Jerry Brotton - the Myth That Keeps On Giving

Tristram Hunt, NuLabour historian (but at least he is one - of the Victorian era) points out in the Observer that "claiming that a Muslim navy helped England to defeat the Spanish Armada is not the way to promote harmonious multiculturalism", before

a) saying something that doesn't exactly accord with the facts, to put it kindly :

Brotton's point was that while the correspondence had long been known about, previous historians had rarely highlighted this level of Muslim-Christian exchange.

Cobblers. Brotton's point was "It's the Turks Wot Won It".

b) regurgitating the myth

"This Anglo-Ottoman alliance helped to divert the Spanish fleet, weaken the Armada and save England from Catholic reconquest."

See the previous 500 posts. Once a liberal myth starts, what in Gods name do we have to do to kill it - bury it at a crossroads with a stake through its heart ? Like George Bush's plastic Thanksgiving turkey, the myth has a life of its own - because it's what (some) people want to hear.

Jerry Brotton's Myth ...

Arrives at Comment Is Free.


UPDATE - two useful comments

joseph1832

I am confused: if we are to be better disposed to the Turks in Britain for their help in defeating the Armada, are we to be less well disposed to Spaniards for sending it? If history is to help social cohesion, is that because we look generally to our history as the root of identity, or pull out only those parts convenient to a multi-cultural narrative?

It is an approach to history that says we should be close to the peoples of the Indian sub-continent because 2.5m volunteered in the 2nd World War, but suppresses the fact that 40% of Indian Army prisoners taken by the Japanese at Singapore switched sides. Which means that, whatever praise we rightly give to those who volunteered, how far their actions reflect on India/Pakistan/Bangladesh as a whole, is more complicated.

The truth is that history is a very big picture. The role of the Ottomans in the Armada may have been important, but then there were plenty of other very important factors. A historian may run an argument bringing such factors to the surface (eg: AJP Taylor used to draw out factors like railway timetables as a reason for WWI starting), but it isn't really acceptable where there is a fairly avowed political motive. It is essentially what left wing historians have always despised: nation building history.

What annoys those who this article attacks is the constant attempt to hunt the ethnic minority angle in every part of British history. Given the usual dismissal of history as a major source of national identity, this is rather opportunistic. It ignores that in many important parts of British history there is no meaningful (or even meaningless) minority angle, eg: Wars of the Roses. It also assumes that black and Asian Britons can't look at events involving only white Britons and see their countrymen. It means that we end up editing important parts of British history because they don't provide support to the multi-cultural reading.

I know the post-modernists amongst you think that all history is made up, so what is wrong with making up a new history? But history is, as Ranke said, about trying to tell it how it really was. Promoting minor events into earth-shattering importance is an amusing counter-factual game, but ultimately such minor events sink back into the background.

The progressives must face it: multi-ethnic Britain's origins owe almost everything to post-War immigration. The small and sporadic presence of black and Asian people during previous centuries is of incidental importance. Without post-War immigration, the B.E.M. communities would still amount to less than 1% of the population. Without the pre-Windrush presence, the B.E.M. communities would be about the same size as they are today. The presence of absence of a few more historic forebears neither adds to nor diminishes the rights of the ethnic minority communities. However, building their rights on bad history can only be harmful.

And fernickity :

I'm surprised so few commentators are interested in whether it's actually true that the Turks gave the aid that Jerry Brotton proposes they did. In fact, this question was looked at in great detail by Edwin Pears in the 1890s, with the results published in his article "The Spanish Armada and the Ottoman Porte", published in the English Historical Review, vol. 8 (1893), pp. 439-66. He went over the extensive correspondence between Walsingham and the English ambassadors to the Ottomans, William Harborne and his successor Edward Barton, in great detail (the letter Brotton mentions is just one among many), and although they had been urging the Turks to make a joint attack on Spain from the early 1580s (on the grounds that Protestants, like Muslims, were anti-idolaters and thus had a common interest in defeating Catholic Spain), and Sultan Murad III had promised to make such joint action, the letters show that no naval action was ever actually performed: the Turks were simply too busy with internal revolt and war on their eastern front, and the governor of Constantinople, one of Murad's principal advisers, was being bribed 60,000 ducats a year by the Spanish precisely to prevent their intervention. As Pears states: "The defeat of Lepanto, the war with Persia, and the rising of the subject provinces in North Africa did much to deter the Turk from lending aid. The heavy bribes by which Spain was able to obtain the support of the ministers and favourites of the sultan probably did more." So contrary to Dave Hill's remark, opinion is not divided about whether the Turks intervened or not: there is simply no evidence that they did, and quite a lot of evidence that they didn't. Is Jerry Brotton simply unaware of this earlier research, which I've discovered simply by googling? It sounds like it.

