a suffragette and one of the co-founders of the Irish Women's Franchise League and All India Women's Conference (AIWC).
In his The Future Poetry Sri Aurobindo has acclaimed Cousins' New Ways in English Literature as "literary criticism which is of the first order, at once discerning and suggestive, criticism which forces us both to see and think." He has also acknowledged that he learnt to intuit deeper being alerted by Cousins' criticisms of his poems. In 1920 Cousins came to Pondicherry to meet the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. The appreciation is palpable in the following citations:
From The Future Poetry by Sri Aurobindo:
"It will be more fruitful to take the main substance of the matter for which the body of Mr.Cousins' criticism gives a good material. Taking the impression it creates for a starting-point and the trend of English poetry for our main text, but casting our view farther back into the past, we may try to sound what the future has to give us through the medium of the poetic mind and its power for creation and interpretation. The issues of recent activity are still doubtful and it would be rash to make any confident prediction; but there is one possibility which this book strongly suggests and which it is at least interesting and may be fruitful to search and consider. That possibility is the discovery of a closer approximation to what we might call the mantra in poetry that rhythmic speech which, as the Veda puts it, rises at once from the heart of the seer and from the distant home of the Truth, — the discovery of the word, the divine movement, the form of thought proper to the reality which, as Mr. Cousins excellently says,
" lies in the apprehension of a something stable behind the instability of word and deed, something that is reflection of the fundamental passion of humanity for something beyond itself, something that is a dim foreshadowing of the divine urge which is prompting all creation to unfold itself and to rise out of its limitations towards its Godlike possibilities. Poetry in the past has done that in moments of supreme elevation; in the future there seems to be some chance of its making it a more conscious aim and steadfast endeavour."
Works
• POEMS BY JAMES H. COUSINS
The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. Ed. Nicholson & Lee. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1917.
Padraic Colum (1881–1972).
Anthology of Irish Verse. 1922.
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Legend of the Blemished King and Other Poems (1897)
The Quest (1906)
The Bell-Branch (1908)
The Wisdom of the West (1912)
Etain the Beloved and Other Poems (1912)
The Renaissance in India (1918)
The King's Wife (1919)
Sea-Change (1920)
The Cultural Unity of Asia (1922)
Work and Worship: Essays on Culture and Creative Art (1922)
The New Japan: Impressions and Reflections (with 74 illustrations) (1923)
Heathen Essays (1925)
A Tibetan Banner (1926)
Above the Rainbow and Other Poems (1926)
A Wandering Harp: Selected Poems (1932)
A Bardic Pilgrimage (1934)
Collected Poems (1940)
The Faith Of The Artist. (1941)
The Work Promethean (1970)
• BIOGRAPHIES/CRITICISM
A Wandering Harp: James H. Cousins, a Study. C.N. Mangala. (B.R. Publishing, 1995).
James Henry Cousins: A Study of His Works in the Light of Theosophical Movement. Dilip Kumar Chatterjee. (South Asia Books, 1994).
James Cousins. William A. Dumbleton. (Twayne Publishing, 1980).
• RELATED LINKS
James H. Cousins: Poems – An index of poems.[2]
See also
• Poetry portal
• List of Irish writers
References
1. Cousins at Ricorso
2. [1], [2]
External links
• Works by James Henry Cousins at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about James Cousins at Internet Archive
• Works by James Cousins at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• The Future Poetry by Sri Aurobindo
• Renaissance in India by Sri Aurobindo
****************************
James H. Cousins
by Theosophy Wiki
Accessed: 8/28/20
James Henry Cousins (July 22, 1873- February 20, 1956) was an Irish writer, poet, playwright, actor, critic, editor, and educator who with his wife Margaret Cousins was active in the Theosophical Society based in Adyar, India.
Cousins was significantly influenced by the teachings of Madame Blavatsky and G. S. [George William (AE)] Russell's ability to reconcile mysticism with a pragmatic approach to social reforms. He had a life-long interest in the paranormal and acted as reporter in several experiments carried out by William Fletcher Barrett, Professor of physics at Dublin University and one of the founders of the Society for Psychical Research. He also wrote widely on the subject of Theosophy and in 1915 Cousins travelled to India with the voyage fees paid for by Annie Besant the President of the Theosophical Society (Adyar).
Work in education
Indian friends called him by the high title "Kulapathi," a term used in ancient Indian educational systems to indicate a man who supervised 10,000 people.[1] G. Venkatachalam summarized his life:
My Irish teacher and friend Kulapathi James Cousins, is another good soul whom it has been my privilege to know for nearly a quarter of a century. He may not be a profound pundit in learning, a great classical scholar or even a master-poet, but he certainly is a man of sterling character, high-mindedness and pure life. His snow-white head, clear blue eyes, chubby round face of fine texture and Irish smiles, all proclaim the purity of his life and thoughts.
His other weaknesses—if weaknesses they be—pale into insignificance before this white radiance of his life. He is slightly pedantic, it is true (and most teachers are); he is egotistical in a way (and that most men cannot help being); a trifle selfish (a common factor in all men); but he has also, at other times, risen to heights of sacrifice and unselfishness, as when he deliberately chose to work in India and for Indians on a paltry pittance, refusing with scorn tempting offers from China and America. His claim to fame will rest not on what he has done for Indian art and culture but on his intuitive and synthetic wisdom, with which he has tried to mould his life and that of his students.[2]
Writings
• James H. Cousins and Margaret Cousins. We Two Together. Madras: Ganesh and Co, 1950. Joint autobiography.
Additional resources
1. Suvarna Nalapat, Education in Ancient India: Valabhi and Nalanda Universities Kottayam: D C Books, 2012. Electronic book available at Google.
2. G. Venkatachalam, My Contemporaries (Bangalore: Hosali Press, 1966), 323.
• James H. Cousins.
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Maud Gonne
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/27/20
Maud Gonne
Born: 21 December 1866, Tongham, England
Died: 27 April 1953 (aged 86), Clonskeagh, Ireland
Occupation: Activist
Spouse(s): John MacBride
Children: Georges Silvère (1890–1891), Iseult Gonne, and Seán MacBride
Parent(s): Thomas Gonne and Edith Frith Gonne (née Cook)
Maud Gonne MacBride (Irish: Maud Nic Ghoinn Bean Mac Giolla Bhríghde, 21 December 1866 – 27 April 1953) was an English-born Irish republican revolutionary, suffragette and actress. Of Anglo-Irish descent, she was won over to Irish nationalism by the plight of evicted people in the Land Wars. She also actively agitated for Home Rule.
Early life
She was born at Tongham[1] near Farnham, Surrey, as Edith Maud Gonne, the eldest daughter of Captain Thomas Gonne (1835–86) of the 17th Lancers, whose ancestors hailed from Caithness in Scotland, and his wife, Edith Frith Gonne, born Cook (1844–71). After her mother died while Maud was still a child, her father sent her to a boarding school in France to be educated. "The Gonnes came from County Mayo, but my great-great grandfather was disinherited and sought fortune abroad trading in Spanish wine," she wrote. "My grandfather was head of a prosperous firm with houses in London and Oporto – he destined my father to take charge of the foreign business and had him educated abroad. My father spoke 6 languages but had little taste for business, so he got a commission in the English army; his gift for languages secured for him diplomatic appointments in Austria, the Balkans and Russia, and he was as much at home in Paris as in Dublin."[2]
Early career
In 1882 her father, an army officer, was posted to Dublin. She accompanied him and remained with him until his death. She returned to France after a bout of tuberculosis and fell in love with a right wing politician, Lucien Millevoye.
They agreed to fight for Irish independence and to regain Alsace-Lorraine for France. She returned to Ireland and worked tirelessly for the release of Irish political prisoners from jail. In 1889, she first met W. B. Yeats, who fell in love with her.
In 1890 she returned to France where she once again met Millevoye and had a son, Georges, with him. Georges died, possibly of meningitis, in 1891. Gonne was distraught, and buried him in a large memorial chapel built for him with money she had inherited. Her distress remained with her; in her will she asked for Georges's baby shoes to be interred with her, but made no mention of the daughter born a few years after him. In Dublin, London and Paris she was attracted to the occultist and spiritualist worlds deeply important to Yeats, asking his friends about the reality of reincarnation. In 1891 she briefly joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a magical organisation with which Yeats had involved himself.[3] Gonne separated from Millevoye after Georges' death, but in late 1893 she arranged to meet him at the mausoleum in Samois-sur-Seine and, next to the coffin, they had sexual intercourse. Her purpose was to conceive a baby with the same father, to whom the soul of Georges would transmigrate in metempsychosis.[4] In August 1894 Gonne and Millevoye's daughter Iseult was born. At age 23, Iseult was proposed to by William Butler Yeats, and she had a brief affair with Ezra Pound. At age 26, Iseult married the Irish-Australian novelist, Francis Stuart, who was then 18 years old.
