Journal articles on the topic 'Commerce, Germany, 1914-'

From August to early November 1914, the effectiveness of a lone German commerce-raider, the light cruiser Emden eventually brought the bulk of Allied cargo-shipping in the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean to a virtual halt, thus hampering their war effort in Europe. Although the Emden was finally destroyed at the battle of the Cocos Islands, the press were able to continue the story relating the daring escape of some of her crew. The escapees got away from Direction Island in the Cocos in a requisitioned sailing schooner, the Ayesha. What followed were several months of dangerous and arduous progress first through the Indian Ocean, then through Arabia, finally reaching Constantinople and thence to Germany. Theirs was the only German military unit that returned home from overseas and their story was a gift for German propagandists. Scanning the contemporary German newspapers it becomes clear that they were determined to make the most of this story. It was about German seafarers whose courage and chivalrous attitude towards their enemies should be publicly recognised. It was likewise appreciated by the British. During 1914 and 1915, the German daily press kept the public regularly informed about the Emden whenever there was any news. The legend steadily grew to become a permanent and indisputably positive element of the German collective memory and military tradition. Because the news only came intermittently it became all the more exciting for their readers to follow. The press material is stored as a collection of clippings in the Federal Archive (Bundesarchiv) in Berlin, which clearly shows how the narrative unfolded. It was soon taken up by the German propaganda machine to boost the morale of the German people. Reading the articles it is clear that the editors seized upon this as a story of heroic deeds, allowing them to present their countrymen as super-men who proved the superiority of the German fighting man.

Ronald Rogowski's recent and important work, Commerce and Coalitions, sets forth a farranging and parsimonious theory of trade and political cleavages. This article closely investigates its validity in the case of pre-World War I Germany, where trade has long been seen as a critical factor determining coalition formation and Rogowski's argument appears at first glance to be especially compelling. Close investigation, however, reveals that the key variable in Rogowski's theory, relative factor endowments, fails to account for the political alignment of capital and labor in Germany following 1890. This article puts forward an alternative theory in which business-labor coalition formation is determined not only by the alliance possibilities associated with trade but also by their intersection with the strength of worker organization and capital-labor mobility. This argument both addresses the anomalies that prewar Germany poses for Rogowski's account of trade and cleavages and provides a potential explanation for the absence of business-labor collaboration elsewhere in Western Europe before 1914.

This article examines the Allied blockade around the Canary Islands as a response to the German cruiser war, since the crossroads of trade routes from the South Atlantic that took place in the Canary Islands allowed the German commerce-raiders to ensure, on the one hand, the encounter with numerous enemy merchant ships, objectives of this economic war and, on the other hand, the aid of the numerous German merchant ships that were in their ports, especially as colliers. The immediate Allied action to block the ports in the Canary Islands took advantage of the undisputed hegemony of Great Britain in the archipelago: the British control of the main infrastructures and port and communication services was added by the joint diplomatic pressure of the British and French, although it was the clear superiority of the British naval forces and the vigilance of their cruisers that most contributed to limiting assistance to German commerce-raiders. Primary and secondary sources, diplomatic and military, both British and Spanish, and also French, shed light on the diplomatic and strategic dimension of a blockade in which the British Admiralty managed to end the threat of German commerce-raiders between August 1914 and March of 1915, and limit the operations of the following German auxiliary cruisers, which briefly operated in the eastern central Atlantic in the early months of 1916.

Although the conflict between Muthesius and van de Velde has been well documented in the annals of modern architectural and design history, far less understood is the extent to which domestic political crises and new policy departures in Berlin served as preconditions for the Werkbund conflict in the first place. Prominent Werkbund members—men such as Werkbund Managing Director Ernst Jäckh and Werkbund Vice President Hermann Muthesius, but also including such national political figures and Werkbund members as Friedrich Naumann of Württemberg and Gustav Stresemann of Saxony—used institutional affiliations and their multiple professional identities to forge unprecedented linkages between the Werkbund leadership, industrial interest groups, and powerful German state interests. Specifically, and at the national level, new policies articulated by German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg and key German ministries in Berlin, strident national interest group politics, and an evolving state outlook toward Weltpolitik (geopolitical strategy) combined to reshape Werkbund policy in fundamental ways between 1912 and 1914. Without these forces, and without developments that followed the lopsided and highly contentious Reichstag elections of January 1912, the Werkbund likely never would have risen to the prominent position it came to occupy with state authorities by July 1914.

The historiography of agrarian Germany before 1914 is fundamentally based upon two moments (in the Weberian sense): one of a structural and the other of an institutional nature. The structural moment comprises an emphasis upon the existence and role of agrarian dualism, that is, upon a sharp contrast, emerging from the later Middle Ages onwards, in the agrarian systems found east and west of the River Elbe and its tributary the Saale, which together formed a line bisecting Germany from Hamburg to the modern Czechoslavakian frontier. The institutional moment consists of the shift from a free-trade to a protectionist policy in respect of cereals after 1879. In the words of a leading West German agrarian historian, “On 1 January 1880 … a new epoch commenced for German agricultural policy.” In addition, the adoption of a grain tariff from 1879 is generally assumed to have had a determining influence upon the subsequent development of German agriculture and, for that matter, is thought by some writers to have exerted a considerable influence upon the entire course of modern German history.