Ferickity is obviously an academic, because the documents he quotes are subscription-only via JSTOR, to which most university libraries subscribe. But it seems that he's banged the final nail into the rotten Brotton theory's coffin.

Jerry Brotton - Another Amazing Discovery

Why we must thank the Turks, not the RAF, for stopping Hitler

John Ezard, arts correspondent
Monday October 1, 2007
The Guardian

For sixty years, the gallant "few" in their Spitfires, Hurricanes and Typhoons have symbolised British nonchalance and cunning in the face of danger. First, according to the legend drummed into every pupil, they beat the Luftwaffe over the Kentish coast in the critical summer months of 1940, as the Wehrmacht gathered in the Pas de Calais. Then in 1944 they despatched the enemy tanks, trains and supply convoys in Normandy with little more than a few rockets and their trusty Browning machine guns.

But yesterday, it was claimed that George VI's 'island race' was saved by a less celebrated ally: the Turkish air force.

Jerry Brotton, a lecturer at Royal Holloway College, London, told the Guardian Hay literary festival that a hitherto unnoticed letter from George's war chief and Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, to his ambassador in Istanbul showed that it was Turkish air power rather than the RAF's swashbuckling pilots which delivered the fatal blow to the Nazi invasion plans.

The letter, which ordered the ambassador, Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, to incite the Turks to declare war on Hitler, was written in 1940 and has been buried in archives ever since because it did not apparently relate to any major historical event.

But Mr Brotton told the festival: "Churchill's plan was ultimately successful. Turkish air movements in the eastern Mediterranean fatally split Hitler's Luftwaffe. So alongside all the stories we're told at school about why Hitler failed to conquer Britain and destroy county cricket, we should add another reason: the Anglo-Turkish alliance brokered by George VI, Churchill [and others]."

In his letter to Knatchbull-Hugessen, Churchill wrote: "We do not wish to leave you in any doubt of what our own opinion and your instructions are. We want Turkey to come into the war as soon as possible."

Churchill hoped that Islamic forces might keep the German forces "thoroughly occupied" by "some incursions into Bulgaria and Hungary", or by attacking his Italian satellites from the sea.

The German air force was eventually defeated over the summer and autumn of 1940 as it tried to clear a passage for the rest of the invasion force from Calais. At the battle of Britain, the RAF used radar before closing in on the confused Germans.

Asked about his previous discovery that the Turks stopped the Armada, Dr Brotton said "It's amazing really. The evidence for the Turks defeating Hitler is just as strong as it is for them defeating the Armada".

Next week - how Mongol archers helped win the battle of Agincourt.

Jerry Brotton, Trevor Phillips and the Armada

I suggested yesterday that Dr Brotton's theory seemed to be less than watertight, unless evidence existed that Walsingham's letter not only produced concrete Turkish action, but action which materially affected the Armada's chances of victory. I also doubted if any contribution of Mediterranean vessels could have affected the outcome.

In the strong version of the theory which Dr Brotton and Phillips set forth, the actions of the Grande Porte were not only material, but decisive.


Phillips - "It was the Turks who saved us".

Brotton - "Walsingham's plan was ultimately successful. Ottoman fleet movements in the eastern Mediterranean fatally split Philip II's armada" - although he immediately qualifies this by saying that "alongside all the stories we're told at school about why the Spanish Armada failed to conquer Britain and destroy Protestantism, we should add another reason: the Anglo-Ottoman alliance brokered by Elizabeth, Walsingham [and others]"

Conservative Party Reptile found this reheated Reuters report, in which Dr Brotton gives more information.

An academic argued on Tuesday that the Armada had been weakened before it even set sail for England because the Spanish had been forced to keep some ships in the Mediterranean to deal with the troublesome Turkish navy.

"If the Armada had been bigger it would have taken Britain," said Dr Jerry Brotton.

"The Armada was fatally weakened by having to leave some of its ships in the Mediterranean," added Brotton, a lecturer in Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary, University of London. "Correspondence shows that Walsingham (Queen Elizabeth's spymaster) used diplomats to keep the Turks fighting the Spanish," he told Reuters.