During the 1890s Gonne travelled extensively throughout England, Wales, Scotland and the United States campaigning for the nationalist cause, forming an organization called the "Irish League" (L'association irlandaise) in 1896.[5] In 1899 her relationship with Millevoye ended.
Gonne, in opposition to the attempts of the British to gain the loyalty of the young Irish during the early 1900s, was known to hold special receptions for children. She, along with other volunteers, fought to preserve the Irish culture during the period of Britain's colonization, founding Inghinidhe na hÉireann[Daughters of Ireland].
Twenty-nine women attended the first meeting. They decided to "combat in every way English influence doing so much injury to the artistic taste and refinement of the Irish people."[6]
In her autobiography she wrote, "I have always hated war and am by nature and philosophy a pacifist, but it is the English who are forcing war on us, and the first principle of war is to kill the enemy."[7]
Acting
Gonne, c. 1890 to 1910
In 1897, along with Yeats and Arthur Griffith, she organised protests against Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. In April 1902, she took a leading role in Yeats's play Cathleen Ní Houlihan. She portrayed Cathleen, the "old woman of Ireland", who mourns for her four provinces, lost to the English colonizers. She was already spending much of her time in Paris.[8]
In the same year, she joined the Roman Catholic Church. She refused many marriage proposals from Yeats, not only because he was unwilling to convert to Catholicism and because she viewed him as insufficiently radical in his nationalism, but also because she believed his unrequited love for her had been a boon for his poetry and that the world should thank her for never having accepted his proposals. When Yeats told her he was not happy without her, she replied,
In the 1930s she was involved in the Friends of Soviet Russia organisation.[10]
Marriage
In Paris in 1903, after having turned down at least four marriage proposals from Yeats between 1891 and 1901, Maud married Major John MacBride, who had led the Irish Transvaal Brigade against the British in the Second Boer War.
The following year their son Seán MacBride was born. Afterwards Gonne and her husband agreed to end their marriage. She demanded sole custody of their son, but MacBride refused, and a divorce case began in Paris on 28 February 1905.[11] The only charge against MacBride substantiated in court was that he had been drunk on one occasion during the marriage. A divorce was not granted, and MacBride was given the right to visit his son twice weekly.
After the marriage ended, Gonne made allegations of domestic violence and, according to W. B. Yeats, of sexual molestation of Iseult, her daughter from a previous relationship, then aged eleven.[12] Critics have suggested that Yeats may have fabricated his allegations due to his hatred of MacBride over Maud's rejection of him in favour of MacBride. Neither the divorce papers submitted by Gonne nor Iseult's own writings mention any such incident, which is unsurprising, given the reticence of the times around such matters, but Francis Stuart, Iseult's later husband, attests to Iseult telling him about it.[13] The allegation concerning Iseult was made by Maud to Dr. Anthony MacBride, John's brother. Though Maud omitted it from court proceedings, the MacBride side raised it in court to have John's name cleared. As Maud wrote to Yeats, MacBride succeeded in this. Yeats and some of his biographers have maintained that Iseult was a victim, and have omitted the court incident.[14]
MacBride visited his son as allowed for a short time, but returned to Ireland and never saw him again. Gonne raised the boy in Paris. MacBride was executed in May 1916 along with James Connolly and other leaders of the Easter Rising. After MacBride's death Gonne felt that she could safely return to live permanently in Ireland.[15]
In 1917 Yeats, in his fifties, proposed first to Maud Gonne, who turned him down, and then to the 23-year-old Iseult, who did not accept either. He had known her since she was four, and often referred to her as his darling child and took a paternal interest in her writings (many Dubliners wrongly suspected that Yeats was her father).[16] Iseult considered the proposal, but finally turned him down, because he was not really in love with her and it would upset her mother too much.[17]
Maud Gonne (far right) with relief agency members in Dublin in July 1922
Women's movement
Gonne remained very active in Paris. In 1913, she established L'Irlande libre, a French newspaper. She wanted Cumann na mBan to be considered seriously: her idea was to get affiliation with the English Red Cross, and wrote to Geneva to gain an international profile for the new nationalist organization.[18] In 1918, she was arrested in Dublin and imprisoned in England for six months.
She worked with the Irish White Cross for the relief of victims of violence.
Gonne MacBride moved in upper-class circles. Lord French's sister, Mrs Charlotte Despard was a famous suffragist, who was already a Sinn Feiner when she arrived in Dublin in 1920. She naturally accompanied Gonne on a tour of County Cork, seat of the most fervent revolutionary activity. Cork was under Martial Law Area (MLA) prohibited to Irishmen and women outside the zone. But the Viceroy's sister had a pass.[19]
In 1921, she opposed the Treaty and advocated the Republican side. The committee that set up White Cross in Ireland asked Gonne to join in January 1921 to distribute funds to victims administered by Cumann na mBan.[20] She settled in Dublin in 1922. During the street battles she headed up a delegation called The Women's Peace Committee which approached the Dáil leadership, and her old friend Arthur Griffith. But they were unable to stop the indiscriminate shooting of civilians, being more interested in law and order. In August she set up a similar organization, the Women's Prisoner's Defence League. The prisons were brutal and many women were locked up in men's prisons. The League supported families wanting news of inmates. They worked for prisoners rights, began vigils, and published stories of tragic deaths. Through her friendship with Despard and opposition to government they were labeled "Mad and Madame Desperate".[21] Historians have related the extent of the damage done to her home at 75 St Stephen's Green, when soldiers of the Free State Army ransacked the place. Maud was arrested and taken to Mountjoy Jail. On 9 November 1922 the Sinn Féin Office was raided in Suffolk street; the Free State had swept the capital, rounding up opposition committing them to prison for internment. The evidence comes from Margaret Buckley, who as Secretary of Sinn Féin acted as legal representative for the ladies. But there was nothing prudish about their concerted opposition to civil rights abuses.
On 10 April 1923, Maud Gonne MacBride was arrested. The charges were: 1) painting banners for seditious demonstrations, and 2) preparing anti-government literature. According to the diary account of her colleague Hannah Moynihan:
She was released on 28 April, after twenty days in custody. Months later the women spread a rumour that Nell Ryan had died in custody in order to gain a propaganda victory.[23] Women continued to be arrested. On 1 June Maud was standing in protest outside Kilmainham Jail with Dorothy Macardle, the writer and activist, and Iseult Stuart. They were supporting hungerstriker Maire Comerford. Again the source for this story seems to be fellow ex-prisoner Hanna Moynihan.[24]
Yeats's muse
Maud Gonne's gravestone, Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.
May 2015
Many of Yeats's poems are inspired by her, or mention her, such as "This, This Rude Knocking."[25] He wrote the plays The Countess Cathleen and Cathleen ni Houlihan for her.[25] His poem "Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" ends with a reference to her:
Few poets have celebrated a woman's beauty to the extent Yeats did in his lyric verse about Gonne. From his second book to Last Poems, she became the Rose, Helen of Troy (in No second Troy), the Ledaean Body ("Leda and the Swan" and "Among School Children"), Cathleen Ní Houlihan, Pallas Athene and Deirdre.[26]
Yeats's 1893 poem "On a Child's Death" is thought to have been inspired by the death of Gonne's son Georges, whom Yeats thought Gonne had adopted. The poem was not published in Yeats's lifetime; scholars say he did not want the poem to be part of his canon, as it is of uneven quality.[4]
Personal
Maud Gonne MacBride published her autobiography in 1938, titled A Servant of the Queen, a reference to both a vision she had of the Irish queen of old, Kathleen Ni Houlihan and an ironic title considering Gonne's Irish Nationalism and rejection of the British monarchy.[27][28]
Her son, Seán MacBride, was active in politics in Ireland and in the United Nations. He was a founding member of Amnesty International and its Chairman, and he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974.[29]
She died in Clonskeagh,[30] aged 86, and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.[31]
Notes
1. At Easter 1900. It translates as Daughters of Erin. Cross-reference to Daughters of the American Revolution 1776.
References
1. "Rosemont School, Tormoham, Devon", Census, 1881.
2. "Bureau of military history" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 14 July 2014. Retrieved 10 January 2017.