In 1917 French and foreign agents reconstructed sections of Picardy destroyed by Operation Alberich, a “scorched-earth” program implemented by departing Germans. The region’s unanticipated maltreatment led French Third Army forces to evaluate and assist Picardy’s devastated homesteads and refugee-residents. Under General Georges Humbert, the Third Army implemented juxtaposing reconstruction policies in Picardy. Along with inhabitants, bureaucrats, and German prisoners of war, the Third Army initiated “a regime of temporary aid” that repaired property and provisioned civilians. Humbert’s subordinates also evacuated residents judged too ill, infirm, treacherous, or indolent for massive reconstruction projects. When extemporized statist programs proved insufficient for Picardy’s civilians, French ministries invited American and British humanitarians to inaugurate complementary and supplementary rehabilitation schemes designed to revive rural society and commerce. The conflicting confluence of these individuals’ consensual, coercive, patriotic, and philanthropic cultures de guerre within Picardy helped residents “demobilize” as refugees and “remobilize” for continued participation in World War I.

F.O. Bower, F.R.S., Regius Professor of Botany in the University of Glasgow, attended the 1914 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Australia as President of Section K (Botany). Items from the daily diary that he kept include a running commentary on shipboard life on the outward voyage, sharp observations on some of his scientific colleagues and on meetings, the impacts of news and rumours of the distant war, and describe the hazards of the return voyage at peril from German commerce raiders.

One hundred years ago, on April 6, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson led the United States into the First World War. Four days earlier, in his war message to Congress, he gave his rationale for declaring war against Imperial Germany and for creating a new world order. He now viewed German submarine attacks against neutral as well as belligerent shipping as a threat to the whole world, not just the United States. “The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind,” he claimed. “It is a war against all nations.” He now believed that Germany had violated the moral standards that “citizens of civilized states” should uphold. The president explained: “We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations and their governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized states.” He focused on protecting democracy against the German regime of Kaiser Wilhelm II. “A steadfast concert for peace,” he said, “can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants.” Wilson called on Congress to vote for war not just because Imperial Germany had sunk three American ships, but for the larger purpose of a new world order. He affirmed: “We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included: for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundation of political liberty.”

De Vlaamse Academie voor Taal en Letter-kunde (KANTL) vergaderde het laatst op5 augustus 1914 toen de Eerste Wereldoorlog al was uitgebroken. Gedurende de hele oorlog lagen de activiteiten stil. Na de wapenstilstand van november 1918 wilde het bestuur de leden zo vlug mogelijk weer samenroepen. Meegezogen door de patriottische wind die over het pas bevrijde vaderland raasde, wilden de voorzitter en de secretaris vooraf de Academie uitzuiveren en de leden die zich tijdens de oorlog manifest met de bezetter hadden gecompromitteerd, uitzetten. Zo stond ook het lidmaatschap van Eugeen Van Oye, ex-(ere)voorzitter van de activistische Jong-Vlaamse beweging, ter discussie. Eugeen besefte maar al te goed dat zijn positie wankelde en via zijn collega en vroegere schoolkameraad Hugo Verriest probeerde hij te weten te komen welke stemming er heerste in de Academie. Tussen de twee ontspon zich een volgehouden correspondentie van januari 1919 tot juni 1920, deels bewaard in het archief van de UGent. De eerste maanden kon Verriest zijn vriend hoop geven want heel wat academici bleken hem vooralsnog gunstig gezind. Dat veranderde plots eind mei 1919 toen een brief uit 1916 opdook, medeondertekend door Van Oye en waarin de pas aangestelde professoren van de vervlaamste Gentse Hogeschool werden gelukgewenst. Dat de brief eindigde met de wens dat Vlaanderen zou herrijzen en bijdragen tot de bloei van Groot-Germanië, was de druppel die de emmer deed overlopen. Van Oye beweerde dat hij, vertrouwend op Jan Derk Domela en Emiel Dumon, zijn handtekening blindelings had geplaatst. Verriest gaf hem het voordeel van de twijfel. In de Academie bleef hij het opnemen voor zijn vriend maar slaagde er niet in zijn collega’s te overtuigen. In juli 1919 werd Van Oye uitgesloten en een klein jaar later, in juni 1920, werd hij wegens zijn activistisch engagement voor het Brugs assisenhof gedaagd. Fysisch sterk verzwakt sprong Verriest nog maar eens in de bres voor Eugeen. Als témoin de moralité slaagde hij er deze keer in om de jury te overtuigen zodat Eugeen als een vrij man de rechtszaal kon verlaten. In september 1921 zouden de twee vrienden elkaar voor het laatst ontmoeten ter gelegenheid van de huldiging van hun “meester” Guido Gezelle in het Roeselaars Klein Seminarie. Na de dood van Verriest in oktober 1922, had Stijn Streuvels nog gehoopt dat Van Oye, overeenkomstig de wens van Verriest, diens in memoriam zou mogen opstellen voor de Academie. Het water was echter nog te diep. Van Oye schreef weliswaar het in memoriam maar het was de Algemene Katholieke Vlaamsche Hoogeschooluitbreiding die het opnam in haar publicatie.__________ Close friends in a destitute time. The postwar correspondence between Eugeen Van Oye and Hugo Verriest The Vlaamse Academie voor Taal en Letterkunde [Flemish Academy for Language and Linguistics] had its last meeting on August 5, 1914, after the First World War had already commenced. During the war, activities had ceased to take place, prompting the board to reconvene its members as quickly as possible following the Armistice. Enthralled by the patriotic spirit that had engulfed the country after the war, the Academy’s president and secretary wanted to expunge the society before the meeting, and expel members that had openly collaborated with the German occupier during the war. One of these members that was being discussed was Eugeen Van Oye, the former (honorary) president of the activist Young Flemish Movement. Eugeen fully understood the precarity of his position, and tried to gather more information on the general mood at the Academy via his colleague and old classmate, Hugo Verriest. An ardent correspondence between the two occurred – which has partly been preserved in the archive of Ghent University – from January 1919 until June 1920. Verriest could convey encouraging signals to his friend during those first months, as it appeared that a number of academics still held him in high regard. This however would suddenly change at the end of May 1919, when a letter (co-signed by Van Oye) from 1916 emerged that congratulated the recently appointed professors at the Dutchified University of Ghent. The fact that the letter concluded by wishing for the revival of Flanders, and having it contribute to the prosperity of Great-Germania, would prove to be the final straw. Van Oye though insisted that he had mindlessly put down his signature because he trusted Jan Derk Domela and Emiel Dumon. Verriest would give Van Oye the benefit of the doubt, and continued to show support for his friend at the Academy, even though he failed to convince his colleagues. Van Oye was expelled in July 1919, and had to appear before the court of assizes in Bruges, almost a year later, in June 1920, because of his activist conduct. Verriest, physically weakened at this point, would once again come to Eugeen’s aid. As a témoin de moralité [witness of morality], Verriest did succeed to convince the jury, resulting in Eugeen leaving the court as a free man. The two friend would meet again one last time in September 1921, when their ‘mentor’ Guido Gezelle was honoured at the Seminary in Roeselare. After Verriest’s death in October 1922, Stijn Streuvels had expressed hope that, in accordance with Verriest’s wish, Van Oye would be allowed to write Verriest’s in memoriam for the Academy, but this proved unfeasible, as the schism between the Academy and Van Oye still existed. Van Oye however would write an in memoriam, but this would ultimately be published by the ‘Algemene Katholieke Vlaamsche Hogeschooluitbreiding’ [General Catholic Flemish Expansion of Higher Education].

