A History of the World in 50 Novels. 29 - "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet," by David Mitchell

The wealth of the New World created new opportunities for trade within the Old World. The return on investments in sugar plantations in the Caribbean, tobacco and cotton plantations in North America, and plundered gold from Mexico and Peru increased the demand within Europe for luxury products that had long been available to those who could afford them: silks, rice and porcelain from the Far East; spices from India & Sri Lanka; as well as for more generalised commodities, including copper and silver. As ships circumnavigated the globe, new luxuries also became available to European consumers for the first time: coffee & tea; chocolate & opium.

The British East India Company was established in 1600; the Dutch East India Company in 1602; the Portuguese East India Company in 1628; with competition from the French, the Swedes and the Danes. These companies had quasi-governmental powers, with their own armies and navies, and the power to negotiate treaties. China, India and Japan, however, were ancient, literate civilisations whose rulers were determined that this new trade, however lucrative, would be conducted on their own terms.

The Dutch East-Indiaman, Noord-Nieuwland, off Table Bay, 1762. Iziko William Fehr Collection (image is in the Public Domain).

Specifically, China and Japan were concerned that the exchange of goods should not be accompanied by an uncontrolled exchange of ideas. Already, in the 16th Century, Jesuit missionaries had travelled throughout Asia, gaining converts to Christianity. In the 18th Century, Western notions of "free enterprise" challenged traditional oriental institutions. A compromise between European and Oriental interests was to provide "trading concessions," limited enclaves where foreign ships might dock, but where the interaction between the Europeans and the Chinese and Japanese populations could be strictly controlled. China provided concessions to several European companies at Guangzhou. Japan created an artificial island, Dejima, granting the monopoly first to the Portuguese, and later to the Dutch.

Dejima in 1825, by Isaac Titsingh, Amsterdam, Koninklijke Bibilotheek (image is in the Public Domain).

Dejima and Nagasaki Bay in 1820, British Museum. Photo: PHGCOM (licensed under GNU).

David Mitchell's novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet, is set in the claustrophobic atmosphere of Dutch Dejima at the turn of the 18th and 19th Centuries. A young Dutch clerk, Jacob De Zoet, arrives, planning to make his fortune within a few years and then return to marry his childhood sweetheart. He is a conscientious employee, and part of his mission is to root out corruption, but this proves to be far more difficult than he is at first led to believe.

Everyone he encounters, Dutch and Japanese alike, seems to have a finger in the pie. Everyone, that is, apart from a young midwife, Aibagawa Orito, who has, unusually, been given permission to study with the enclave's Dutch physician. Inevitably, Jacob falls in love with her, but, when her father dies, she is sent away to a Shinto convent, whose abbot casts a menacing shadow over the novel.

The novel is meticulously researched, and Mitchell creates a stunning impression of a social and cultural milieu in which individuals from two very different cultures are given enough access to one another to pique, but never fully to satisfy, their curiosity. He also skilfully blurs the boundaries between historical fact and literary fiction. Jacob himself is "loosely based" on a historical figure, Hendrik Doeff, who faced down a British attack in 1808, but he is, nonetheless, a fictional character, whose confrontation with the real warship (HMS Phaeton) takes place in 1800, with a fictional captain (the latter a fantastic example of what a first-class writer can accomplish in the development of a minor character, in the space of just a few pages).

Hendrik Doeff, with Balinese servant, early 19th Century (image is in the Public Domain).

"The cogs and levers of time swell and buckle in the heat. In the stewed gloom, Jacob hears, almost, the sugar in its crates hissing into fused lumps. Come Auction Day, it shall be sold to the spice merchants for a pittance, or else, as well they know, it must be returned to the 'Shenandoah's hold for a profitless return voyage back to the warehouses of Batavia ... The scratch of Jacob's quill is joined by a not dissimilar noise from a rafter. It is a rhythmic scratting, soon overlain by a tiny, sawing squeak. A he-rat, the young man realises, mounting his she-rat ... "