3. Lewis, p. 140
4. Schofield, Hugh (31 January 2015). "Ireland's heroine who had sex in her baby's tomb". BBC. Retrieved 31 January 2015.
5. Greene, D.H. (1959). J.M. Synge, 1871–1909. New York: Macmillan. p. 62. Retrieved 26 January2016.
6. McCoole, Sinead (2004), No Ordinary Women: Irish Female Activists in the Revolutionary Years 1900–23, The O'Brien Press Dublin, pp. 20–1.
7. Gonne, Maud (1995). Jeffares, A. Norman; White, Anna MacBride (eds.). The autobiography of Maud Gonne : a servant of the queen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 115. ISBN 9780226302522.
8. McCoole, "No Ordinary Women", p.24
9. Jeffares, A. Norman (1988). W. B. Yeats, a new biography. London and New York: Continuum. p. 102.
10. Levenson, Leah; Natterstad, Jerry H. (1989). Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington: Irish Feminist. Syracuse University Press. p. 157. ISBN 9780815624806.
11. Anthony J. Jordan. "The Yeats Gonne MacBride Triangle". Ricorso.net. Retrieved 10 January 2017.
12. p. 286, Foster, R. F. (1997). W. B. Yeats: A Life, Vol. I: The Apprentice Mage. New York: Oxford UP. ISBN 0-19-288085-3
13. Stuart, Francis (1971). Black List, Section H. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. p. 34. ISBN 978-0809305278. Retrieved 20 May 2018.
14. The Yeats Gonne MacBride Triangle, Anthony J. Jordan. Westport Books, 2000. pp. 86–104
15. Jordan, Anthony J. (2000). The Yeats-Gonne-MacBride triangle. Westport. pp. ?. ISBN 978-0-9524447-4-9. Retrieved 14 March 2011.
16. French, Amanda (2002). "A Strangely Useless Thing': Iseult Gonne and Yeats" (PDF). Yeats Eliot Review: A Journal of Criticism and Scholarship. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 November 2014. Retrieved 11 January 2017.
17. Yeat's Ghosts, Brenda Maddox, ch. 3
18. McCoole, p. 30 cites Barry Delany, 'Cumann na mBan', William Fitzgerald (ed.) "The Voice of Ireland", London, Virtue & Co Ltd, p.162.
19. Diary of Hanah Moynihan, KGC, Dublin, cited in McCoole, p. 80.
20. Diary of Hannah Moynihan, Autograph Books, Kilmainham Gaol Collection, Dublin.
21. Margaret Mullvihill, "Charlotte Despard", pp. 143–45, cited by McCoole, p. 96.
22. Diary of Hannah Moynihan, KGC, Dublin, as cited by McCoole, pp. 118–19.
23. Nellie O'Cleirigh, p. 12
24. McCoole, p. 129.
25. "Monologue about Yeats and his muse set to open at Epsom Playhouse". Epsom Guardian. 4 September 2012. Retrieved 31 January 2015. Many of Yeats's poems are inspired by her, or mention her, such as "This, This Rude Knocking". He also wrote the plays The Countess Cathleen and Cathleen ni Houlihan for Maud.
26. Pratt, Linda Ray (Summer 1983). "Maud Gonne: "Strange Harmonies Amid Discord"". Biography, University of Hawai'i Press. 6 (3): 189–208. JSTOR 23539184.
27. Macbride Maud Gonne. A Servant Of The Queen.
28. Gonne, Maud (17 March 1995). Jeffares, A. Norman; White, Anna MacBride (eds.). The Autobiography of Maud Gonne: A Servant of the Queen. University of Chicago Press. p. xii. ISBN 9780226302522.
29. "The Nobel Peace Prize 1974". NobelPrize.org. Retrieved 19 December 2018.
30. Maye, Brian (26 April 2003). "An Irishman's Diary". Irish Times. Retrieved 19 December 2018.
31. "Maud Gonne MacBride". Glasnevin Trust. Retrieved 19 December 2018.
Writings
• Servant of the Queen Dublin, Golden Eagle Books Ltd. (ISBN 9780226302522, 1995 reprint)
Bibliography
• Cardozo, Nancy, (1979) Maud Gonne London, Victor Gollancz
• Coxhead, Elizabeth,(1985) Daughters of Erin, Gerrard's Cross, Colin Smythe Ltd, p. 19-77.
• Fallon, Charlotte, Republican Hunger Strikers during the Irish Civil War and its Immediate Aftermath, MA Thesis, University College Dublin 1980.
• Fallon, C, 'Civil War Hungerstrikes: Women and Men', Eire, Vol 22, 1987.
• Levenson, Samuel, (1977) Maud Gonne London, Cassell & Co Ltd
• Ward, Margaret, (1990), Maud Gonne California, Pandora.
• Jordan, Anthony J, (2018) "Maud Gonne's Men" Westport Books
External links
• The National Library of Ireland's exhibition, Yeats: The Life and Works of William Butler Yeats
• Maud Gonne at Library of Congress Authorities, with 14 catalogue records
• Collection of information sources on the history of the Gonne family
• Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Maud Gonne and W.B. Yeats Papers
• Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Maud Gonne Collection
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/27/20
Maud Gonne
Born: 21 December 1866, Tongham, England
Died: 27 April 1953 (aged 86), Clonskeagh, Ireland
Occupation: Activist
Spouse(s): John MacBride
Children: Georges Silvère (1890–1891), Iseult Gonne, and Seán MacBride
Parent(s): Thomas Gonne and Edith Frith Gonne (née Cook)
Maud Gonne MacBride (Irish: Maud Nic Ghoinn Bean Mac Giolla Bhríghde, 21 December 1866 – 27 April 1953) was an English-born Irish republican revolutionary, suffragette and actress. Of Anglo-Irish descent, she was won over to Irish nationalism by the plight of evicted people in the Land Wars. She also actively agitated for Home Rule.
Early life
She was born at Tongham[1] near Farnham, Surrey, as Edith Maud Gonne, the eldest daughter of Captain Thomas Gonne (1835–86) of the 17th Lancers, whose ancestors hailed from Caithness in Scotland, and his wife, Edith Frith Gonne, born Cook (1844–71). After her mother died while Maud was still a child, her father sent her to a boarding school in France to be educated. "The Gonnes came from County Mayo, but my great-great grandfather was disinherited and sought fortune abroad trading in Spanish wine," she wrote. "My grandfather was head of a prosperous firm with houses in London and Oporto – he destined my father to take charge of the foreign business and had him educated abroad. My father spoke 6 languages but had little taste for business, so he got a commission in the English army; his gift for languages secured for him diplomatic appointments in Austria, the Balkans and Russia, and he was as much at home in Paris as in Dublin."[2]
Early career
In 1882 her father, an army officer, was posted to Dublin. She accompanied him and remained with him until his death. She returned to France after a bout of tuberculosis and fell in love with a right wing politician, Lucien Millevoye.
Lucien Millevoye (1 August 1850 – 25 March 1918) was a French journalist and right-wing politician, now best known for his relationship with the Irish revolutionary and muse of W.B. Yeats, Maud Gonne.
Millevoye was born in Grenoble in 1850, the grandson of the poet Charles Hubert Millevoye. He was the editor of La Patrie and a supporter of General Boulanger.Georges Ernest Jean-Marie Boulanger (29 April 1837 – 30 September 1891), nicknamed Général Revanche, was a French general and politician.
An enormously popular public figure during the Third Republic, he won a series of elections and was feared to be powerful enough to establish himself as dictator at the zenith of his popularity in January 1889. His base of support was the working districts of Paris and other cities, plus rural traditionalist Catholics and royalists. He promoted an aggressive nationalism, known as Revanchism [Revenge], which opposed Germany and called for the defeat of the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71) to be avenged.
The elections of September 1889 marked a decisive defeat for the Boulangists. Changes in the electoral laws prevented Boulanger from running in multiple constituencies and the aggressive opposition of the established government, combined with Boulanger's self-imposed exile, contributed to a rapid decline of the movement. The decline of Boulanger severely undermined the political strength of the conservative and royalist elements of French political life; they would not recover strength until the establishment of the Vichy regime in 1940.[1] The defeat of the Boulangists ushered in a period of political dominance by the Opportunist Republicans [The Moderates or Moderate Republicans (French: Républicains modérés), pejoratively labeled Opportunist Republicans (French: Républicains opportunistes), were a French political group active in the late 19th century during the Third French Republic.].
