by RNS | Jun 15, 2020 | Beating Tsundoku
Geoffrey Pimm, The Violent Abuse of Women in 17th and 18th Century Britain (Pen & Sword, 2019)
In The Violent Abuse of Women in 17th and 18th Century Britain, Pimm argues that the two centuries he covers were periods of profound change between the mediaeval and modern worlds. For women, however, that transition into an ‘enlightened’ future barely made a dent in their standing and treatment at the hands of the patriarchy: women were the ‘weaker vessel’ and easily influenced by the devil; they had few rights under a misogynistic law and little recourse to a gentler society. That sets the tone for Pimm’s catalogue of abuse directed against women at all levels of British society. It is a sometimes distressing read, but also fascinating.
Violence began at home where the man ruled over his wife and household almost without limits. That extended to children and servants. Sexual violence was a pronounced component of that abuse at one end of the spectrum, while libel and slander caused damage at the other end. Violence also underpinned many clandestine marriages and abductions. All of this was conducted under a lax legal system for perpetrators. But the legal system itself sanctioned extreme cruelty. Women sentenced to prison for even the most minor misdemeanours, including cross-dressing, were held in disgusting conditions, but they were also routinely whipped, often publicly in front of a crowd, some of whom attended for erotic satisfaction, and not just men. Branding and maiming also occurred as did the scold, a bracket placed round the head of female gossips and blasphemers. The latter might also be subject to ducking in the village pond or a river, or a whipping, and sometimes worse – Quakers had a particularly bad time at the hands of legally sanctioned religious fanaticism. The worst legal punishment for women was execution by burning, which was replaced by hanging under the notorious Bloody Code. Others were transported to the colonies where if anything conditions were worse than prisons. Women convicted of lesser offences might suffer the public pillory where they might endure anything from indignity to life-threatening violence. Being exposed in a cage was, however, on the way out in the 18th Century, though it was still used. Pimm concludes with the growing reform movement in the 19th Century that led to the end of these sustained levels of violence against women. Four appendices follow, providing more detail on some specific cases and a list of whipping offences in Jamaica from 1858, long after the Mother Country had stopped.
Pimm’s absorbing survey contains twenty chapters, which is disappointing in that there were so many facets to violent abuse against women. That might explain Pimm’s short chapter on the almost exclusively female crime of witchcraft, however, while I am not sure the Whipping Tom stories of obviously criminal behaviour quite fit into this book; they could have been excised to make more room elsewhere for deeper analysis. Pimm also derives many accounts directly from the sources, including some surprising perpetrators such as James Boswell, Jonathan Swift, and especially Samuel Pepys. Moreover, Pimm brings out the obvious patriarchal side to this story, but also the hypocritical class aspects, and he mentions race where applicable, all of which points to violence as an instrument of planned social control, though Pimm swerves round that conclusion. Nevertheless, Pimm has added to our knowledge of women during that transitional era in an enlightening but often uncomfortable read. 8/10
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by RNS | Jun 14, 2020 | Beating Tsundoku
Ian Baxter, The Destruction of 6th Army at Stalingrad (Pen & Sword, 2020)
Pen & Sword’s Images of War series continues to expand in interesting directions. Ian Baxter’s The Destruction of 6th Army at Stalingrad returns us to the Eastern Front during World War II in a volume that is somewhat problematic but still valuable.
After a brief survey of the background that brought Paulus and his 6th Army into the 1942 campaign on the Eastern Front, Baxter begins his narrative with the operations leading to the disaster at Stalingrad. The 6th Army started east of Kharkov and advanced steadily, pushing the Soviets back across the steppes from the Don to the Volga. There the smooth progress ended in attritional street warfare that cost both sides dearly, but the Germans could not afford their losses. The Soviet offensive around the city in November, coincided with the onset of Winter, and the 6th Army was soon surrounded. A relief force in December failed to get through. Paulus fought on until the Soviets literally fought their way to his door. A useful appendix outlining the Orders of Battle concludes Baxter’s book.
To make these books work, the accompanying photographs have to add to the narrative as well as telling stories in themselves. Baxter gets that aspect right for the most part with an excellent selection of photographs depicting German soldiers, with his captions highlighting details we otherwise might miss. The images begin with the Germans advancing in high spirits and well-resourced. Then we see more smoke on the horizon, and more Soviet POWs. The problem is that it takes a long time for Baxter to get his 6th Army into Stalingrad – the first snow photograph is on page 114 out of 150 – and the army’s destruction is narrated with photographs for only eleven pages at the end; for an army that had endured 199 days of ‘brutal combat’ that coverage seems very condensed. It is as if Baxter has baulked at the final fence, and it is not clear why he did so given the title of this book. For well-annotated images of the German advance into the Soviet Union, this is a very good book; but those interested in the plight of the 6th Army at Stalingrad could be very disappointed. 6/10
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by RNS | Jun 12, 2020 | Beating Tsundoku
The Hardest Slog
Simon Forty, Allied Armies in Sicily and Italy 1943-1945 (Pen & Sword, 2019)
In Allied Armies in Sicily and Italy 1943-1945, Simon Forty reminds us that mountainous Italy with its fickle environment is no place to fight a war. But the polyglot Allied forces did so anyway, slogging up the peninsula for nearly two years most of it against a redoubtable and nimble German army and the elements. Forty takes us on that journey in this welcome addition to Pen & Sword’s Images of War series.
After an overview of the Italian campaign, Forty begins his narrative with the invasion of Sicily, Operation Husky, in July 1943. The successful campaign lasted six weeks and taught the Allies many lessons, but the German army mostly slipped away to fight on the mainland. The Allies barely paused for breath before invading the peninsula in a three-pronged attack that almost ended in disaster. They pushed inexorably on, however, as the Germans withdrew behind carefully established defensive lines. Forty pauses at the infamous Battle of Monte Cassino and the German Gustav Line, which held up the Allied advance at great cost. Then came the flawed flanking landings at Anzio and the unnecessary progress to Rome. The advance north began again, tying down German troops, although the Allies did not have the strength to strike the decisive blow. In the end, both sides ran out of war to fight with the German surrender in May 1945.
The Images of War books rely heavily on photographs accompanying the text to tell a more complete story. Forty gets the balance right in this edition, particularly in showing the nature of the terrain and the conditions under which the campaign was fought. The photos also make it clear the Allies did not have it all their own way. Both the photos and the text give due weight to the multinational force on the Allied side with not just the British Commonwealth forces and Americans, but Poles, Greeks, Brazilians, and other contingents playing their part. The Italian partisans too are given their credit for weakening the Germans behind the lines at such high risk to the civilian population. There is a bit of an imbalance in Forty’s account with Sicily receiving a bit too much emphasis, but that is a minor quibble in what is a very useful book from the Images of War stable. 8/10
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