"'The Shogun's reply to my ultimatum is a message for me,' complains Voorstenbosch. 'Why must a piece of paper rolled up in a tube spend a night at the Magistracy like a pampered guest? If it arrived yesterday evening, why wasn't it brought to me straight away?' Because, Jacob thinks, a Shogunal communique is the equivalent of a Papal edict and to deny it due ceremony would be capital treason. He keeps his mouth shut, however ,.. "

"The noises of battening, nailing and herding are gusted in through the warehouse doors. Hanzaburo stands on the threshold, watching the darkening sky. At the table, Ogawa Ozaemon is translating the Japanese version of Shipping Document 99b from the trading season of 1797, relating to a consignment of camphor crystals. Jacob records the gaping discrepancies in prices and quantities between it and its Dutch counterpart. The signature verifying the document as 'An Honest and True Record of the Consignment' is Acting-Deputy Melchior van Cleef's: the deputy's twenty-seventh falsified entry Jacob has so far uncovered. The clerk has told Vorstenbosch of this growing list, but the Chief Resident's zeal as a reformer of Dejima is dimming by the day. Vorstenbosch's metaphors have changed from 'excising the cancer of corruption' to 'best employing what tools we have to hand' ..."

I have deliberately not quoted from Chapter XXXIX, an extraordinary piece of prose-poetry, including what is, for my money, one of the most remarkable and beguiling sentences in the whole of English literature. Such writing can only truly be appreciated in the context of the work of which it forms part.

Mark Patton's novels, Undreamed Shores, An Accidental King and Omphalos, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from Amazon.

Ancient Skulls and Medieval Skullduggery - The Mysterious Afterlives of Saint Helena

The characters in "Jerusalem," the 16th Century story in my novel, Omphalos, begin their pilgrimage to the Holy Land in Venice. Some of them visit the Monastery of Sant'Elena, on an island in the Venice Lagoon, where they are shown the preserved body of Saint Helena (the mother of the Emperor Constantine, and supposed discoverer of the True Cross and the tomb of Christ), who appears to assist one of them in the performance of a miracle. Appearances, however, can be very deceptive.

The Church of San't Elena, Venice. Photo: Didier Descouens (licensed under CCA).

That someone visiting Sant'Elena in 1517 would have been shown this body is beyond doubt. The Italian priest, Pietro Casola, saw it in 1494, on his way to Jerusalem. In 1517, the English priest, Richard Torkington, making the same journey, describes what he saw in some detail: "She lith in a ffayr place of religion, of white monks, ye may see her face perfythly, her body ys covered with a cloth of whith sylke ... Also there lyes upon her breast a lytell crosse made of the holy crosse ... Also the Tumbe of Constantini Magni ... and a bone of Seynt Mary Mawdleyn." As far as I am aware, Torkington's is the last recorded account of this "relic." She seems, somehow, to have been spirited away some time shortly afterwards. I have little doubt of the reason for this: the church authorities realised that the relic was fraudulent, and did not want to stoke the fire of the Reformation with such a blatant piece of tinder.

The body of Saint Helena was supposedly "translated" (the Medieval euphemism for the theft of relics) from Constantinople to Venice, by a monk named Aicardo in 1211. The problem, however, is that the body of Saint Helena was never in Constantinople in the first place. She was buried in a mausoleum on the outskirts of Rome. No Roman church today claims to hold any part of her remains, although the mausoleum can be visited, and her sarcophagus is in the Vatican Museum.

The Mausoleum of Saint Helena, Rome. Photo: Mario1952 (licensed under GNU).

The Sarcophagus of Saint Helena. Photo: Joshua Sherurcij (reproduced with permission).

The Monastery of Sant'Elena was closed by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1810 and, when the Church of Sant'Elena was rededicated in 1928, the "urn of Saint Helena" was returned. Clearly, however, no urn could contain what Torkington or Casola saw, a body with a preserved face, and a wooden cross lying on her breast.

If no part of Saint Helena's mortal remains was ever to be found in Constantinople or Venice, and if no part of them remains in Rome, where might they have ended up? An alternative story is that they were translated from Rome to the Benedictine Abbey of Hautvillers, in the Champagne region, by a priest named Theutgise in 840 AD. This is intrinsically more believable, since he would, at least, have been looking in the right place.