Academics have attributed the failure of the movement to Boulanger's own weaknesses. Despite his charisma, he lacked coolness, consistency, and decisiveness; he was a mediocre leader who lacked vision and courage. He was never able to unite the disparate elements, ranging from the far left to the far right, that formed the base of his support. He was able, however, to frighten Republicans and force them to reorganize and strengthen their solidarity in opposition to him.[
-- Georges Ernest Boulanger, by Wikipedia
He served as Boulangist member for the Amiens in the French Chamber of Deputies from 1889 to 1893. He was elected a Nationalist deputy from Paris in 1898 and 1902. In the late 1880s he went to Russia to further the cause of a Franco-Russian alliance. He claimed to be Boulanger's emissary to the Russian Emperor in St Petersburg, a claim Boulanger himself apparently denied.
During the late 1880s and throughout the 1890s, following his separation from his wife Adrienne, he had a relationship with the Irish activist Maud Gonne which produced two children, Georges Silvère (1890–1891) who died of meningitis, and Iseult Lucille Germaine (1894–1954). Gonne was deeply involved in the Irish independence movement, editing the French language nationalist newspaper L'Irlande Libre in the run-up to the centennial of the 1798 Rebellion. Gonne left Millevoye in the summer of 1900 and returned to Ireland with Iseult.
From 1898 until his death in 1918 Millevoye served as the deputy for Paris, where he died on 25 March 1918.
-- Lucien Millevoye, by Wikipedia
They agreed to fight for Irish independence and to regain Alsace-Lorraine for France. She returned to Ireland and worked tirelessly for the release of Irish political prisoners from jail. In 1889, she first met W. B. Yeats, who fell in love with her.
In 1890 she returned to France where she once again met Millevoye and had a son, Georges, with him. Georges died, possibly of meningitis, in 1891. Gonne was distraught, and buried him in a large memorial chapel built for him with money she had inherited. Her distress remained with her; in her will she asked for Georges's baby shoes to be interred with her, but made no mention of the daughter born a few years after him. In Dublin, London and Paris she was attracted to the occultist and spiritualist worlds deeply important to Yeats, asking his friends about the reality of reincarnation. In 1891 she briefly joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a magical organisation with which Yeats had involved himself.[3] Gonne separated from Millevoye after Georges' death, but in late 1893 she arranged to meet him at the mausoleum in Samois-sur-Seine and, next to the coffin, they had sexual intercourse. Her purpose was to conceive a baby with the same father, to whom the soul of Georges would transmigrate in metempsychosis.[4] In August 1894 Gonne and Millevoye's daughter Iseult was born. At age 23, Iseult was proposed to by William Butler Yeats, and she had a brief affair with Ezra Pound. At age 26, Iseult married the Irish-Australian novelist, Francis Stuart, who was then 18 years old.
During the 1890s Gonne travelled extensively throughout England, Wales, Scotland and the United States campaigning for the nationalist cause, forming an organization called the "Irish League" (L'association irlandaise) in 1896.[5] In 1899 her relationship with Millevoye ended.
Gonne, in opposition to the attempts of the British to gain the loyalty of the young Irish during the early 1900s, was known to hold special receptions for children. She, along with other volunteers, fought to preserve the Irish culture during the period of Britain's colonization, founding Inghinidhe na hÉireann[Daughters of Ireland].
Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Irish pronunciation: [ɪnʲiːnʲiː n̪ˠə ˈheːɾʲən̪ˠ], "Daughters of Ireland") was a radical Irish nationalist women's organisation led and founded by Maud Gonne from 1900 to 1914, when it merged with the new Cumann na mBan [The Women's Council].Cumann na mBan (Irish pronunciation: [ˈkʊmˠən̪ˠ n̪ˠə mˠan̪ˠ]; literally "The Women's Council" but calling themselves "The Irishwomen's Council" in English), abbreviated C na mB, is an Irish republican women's paramilitary organisation formed in Dublin on 2 April 1914, merging with and dissolving Inghinidhe na hÉireann, and in 1916, it became an auxiliary of the Irish Volunteers.[The Irish Volunteers (Irish: Óglaigh na hÉireann), sometimes called the Irish Volunteer Force or Irish Volunteer Army was a military organisation established in 1913 by Irish nationalists. It was ostensibly formed in response to the formation of the Ulster Volunteers in 1912, and its declared primary aim was "to secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to the whole people of Ireland". The Volunteers included members of the Gaelic League, Ancient Order of Hibernians and Sinn Féin, and, secretly, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). Increasing rapidly to a strength of nearly 200,000 by mid-1914, it split in September of that year over John Redmond's commitment to the British War effort, with the smaller group retaining the name of "Irish Volunteers".] Although it was otherwise an independent organisation, its executive was subordinate to that of the Volunteers...
The constitution of Cumann na mBan contained explicit references to the use of force by arms if necessary. At the time the Government of Ireland Bill 1914 was being debated and might have had to be enforced in Ulster. The primary aims of the organisation as stated in its constitution were to "advance the cause of Irish liberty and to organize Irishwomen in the furtherance of this object", to "assist in arming and equipping a body of Irish men for the defence of Ireland" and to "form a fund for these purposes, to be called 'The Defence of Ireland Fund'"...
On 23 April 1916, when the Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood finalised arrangements for the Easter Rising, it integrated Cumann na mBan, along with the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army, into the 'Army of the Irish Republic'. Patrick Pearse was appointed Commandant-General and James Connolly Commandant-General of the Dublin Division.
On the day of the Rising, Cumann na mBan members, including Winifred Carney, who arrived armed with both a Webley revolver and a typewriter, entered the General Post Office on O'Connell Street in Dublin with their male counterparts. By nightfall, women insurgents were established in all the major rebel strongholds throughout the city except Boland's Mill and the South Dublin Union held by Éamon de Valera and Eamonn Ceannt.
The majority of the women worked as Red Cross workers, couriers or procured rations for the men. Members also gathered intelligence on scouting expeditions, carried despatches and transferred arms from dumps across the city to insurgent strongholds.
Some members of Cumann na mBan were also members of the Citizen Army and as such were combatants in the Rising. Constance Markievicz is said to have shot and killed a policeman at St Stephen's Green during the opening phase of the hostilities. She carried out sniper attacks on British troops and with Mary Hyland and Lily Kempson, was among a small force under Frank Robbins which occupied the College of Surgeons opposite the Green and failed to [obtain] rifles that were believed to be held there by the college's Officer Training Corps. Helena Molony was among the Citizen Army company which attacked Dublin Castle and subsequently occupied the adjacent City Hall, where she and other women sniped.
At the Four Courts the women of Cumann na mBan helped to organise the evacuation of buildings at the time of surrender and to destroy incriminating papers. More typical was the General Post Office (GPO), where Pearse insisted that most of them (excluding Carney, who refused to leave the injured James Connolly) leave at noon on Friday, 28 April. The building was then coming under shell- and machine-gun fire and many casualties were anticipated. The following day the leaders at the GPO decided to negotiate surrender. Pearse asked Cumann na mBan member Elizabeth O'Farrell (a mid-wife at the National Maternity Hospital) to act as a go-between. Under British military supervision she brought Pearse's surrender order to the rebel units still fighting in Dublin. Over 70 women, including many of the leading figures in Cumann na mBan, were arrested after the insurrection and many of the women who had been captured fighting were imprisoned in Kilmainham; all but twelve had been released by 8 May 1916.
-- Cumann na mBan [The Women's Council] [The Irishwomen's Council], by Wikipedia
The Inghinidhe originated from a meeting of 15 women in the Celtic Literary Society Rooms in Dublin on Easter Sunday 1900. While the meeting's original purpose was to provide a gift for Arthur Griffith for defending Maud Gonne from an accusation that she was a British spy, it turned to planning a "Patriotic Children's Treat" in response to the Children's Treat in the Phoenix Park which had been part of Queen Victoria's April visit to Dublin. One aim of the royal visit was to encourage Irishmen to enlist in the British Army to fight in the Boer War, whereas Griffith, Gonne and others were sympathetic to the Boers. Over fifty women joined the organising committee for the Patriotic Children's Treat, which took place in July on the Sunday after the Wolfe Tone Commemoration. It involved 30,000 children parading from Beresford Place to Clonturk Park, followed by a picnic and anti-recruitment speeches. The funds left over after the Patriotic Children's Treat were used to establish Inghinidhe na hÉireann as a permanent organisation.