De Vlaamse Academie voor Taal en Letter-kunde (KANTL) vergaderde het laatst op5 augustus 1914 toen de Eerste Wereldoorlog al was uitgebroken. Gedurende de hele oorlog lagen de activiteiten stil. Na de wapenstilstand van november 1918 wilde het bestuur de leden zo vlug mogelijk weer samenroepen. Meegezogen door de patriottische wind die over het pas bevrijde vaderland raasde, wilden de voorzitter en de secretaris vooraf de Academie uitzuiveren en de leden die zich tijdens de oorlog manifest met de bezetter hadden gecompromitteerd, uitzetten. Zo stond ook het lidmaatschap van Eugeen Van Oye, ex-(ere)voorzitter van de activistische Jong-Vlaamse beweging, ter discussie. Eugeen besefte maar al te goed dat zijn positie wankelde en via zijn collega en vroegere schoolkameraad Hugo Verriest probeerde hij te weten te komen welke stemming er heerste in de Academie. Tussen de twee ontspon zich een volgehouden correspondentie van januari 1919 tot juni 1920, deels bewaard in het archief van de UGent. De eerste maanden kon Verriest zijn vriend hoop geven want heel wat academici bleken hem vooralsnog gunstig gezind. Dat veranderde plots eind mei 1919 toen een brief uit 1916 opdook, medeondertekend door Van Oye en waarin de pas aangestelde professoren van de vervlaamste Gentse Hogeschool werden gelukgewenst. Dat de brief eindigde met de wens dat Vlaanderen zou herrijzen en bijdragen tot de bloei van Groot-Germanië, was de druppel die de emmer deed overlopen. Van Oye beweerde dat hij, vertrouwend op Jan Derk Domela en Emiel Dumon, zijn handtekening blindelings had geplaatst. Verriest gaf hem het voordeel van de twijfel. In de Academie bleef hij het opnemen voor zijn vriend maar slaagde er niet in zijn collega’s te overtuigen. In juli 1919 werd Van Oye uitgesloten en een klein jaar later, in juni 1920, werd hij wegens zijn activistisch engagement voor het Brugs assisenhof gedaagd. Fysisch sterk verzwakt sprong Verriest nog maar eens in de bres voor Eugeen. Als témoin de moralité slaagde hij er deze keer in om de jury te overtuigen zodat Eugeen als een vrij man de rechtszaal kon verlaten. In september 1921 zouden de twee vrienden elkaar voor het laatst ontmoeten ter gelegenheid van de huldiging van hun “meester” Guido Gezelle in het Roeselaars Klein Seminarie. Na de dood van Verriest in oktober 1922, had Stijn Streuvels nog gehoopt dat Van Oye, overeenkomstig de wens van Verriest, diens in memoriam zou mogen opstellen voor de Academie. Het water was echter nog te diep. Van Oye schreef weliswaar het in memoriam maar het was de Algemene Katholieke Vlaamsche Hoogeschooluitbreiding die het opnam in haar publicatie.__________ Close friends in a destitute time. The postwar correspondence between Eugeen Van Oye and Hugo Verriest The Vlaamse Academie voor Taal en Letterkunde [Flemish Academy for Language and Linguistics] had its last meeting on August 5, 1914, after the First World War had already commenced. During the war, activities had ceased to take place, prompting the board to reconvene its members as quickly as possible following the Armistice. Enthralled by the patriotic spirit that had engulfed the country after the war, the Academy’s president and secretary wanted to expunge the society before the meeting, and expel members that had openly collaborated with the German occupier during the war. One of these members that was being discussed was Eugeen Van Oye, the former (honorary) president of the activist Young Flemish Movement. Eugeen fully understood the precarity of his position, and tried to gather more information on the general mood at the Academy via his colleague and old classmate, Hugo Verriest. An ardent correspondence between the two occurred – which has partly been preserved in the archive of Ghent University – from January 1919 until June 1920. Verriest could convey encouraging signals to his friend during those first months, as it appeared that a number of academics still held him in high regard. This however would suddenly change at the end of May 1919, when a letter (co-signed by Van Oye) from 1916 emerged that congratulated the recently appointed professors at the Dutchified University of Ghent. The fact that the letter concluded by wishing for the revival of Flanders, and having it contribute to the prosperity of Great-Germania, would prove to be the final straw. Van Oye though insisted that he had mindlessly put down his signature because he trusted Jan Derk Domela and Emiel Dumon. Verriest would give Van Oye the benefit of the doubt, and continued to show support for his friend at the Academy, even though he failed to convince his colleagues. Van Oye was expelled in July 1919, and had to appear before the court of assizes in Bruges, almost a year later, in June 1920, because of his activist conduct. Verriest, physically weakened at this point, would once again come to Eugeen’s aid. As a témoin de moralité [witness of morality], Verriest did succeed to convince the jury, resulting in Eugeen leaving the court as a free man. The two friend would meet again one last time in September 1921, when their ‘mentor’ Guido Gezelle was honoured at the Seminary in Roeselare. After Verriest’s death in October 1922, Stijn Streuvels had expressed hope that, in accordance with Verriest’s wish, Van Oye would be allowed to write Verriest’s in memoriam for the Academy, but this proved unfeasible, as the schism between the Academy and Van Oye still existed. Van Oye however would write an in memoriam, but this would ultimately be published by the ‘Algemene Katholieke Vlaamsche Hogeschooluitbreiding’ [General Catholic Flemish Expansion of Higher Education].

