St Helena

George Brooks Bennett and his father James were relatively junior army officers, George in the Commissariat and James in the Honorable East India Company. Together, their lives more than spanned the 19th century and although they saw no great military actions, they did witness an extraordinary range of historical events.

Readers of history more than often have their own ‘periods’ or ‘places’ or ‘people’ or particular ‘events’ that attract them. The strength of this book lies in its diversity -  readers who are fascinated by the minutiae of Napoleonic history, the life of soldier in the East India soldier, or the social history of early nineteenth century England will all find something new. So will those who want to know more about the history of St Helena or social and military life at the Cape in the late nineteenth century. Lovers of biography will be enthralled by the small boy who having seen Napoleon’s funeral, travels alone from St Helena to boarding school in Hampshire; of his life in London, and his journeys - initially back to St Helena and then onto to South Africa and the Eastern Cape; of his interests in botany that brought him into contact with the Hookers of Kew Garden fame and of the magnificent garden he created on the slopes of Table Mountain. There is even a mystery to solve – the intriguing story of Napoleon’s coffin :   

James Bennett was a member of the East India Company garrison on St Helena when Napoleon was exiled to the island in 1815. When the ex-emperor died, it was reported that he had expressed a wish to be buried in a mahogany coffin. However, the only mahogany on the island was a table owned by Captain Bennett. Thus it was that this obscure officer became known as the man who donated his table to manufacture the coffin of one of the greatest generals the world has ever known. This story is still being perpetuated by modern histories of the exile but like all stories it has grown in the telling. In the first chapter of The Bennett Letters, the author delves into the twists and turns of the story and uncovers how the story originated and the probable truth behind it.

This 248 page book is based on a large collection of unpublished family letters and documents underpinned with a considerable amount of research into the background of the events described. The result is a book which should appeal to a wide audience as well as being of considerable interest to professional historians as a source book. The appendices alone contain unique information on the financial aspects of life in St Helena during the most critical period of its history – the change of sovereignty from the East India Company to the Crown in 1835. 

The Bennett Letters was published by the Choir Press in 2006

This work overviews complete lists and cartographic as well as statistical analysis of the lost ships of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) during 17th and 18th century. The various possibilities of eventual future archaeological research of the minimum 734 ships are also examined.

Diese Arbeit ist eine Zusammentragung aller Schiffsverluste der Niederländischen Ostindienkompanie (und ihrer Vorgängergesellschaften) während des 17. und 18. Jhd. und beinhaltet kartographische sowie statistische Analysen zu den archäologischen Erkenntnissen und Möglichkeiten der mindestens 734 Schiffe.

Dit werk omvat de volledige lijsten en kartering alsmede statistische analyses van de schip verliezen van de Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) tijdens de 17e en 18e eeuw. De vele mogelijkheden van toekomst archeologisch onderzoek van deze 734 schepen zijn ook behandelt.


[* Sensible data is blackened * Sensible Daten sind geschwärzt * Vertrouwelijke gegevens zijn zwart *]

This account of the life, and death in Jamaica, of the Tahitian known to the English as Pappo, was published in the Jamaican newspaper The Royal Gazette in November 1793.  The issue of the weekly newspaper is available online in the digital collection of the State Library of New South Wales, an item of the collection: Sir Joseph Banks’ Papers  It would have been an unusual item as the subject of the obituary was not European.

The account was written by the botanist James Wilkes, one of the crew on Captain William Bligh’s Providence. Wilkes, on arrival in Jamaica a few months earlier, had been assigned to remain, posted to the government botanical gardens at Bath, in parish of St Thomas in the East. His role was to ensure survival and propagation of the breadfruit plants, transported at huge expense from Tahiti.

This account has not previously been transcribed in full, as far as can be ascertained.  A historical novel around the life of Pappo, and the role he played in establishing breadfruit across the West Indies, is being written by Michael Morrissey for publication in 2018. A note at the end of the transcription provides further information.

My Huffington Post review of the fifth CNN "Finding Jesus" episode (03/31/2015); while relics of the cross of Jesus came to be proliferated during the Byzantine era and later during the Crusades, most of these relics are dated later using Carbon 14 dating; nonetheless, the death of Jesus on the cross is a historical near certainty.