-- Inghinidhe na hÉireann [Daughters of Ireland], by Wikipedia
Twenty-nine women attended the first meeting. They decided to "combat in every way English influence doing so much injury to the artistic taste and refinement of the Irish people."[6]
In her autobiography she wrote, "I have always hated war and am by nature and philosophy a pacifist, but it is the English who are forcing war on us, and the first principle of war is to kill the enemy."[7]
Acting
Gonne, c. 1890 to 1910
In 1897, along with Yeats and Arthur Griffith, she organised protests against Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. In April 1902, she took a leading role in Yeats's play Cathleen Ní Houlihan. She portrayed Cathleen, the "old woman of Ireland", who mourns for her four provinces, lost to the English colonizers. She was already spending much of her time in Paris.[8]
In the same year, she joined the Roman Catholic Church. She refused many marriage proposals from Yeats, not only because he was unwilling to convert to Catholicism and because she viewed him as insufficiently radical in his nationalism, but also because she believed his unrequited love for her had been a boon for his poetry and that the world should thank her for never having accepted his proposals. When Yeats told her he was not happy without her, she replied,
Oh yes, you are, because you make beautiful poetry out of what you call your unhappiness and are happy in that. Marriage would be such a dull affair. Poets should never marry. The world should thank me for not marrying you.[9]
In the 1930s she was involved in the Friends of Soviet Russia organisation.[10]
The Friends of Soviet Russia (FSR) was formally established in the United States on August 9, 1921 as an offshoot of the American Labor Alliance for Trade Relations with Soviet Russia (ALA). It was launched as a "mass organization" dedicated to raising funds for the relief of the extreme famine that swept Soviet Russia in 1921, both in terms of food and clothing for immediate amelioration of the crisis and agricultural tools and equipment for the reconstruction of Soviet agriculture.
From 1927 the organization was known as the Friends of the Soviet Union (FSU) and was the American national affiliate of a new international authority known as the International Association of Friends of the Soviet Union.
-- Friends of Soviet Russia, by Wikipedia
Marriage
In Paris in 1903, after having turned down at least four marriage proposals from Yeats between 1891 and 1901, Maud married Major John MacBride, who had led the Irish Transvaal Brigade against the British in the Second Boer War.
John MacBride (sometimes written John McBride; Irish: Seán Mac Giolla Bhríde; 7 May 1868[1] – 5 May 1916) was an Irish republican and military leader executed by the British for his participation in the 1916 Irish Easter Rising in Dublin...
He joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood and was associated with Michael Cusack in the early days of the Gaelic Athletic Association. He also joined the Celtic Literary Society through which he came to know Arthur Griffith who was to remain a friend and influence throughout his life.Arthur Joseph Griffith (Irish: Art Seosamh Ó Gríobhtha; 31 March 1871 – 12 August 1922) was an Irish writer, newspaper editor and politician who founded the political party Sinn Féin [Sinn Féin,"[We] Ourselves") is a centre-left to left-wing Irish republican political party active in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.] He led the Irish delegation at the negotiations that produced the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, and served as President of Dáil Éireann [President of the Irish Republic, was the leader of the revolutionary Irish Republic of 1919–1922.] from January 1922 until his death in August 1922.
After a short spell in South Africa, Griffith founded and edited the Irish nationalist newspaper The United Irishman in 1899. In 1904, he wrote The Resurrection of Hungary: A Parallel for Ireland, which advocated the withdrawal of Irish members from the Parliament of the United Kingdom and the setting up of the institutions of government at home, a policy that became known as Sinn Féin (ourselves). On 28 November 1905, he presented "The Sinn Féin Policy" at the first annual convention of his organisation, the National Council; the occasion is marked as the founding date of the Sinn Féin party. Griffith took over as president of Sinn Féin in 1911, but at that time the organisation was still small.
Griffith was arrested following the Easter Rising of 1916, despite not having taken any part in it. On his release, he worked to build up Sinn Féin, which won a string of by-election victories. At the party's Ardfheis (annual convention) in October 1917, Sinn Féin became an unambiguously republican party, and Griffith resigned the presidency in favour of the 1916 leader Éamon de Valera, becoming vice-president instead. Griffith was elected as a member of parliament (MP) for East Cavan in a by-election in June 1918, and re-elected in the 1918 general election, when Sinn Féin won a huge electoral victory over the Irish Parliamentary Party and, refusing to take their seats at Westminster, set up their own constituent assembly, Dáil Éireann.
In the Dáil, Griffith served as Minister for Home Affairs from 1919 to 1921, and Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1921 to 1922. In September 1921, he was appointed chairman of the Irish delegation to negotiate a treaty with the British government. After months of negotiations, he and the other four delegates signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which created the Irish Free State, but not as a republic. This led to a split in the Dáil. After the Treaty was narrowly approved by the Dáil, de Valera resigned as president and Griffith was elected in his place. The split led to the Irish Civil War. Griffith died suddenly in August 1922, two months after the outbreak of that war.
-- Arthur Griffith, by Wikipedia
Beginning in 1893, MacBride was termed a "dangerous nationalist" by the British government. In 1896 he went to the United States on behalf of the IRB. In the same year he returned and emigrated to South Africa.
He took part in the Second Boer War, where he raised the Irish Transvaal Brigade [Two Irish Commandos volunteer military units of guerilla militia fought alongside the Boers against the British forces during the Second Boer War (1899–1902).] What became known as MacBride's Brigade was first commanded by an Irish American, Colonel John Blake, an ex-US Cavalry Officer. MacBride recommended Blake as Commander since MacBride himself had no military experience. The Brigade was given official recognition by the Boer Government with the commissions of the Brigade's officers signed by State Secretary F.W. Reitz. MacBride was commissioned with the rank of Major in the Boer army and given Boer citizenship...
When MacBride became a citizen of the Transvaal, the British considered that, as an Irishman and citizen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, he had given aid to the enemy. After the war he travelled to Paris where Maud Gonne lived. In 1903, he married her to the disapproval of W. B. Yeats, who considered her his muse and had previously proposed to her. The following year their son Sean MacBride was born. Yeats wrote to Lady Gregory in January 1905, the month MacBride and Maud separated, that he had been told MacBride had molested his stepdaughter, Iseult, who was 10 at that time. The marriage had already failed but the couple could not agree on custody of Sean. Maud instituted divorce proceedings in Paris. No divorce was given but in a separation agreement, Maud won custody to the baby until age 12. The father got visiting rights and one month each summer. MacBride returned to Dublin and never saw his son again...
After returning permanently from Paris to Dublin in 1905 MacBride joined other Irish nationalists in preparing for an insurrection. Because he was so well known to the British, the leaders thought it wise to keep him outside their secret military group planning a Rising. As a result he happened to find himself in the midst of the Rising without notice. He was in Dublin early on Easter Monday morning to meet his brother Dr. Anthony MacBride, who was arriving from Westport to be married on the Wednesday. The Major walked up Grafton St and saw Thomas MacDonagh in uniform and leading his troops. He offered his services and was appointed second-in-command at the Jacob's factory.
After the Rising, MacBride, following a court martial under the Defence of the Realm Act, was shot by British troops in Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin.
-- John MacBride, by Wikipedia
The following year their son Seán MacBride was born. Afterwards Gonne and her husband agreed to end their marriage. She demanded sole custody of their son, but MacBride refused, and a divorce case began in Paris on 28 February 1905.[11] The only charge against MacBride substantiated in court was that he had been drunk on one occasion during the marriage. A divorce was not granted, and MacBride was given the right to visit his son twice weekly.
After the marriage ended, Gonne made allegations of domestic violence and, according to W. B. Yeats, of sexual molestation of Iseult, her daughter from a previous relationship, then aged eleven.[12] Critics have suggested that Yeats may have fabricated his allegations due to his hatred of MacBride over Maud's rejection of him in favour of MacBride. Neither the divorce papers submitted by Gonne nor Iseult's own writings mention any such incident, which is unsurprising, given the reticence of the times around such matters, but Francis Stuart, Iseult's later husband, attests to Iseult telling him about it.[13] The allegation concerning Iseult was made by Maud to Dr. Anthony MacBride, John's brother. Though Maud omitted it from court proceedings, the MacBride side raised it in court to have John's name cleared. As Maud wrote to Yeats, MacBride succeeded in this. Yeats and some of his biographers have maintained that Iseult was a victim, and have omitted the court incident.[14]
MacBride visited his son as allowed for a short time, but returned to Ireland and never saw him again. Gonne raised the boy in Paris. MacBride was executed in May 1916 along with James Connolly and other leaders of the Easter Rising. After MacBride's death Gonne felt that she could safely return to live permanently in Ireland.[15]
In 1917 Yeats, in his fifties, proposed first to Maud Gonne, who turned him down, and then to the 23-year-old Iseult, who did not accept either. He had known her since she was four, and often referred to her as his darling child and took a paternal interest in her writings (many Dubliners wrongly suspected that Yeats was her father).[16] Iseult considered the proposal, but finally turned him down, because he was not really in love with her and it would upset her mother too much.[17]
Maud Gonne (far right) with relief agency members in Dublin in July 1922
Women's movement
Gonne remained very active in Paris. In 1913, she established L'Irlande libre, a French newspaper. She wanted Cumann na mBan to be considered seriously: her idea was to get affiliation with the English Red Cross, and wrote to Geneva to gain an international profile for the new nationalist organization.[18] In 1918, she was arrested in Dublin and imprisoned in England for six months.