This article concerns the social and cultural role of the Society of the Divine Word (SVD) in German Togo ‒ the Catholic missionary order that commenced its work in the colony in 1892 ‒ and specifically the importance of its schools for the German colonial project in that part of Africa. I seek to substantiate the thesis that Christian missions were in fact vital for modern colonial states as holders ‒ mainly through their educational effort ‒ of cultural/symbolic capital that is imperative for a proper functioning of any polity. The SVD mission made a considerable impact on social life of the colony through a network of competitive schools that it established, and for which it also secured a large part of financial resources provided by the colonial government. The importance of mission schools for the colonial project, on the one hand, and their reliance on the government funding, on the other were also important factors in the settling of a protracted conflict about social justice between the order and the government (1903-1907). One essential component of the educational success of the SVD missionaries in Togo was a genuine interest of indigenous elites in the acquisition of Western-style education, especially in the south of the colony that had been exposed to direct European influences for centuries.

British business in Latin America struggled throughout the inter-war period, affected by the First World War, aggressive US trade strategies and a dated British commercial support structure that had turned its attentions to imperial markets. Chamber of Commerce archive material reveals the frustrations of the British business community in Chile as hard-won markets were lost to well-supported US firms and returning German competition, as a consequence of weak political, financial and marketing support. Against a backdrop of British commercial decline worldwide, the Chilean case echoes the experiences of businessmen across Latin America's non-imperial markets. As the British government dallied, US business established an unassailable position.

This article analyses the reorientation of Hanseatic merchants’ involvement in world trade during the second half of the nineteenth and first decades of the twentieth centuries. This shift was influenced by the independence of former British and Iberian colonies in the Americas, which caused the implosion of colonial trade monopolies. The abolition of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, and the Scramble for Africa also allowed German commerce to obtain more direct access to markets in and raw materials from tropical regions. An examination of the commodity chains of rubber and palm oil/kernels reveals the great influence of Hanseatic merchant families (e.g. O’Swald, Schramm or Woermann) on determining and shaping the terms by which African and South American regions became incorporated into the emerging world economy.

Visitors to the sea-side resort of Swakopmund on the Namibian coast will have often stood on the northern banks of the Swakop river and marvelled at the sea of sand dunes that commences on the opposite side of the river. Very few of them will ever have realised that they were standing upon, and wandering amongst, the mass graves of Herero and Nama prisoners of war, who between 1904 and 1908 were employed as forced labourers. As I write the mass-graves of Swakopmund are used by recreationers as a testing ground for their four-wheel-drive off-road vehicles, perhaps in the future the true nature of these graves will come to be realised and appreciated.

This article counters a common misconception that business was universally opposed to air pollution control at the beginning of the twentieth century. In comparing the reaction of German and American businessmen to smoke abatement efforts before World War I, it shows that behavior was primarily shaped by national culture, rather than by a general desire to “externalize costs.” German smoke abatement did not meet significant resistance from industrialists, with regulation being based on a general consensus of all parties involved—a process which turned out to be as much a chance for abatement as it was an impediment for reforms. The American business community was split into two factions: those opposed to smoke abatement because they feared additional costs and the intrusion of factories by officials, and others, frequently organized in Chambers of Commerce or similar civic associations, who took a broader perspective and argued that the economic prospects of their city were at stake. The ultimate success of the latter group was largely due to changes in strategy, which allowed businessmen to develop a more positive attitude toward smoke abatement while simultaneously increasing the effectiveness of regulation. Business, therefore, should not be viewed as an inevitably “negative force” in environmental regulation.

From the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 through the New Deal, American legislators commonly endowed administrative agencies with broad discretionary power. They did so over the objections of an intellectual founder of the American administrative state. The American-born, German-educated lawyer and political scientist Ernst Freund developed an Americanized version of the Rechtsstaat—a government bound by fixed and definite rules—in an impressive body of scholarship between 1894 and 1915. In 1920 he eagerly took up an offer from the Commonwealth Fund to finance a comprehensive study of administration in the United States. Here was his chance to show that a Continental version of the Rule of Law had come to America. Unfortunately for Freund, the Commonwealth Fund yoked him to the Austrian-born, American-educated Felix Frankfurter, a celebrant of the enlightened discretion of administrators. Freund's major publication for the Commonwealth Fund, Administrative Powers over Persons and Property (1928), made little impression on scholars of administrative law, who took their lead from Frankfurter. Today the Rechtsstaat is largely the beau ideal of libertarian critics of the New Deal; few recognize that it is also part of the diverse legacy of Progressive reform.