This paper was written for the inaugural edition of Dies Legibiles, an undergraduate Medieval Studies journal out of Smith College. Their website and the full edition of the journal can be found here: https://sophia.smith.edu/dies-legibiles/previous-editions/first-edition-2020-21/

Abstract:
This analysis of the Old English poem The Dream of the Rood and its reflexes in material culture incorporates two major pursuits. The first is a reconstruction of a potential, contemporary impetus for religious experience perceived upon an encounter with any iteration of what I term the Roodcorpus; that is, the extant manifestations of a widespread poem, both temporally and spatially, known to us as The Dream of the Rood. This spiritual or religious experience is chiefly predicated on the Rood's retention of memory from its personal involvement in and experience of Christ's Crucifixion. My establishment of this Rood-corpus also provides a (to my knowledge) original hypothesis regarding the archetype that begat our extant versions of the poem. The second pursuit seeks to place The Dream of the Rood and the Rood-corpus more broadly in the context of their contemporary and nascent Cross Legends, specifically those that deal with the life of the True Cross before Christ. This second endeavor establishes a grander, more cosmic scope of the Christian salvation story encapsulated within the poem and, following the explication of memory's role in this body of literature, extends the roots of the Rood's memory back into the earliest days of the Bible. The cumulative effect of this study is to illuminate the constellation of meaning present within and surrounding the Rood-corpus and establishing the evocative milieu in which it was encountered.

Born in Bristol in 1856, Mosely was a friend and contemporary of Cecil Rhodes, both staking an early claim at the Kimberley diamond mines in the 1870s and making a fortune. He gained a reputation as one  of the foremost philanthropists of the early 20th century. Already familiar  with St Helena's lack of opportunities, he was galvanised into action when the island’s garrison closed in 1906
leaving it without an industry. He aided the island in many ways, principally by establishing a cured fish manufacturing industry. When this failed, he unsuccessfully attempted to persuade authorities in the USA to allow the entire population of St Helena to emigrate to Coronado, California. The paper demonstrates that St Helena's Governor Gallwey deliberately distorted his reports to suggest the fishing industry failed because of mackerel shortages, which was then further exaggerated by later island histories.

This describes St Helena during the first dozen years of the 20th century. A boost was given to the economy by the landing of an international telegraph cable and the island's role in confining Boer War prisoners. However, these prisoners brought infections with them that were likely to spread amongst the general population. The island government embarked on a programme to improve the hygiene of Jamestown's water supplies, its drainage system and waste disposal. New water supplies and sanitaryware were forcibly installed in private houses at a cost that was sometimes greater than the value of houses. Householders who could barely scratch a living were then obliged to refund the cost of these improvements. All this happened at a time when the War Office removed the last source of income on the island by withdrawing its garrison of soldiers.

Critical edition with presentation and commentary in French of the original manuscript of Las Cases Memorial, Perrin 2017, p. 827. Supported by the Centre national du livre, 25% contribution. Reviews: 26/10/17 Valeurs actuelles, 24/10/17 Le Magazine Littéraire, 19/10/17 Le Figaro Littéraire, 18/10/17 Point de Vue, 15/10/17 Le Parisien, 16/10/17 La Libre Belgique, 15/10/17 Aujourd'hui en France, 7/10/17 Public Sénat, 8/10/17 Breizhinfo, 4/10/17 Le Point, 4/10/17 Histoire pour Tous, 3/9/17 Le Monde, 2/9/17 Revue des Deux Mondes, 28/9/17 Le Monde des Livres

Phylogenetic analysis of nrDNA ITS and trnL (UAA) 5prime exon-trnF (GAA) chloroplast DNA sequences from 17 species ofPelargonium sect.Peristera, together with nine putative outgroups, suggests paraphyly for the section and a close relationship between the highly disjunct South African and Australian species of sect.Peristera. Representatives fromPelargonium sectt.Reniformia, Ligularia s. l. andIsopetalum (the St. Helena endemicP. cotyledonis) appear to be nested within thePeristera clade. The close relationship between the South African and AustralianPeristera is interpreted as being caused by long-range dispersal to Australia, probably as recent as the late Pliocene.