The Reliquary of Saint Helena at Hautvillers. Photo: G. Garitan (licensed under CCA).

Following the Revolution, the remains were moved to Paris by the Ordre des Chevaliers du Saint Sepulcre, and installed in the Church of Saint-Leu-Saint-Gilles, on the Rue Saint Denis (in 1827, by mutual agreement, some of these remains were returned to Hautvillers).

The Reliquary of Saint Helena at Paris. Photo: Testus (licensed under CCA).

There are, however, other claims. Prior to the French Revolution, the Chateau de Genech, in the Pas de Calais, claimed to be in possession of Saint Helena's head. The Cathedral of Trier, in Germany, however, has a closer personal association with her (it is built on what may have been her palace, and also holds what is claimed to be the tunic of Christ, brought back by her from her journey to the Holy Land), and has a reliquary supposedly containing her skull, which it has held since the Middle Ages.

The Reliquary of Saint Helena at Trier. Photo: Turelio (CCA license CC-BY-SA-3.0-de).

Which, then, are the genuine relics? We can probably discount Genech, as well as Venice, but it is possible that the relics at Hautvillers, Paris and Trier are all genuine. It is equally possible that none of them are. This is just one example of a more general problem. By the 12th Century, Europe was awash with shrines and relics. That some of these were genuine we need not doubt, but that some were fraudulent was not a new discovery by the 16th Century advocates of the Reformation: it was recognised by Geoffrey Chaucer in his characterisation of the "Pardoner."

The Pardoner, from the Ellesmere Manuscript of The Canterbury Tales (image is in the Public Domain). "He had a croys of latoun ful of stones. And in a glas he hadde pigges bones. But with thise relikes, whan that he fond a povre persoun dwellyng upon lond, upon a day he gat him moore moneye than that the person gat in monthes tweye ... "

Clearly some relics have more reliable "biographies" than others but, by the time the monks of Venice shuffled their false relic into an unmarked grave, the cult of relics was rapidly falling into disrepute.

Mark Patton's novels, Undreamed Shores, An Accidental King and Omphalos, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from Amazon. For this week only, the e-book versions are available at the reduced price of 99 pence/ 99 cents.

Palastinalied - A Musical Time Capsule from the World of the Crusades

In "Jerusalem," the 16th Century story in my novel, Omphalos, as my protagonist, Richard Mabon, a Catholic priest from Jersey, steps onto the shore of the Holy Land at Jaffa, he notices his German ship-mates gathering around their most prominent compatriot, the knight, Heinrich von Dessau, who leads them in the singing of a song. Since Mabon does not understand German, I present, in the novel, one verse of the song as he would have heard it (in the original Middle High German):

"Kristen, Juden und die Heiden,
Jehent daz diz ir erbe si.
Got muesse ez ze rehte scheiden,
Durch die sine Namen dri.
Al diu Werlt diu stritet her,
Wir sin an der rehten ger.
Reht ist daz er uns gewer."

Here is the song performed by the Austrian early music ensemble, Dulamans Vroudenton, and below is an English translation (from J.W. Thomas 1968, Medieval German Lyric Verse in English Translation - University of North Carolina Press) of the verse above:

"Christians, Heathens, Jews contending,
Claim it as a legacy.
May God judge with grace unending,
Through his blessed Trinity.
Strife is heard on every hand,
Ours the only just demand.
He will have us rule the land."

Heinrich von Dessau is a fictional character, but any German pilgrim singing the song in 1517 would have understood that it was already ancient. It was written by Walther von der Vogelweide (1170-1230), a prolific author of both love-lyrics and martial poetry, but this song, "Palestinalied," is the only one for which we have the original music as well as the words.

Walther von der Vogelweide, as depicted in the Codex Manesse (1305-15), University Library, Heidelberg (image is in the Public Domain).