The economic expression of the Romanian-Polish military and political alliance undoubtedly had to be represented by the rebirth of the Baltic-Pontic commercial road, as the flow of products coming into and towards the Polish space had been artificially directed, during the 19th century, as a result of understandable political and economic interests, towards the North and the Adriatic Seas, instead of the Baltic and Black Seas. A Polish commercial road towards the Balkans obviously comprised economic, financial and strategic components. One of them referred to building an alternative to the continental routes dominated by Germany (Rhine, Main, Danube); the aim was chiefly to break a dangerous monopoly in the region of Central Europe and the Baltic area. Foreign commerce on the two relations did not enjoy, in any period between the two world wars, a spectacular evolution and never reached an important point. The arguments are based on strictly economic and financial elements: 1. Romania and Poland produced largely the same type of merchandise: there were basically similar raw materials (cereal, coal, oil), the products had a very low degree of processing, and one could earn more and more assuredly with the export type-products on traditional markets (mainly Western Europe); 2. Even if there was a great interest in a partner or a product on the other market, the transport thereof took a very long time. Between Warsaw and Bucharest there was a simple, inefficient and unsafe railroad; there was no preoccupation in the ’20s for the revamping or modernizing of the transport and service infrastructure (telephone, telegraph, post) between the two states; 3. Last, but not least, although the two states had a great number of inhabitants – and, thus, an extremely important potential for buying and consumption – the potential was strongly handicapped by the standard of living. The scanty Polish projects and investments on the Baltic – Black Sea axis have completed – and have not influenced – the general frame of Romanian – Polish relations, essentially based on political, diplomatic and military interests.

Čenču Jezups or Dzērkste (real name Jezups Kindzuļs, 1888–1941?) was a Latgalian public figure, agronomist, publicist and writer. Date of his death is unknown – he was arrested in February 1941 by NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs), but after that there is no information about his further life. He participated in the Latgalian Awakening movement at the beginning of 20th century. Later J. Kindzuļs was one of the organizers of the Latgalian congress (1917) in Rēzekne and a member of Constitutional Assembly of Latvia (1920–1922). He was an editor of such periodicals as “Latgalīts” (1921), “Latgolas Zemkūpis” (1924–1935), “Latgolas lauksaimnīks” (calendar, 1924–1935). He wrote his novel “Pīters Vylāns” between 1935 and 1941. It was first published in Daugavpils in 1943 by writer and publisher Vladislavs Luocis. Later it was published again in Germany in 1967.Čenču Jezups’ novel “Pīters Vylāns” was analysed by Miķelis Bukšs, Ilona Salceviča, Oskars Seiksts. The mentioned papers reveal the meaning of Latgalian self-confidence, which is disclosed in “Pīters Vylāns”, but unfortunately the author of this novel seems to be forgotten. Therefore the aim of this research is to “decode” factors of inspiration in Čenču Jezups’ novel “Pīters Vylāns” to gain more information about author’s life and his value system.Inspiration is always connected with writer’s life experience. Furthermore, the writer creates his own world. Vladislavs Luocis wrote that J. Kindzuļs planned to write a trilogy (Lōcis 1965: 26), but because of Latvia’s occupation by the Soviet Union this intention was not fulfilled. Factors of inspiration are divided into two groups: literary and non-literary (Lukaševičs 2007: 5). Non-literary factors of inspiration are those connected with J. Kindzuļs’ life (social and political events, education and public activities, private life). Literary and cultural factors of inspiration refer to his interests and Latgalian self-identification.Novel “Pīters Vylāns” was written during the authoritarian regime of Kārlis Ulmanis (1934–1940) and deals with peasants’ life during the Russian Revolution of 1905 (1905–1907) in Latgale. The problems of Latgalian identity (to be russified or polonized, quest for identity as a possibility) are dealt with by means of such characters as Vera Semjonova, Stefa, Meikuls Stumbris and Buks. It may be that the characters Pīters Vylāns and Ontons Sleižs are the two sides of J. Kindzuļs’ alter ego. His life experience until World War I is revealed in Pīters Vylāns, but after 1920 – in Ontons Sleižs. J. Kindzuļs may have studied either agronomy or law in Petersburg (after 1907). He took part in Latgalian Musical society and later he worked in the editorial office of newspaper “Drywa” (1908–1912). J. Kindzuļs was involved in the First World War and after that he worked in Rēzekne Commerce School (1919). After 1922 he started farming in his household “Pelēķi” in Laucesa rural municipality and was busy with issues of agronomy in Latgale.J. Kindzuļs’ private life is revealed in two women characters: Elvira and Stefa. Kindzuļs himself had three wives: unknown (married before 1919), Hortenzija Kindzule (Dardedze, married about 1921), Jadviga Kindzule (Kondrāte, married before 1933). J. Kindzuļs became a widower twice. He had two sons: Česlavs (from his first marriage) and Andrivs Jēkabs (from the second marriage). The third child was a daughter, but he and his wife Jadviga lost her because she died of an illness when she was 3.Because of lack of information about J. Kindzuļs, there is no possibility to find out his interests. The only way to get more information about J. Kindzuļs is to research his novel “Pīters Vylāns”. From the novel we know that for J. Kindzuļs there are three groups of literary and cultural factors of inspiration. Firstly, it is Latgalian self-confidence, which appears in the use of Roman Catholic elements such as rites, prayers and honour songs for God. Secondly, it is syncretism of Christian faith and paganism, which is presented as rewriting of folksongs by hand and “vakariešona” or evening gathering. Thirdly, it is European culture, because it is clear that J. Kindzuļs knew, for example, such writers as Goethe, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, classical music (F. F. Chopin) and architecture. The amount of information about J. Kindzuļs must be enriched and research must be continued. Novel “Pīters Vylāns” was written after 1935 and it is autobiographical. Such characters as Pīters Vylāns and Ontons Sleižs reflect the personality of J. Kindzuļs, but Elvira and Stefa reveal some traits of his wives Hortenzija and Jadviga. J. Kindzuļs glorifies values which became significant after 1934: land and farming, peasants and unity. He describes the Latvians of Latgale during the Russian Revolution of 1905 (1905–1907), but at the same time he criticizes the tendency to be latvianized. The same attitude he has to russification. He accepts the ideological course of Kārlis Ulmanis policy and this ideological position of J. Kindzuļs is manifested as a form of rebellion.

