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Monday, February 28, 2011

Not a theory you'll hear on Al Jazeera

It occurs to me that the pattern of revolution in the Arab World reflects the original colonial powers...

Tunisia - manning of barricades, much frenzied political debate, corrupt ruler fades away into obscurity. Former colonial power = France.

Egypt - flagrant theft of priceless historic artefacts, army and political elite rapidly ejects corrupt ruler. Former colonial power = Britain.

Libya - complete chaos, unstable old ruler makes endless incoherent ranting speeches and refuses to give up. Former colonial power = Italy.


(I wonder if Italian media, bloggers etc have spotted the intriguing parallel between Gaddafi and Berlusconi?)

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Crowning Glory?

I was in Sweden the other day, carrying out some fieldwork and preliminary research for the fourth Quinton novel - provisionally named The Lion of Midnight and set in the early months of 1666. This took me for the first time to Kalmar, carpeted in picture-postcard snow, where my main objective was a visit to the exhibition displaying relics brought up from the wreck of the great Swedish warship Kronan (= Crown). Designed by the English shipwright Francis Sheldon, and at the time of her loss the most heavily armed ship in the world (and one of the two or three largest), the Kronan turned over and blew up during a battle against the combined Dutch-Danish fleet in 1676. The Baltic waters, free of teredo navalis, have preserved many remarkable artefacts from the ship, from huge bronze cannon in superficially mint condition to tiny rings, coin hordes and such stunning survivals as Sweden's oldest violin. The Kronan was far larger than the much better-known Vasa, and the locals claim that the finds from Kronan are more extensive and important - having seen both, I won't argue with them. In many respects the Kronan materials also outdo those brought up from the Mary Rose, and provide some superb insights into life as a whole during the early modern age, not just into naval warfare

But therein lies the rub. Vasa and Mary Rose are names known around the world, yet even some very eminent British maritime historians had never heard of Kronan and the exhibition when I mentioned it to them. The exhibition ends with the ambitious future plan to raise the remaining side of the ship, preserved beneath the silt (as the side of Mary Rose was), but I wonder whether such a laudable scheme will ever come to fruition. For one thing, Kalmar is far less accessible than either Stockholm or Portsmouth, an hour's flight from the former (which in my case was a hair-raising switchback, flying through a snowstorm in an ageing turbo-prop plane), and it is in the invidious position of having effectively come second to the Vasa - despite arguably being a more important ship than the latter, and with a wider range of finds, I suspect that the Kronan project will struggle to raise funds simply because the Vasa is already there, an hour away in a highly accessible capital city, and an entirely intact hull rather than just one half of one. However, and with the greatest respect to a project that has clearly worked very hard over a long period of time and has accomplished a vast amount, it must be said that from this writer's perspective, at least, the Kronan team is not doing enough to develop the sort of international profile that would be required if the ambitious plans for her are to get anywhere. For example, when searching via the UK Google site the excellent Kronan website does not feature on the first page of  search results for the single word 'Kronan', while using 'ship Kronan' does not bring up a link to the site within the first ten pages of results. This might be partly because the Kronan does not actually have a discrete website of its own, but is a kind of sub-site of the Kalmar Lansmuseum, in which the exhibition is housed. The approximate equivalent would be for the Mary Rose exhibition to be housed in one room of the Isle of Wight's Museum of Island History. Moreover, the Kronan blog is only in Swedish, despite the fact that most Swedes speak, and write, outstandingly good English, and surely an English translation would immediately provide greater 'reach' (if only by ensuring higher rankings in the search engines); as it is, the blog relies on a Google Translate button, which often produces laughable or indecipherable results.  This is a great shame; the story of the past, and hopefully the future, of the Kronan deserves to be much better known.


Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Roses by any other names

Word reaches me that the National Maritime Museum is to be 'rebranded' as the 'Royal Museum of Greenwich'. Apparently the NMM name will be retained for the present building, but will be subordinate to the new overall name for all the sites at Greenwich. In one sense this simply echoes the recent creation of the National Museum of the Royal Navy, but there are crucial differences. NMRN gives a unified identity to a number of sites scattered across the country; there is no such rationale at Greenwich, where the sites are all within a 15-minute walk of each other. Above all, though, 'National Museum of the Royal Navy' clearly does exactly what it says on the tin; the title directly reflects the main focus and remit of the institution. No such logic can be detected in the new name at Greenwich. Moreover, that name surely implies - or even makes quite explicit - a downgrading of the 'maritime' focus of the institution; while the NMM name might be retained in theory, at a quite explicitly secondary level, the experience of the NMRN and other institutions surely suggests that the 'headline' corporate branding, and so forth, will reflect the new name. Yet 'the National Maritime Museum' is an internationally known and respected 'brand', while 'the Royal Museum of Greenwich' sounds like nothing more than a glorified repository of a few artefacts of local history. Worse, this rebranding might be interpreted by some as a signal that the 'maritime' element is no longer considered significant - this at a time when 'sea blindness' is rampant in Britain and when the NMM should be leading the fight against such widespread ignorance of the nation's maritime heritage, not effectively ditching both the words 'national' and 'maritime'. (In the year of a royal wedding and a government headed by public school alumni, it is surely also an interesting sign of the times that the word 'royal' is evidently still considered to be far superior to the word 'national'.) No doubt the NMM's management consider its 'royal' rebranding to be quite a coup, and probably a greater potential attraction for the sort of American, Japanese and Chinese tourists who flock unthinkingly to anything 'royal'. Perhaps it will be. Unfortunately, though, it is also yet another lamentable  landmark in Britain's relentless retreat from the sea.

(All opinions expressed in this post are entirely my own, and do not necessarily reflect those of any organisation with which I am associated.)