Walther was born, almost certainly, in what is now Austria. His armorial bearings suggest that he was a knight, but probably not a landed or wealthy one ("Vogelweide" refers to fields in which singing birds, and hawks for hunting, were captured, hence the main device on his shield). The helmet and sword suggest that he was knighted for military service. "Palastinalied" may have been written to drum up support for the Fifth Crusade (1213-21), which would end in failure on the Nile, but it is unlikely that the poet took part in this campaign, since, at 43, he would almost certainly have been considered to be beyond military age.

It is, to my mind, rather more likely that he participated in the Third Crusade (1189-92), setting out at the age of 19, in the retinue of Leopold V of Austria. Leopold's overlord, the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, was accidentally drowned in a river in Anatolia on 10th June, 1190, and many of the German knights, struck by grief, returned home. Leopold, however, continued on to the Holy Land, seizing Acre (but not Jerusalem) from the Muslims. I think it likely that Walther remained with his army.

The Siege of Acre, during the Third Crusade (image is in the Public Domain).

Certainly this would make sense of the first verse of "Palastinalied," clearly written in the voice of a knight setting foot in the Holy Land for the first time:

"Now my life has gained some meaning,
Since these sinful eyes behold
The sacred land, with meadows greening,
Whose renown is often told.
This was granted me from God:
To see the land, the holy sod,
Which, in human form, He trod" (translation as above).

The old city of Acre, where Walther might have stepped, for the first time, onto the shore of the Holy Land. Photo: Maksim (image is in the Public Domain).

The Medieval fortess of Acre. Photo: CristianChirita (licensed under GNU).

It may have been in the course of this campaign that the young Walther first met Reinmar of Hagenau, a celebrated singer and poet, known as "The Nightingale," who seems to have participated in it. Returning to Austria, Walther seems to have become Reinmar's pupil, and later served himself as a musician at the courts of Carinthia, Meissen and Brunswick. Walther von der Vogelweide's reputation, like that of his master, endured: Walter von Stolzing, the hero of Wagner's opera, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg, claims him as a model.

The "Sangerkrieg" of Wartburg, in which Walther participated, and which inspired Wagner's opera. Codex Manesse, University Library, Heidelberg (image is in the Public Domain).

Although a pious Catholic, Walther consistently supported the Holy Roman Empire against what he saw as the impositions and excesses of a frequently hostile papacy. Why, one might ask? Frederick Barbarossa was, perhaps, the greatest of all the Holy Roman Emperors after Charlemagne. It is hardly likely that Walther would have met him, but he might well have seen him, and even heard him speak, and perhaps his example provided the young poet and songwriter with an ideal to pursue throughout his life.

Reliquary bust of Frederick Barbarossa, Cappenberg Abbey, Germany. Photo: Dr Hans Chr. Rieldelbauch (licensed under CCA).

Mark Patton's novels, Undreamed Shores, An Accidental King and Omphalos, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from Amazon.

A History of the World in 50 Novels. 28 - "The Pioneers," by James Fenimore Cooper

In July 1776, the American Continental Congress formally declared independence from the British Crown. In the years that followed, France and Spain joined the war on the side of the colonists, Britain finally accepting defeat in 1783. The Iroquois Confederacy of Chief Joseph Brant Thayendanegea was shattered, his surviving fighters drifting north into Canada. He had lost his "double bet."

Part of the stated rationale for the American Revolution was that it made no sense for "an island to rule a continent." With the United States of America now established as a nation, with a constitution, an army and, perhaps most importantly, a dream, the former colonists turned their backs on the Atlantic, and looked to the continent that lay ahead of them. In the distance they saw mountains, the Appalachians but some among them had already climbed those peaks, and looked upon the vast expanse of land beyond them.

Among the first to blaze a trail through the mountains was the frontiersman, Daniel Boone. He established the "Wilderness Road" through Cumberland Gap, passing from Virginia into what is now Kentucky.

Daniel Boone, by Chester Harding, 1820. Massachusetts Historical Society (image is in the Public Domain).

Boone's "Wilderness Road," Library of Congress (image is in the Public Domain).