Abstract This paper departs from the preoccupation in the literature with the pressure group activity of single chambers of commerce by examining an influential but previously neglected federated business pressure group, the British Imperial Council of Commerce (BICC). Set within interlocking dynamics of British Imperial and global history and the clamour for imperial preference, it focuses on BICC's interface with the British government and its overseas dependencies in the context and vortex of Imperial economic policy, the First World War, interimperial competition, especially Anglo–German rivalry, and the vagaries of the world political economy. This essay provides insights into the internal affairs of the BICC, business–government relations in the British Empire, and the political economy of the Empire between 1911 and 1925. It demonstrates how the BICC, focused on Imperial economic governance, navigated the conflict between the prevailing ideology of laissez faire (free trade) and the clamour for xenophobic protectionism during the First World War and its aftermath. The paper highlights the limits of business pressure group activity, and the impact of the war and its aftermath on the BICC.

IntroductionI stumble to my feet breathing heavily and, over the roar of a tank, a nearby soldier yells right into my face: “We’re surrounded! We have to hold this line!” I follow him, moving past burning debris and wounded men being helped walk back in the opposite direction. Shells explode around me, a whistle sounds, and then the Hun attack; shadowy figures that I fire upon as they approach through the battlefield fog and smoke. I shoot some. I take cover behind walls as others fire back. I reload the weapon. I am hit by incoming fire, and a red damage indicator appears onscreen, so I move to a better cover position. As I am hit again and again, the image becomes blurry and appears as if in slow-motion, the sound also becoming muffled. As an enemy wielding a flame-thrower appears and blasts me with thick fire, my avatar gasps and collapses. The screen fades to black.So far, so very normal in the World War One themed first-person shooter Battlefield 1 (Electronic Arts 2016). But then the game does something unanticipated. I expect to reappear—or respawn—in the same scenario to play better, to stay in the fight longer. Instead, the camera view switches to an external position, craning upwards cinematically from my character’s dying body. Text superimposed over the view indicates the minimalist epitaph: “Harvey Nottoway 1889-1918.” The camera view then races backwards, high over the battlefield and finally settles into position behind a mounted machine-gun further back from the frontline as the enemy advances closer. Immediately I commence shooting, mowing down German troops as they enter our trenches. Soon I am hit and knocked away from the machine-gun. Picking up a shotgun I start shooting the enemy at close-quarters, until I am once again overrun and my character collapses. Now the onscreen text states I was playing as “Dean Stevenson 1899-1918.”I have attempted this prologue to the Battlefield 1 campaign a number of times. No matter how skilfully I play, or how effectively I simply run away and hide from the combat, this pattern continues: the structure of the game forces the player’s avatar to be repeatedly killed in order for the narrative to progress. Over a series of player deaths, respawning as an entirely new character each time, the combat grows in ferocity and the music also becomes increasingly frenetic. The fighting turns to hand-to-hand combat, or shovel-to-head combat to be more precise, and eventually an artillery barrage wipes everybody out (Figure 1). At this point, the prologue is complete and the gamer may continue in a variety of single-player episodes in different theatres of WW1, each of which is structured according to the normal rules of combat games: when your avatar is killed, you respawn at the most recent checkpoint for a follow-up attempt.What are we to make of this alternative narrative structure deployed by the opening episode of Battlefield 1? In contrast to the normal video-game affordances of re-playability until completion, this narrative necessitation of death is in some ways motivated by the onscreen text that introduces the prologue: “What follows is frontline combat. You are not expected to survive.” Certainly it is true that the rest of the game (either single-player or in its online multiplayer deathmatch mode) follows the predictable pattern of dying, replaying, completing. And also we would not expect Battlefield 1 to be motivated primarily by a kind of historical fidelity given that an earlier instalment in the series, Battlefield 1942 (2002) was described by one reviewer as:a comic book version of WWII. The fact that any player can casually hop into a tank, drive around, hop out and pick off an enemy soldier with a sniper rifle, hop into a plane, parachute out, and then call in artillery fire (within the span of a few minutes) should tell you a lot about the game. (Osborne)However what is happening in this will-to-die structure of the game’s prologue represents an alternative and affectively unsettling game experience both in its ludological structure as well as its affective impact. Defamiliarization and Humanization Drawing upon a phenomenology of game-play, whereby the scholar examines the game “as played” (see Atkins and Kryzwinska; Keogh; Wilson) to consider how the text reveals itself to the player, I argue that the introductory single-player episode of Battlefield 1 functions to create a defamiliarizing effect on the player. Defamiliarization, the Russian Formalist term for the effect created by art when some unusual aspect of a text challenges accepted perceptions and/or representations (Schklovski; Thompson), is a remarkably common effect created by the techniques used in combat cinema and video-games. This is unsurprising. After all, warfare is one of the very examples Schklovski uses as something that audiences have developed habituated responses to and which artworks must defamiliarize. The effect may be created by many techniques in a text, and in certain cases a work may defamiliarize even its own form. For instance, recent work on the violence in Saving Private Ryan shows that during the lengthy Omaha Beach sequence, the most vivid instances of violence—including the famous shot of a soldier picking up his dismembered arm—occur well after the audience has potentially become inured to the onslaught of the earlier frequent, but less graphic, carnage (Bender Film Style and WW2). To make these moments