She worked with the Irish White Cross for the relief of victims of violence.
The Irish White Cross was established on 1 February 1921 as a mechanism for distributing funds raised by the American Committee for Relief in Ireland.[1]The American Committee for Relief in Ireland was formed through the initiative of Dr. William J. Maloney and others in 1920, with the intention of giving financial assistance to civilians in Ireland who had been injured or suffered severe financial hardship due to the ongoing Irish War of Independence. It was only one of several US based philanthropic organisations that emerged following World War I with a view to influencing the post-war settlement from their perspective of social justice, economic development and long term stability in Europe. Some of them concentrated their efforts on events in Ireland, and while activists of Irish ethnicity were well represented, membership was far from confined to Americans of Irish heritage. Apart from the ACRI, bodies such as the American Commission on Irish Independence and the American Commission on Conditions in Ireland raised money and attempted to influence US foreign policy in a manner sympathetic to the goal of Irish secession from the United Kingdom.
-- American Committee for Relief in Ireland, by Wikipedia
It was managed by the Quaker businessman, and later Irish Free State senator, James G. Douglas.James Green Douglas (1887 – 16 September 1954) was an Irish businessman and politician.
Douglas was an Irish nationalist Quaker who managed the Irish White Cross from 1920 to 1922. He was appointed by Michael Collins as chairman of the committee to draft the Constitution of the Irish Free State following the Irish War of Independence.
Douglas went on to become a very active member of Seanad Éireann [the upper house of the Oireachtas (parliament) of the Irish Free State] between 1922 and 1936 under the constitution he had helped to prepare. In 1922 he was elected as the first Vice-Chairman of the Senate. The Senate was abolished in 1936 and re-established under the terms of the 1937 Constitution; he was again an active Senator between 1938 and 1943, and from 1944 to 1954. The topics most associated with him during his work as Senator were international refugees and the League of Nations.
-- James G. Douglas, by Wikipedia
The White Cross continued to operate until the Irish Civil War and its books were officially closed in 1928. From 1922 its activities were essentially wound down and remaining funds divested to subsidiary organisations. The longest running of these aid committees was the Children's Relief Association which distributed aid to child victims of this troubled period, north and south of the border, until 1947.
-- Irish White Cross, by Wikipedia
Gonne MacBride moved in upper-class circles. Lord French's sister, Mrs Charlotte Despard was a famous suffragist, who was already a Sinn Feiner when she arrived in Dublin in 1920. She naturally accompanied Gonne on a tour of County Cork, seat of the most fervent revolutionary activity. Cork was under Martial Law Area (MLA) prohibited to Irishmen and women outside the zone. But the Viceroy's sister had a pass.[19]
Charlotte Despard (née French; 15 June 1844 – 10 November 1939) was an Anglo-Irish suffragist, socialist, pacifist, Sinn Féin activist, and novelist. She was a founding member of the Women's Freedom League, Women's Peace Crusade, and the Irish Women's Franchise League, and an activist in a wide range of political organizations over the course of her life, including among others the Women's Social and Political Union, Humanitarian League, Labour Party, Cumann na mBan, and the Communist Party of Great Britain.
Despard was imprisoned four times for her suffragette activism,[3][4] and she continued actively campaigning for women's rights, poverty relief and world peace right into her 90s.[3]
-- Charlotte Despard, by Wikipedia
In 1921, she opposed the Treaty and advocated the Republican side. The committee that set up White Cross in Ireland asked Gonne to join in January 1921 to distribute funds to victims administered by Cumann na mBan.[20] She settled in Dublin in 1922. During the street battles she headed up a delegation called The Women's Peace Committee which approached the Dáil leadership, and her old friend Arthur Griffith. But they were unable to stop the indiscriminate shooting of civilians, being more interested in law and order. In August she set up a similar organization, the Women's Prisoner's Defence League. The prisons were brutal and many women were locked up in men's prisons. The League supported families wanting news of inmates. They worked for prisoners rights, began vigils, and published stories of tragic deaths. Through her friendship with Despard and opposition to government they were labeled "Mad and Madame Desperate".[21] Historians have related the extent of the damage done to her home at 75 St Stephen's Green, when soldiers of the Free State Army ransacked the place. Maud was arrested and taken to Mountjoy Jail. On 9 November 1922 the Sinn Féin Office was raided in Suffolk street; the Free State had swept the capital, rounding up opposition committing them to prison for internment. The evidence comes from Margaret Buckley, who as Secretary of Sinn Féin acted as legal representative for the ladies. But there was nothing prudish about their concerted opposition to civil rights abuses.
On 10 April 1923, Maud Gonne MacBride was arrested. The charges were: 1) painting banners for seditious demonstrations, and 2) preparing anti-government literature. According to the diary account of her colleague Hannah Moynihan:
Last night [10th April] at 11pm, we heard the commotion which usually accompanies the arrival of new prisoners... we pestered the wardress and she told us there were four – Maud Gonne MacBride, her daughter Mrs Iseult Stuart and two lesser lights... Early this morning... we could see Maud walking majestically past our cell door leading on a leash a funny little lap dog which answered to the name that sounded like Wuzzo - Wuzzo.[22]
She was released on 28 April, after twenty days in custody. Months later the women spread a rumour that Nell Ryan had died in custody in order to gain a propaganda victory.[23] Women continued to be arrested. On 1 June Maud was standing in protest outside Kilmainham Jail with Dorothy Macardle, the writer and activist, and Iseult Stuart. They were supporting hungerstriker Maire Comerford. Again the source for this story seems to be fellow ex-prisoner Hanna Moynihan.[24]
Yeats's muse
Maud Gonne's gravestone, Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.
May 2015
Many of Yeats's poems are inspired by her, or mention her, such as "This, This Rude Knocking."[25] He wrote the plays The Countess Cathleen and Cathleen ni Houlihan for her.[25] His poem "Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" ends with a reference to her:
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Few poets have celebrated a woman's beauty to the extent Yeats did in his lyric verse about Gonne. From his second book to Last Poems, she became the Rose, Helen of Troy (in No second Troy), the Ledaean Body ("Leda and the Swan" and "Among School Children"), Cathleen Ní Houlihan, Pallas Athene and Deirdre.[26]
Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways
Or hurled the little streets upon the great.
(from 'No second Troy', 1916)
Yeats's 1893 poem "On a Child's Death" is thought to have been inspired by the death of Gonne's son Georges, whom Yeats thought Gonne had adopted. The poem was not published in Yeats's lifetime; scholars say he did not want the poem to be part of his canon, as it is of uneven quality.[4]
Personal
Maud Gonne MacBride published her autobiography in 1938, titled A Servant of the Queen, a reference to both a vision she had of the Irish queen of old, Kathleen Ni Houlihan and an ironic title considering Gonne's Irish Nationalism and rejection of the British monarchy.[27][28]
Her son, Seán MacBride, was active in politics in Ireland and in the United Nations. He was a founding member of Amnesty International and its Chairman, and he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974.[29]
She died in Clonskeagh,[30] aged 86, and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.[31]
Notes
1. At Easter 1900. It translates as Daughters of Erin. Cross-reference to Daughters of the American Revolution 1776.
References
1. "Rosemont School, Tormoham, Devon", Census, 1881.
2. "Bureau of military history" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 14 July 2014. Retrieved 10 January 2017.
3. Lewis, p. 140
4. Schofield, Hugh (31 January 2015). "Ireland's heroine who had sex in her baby's tomb". BBC. Retrieved 31 January 2015.
5. Greene, D.H. (1959). J.M. Synge, 1871–1909. New York: Macmillan. p. 62. Retrieved 26 January2016.
6. McCoole, Sinead (2004), No Ordinary Women: Irish Female Activists in the Revolutionary Years 1900–23, The O'Brien Press Dublin, pp. 20–1.