I must say the argument is looking weaker and weaker. If it's a question of ships, as explained yesterday, the fighting vessels of the Spanish Mediterranean fleet would have been little help in the Channel or North Sea, even conceding the point (for which no evidence seems to be offered) that Walsingham's letter produced any Turkish action.

The Reuters report also includes this :

Dr Simon Adams, co-author of "England, Spain and the Grand Armada" argues the Ottoman Turks were not threatening the Spanish in the Mediterranean. "The Walsingham letter had been sent in 1584 or 1585 and although England might have hoped the Turks would cause the Spanish problems, nothing really happened," he told Reuters. "The Turks were not really doing anything (against Spain) in 1588. They were busy in the near east," added the University of Strathclyde academic. Adams said the Armada failed because the expedition was poorly planned and the English had an effective navy helped by favourable weather.

This would imply that there's no evidence of the letter producing any response. The thesis looks extremely weak.

I wrote to Dr Brotton as follows two days ago. I'll let you know.

Dear Dr Brotton,

Your 2004 Hay Festival lecture is in the news again, via Trevor Phillips' interpretation. But all I know of it is the 2004 Guardian report which boils down to :

"Walsingham hoped that Islamic forces might keep the Spanish forces "thoroughly occupied" by "some incursions from the coast of Africa", or by attacking his Italian territories from the sea."

Followed by "Walsingham's plan was ultimately successful. Ottoman fleet movements in the eastern Mediterranean fatally split Philip II's armada".

It sounds as if the Guardian report missed out the crucial link - the evidence that

a) Harborne successfully induced the Turks to harass Spanish possessions or otherwise threaten Spain, over and above the existing semi-endemic warfare
b) that this had a material impact on the Armada

Have you a transcript or copy of the lecture - or references to the evidence for a) and b) ? If so could you please mail me copies/references ?

Regards

LT

UPDATE - Six months on and Dr Brotton has not replied. They say the best way to sustain a poor argument is never to offer any evidence in its defence.

New Liberal Myth Gets Half Way Round World

It was way back in 2004 that I spotted what appeared to be a new liberal myth, decanted by an English lecturer called Jerry Brotton at the Hay literary festival.

"Of course what we're seeing here is a liberal myth in embryo - that the Turks rather than Drake and Effingham beat the Armada."



This embryonic myth was repeated by Trevor Phillips a couple of months later (along with the "Islamic King Offa" myth). No one took any notice. He seems to have got a bit more attention this time.



British history should be rewritten to make it "more inclusive", says Trevor Phillips, the head of the new human rights and equality commission. He said Muslims were also part of the national story and "sometimes we have to go back into the tapestry and insert some threads that were lost".

He quoted the example of the Spanish Armada, which was held up by the Turks at the request of Queen Elizabeth I.

"When we talk about the Armada it's only now that we are beginning to realise that part of it is Muslims," Mr Phillips told a Labour fringe meeting. "It was the Turks who saved us, because they held up Armada at the request of Elizabeth I. Now let's rewrite that story, let's use our heritage to rewrite that story so it is truly inclusive. "That's the reason for this so we have an identity which brings us together, which binds us in the stormy times that we are going to have in the next century."


As far as I know, the only "evidence" for this theory is that Queen Elizabeth's security head, Francis Walsingham, sent a letter to her ambassador at the Ottoman court, asking him to do all in his power to get the Turks to threaten Spain in the Mediterranean :

The letter, which ordered the ambassador, William Harborne, to incite the Turks to harry the Spanish navy, was written in the mid-1580s and has been buried in archives ever since because it did not apparently relate to any major historical event.

But Mr Brotton told the festival: "Walsingham's plan was ultimately successful. Ottoman fleet movements in the eastern Mediterranean fatally split Philip II's armada - So alongside all the stories we're told at school about why the Spanish Armada failed to conquer Britain and destroy Protestantism, we should add another reason: the Anglo-Ottoman alliance brokered by Elizabeth, Walsingham [and others]."

In his letter to Harborne, Walsingham wrote: "Her Majesty being, upon the success of the said King of Spain's affairs in the Low Countries, now fully resolved to oppose herself against his proceedings in defence of that distressed nation, whereof it is not otherwise likely but hot wars between him and us, wills me again to require you effectually to use all your endeavour and industry in that behalf."

Walsingham hoped that Islamic forces might keep the Spanish forces "thoroughly occupied" by "some incursions from the coast of Africa", or by attacking his Italian territories from the sea.