stand out with equivalent horrific impact against the background of the Normandy beach bloodbath Spielberg also treats them with a stuttered frame effect and accompanying audio distortion, motivated (to use a related Formalist term) by the character’s apparent concussion and temporary disorientation. Effectively a sequence of point of view shots then, this moment in Private Ryan has become a model for many other war texts, and indeed the player’s death in the opening sequence of Battlefield 1 is portrayed using a very similar (though not identical) audio-visual treatment (Figure 2).Although the Formalists never played videogames, recent scholarship has approached the medium from a similar perspective. For example, Brendan Keogh has focused on the challenges to traditional videogame pleasure generated by the 2012 dystopian shooter Spec Ops: The Line. Keogh notes that the game developers intended to create displeasure and “[forcing] the player to consider what is obscured in the pixilation of war” by, for instance, having them kill fellow American troops in order for the game narrative to continue (Keogh 9). In addition, the game openly taunts the player’s expectations of entertainment based, uncritical run-and-gun gameplay with onscreen text during level loading periods such as “Do you feel like a hero yet?” (8).These kinds of challenges to the expectations of entertainment in combat shooters are found also in one sequence from the 2009 game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in which the player—as an undercover operative—is forced to participate in a terrorist attack in which civilians are killed (Figure 3). While playing that level, titled “No Russian,” Timothy Welsh argues: “The player may shoot the unarmed civilians or not; the level still creeps slowly forward regardless” (Welsh 409). In Welsh’s analysis, this level emerges as an unusual attempt by a popular video game to “humanize” the non-playing characters that are ordinarily gunned down without any critical and self-reflective thought by the player in most shooter games. The player is forced into a scenario in which they must make a highly difficult ethical choice, but the game will show civilians being killed either way.In contrast to the usual criticisms of violent video games—eg., that they may be held responsible for school shootings, increased adolescent aggression and so on —the “No Russian” sequence drew dramatic complaints of being a “terrorist simulator” (Welsh 389). But for Welsh this ethical choice facing the player, to shoot or not to shoot civilians, raises the game to a textual experience offering self-inspection. As in the fictional theme park of Westworld (HBO 2016), it does not really matter to the digital victim if a player kills them, but it should—and does—matter to the player. There are no external consequences to killing a computer game character composed only of pixels, or killing/raping a robot in the Westworld theme park, however there are internal consequences: it makes you a killer, or a rapist (see Harris and Bloom).Thus, from the perspective of defamiliarization, the game can be regarded as creating the effect that Matthew Payne has labelled “critical displeasure.” Writing about the way this is created by Spec Ops, Payne argues that:the result is a game that wields its affective distance as a critique of the necessary illusion that all military shooters trade in, but one that so few acknowledge. In particular, the game’s brutal mise-en-scène, its intertextual references to other war media, and its real and imagined opportunities for player choice, create a discordant feeling that lays bare the ease with which most video war games indulge in their power fantasies. (Payne 270)There is then, a minor tradition of alternative military-themed video game works that attempt to invite or enable the player to conduct a kind of ethical self-examination around their engagement with interactive representations of war via particular incursions of realism. The critical displeasure invoked by texts such as Spec Ops and the “No Russian” level of Call of Duty is particularly interesting in light of another military game that was ultimately cancelled by the publisher after it received public criticism. Titled Six Days in Fallujah, the game was developed with the participation of Marines who had fought in that real life battle and aimed to depict the events as they unfolded in 2004 during the campaign in Iraq. As Justin Rashid argues:the controversy that arose around Six Days in Fallujah was, of course, a result of the view that commercial video games can only ever be pure entertainment; games do not have the authority or credibility to be part of a serious debate. (Rashid 17)On this basis, perhaps a criterial attribute of an acceptable alternative military game is that there is enough familiarity to evoke some critical distance, but not too much familiarity that the player must think about legitimately real-life consequences and impact. After all, Call of Duty was a successful release, even amid the controversy of “No Russian.” This makes sense as the level does not really challenge the overall enjoyment of the game. The novelty of the level, on the one hand, is that it is merely one part of the general narrative and cannot be regarded as representative of the whole game experience. On the other hand, because none of the events and scenarios have a clear indexical relationship to real-world terrorist attacks (at least prior to the Brussels attack in 2016) it is easy to play the ethical choice of shooting or not shooting civilians as a mental exercise rather than a reflection on something that really happened. This is the same lesson learned by the developers of the 2010 game Medal of Honor who ultimately changed the name of the enemy soldiers from “The Taliban” to “OPFOR” (standing in for a generic “Opposing Forces”) after facing pressure from the US and UK Military who claimed that the multiplayer capacities of the game enabled players to play as the Taliban (see Rashid). Conclusion: Affective Friction in Battlefield 1In important ways then, these game experiences are precursors to Battlefield 1’s single player prologue. However, the latter does not attempt a wholesale deconstruction of the genre—as does Spec Ops—or represent an attempt to humanise (or perhaps re-humanise) the non-playable victim characters as Welsh suggests “No Russian” attempts to do. Battlefield 1’s opening structure of death-and-respawn-as-different-character can be read as humanizing the player’s avatar. But most importantly, I take Battlefield’s initially unusual gameplay as an aesthetic