7. Gonne, Maud (1995). Jeffares, A. Norman; White, Anna MacBride (eds.). The autobiography of Maud Gonne : a servant of the queen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 115. ISBN 9780226302522.
8. McCoole, "No Ordinary Women", p.24
9. Jeffares, A. Norman (1988). W. B. Yeats, a new biography. London and New York: Continuum. p. 102.
10. Levenson, Leah; Natterstad, Jerry H. (1989). Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington: Irish Feminist. Syracuse University Press. p. 157. ISBN 9780815624806.
11. Anthony J. Jordan. "The Yeats Gonne MacBride Triangle". Ricorso.net. Retrieved 10 January 2017.
12. p. 286, Foster, R. F. (1997). W. B. Yeats: A Life, Vol. I: The Apprentice Mage. New York: Oxford UP. ISBN 0-19-288085-3
13. Stuart, Francis (1971). Black List, Section H. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. p. 34. ISBN 978-0809305278. Retrieved 20 May 2018.
14. The Yeats Gonne MacBride Triangle, Anthony J. Jordan. Westport Books, 2000. pp. 86–104
15. Jordan, Anthony J. (2000). The Yeats-Gonne-MacBride triangle. Westport. pp. ?. ISBN 978-0-9524447-4-9. Retrieved 14 March 2011.
16. French, Amanda (2002). "A Strangely Useless Thing': Iseult Gonne and Yeats" (PDF). Yeats Eliot Review: A Journal of Criticism and Scholarship. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 November 2014. Retrieved 11 January 2017.
17. Yeat's Ghosts, Brenda Maddox, ch. 3
18. McCoole, p. 30 cites Barry Delany, 'Cumann na mBan', William Fitzgerald (ed.) "The Voice of Ireland", London, Virtue & Co Ltd, p.162.
19. Diary of Hanah Moynihan, KGC, Dublin, cited in McCoole, p. 80.
20. Diary of Hannah Moynihan, Autograph Books, Kilmainham Gaol Collection, Dublin.
21. Margaret Mullvihill, "Charlotte Despard", pp. 143–45, cited by McCoole, p. 96.
22. Diary of Hannah Moynihan, KGC, Dublin, as cited by McCoole, pp. 118–19.
23. Nellie O'Cleirigh, p. 12
24. McCoole, p. 129.
25. "Monologue about Yeats and his muse set to open at Epsom Playhouse". Epsom Guardian. 4 September 2012. Retrieved 31 January 2015. Many of Yeats's poems are inspired by her, or mention her, such as "This, This Rude Knocking". He also wrote the plays The Countess Cathleen and Cathleen ni Houlihan for Maud.
26. Pratt, Linda Ray (Summer 1983). "Maud Gonne: "Strange Harmonies Amid Discord"". Biography, University of Hawai'i Press. 6 (3): 189–208. JSTOR 23539184.
27. Macbride Maud Gonne. A Servant Of The Queen.
28. Gonne, Maud (17 March 1995). Jeffares, A. Norman; White, Anna MacBride (eds.). The Autobiography of Maud Gonne: A Servant of the Queen. University of Chicago Press. p. xii. ISBN 9780226302522.
29. "The Nobel Peace Prize 1974". NobelPrize.org. Retrieved 19 December 2018.
30. Maye, Brian (26 April 2003). "An Irishman's Diary". Irish Times. Retrieved 19 December 2018.
31. "Maud Gonne MacBride". Glasnevin Trust. Retrieved 19 December 2018.
Writings
• Servant of the Queen Dublin, Golden Eagle Books Ltd. (ISBN 9780226302522, 1995 reprint)
Bibliography
• Cardozo, Nancy, (1979) Maud Gonne London, Victor Gollancz
• Coxhead, Elizabeth,(1985) Daughters of Erin, Gerrard's Cross, Colin Smythe Ltd, p. 19-77.
• Fallon, Charlotte, Republican Hunger Strikers during the Irish Civil War and its Immediate Aftermath, MA Thesis, University College Dublin 1980.
• Fallon, C, 'Civil War Hungerstrikes: Women and Men', Eire, Vol 22, 1987.
• Levenson, Samuel, (1977) Maud Gonne London, Cassell & Co Ltd
• Ward, Margaret, (1990), Maud Gonne California, Pandora.
• Jordan, Anthony J, (2018) "Maud Gonne's Men" Westport Books
External links
• The National Library of Ireland's exhibition, Yeats: The Life and Works of William Butler Yeats
• Maud Gonne at Library of Congress Authorities, with 14 catalogue records
• Collection of information sources on the history of the Gonne family
• Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Maud Gonne and W.B. Yeats Papers
• Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Maud Gonne Collection
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William Wedderburn
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/27/20
Sir William Wedderburn, Bt
Member of Parliament for Banffshire
In office: 1893–1900
Preceded by: Sir Robert Duff
Succeeded by: Alexander William Black
Personal details
Born: 25 March 1838, Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
Died: 25 January 1918 (aged 79), Meredith, England, United Kingdom
Nationality: Scottish
Political party: Liberal Party
Other political affiliations: Co-founder of Indian National Congress
Relations: Wedderburn family
Alma mater: University of Edinburgh
Profession: Civil servant, politician
William Wedderburn
Sir William Wedderburn, 4th Baronet, JP DL (25 March 1838 – 25 January 1918) was a Scottish civil servant and politician who was a Liberal Party member of Parliament (MP). Wedderburn was one of the founding members of the Indian National Congress.[1][2] He was also the president of Congress in 1889 and 1910, Allahabad session.[3]
Early life
See also: Wedderburn baronets
Born in Edinburgh, the fourth and youngest son of Sir John Wedderburn, 2nd Baronet and Henrietta Louise Milburn, he was educated at Hofwyl Workshop, then Loretto School and finally at Edinburgh University.[4] He joined the Indian Civil Service as his father and an older brother had done. His older brother John had been killed in the 1857 uprising and William joined the service in 1860 after ranking third (of 160 applicants) in the entrance exam of 1859.[5][6] His elder brother David was the 3rd baronet.
Career
Wedderburn (right) with Hume (left) and Dadabhai Naoroji
William Wedderburn
He entered the Indian Civil Service in Bombay in 1860, served as District Judge and Judicial Commissioner in Sind; acted as secretary to Bombay Government, Judicial and Political Departments; and from 1885 acted as Judge of the High Court, Bombay. He retired when acting Chief Secretary to the Government of Bombay in 1887. During his work he noted the troubles of peasantry arising from moneylending and he suggested that co-operative agricultural banks be established to provide credits at reasonable rates. The proposal was supported in India but was blocked by the India Office. Wedderburn supported reforms suggested by Lord Ripon to develop local self-government and equality to Indian judges. He was seen as supporting the aspirations of Indians and was denied a judge position in the Bombay high court. This led him to retire early in 1887. Along with Allan Octavian Hume he was a founder of the Indian National Congress and served as its president in 1889 and 1910.[4] He worked along with influential Congress leaders in Bombay and in 1890 he chaired the British committee of the Indian National Congress, helped publish the journal India and attempted to support the movement through parliamentary action in Britain. He developed a close working relationship with G. K. Gokhale of the Congress.[5] He was an unsuccessful parliamentary candidate in North Ayrshire in 1892 and served as Liberal Member of Parliament for Banffshire from 1893 to 1900.[4]
He was a member of the Royal Commission on Indian Expenditure in 1895 and chairman of Indian Parliamentary Committee. He was considered a great friend of the Indian Progressive Movement and presided at the Indian National Congress, 1889, later Chairman, British Committee of the Indian National Congress.[4] In 1910 he returned to India as Congress president and tried to solve the rift between Hindus and Muslims and attempted to reconcile the differences between those who wished to work constitutionally and those who wanted to use more militant actions. He wrote a biographical memoir of A. O. Hume who died in 1912.[5]
He succeeded his brother, Sir David, to the baronetcy on 18 September 1882. He married Mary Blanche Hoskyns, daughter of Henry William Hoskyns, on 12 September 1878. A daughter, Dorothy, was born in Poona in 1879 and in 1884 they had a second daughter in London, Margaret Griselda.[4] He died at his home in Meredith, Gloucestershire on 25 January 1918.[5]
Publications
• Papers and Schemes on Arbitration Courts, Agricultural Banks, Village Panchayets and subjects relating to the condition of the Indian people
• Allan Octavian Hume, C.B.; father of the Indian National Congress, 1829 to 1912 (1912)
References
1. Nanda, Bal Ram (2015). Gokhale: The Indian Moderates and the British Raj. Princeton University Press. p. 542. ISBN 9781400870493.