Now between Walsingham's letter and "Walsingham's plan was ultimately successful. Ottoman fleet movements in the eastern Mediterranean fatally split Philip II's armada" lies the small question of some missing evidence.

Is there evidence that Harborne persuaded the Turks to any action they might not otherwise have taken ?

Did these actions have any impact on the Armada ? There are many possible impacts - manpower, ship-power, weapon-power, stores and supplies.

On these questions the Guardian report is silent. I've mailed Dr Brotton to ask him.

My knowledge of this period's naval history is limited to copies of Garret Mattingley's The Spanish Armada and Ernle Bradford's The Great Siege. From this admittedly limited base a few reasonably solid conclusions can be drawn.

1/ Any impact of Ottoman naval movements was unlikely to have affected the Armada as far as its complement of ships was concerned. Mediterranean fighting vessels on both the Ottoman and Spanish sides were oar-driven galleys, and as such totally unsuited to Atlantic and North Sea warfare. Original plans for the Armada called for forty galleys, but in the end only four were sent. All four were turned back in the Bay of Biscay by the storm of July 28th, one being lost. Five galleasses - higher-built galleys with a gundeck - fared ill, three (Mattingly says two) being lost. The Spanish could probably have sent their entire Mediterranean galley fleet for no greater result than lowering the price of firewood along the French coast.

2/ Most historians conclude that the battle was lost because

a) the Spanish tactics - of attempting to close and board - could not cope with the English tactics of standing off and using their superior range cannon at distances where the Spanish could not reply.

b) a Spanish failure either to take the few opportunities the English offered - when the fleet held the weather gauge on July 30th, or to wait in the shelter of the Isle of Wight for the Duke of Parma's forces to be ready. Instead they found themselves waiting off Gravelines for Parma - and they couldn't wait long enough without being attacked.

Unless the Turks managed to divert a large number of ship-smashing cannon away from the Armada - unlikely given that the galley's main armament was a single long gun at the bow and light deck anti-personnel guns for closing and boarding, I'm not sure that either of these reasons would have been affected by anything the Ottomans did.

You never know though - I may be completely wrong. Let's see what Dr Brotton has to say.

UPDATE - no reply as yet.

A New Liberal Myth And Two Neat Sites

This one is long overdue. The Neighbours from Hell site.

And the other is just a wonderful blog, discovered while looking for stuff on the Ottoman Empire (like the Hackney Empire, but full of towels). A Guardian leader, drawing on the work of historian Jerry Brotton, contended that because Queen Elizabeth's spy chief Francis Walsingham had wanted the Turks to harass the Spanish in the Eastern Mediterranean prior to the 1588 Armada, that we should therefore be easy about Turkish accession to the EU today.

Queen Elizabeth I's Turkish diplomacy helped Sir Francis Drake beat the Armada by drawing some of Spain's fleet into defensive operations in the Mediterranean ... Still, if Turkey could be an ally of Good Queen Bess, the secular EU should more easily swallow its doubts 400 years on.

Two things here. One is that what happened 400 years ago shouldn't necessarily influence foreign policy today. Does the Guardian believe that if we'd been at war with the Grande Porte in 1588 we should veto accession now ?
The other is that the Guardian may not be aware of it, but Britain, along with the USA, France, Germany, Spain and one or two other countries, is currently allied to Turkey via the little-known NATO organisation. Turkey has been a member since 1952, three years after NATO was formed.

Of course what we're seeing here is a liberal myth in embryo - that the Turks rather than Drake and Effingham beat the Armada.

Britain was never allied to the Ottoman Empire (which it finally got round to destroying in 1918. In the process the Turks inflicted damage on us which included the premature death of my grandfather, seriously wounded in Palestine). Just as in today's world, we (and other European countries) were capable of accepting aid from the unlikeliest of sources if they were against our main enemy. Francis I of France (you know the guy who beat Henry VIII at wrestling at the Field Of The Cloth Of Gold. Henry was so humiliated he never forgave him) actually was allied to the Turks, seeing his main enemy as the Hapsburgs.

England's main enemy was Catholic Spain. Yet when the Turks besieged Malta, a Spanish dependency, in 1565, Elizabeth wrote "If the Turks should prevail against the Isle of Malta, it is uncertain what peril might follow to the rest of Christendom."