An article inspired by recent studies claiming that St Helen (Greek) or Helena, (Latin) was the first archaeologist and it's even more important that she was a woman, so she was also the first woman archaeologist.  This a study of primary and secondary sources on St Helena's finding of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem and how she could be considered the first archaeologist without exaggeration or anachronism.  This article was first published on this author's blog: "Hellenic and Hellenic-American Psychohistory, Psychoarchaeology, and PSychopedagogy (https://psychohistory-psychoarchaeology.blogspot.com/?fbclid=IwAR35a09ihKE-o2Bm24FS4ejS_yjZ2GAhFciodX8GfrxPTd-BSdT7STfO5R4)".  Then, it was published on "Greek News" (https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.greeknewsonline.com%2Fst-helena-the-first-archaeologist%2F%3Futm_source%3Dfeedburner%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_campaign%3DFeed%253A%2520greeknewsonline%252FJhrp%2520(Greek%2520News)%26fbclid%3DIwAR0f_wFDnOnnzIYexJareNyFt59AXjj5ozJuXVqfieU0wkiurQXL_zbtDnc&h=AT2IN-69Ch-nk1X0xBVmn1AQHSV38H91b8qVqcPj_owMN8AnAC27YcBeZxFqErKBBzOhIh0molLvgXvOycY_QyYn0uFykh2MAhbR_297gTqIK819WWasamE1OI46cIGxKtOgXyuqWHRs-mfhuqpT&__tn__=-UK-R&c[0]=AT2_ikFTzCFJ3pjBaHqeUUBlzLggLbLfUP4V1fZYxzE8jg6eZStzElfmA61KDXF3V2xA2kDXJJDKMpAEOjOUmUot7FcWj00sHSqgvejtnHgGy5tpQ-NdE_4k_08Yk06KFjAXvLwTCEGtWPqD2a4Na7dy9A) and finally, on "Queens Gazette (https://www.qgazette.com/articles/st-helena-the-first-archaeologist/?fbclid=IwAR2_T44xs2PWW_QyIdq8C4XDH4zbLv1LCNIhxtmYLit57W40YCqybCnbHgk)", all in 2021, a few weeks after Sts Constantine and Helen's Festive Day on May 21.

Keywords: St Helen, St Helena, Constantine the Great, the elevation of the Holy Cross, Eusebius of Caesarea, Josephus. Cyril of Alexandria

On July 4, 1187, Ayyubid Muslim forces under the leadership of Saladin captured the True Cross from the Christian army at Hattin in the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. The loss of the Cross was lamented throughout Christendom, prompting the chronicler Rigord to claim that children born that year had fewer teeth than normal, and allegedly causing Pope Urban III to die from shock when he heard the news. According to Christian tradition, the True Cross had been discovered in the Jerusalem in 326 by Helena, mother of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great. Constantine, in turn, was famous for building the first Church of the Holy Sepulchre—the destination of countless pilgrims and crusaders. By the early twelfth century, Welsh and English legends about these two Romans claimed that they were British by birth and inheritance. This paper examines the evolution of these legends during the Angevin period. In the decade or so following Hattin and the Third Crusade (1189-92), Angevin depictions of Helena and Constantine emphasized their Britishness as an inherent part of their contributions to Jerusalem’s Christian landscape. By appropriating England’s Romano-British past and its historical and mythical connections to the Holy Land, Angevin authors constructed an idealized model of a Christian, English ruler who would free the Holy Land from the stranglehold of pagans, Jews, and Muslims. Ultimately, this paper argues, in the decade after the failures of the Third Crusade, these authors created a reassuring vision of a successful crusading English king.

This chapter examines
the traditions of queenship in Mercia, an Anglo- Saxon
kingdom, and during the Isaurian dynasty in Constantinople,
and the circumstances under which the status and power of
the queen increased to never- before- seen levels. Although
Irene of Byzantium (ca. 752– 803) and Cynethryth of Mercia
(d. after 798) inherited very different traditions, the similar
needs of their dynasties allowed them to produce similar
articulations of queenly power.