2. Mookerjee, Girija; Andrews, C.F (1938). Routledge Revivals: The Rise and Growth of the Congress in India. Routledge. p. 306. ISBN 9781315405483.
3. "William Wedderburn - Read here complete information about William Wedderburn biography, History, education, Family, fact, other information". Indian National Congress. Retrieved 7 December 2019.
4. C. Hayavadana Rao, ed. (1915). The Indian Biographical Dictionary. Pillar & Co. pp. 460–61. Retrieved 14 March 2010.
5. Moulton, Edward C. (2004). "Wedderburn, Sir William, fourth baronet (1838–1918)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/41165.
6. Ratcliffe, S.K. (1923). Sir William Wedderburn and the Indian reform movement. London: George Allen and Unwin.
External links
• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Sir William Wedderburn
• Speeches and writings (1918)
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/27/20
Sir William Wedderburn, Bt
Member of Parliament for Banffshire
In office: 1893–1900
Preceded by: Sir Robert Duff
Succeeded by: Alexander William Black
Personal details
Born: 25 March 1838, Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
Died: 25 January 1918 (aged 79), Meredith, England, United Kingdom
Nationality: Scottish
Political party: Liberal Party
Other political affiliations: Co-founder of Indian National Congress
Relations: Wedderburn family
Alma mater: University of Edinburgh
Profession: Civil servant, politician
William Wedderburn
Sir William Wedderburn, 4th Baronet, JP DL (25 March 1838 – 25 January 1918) was a Scottish civil servant and politician who was a Liberal Party member of Parliament (MP). Wedderburn was one of the founding members of the Indian National Congress.[1][2] He was also the president of Congress in 1889 and 1910, Allahabad session.[3]
Sir William Wedderburn
President: 1838-1918 (Bombay, 1889, Allahabad, 1910)
by Indian National Congress
Accessed: 8/27/20
Sir William Wedderburn was born in March 1838 in Edinburgh, Scotland. The Wedderburns of the Scottish Border were a family of great antiquity. In 1859 Weddeburn appeared for the Indian Civil Service examination.
He left for India in 1860 and began official duty at Dharwar as an Assistant Collector. He was appointed Acting Judicial Commissioner in Sind and Judge of the Sadar Court in 1874. In 1882 he became the District and Sessions Judge of Poona. At the time of his retirement in 1887, he was the Chief Secretary to the Government of Bombay.
During his service in India, Wedderburn's attention was focussed on famine, the poverty of the Indian peasantry, the problem of agricultural indebtedness and the question of reviving the ancient village system. His concern with these problems brought him in touch with the Indian National Congress.
After his retirement, Wedderburn threw his heart and soul into it. He presided over the fourth Congress held in Bombay in 1889. Meanwhile, after the death of his brother David, Sir William succeeded to the baronetcy in 1879.
He entered Parliament in 1893 as a Liberal member and sought to voice India's grievances in the House. He formed the Indian Parliamentary Committee with which he was associated as Chairman from 1893 to 1900.
In 1895, Wedderburn represented India on the Welby Commission (i.e. Royal Commission) on Indian Expenditure. He also began participating in the activities of the Indian Famine Union set up in June 1901, for investigation into famines and proposing preventive measures.
He came to India in 1904 to attend the 20th session of the Indian National Congress in Bombay, which was presided over by Sir Henry Cotton. He was again invited in 1910 to preside over the 25th session.
He remained the Chairman of the British Committee of the Congress from July 1889 until his death. As a liberal, William Wedderburn believed in the principle of self-government. Along with the founders of the Indian National Congress, he believed in the future of India in partnership with the British Commonwealth and welcomed the formal proclamation made by the British Government on 20 August 1917, that the goal of British policy in India was the progressive establishment of self-government.
Some members of the old order condemned him as a disloyal officer, for his continual tirades against the bureaucracy, his incessant pleading for the Indian peasant and for his stand on constitutional reforms for India. Wedderburn's main contribution to the promotion of national consciousness was his life -- long labour on behalf of the Indian Reform Movement. The Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms were regarded by him as the crowning glory of his life's work.
“What are the practical objects of the Congress movement? They are, to revive the national life, and to increase the material prosperity of country; and what better objects could we have before us? Lastly, as regards our methods, they are open and constitutional, and based solely on India's reliance upon British justice and love of fair play.”
--From the Presidential Address - William Wedderburn I.N.C. Session, 1889, Bombay
Early life
See also: Wedderburn baronets
Born in Edinburgh, the fourth and youngest son of Sir John Wedderburn, 2nd Baronet and Henrietta Louise Milburn, he was educated at Hofwyl Workshop, then Loretto School and finally at Edinburgh University.[4] He joined the Indian Civil Service as his father and an older brother had done. His older brother John had been killed in the 1857 uprising and William joined the service in 1860 after ranking third (of 160 applicants) in the entrance exam of 1859.[5][6] His elder brother David was the 3rd baronet.
Career
Wedderburn (right) with Hume (left) and Dadabhai Naoroji
William Wedderburn
He entered the Indian Civil Service in Bombay in 1860, served as District Judge and Judicial Commissioner in Sind; acted as secretary to Bombay Government, Judicial and Political Departments; and from 1885 acted as Judge of the High Court, Bombay. He retired when acting Chief Secretary to the Government of Bombay in 1887. During his work he noted the troubles of peasantry arising from moneylending and he suggested that co-operative agricultural banks be established to provide credits at reasonable rates. The proposal was supported in India but was blocked by the India Office. Wedderburn supported reforms suggested by Lord Ripon to develop local self-government and equality to Indian judges. He was seen as supporting the aspirations of Indians and was denied a judge position in the Bombay high court. This led him to retire early in 1887. Along with Allan Octavian Hume he was a founder of the Indian National Congress and served as its president in 1889 and 1910.[4] He worked along with influential Congress leaders in Bombay and in 1890 he chaired the British committee of the Indian National Congress, helped publish the journal India and attempted to support the movement through parliamentary action in Britain. He developed a close working relationship with G. K. Gokhale of the Congress.[5] He was an unsuccessful parliamentary candidate in North Ayrshire in 1892 and served as Liberal Member of Parliament for Banffshire from 1893 to 1900.[4]
He was a member of the Royal Commission on Indian Expenditure in 1895 and chairman of Indian Parliamentary Committee. He was considered a great friend of the Indian Progressive Movement and presided at the Indian National Congress, 1889, later Chairman, British Committee of the Indian National Congress.[4] In 1910 he returned to India as Congress president and tried to solve the rift between Hindus and Muslims and attempted to reconcile the differences between those who wished to work constitutionally and those who wanted to use more militant actions. He wrote a biographical memoir of A. O. Hume who died in 1912.[5]
He succeeded his brother, Sir David, to the baronetcy on 18 September 1882. He married Mary Blanche Hoskyns, daughter of Henry William Hoskyns, on 12 September 1878. A daughter, Dorothy, was born in Poona in 1879 and in 1884 they had a second daughter in London, Margaret Griselda.[4] He died at his home in Meredith, Gloucestershire on 25 January 1918.[5]
Publications
• Papers and Schemes on Arbitration Courts, Agricultural Banks, Village Panchayets and subjects relating to the condition of the Indian people
• Allan Octavian Hume, C.B.; father of the Indian National Congress, 1829 to 1912 (1912)
References
1. Nanda, Bal Ram (2015). Gokhale: The Indian Moderates and the British Raj. Princeton University Press. p. 542. ISBN 9781400870493.
2. Mookerjee, Girija; Andrews, C.F (1938). Routledge Revivals: The Rise and Growth of the Congress in India. Routledge. p. 306. ISBN 9781315405483.
3. "William Wedderburn - Read here complete information about William Wedderburn biography, History, education, Family, fact, other information". Indian National Congress. Retrieved 7 December 2019.
4. C. Hayavadana Rao, ed. (1915). The Indian Biographical Dictionary. Pillar & Co. pp. 460–61. Retrieved 14 March 2010.
5. Moulton, Edward C. (2004). "Wedderburn, Sir William, fourth baronet (1838–1918)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/41165.
6. Ratcliffe, S.K. (1923). Sir William Wedderburn and the Indian reform movement. London: George Allen and Unwin.
External links
• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Sir William Wedderburn
• Speeches and writings (1918)
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