With Boone's assistance, Judge Richard Henderson made a treaty with the Cherokee Nation, purchasing more than 20 million acres of land between the Cumberland and Kentucky Rivers. With 30 pioneers, Henderson established a township, which he named Boonesborough, in honour of the man who had made it possible.

Boonsborough in 1778, by George Washington Ranek, 1901 (image is in the Public Domain).

The novelist, James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851), was himself part of this story of westward expansion. His own father, William Cooper, had purchased several thousand acres of land confiscated from Thayendanegea's Iroquois, in upstate New York, along the banks of the Susquehanna River, establishing the settlement of Cooperstown.

Otsego Hall, the home of William Cooper and James Fenimore Cooper, from Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1900 (image is in the Public Domain).

James Fenimore Cooper stands alongside Herman Melville, as one of the founding fathers of the American novel, and alongside Sir Walter Scott, as a founding father of the historical novel. His novel, The Pioneers (published in 1823, but set in 1793), is set in "Templeton," on the Susquehanna, a township founded by Judge Marmaduke Temple.

The judge is an educated and sophisticated man, a natural leader with a fascination and respect for the wilderness that he knows he does not fully understand. Between him and his family, and that wilderness, stands the figure of "the Leather-Stocking," Natty Bumpo, thought to be based, at least in part, on Daniel Boone. If Marmaduke relies on Natty, then he, in turn, relies on his friend, the ageing Mohican chief, Chingachgook, for his understanding of the landscape.

The tension between the "civilisation" of Judge Temple, and the sustainability of the wilderness that he and Natty love in their very different ways, is a key theme in the book, but Cooper clearly wanted to believe that the two can be reconciled, if only the judge will be guided by the frontiersman.

"The Pioneers," by Joshua Shaw (1776-1860 - image is in the Public Domain).

Behind this optimism, however, is a note of realism. Chingachgook is a lonely figure, the last of his people, as he sees it, a people already ravaged by diseases brought by the Europeans. The trick for us, as modern readers, is to immerse ourselves in Cooper's lyrical prose, and read the book as though we didn't know what happened next.

"Near the centre of the State of New York lies an extensive district of country whose surface is a succession of hills and dales ... of mountains and valleys. It is among these hills that the Delaware takes its rise; and flowing from the limpid lakes and thousand springs of this region the numerous sources of the Susquehanna meander through the valleys until, uniting their streams, they form one of the proudest rivers of the United States."

The Susquehanna River. Photo: Nicholas (licensed under CCA).

"'The enterprise of Judge Temple is taming the very forests!' exclaimed Elizabeth, throwing off the covering, and partly rising in the bed. 'How rapidly is civilisation treading on the foot of nature!' she continued, as her eye glanced over not only the comforts, but the luxuries of her apartment, and her ear again listened to the distant, but often repeated howls from the lake.'"

"'Awake! awake! my fair lady! The gulls are hovering over the lake already, and the heavens are alive with pigeons ... Benjamin is overhauling the ammunition, and we only wait for our breakfasts, and away for pigeon-shooting ... ' Among the sportsmen was the tall, gaunt form of the Leather-Stocking, walking over the field, with his rifle hanging on his arm ... None pretended to collect the game, which lay scattered over the fields in such profusion as to cover the very ground with fluttering victims ... 'This comes of settling a country!' [Leather-Stocking] said ... 'Well, the Lord won't see the waste of his creatures for nothing, and right will be done to the pigeons, as well as by others, by and by.'"

Mark Patton's novels, Undreamed Shores, An Accidental King and Omphalos, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from Amazon.

Revolution Day - Guest-Post with T.E. Taylor

I am happy to welcome my fellow Crooked Cat author, T.E. (Tim) Taylor for this guest-post. His latest novel, Revolution Day, was published a few weeks ago.

"Hello, Mark, and thank you for inviting me along. Knowing that your blog - one of the most interesting I've seen - has a historical theme, I thought I would talk about the ways in which my new novel, Revolution Day, is informed by history.