When the Maltese, lead by the Knights Of St John, saw off the infidels, Elizabeth's Archbishop Matthew Parker, no doubt after consultatation with his Queen, ordered prayers of Thanksgiving to be said thrice weekly for six weeks in all English Churches.

And does this sound as if the Turks were allies ?

"Forasmuch as the Isle of Malta (in old time called Melite, where S Paul arrived when he was sent to Rome) lying near unto Sicily and Italy, and being as it were the key of that part of Christendom, is presently invaded with a great Army and navy of Turks, infidels and sworn enemies of Christian religion, not only to the extreme danger and peril of those Christians that are besieged, and daily assaulted in the holds and forts of the said Island, but also of all the rest of the countries of Christendom adjoining; it is our parts, which for distance of place cannot succour them with temporal relief, to assist them with spiritual aid: that is to say, the earnest, hearty, and fervent prayer ......"

Or this ?

"Better it is for us to fall into thy hands, than into the hands of men, and especially into the hands of Turks and Infidels thy professed enemies, who now invade thine inheritance. Against thee, O Lord, have we sinned, and transgressed thy commandments: against Turks, Infidels, and other enemies of the Gospel of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, have we not offended, but only in this, that we acknowledge thee, the eternal Father, and thy only Son our Redeemer, with the Holy Ghost, the comforter, to be the only true Almighty and everliving God. For if we would deny and blaspheme thy most holy name, forsake the Gospel of thy dear Son, embrace false religion, commit horrible Idolatries, and give ourselves to all impure, wicked, and abominable life, as they do; the devil, the world, the Turk, and all other thine enemies would be at peace with us, according to the saying of thy Son Christ: If you were of the world, the world would love his own. But therefore hate they us, because we love thee: therefore persecute they us, because we acknowledge thee, God the Father, and Jesus Christ thy Son, whom thou hast sent. The Turk goeth about to set up, to extol, and to magnify that wicked monster and dammed soul Mohumet above thy dearly beloved Son Jesus Christ, whom we in heart believe, and with mouth confess, to be our only Saviour and redeemer. Wherefore awake, O Lord our God and heavenly Father, look upon us thy children, and all such Christians as now be besieged and afflicted, with thy fatherly and merciful countenance: and overthrow and destroy thine and our enemies, sanctify thy blessed name emonges us, which they blapheme, establish thy kingdom, which they labour to overthrow: suffer not thine enemies to prevail against those, that now call upon thy name, and put their trust in thee ..."

And what about this ?

First, the Turke with his sword, what landes, nations, and countreys, what empires, kingdomes, and provinces, with cities innumerable hath he wonne, not from us but from Thee! Where thy name was wont to be invocated, thy word preached, thy sacraments administered, there now reigneth barbarous Mahumet with his filthy Alcoran. The florishing churches in Asia, the learned churches of Grecia, the manifold churches in Africa, which were wont to serve thee now are gone from thee. The seven churches of Asia with their candlesticks, whom thou didest so well forewarne, are now removed. All the churches where thy diligent apostle S. Paul, thy apostle S. Peter and John, and other apostles, so laboriously travayled, preachyng and writying to plant thy Gospell, are now gone from thy Gospell. In all the kyngdome of Syria, Palestina, Arabia, Persia, in Armenia, and the empire of Cappadocia, through the whole compasse of Asia, with Egypt and with Africa also, unless among the farre Aethiopians some olde steppes of Christianity peradventure yet do remayne, either els in all Asia and Africa, thy church hath not one foot of free land, but all is turned either into infidelitie or to captivitie, whatsoever pertaineth to thee. And if Asia and Africa onely were decayed, the decay were great, but yet the defection were not universal. Now in Europa a great part also is shronke from thy Church. All Thracia with the empire of Constantinople, all Grecia, Epyrus, Illyricum, and now of late all the kyngdoms almost of Hungaria, with must of Austria, with lamentable slaughter of Christen bloud is wasted and all become Turkes.

Not exactly what you'd call a "deepening of understanding and of friendship". Can't we get rid of Rasputin and bring back Matthew Parker ? I rest my case.

But hist ! I near forgotte ! Ye otherre blogge ! Mirabilis ! A grande history blog which almost certainly knowes whether 'among the farre Aethiopians some olde steppes of Christianity peradventure yet do remayne'.

I like "Mirabilis.ca is powered by Movable Type, Gregorian chant, and a very good Merlot".

Onne ye blogge-rolle mote it lie untille ye laste trumpet.