attempt to set a particular tone to the game. Motivated by the general cultural attitude of deferential respect for the Great War, Battlefield 1 takes an almost austere stance toward the violence depicted, paradoxically even as this impact is muted in the later gameplay structured according to normal multiplayer deathmatch rules of run-and-gun killing. The futility implied by the player’s constant dying is clearly motivated by an attempt at realism as one of the cultural memories of World War One is the sheer likelihood of being killed, whether as a frontline soldier or a citizen of a country engaged in combat (see Kramer). For Battlefield 1, the repeated dying is really part of the text’s aesthetic engagement. For this reason I prefer the term affective friction rather than critical displeasure. The austere tone of the game is indicated early, just prior to the prologue gameplay with onscreen text that reads:Battlefield 1 is based on events that unfolded over 100 years agoMore than 60 million soldiers fought in “The War to End All Wars”It ended nothing.Yet it changed the world forever. At a simple level, the player’s experience of being killed in order for the next part of the narrative to progress evokes this sense of futility. There have been real responses indicating this, for instance one reviewer argues that the structure is “a powerful treatment” (Howley). But there is potential for increased engagement with the game itself as the structure breaks the replay-cycle of usual games. For instance, another reviewer responds to the overall single-player campaign by suggesting “It is not something you can sit down and play through and not experience on a higher level than just clicking a mouse and tapping a keyboard” (Simpson). This affective friction amplifies, and draws attention to, the other advances in violent stylistics presented in the game. For instance, although the standard onscreen visual distortions are used to show character damage and the direction from which the attack came, the game does use slow-motion to draw out the character’s death. In addition, the game features incidental battlefield details of shell-shock, such as soldiers simply holding the head in their hands, frozen as the battle rages around them (Figure 4). The presence of flame-thrower troops, and subsequently the depictions of characters running as they burn to death are also significant developments in violent aesthetics from earlier games. These elements of violence are constitutive of the affective friction. We may marvel at the technical achievement of such real-time rendering of dynamic fire and the artistic care given to animate deaths and shell-shock depictions. But simultaneously, these “violent delights”—to borrow from Westworld’s citation of Shakespeare—are innovations upon the depictions of earlier games, even contemporary, combat games. Indeed, one critic has almost ashamedly noted: “For a game about one of the most horrific wars in human history, it sure is pretty” (Kain).These violent depictions show a continuation in the tradition of increased detail which has been linked to a model of “reported realism” as a means of understanding audience’s claims of realism in combat films and modern videogames as a result primarily of their hypersaturated audio-visual texture (Bender "Blood Splats"). Here, saturation refers not to the specific technical quality of colour saturation but to the densely layered audio-visual structure often found in contemporary films and videogames. For example, thick mixing of soundtracks, details of gore, and nuanced movements (particularly of dying characters) all contribute to a hypersaturated aesthetic which tends to prompt audiences to make claims of realism for a combat text regardless of whether or not these viewers/players have any real world referent for comparison. Of course, there are likely to be players who will simply blast through any shooter game, giving no regard to the critical displeasure offered by Spec Ops narrative choices or the ethical dilemma of “No Russian.” There are also likely to be players who bypass the single-player campaign altogether and only bother with the multiplayer deathmatch experience, which functions in the same way as it does in other shooter games, including the previous Battlefield games. But perhaps the value of this game’s attempt at alternative storytelling, with its emphasis on tone and affect, is that even the “kill-em-all” player may experience a momentary impact from the violence depicted. This is particularly important given that, to borrow from Stephanie Fisher’s argument in regard to WW2 games, many young people encounter the history of warfare through such popular videogames (Fisher). In the centenary period of World War One, especially in Australia amid the present Anzac commemorative moment, the opportunity for young audiences to engage with the significance of the events. As a side-note, the later part of the single-player campaign even has a Gallipoli sequence, though the narrative of this component is designed as an action-hero adventure. Indeed, this is one example of how the alternative dying-to-continue structure of the prologue creates an affective friction against the normal gameplay and narratives that feature in the rest of the text. The ambivalent ways in which this unsettling opening scenario impacts on the remainder of the game-play, including for instance its depiction of PTSD, is illustrated by some industry reviewers. As one reviewer argues, the game does generate the feeling that “war isn’t fun — except when it is” (Plante). From this view, the cognitive challenge created by the will to die in the prologue creates an affective friction with the normalised entertainment inherent in the game’s multiplayer run-and-gun components that dominate the rest of Battlefield 1’s experience. Therefore, although Battlefield 1 ultimately proves to be an entertainment-oriented combat shooter, it is significant that the developers of this major commercial production decided to include an experimental structure to the prologue as a way of generating tone and affect in a fresh way. ReferencesAtkins, Barry, and Tanya Kryzwinska. "Introduction: Videogame, Player, Text." Videogame, Player, Text. Eds. Atkins, Barry and Tanya Kryzwinska. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007.Bender, Stuart Marshall. "Blood Splats and Bodily Collapse: Reported Realism and the Perception of Violence in Combat Films and Videogames." Projections 8.2 (2014): 1-25.Bender, Stuart Marshall. Film Style and the World War II Combat Film. 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