Unlike my first novel, Zeus of Ithome, which recounts the struggle of the ancient Messenian people to free themselves from three centuries of slavery under the Spartans, it is not a historical novel as such. It is set in the present day, and charts a year in the life of a fictional dictator, Carlos Almanzor, as his Vice-President plots against him, and his estranged wife, Juanita, writes a memoir in which she recounts his rise to power, and his gradual metamorphosis from a liberal socialist into an autocrat and authoritarian.

I was first inspired to write the novel by the fall of several dictators (Hussein, Mubarak, Gaddafi) in the Middle East. What interested me was the ways in which people become corrupted by power, and how they become deluded by it, and begin to lose their grip. As the ideas came together, I decided that Latin America (with its long history of dictators) would be a better location for the novel, partly because I wanted a strong, politically active, female character, which would have been more difficult in a Middle Eastern setting.

The characters, and even the country, are fictional, but the fortunes of Carlos's regime are influenced by wider historical developments - in particular, the ebb and flow of relations between the superpowers during the Cold War. thus Carlos develops a close relationship with the Soviet Union early in his regime, although, unlike Fidel Castro, he later makes overtures to the United States when economic necessity demands it. Another key event in the novel (which I will not describe, so as not to spoil the plot) was suggested by the career of Nicolae Ceaucescu of Romania.

Carlos is not based on any specific historical dictator, but his character, and some of the events that occur during his life, draw upon a variety of historical models. He has the classic dictator's fetish for military uniforms - in his case, as with so many historical dictators, not earned by any actual military service.

In other respects, however, I wanted to avoid the stereotypes. Carlos is not a monster, or an archetypal strongman dictator. He began as an idealist, a campaigning lawyer, but gradually became more authoritarian and autocratic as his regime unfolded. He jealously keeps all power to himself, not because he craves it for his own sake, but because he has an intellectual arrogance that leads him to believe that he alone can be entrusted with stewardship of the nation.

For the same reason, he has embraced repression, believing it to be a distasteful necessity. In this respect, he has precedents among the historical Latin American dictators: Gualberto Villarroel of Bolivia, for example, was a reformist who adopted repressive measures to suppress dissent.

Gualberto Villarroel. Photo: Juangarciaguzman (licensed under CCA).

Other characters in the novel respond to power in different ways, and Carlos - again in common with many historical autocrats, such as Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay - faces his greatest threat from a man who has been his closest ally for many years.

Alfredo Stroessner (image is in the Public Domain).

Although Carlos's estranged wife, Juanita, is not directly based on any historical character, there are hints of Eva Peron in her feminism, glamour, and the political career that she has pursued alongside her husband. She differs, however, in her long life, in the course of which her personal and political relationship with Carlos breaks down irretrievably.

Eva Peron in 1950 (image is in the Public Domain).

Revolution Day thus has a much looser relationship with history than Zeus of Ithome, in relation to which I was very careful to get the facts and details right. Nevertheless, it is ultimately inspired by history, and draws upon historical precedents in an unashamedly eclectic way."

Tim was born in 1960 in Stoke-on-Trent. He studied Classics at Pembroke College, Oxford, and later Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London. After a couple of years playing in a rock band, he joined the Civil Service, leaving in 2011 to spend more time writing. He now lives in Yorkshire with his wife and daughter, and divides his time between creative writing, academic research, and part-time teaching for Leeds and Huddersfield Universities. As well as novels, he writes poetry, and the occasional short story. He also plays guitar, and likes to walk up hills.

Tim Taylor's novel, Revolution Day, is published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from Amazon UK or Amazon USA.  He can be found on Facebook, Twitter, on his website, and on the Crooked Cat author site.

A History of the World in 50 Novels. 27 - "Manituana," by Wu Ming

In the previous blog-post in this series, I introduced the theme of the European settlement of the Americas, and the relationships between the colonists and the native peoples they encountered. The north-eastern part of what is now the United States was home to one of the most sophisticated Native American civilisations, that of the Iroquois, a confederacy of five (later six) tribes that seems to have been established around 1450.

Iroquois culture centred on the long-house, which served both as a physical focus for domestic and ceremonial activities, and as a metaphor for the lands of the Iroquois themselves. One tribe, for example, the Mohawk, described themselves as "Keepers of the Eastern Door." The Iroquois were farmers, for whom the "Three Sisters" (maize, squash and beans) were sacred gifts from the guardian spirits of the tribe. Power was shared between hereditary male and female elders, who held parallel councils; and elected male war-leaders.

A reconstructed Iroquois long-house, Ontario, Canada. Photo: Laslovarga (licensed under CCA).

In the 17th Century, the Mohicans, Delaware and Huron, traditional enemies of the Iroquois, formed an alliance with the French. The Iroquois responded by forming an alliance with the Dutch, with whom they engaged in a lucrative trade in beaver fur. When the French defeated the Dutch, driving them from North America, England was the obvious new ally for the Iroquois. A delegation of elders of the tribe even travelled to London for a meeting with Queen Anne.

The "Four Mohawk Kings," who met with Queen Anne in 1710. Johannes Verelst, National Archive of Canada (image is in the Public Domain).

Manituana, by the Italian writers' collective, Wu Ming, is set in the aftermath of all of this, during the American Revolutionary Wars.

A ghost hangs over the novel, a figure that the reader never actually meets. Sir William Johnson (1715-1774) was a Catholic Irishman who prudently converted to Anglicanism when, as a young man, he was invited to move to the Colony of New York to manage his uncle's estate.

Sir William Johnson is here depicted saving the life of the French commander, Baron Dieskau, at the Battle of Fort George (image is in the Public Domain). Johnson and his Iroquois volunteers fought with distinction on the British side in the French-Indian Wars and American Revolutionary Wars.

Already dead when the novel opens, Johnson is remembered with affection by most of the Iroquois and British characters. The reader may well take a more nuanced view of this man, whose first act in America was to purchase 60 African slaves, and who went on to learn the Iroquois language and customs, take an Iroquois woman as consort, father illegitimate children on several other Iroquois and European women, and accumulate substantial land and wealth.

Sir William entertaining the Iroquois at Johnson Hall, 1772, by E.L. Henry (1903), Canadian Museum of Civilisation (image is in the Public Domain).

Key figures in this novel of several viewpoints include Johnson's Mohawk widow, Molly Brant; her younger brother, Joseph Brant Thayendanegea, Johnson's protégé, who twice visits London to meet George III; and Guy Johnson, Sir William's nephew, who fights alongside Joseph.

Joseph Brant Thayendanegea, by Gilbert Stuart, painted in London, 1786, Sothebys (image is in the Public Domain).

"The Indian came forward, the Apollo of the New World, a flesh-and-blood emblem of manliness and serene strength. He inclined his chest toward the king, kissed the queen's hand, and stepped back ... Warwick couldn't help covering his mouth with his hands. The prince, the American champion, had forgotten the king's ring! ... the earl studied the expression of George III ... There were no signs of anger ... Warwick missed the queen's question. The prince replied that his Indian name meant ... 'Place Two Bets.' 'What would be your double bet, Chief Brant?' ... 'I'm betting on the Six Nations, Your Majesty, and on the Crown of England.'"

"He asked the guards of the Sacred Fire of the Confederation to attend the Oswego Council in the Spring ... 'Brothers, this rebellion is the greatest threat that the Six Nations have ever had to confront. The American Englishmen have declared their independence from England: they no longer recognise the authority of the king. This means they believe that the bar placed upon their expansion onto our lands has fallen ... Only by fighting can we hope to save ourselves from catastrophe. Fighting for England and fighting for ourselves.'"

"'I am a chief ... I have to fight for my people, I have to give them some land. If the hardness of oak is not enough, we will become rock. But we have to try, we have to make the effort. Or else there will be no dawn for the Mohawks."

Indian Castle Church as it is today, built by Sir William Johnson in 1769, on land gifted by Molly and Joseph Brant, all that remains of Canajoharie, the Mohawk settlement he established. Photo: Donsram (licensed under GNU).

Manituana could hardly have been anything other than the tragedy that it is, and the tragedy of Thayendanegea is truly one worthy of a Sophocles or a Shakespeare. To quote a commentator in Le Monde, however, this is a book in which "nobody is either completely guilty or completely innocent, and one's legitimate battle for liberty and independence may bring about the loss of someone else's independence and liberty."

Mark Patton's novels, Undreamed Shores, An Accidental King and Omphalos, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from Amazon.

An Englishman's Pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1517 - Week 5 - The Sights of Jerusalem

Having arrived in Jerusalem, Richard Torkington and his fellow pilgrims stayed there for a week, sleeping on carpets on the floor of the Hostel of Saint James, which seems to have been located just inside the city's Jaffa Gate.

The Jaffa Gate, Jerusalem (image is in the Public Domain).

"Sunday the xixth day of Julii, we came to Mounte Sion to masse, which was song ther right devowtly ... and whan masse was don we all went to dyn in the place wher we were right honestly servyd. And at melys of the dinner the ffather warden made a ryght holy sermon ... and exortyd every man to confession and repentaunce, and so visit the seyd holy places in clennesse of liff."

The "Cenacle" or "Last Supper Room," formerly part of the Priory of Mount Sion. Tradition holds this as the location of the Last Supper, and other accounts of Early Modern pilgrimages specifically claim that the Prior of Mount Sion held mass here for the pilgrims. None of the surviving architecture dates to the time of Christ, but it is, in large part, the building that Torkington would have seen. Photo: Marco Plassio (licensed under CCA).

"And this sermon done, the ffader warden gaff us warnyng that every man shuld provyd mete for himself and he wold fynd us wyne, and so he did all the time we war ther."

On the Monday the friars led them around the Valley of Jehosephat, pointing out the Tomb of Absalom, continuing on to the Mount of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemene. The pilgrims were shown the place where Christ was betrayed, and then the houses of Herod and Pilate, following the Via Dolorosa. All would have made this journey, metaphorically, every Easter in their own parish churches ("The Stations of the Cross"), but now they were making it in real time and space.

The Valley of Jehosephat (Valley of Hinom). Photo: Devor Avi (licensed under CCA).

The Garden of Gethsemane. Photo: Chris Yunker (licensed under CCA).

"The Tewysday, at vj of the cloke at after noon ... we were admitted by the lordes, Turkes and Mamoloukes of the citie to entre in to the Temple of the Holy Sepulchre. At the same time the most parte of the ffryers of the Mount Sion entered with us ... they began ther a very solemn procession. And at every station was showd un to us by one of the ffryers, the mysteries and holines of the places wher they made their stations."

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem (image is in the Public Domain).

These included the pillar at which Christ was scourged, the socket in which the cross had stood and, finally, the rock-cut tomb in which Christ's body had been placed.

"The same Wednysday ... we taryd all Day and all night in the Temple of the Holy Sepulchre."

The interior of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem (image is in the Public Domain).

There followed an excursion to Bethlehem, and then, the following Monday, they departed, with a large escort of "lordes, Turkes and Saracens," to rejoin their ship at Jaffa. And here we will leave Richard Torkington, for he returned to England by very much the same route along which he had come. His full account does not seem to be available online, as yet, but a printed version was published in 1883 (W.J. Loftie, Ye Oldest Diarie of Englysshe Travell), and is available in many libraries.

Torkington's account was of particular interest to me, as I was writing "Jerusalem," the 16th Century story in my novel, Omphalos. By placing my protagonists, Richard Mabon and Nicholas Ahier (the latter is fictional), on the same ship as Torkington (the historical Mabon might have made the journey any time between 1517 and 1522), I had a precise itinerary around which I could build my story.

I even wondered if I might find a mention of Mabon in Torkington's account, but he says almost nothing about his fellow pilgrims, about his conversations with them, or even, as a priest, about his spiritual response to the places he was experiencing. Other pilgrims who have left written accounts had more to say about these things, and I drew upon these sources, also, in putting together Mabon's fictionalised account. I shall have more to say about these sources in the near future.

Mark Patton's novels, Undreamed Shores, An Accidental King and Omphalos, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from Amazon.