Happy Birthday Jamaica! The end of colonialism

"In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue." And, for the next 450+ years, Western Europeans accumulated, at one time or another, dominion over the vast majority of land and peoples of the earth. Today is the 50th anniversary of the end of British colonial rule in Jamaica. As such, it is a fitting occasion for a brief discussion of one of the major international themes of the 1960s – the end of political colonialism.

By the 19th Century, the focus of colonial expansion had shifted from the Americas to Africa and Asia.  The British consolidated their hold on the Indian subcontinent, while dividing up Polynesia, Micronesia, the Middle East, Africa and parts of the Far East, mainly with France.  By the beginning of World War I, colonies belonging to England, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and Italy could be found throughout the world.  In 1922, Great Britain, with its roughly 43 million citizens, controlled almost a quarter of the land area of the Earth, with a total population of more that 450 million people – 20% of the world’s inhabitants. 

India Independence Day celebration- August 15, 1947

The Versailles Treaty that ended World War I, with its Wilsonian emphasis on political self-determination, was probably the real beginning of the end, philosophically, for 19th Century colonialism.  World War II certainly marked the start of its decline in fact.  The late 1940s saw the British depart from India (“the jewel in the crown”) in 1947, and from Palestine in 1948.  The pace picked up rapidly, sometimes spurred by revolutionary/terrorist movements (such as Palestine and French Algeria), but more often by peaceful withdrawal motivated by financial exhaustion, political agitation at home, and the growing international stigma associated with the system. 

 With apologies to Jamaica, let's use Africa as a convenient historical example.  Of the roughly 50 African colonies formerly controlled by European powers, almost 2/3s of them achieved their independence in the 1960s (more than half of those in 1960 alone).  The four African colonies that were liberated in 1962 were:

Rwanda, former Belgian colony, on July 1, 1962
Burundi, former Belgian colony, on July 1, 1962
Algeria, former French colony, on July 1, 1962
Uganda, former British colony, on October 9, 1962

While many of these new nations achieved stability, the avalanche of independence that swept along the others left many without the political background and infrastructure necessary for effective self-governance.   Adding to that unpreparedness was the economic chaos frequently caused by the abrupt separation from their former colonial systems.  Also, in many cases, the new nations merely mirrored the administrative units established by the controlling power and did not actually reflect the ethic divisions upon which true nationality-based sovereignty could grow.  The resulting politically and economic instability contributed to and, as we will see later in the decade, became part of another of the major themes of the 1960s, the Cold War.

Goodbye, Norma Jeane

Fifty years ago today, on August 5, 1962, Marilyn Monroe, perhaps the ultimate sex symbol of all times, was found dead in her home from an overdose of barbiturates.  She was only 36.  

The circumstances of her death are one of the recurring fields for conspiracy theory.  An FBI file, which was disclosed in 2006, contained a report which speculated that then Attorney General Robert Kennedy had been having an affair with Monroe and that he promised to leave his wife and marry her.  According to the report, when Monroe decided that Kennedy had no intention of doing so, she threatened to make the affair public.  Since she had a history of publicity-seeking suicide attempts, she was allegedly urged to do so again, but this time she was allowed to die.  Not only Robert Kennedy, but actor Peter Lawford, Monroe’s psychiatrist, and others were also named as conspirators.  The report notes that the source of the story was unknown and the accuracy could not be authenticated.  This is only one of the many theories that add a provocative twist to this sad chapter.

As we’ve observed before in this blog, Monroe’s story really belongs mostly to the 1950s.  By 1962, she had developed the reputation as difficult to work with and unreliable, and only two of her movies were released after 1959.  Her importance to the story of the 1960s, aside from the historical significance of her death, was as a transitional symbol.  From the conservative, “Ozzie and Harriet” 1950s to the sexual revolution, “Love the One You’re With” of the end of the 1960s, Marilyn Monroe’s none-too-subtle sexuality clearly represents an important intermediate step. 

Bon appétit!

Julia Child was possibly the world’s most recognized chef.  She is unquestionably the most satirized, with her flair, her pearls, her distinctive voice, and her iconic “bon appétit!.  She is one of the minor but important personalities of 1960s culture.

Julia’s rise to fame started with the publication of Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 1961, a book she wrote with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle and which was intended to make French cuisine accessible to the everyday cook.  Her television career actually began on July 26, 1962, with an appearance on a book review show on Boston’s fledgling public television station, WGBH.  During that broadcast, she demonstrated how to cook an omelette.  The segment was so well received that it led to her own show, “The French Chef”, which premiered on February 11, 1963.  The show ran for ten years, and was followed by a number of other series and specials over almost forty years.  It is probably no exaggeration that Julia Child is the mother of modern cooking television.

 

One of the many interesting tidbits about this extraordinary lady was her service in World War II.  After being rejected by the army and navy because she was too tall (6’ 2”), she joined the Office of Strategic Services – the predecessor of the modern CIA.  Her mostly clerical service with the OSS included working directly with its legendary chief, Gen. Bill Donovan and, later, "registering, cataloging and channeling a great volume of highly classified communications" for the OSS's clandestine stations in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in the Indian Ocean.

If you like to cook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking is a joy to use with its step-by-step instructions.  Be warned, however, that its liberal use of butter certainly doesn’t meet modern standards for healthy eating.  Also, Meryl Streep’s portrayal of Julia in Julie and Julia is a lot of fun if you’re looking for an entertaining way to learn more about this remarkable character.  Finally, if you’re in Washington and want to get a sense for Julia, or just pay homage, her kitchen has been preserved in the Smithsonian American History Museum.

Starting a rock and roll avalanche

You get off the London Underground at the Oxford Circus station in the middle of London.  It’s past dinner time but still light.  You wander east on the right side of Oxford Street, heading to your hotel in the general direction of the British Museum. It's a warm summer evening - a Thursday.  Three blocks from the tube, you hear the blues song “Baby What’s Wrong" through the open door of a club just in front of you.  It's been a long day of sightseeing, and you need a break and a pint, so you make one of those fateful decisions people make every day without realizing it.  You follow the music inside.

The club's called The Marquee, and it's smokey and not very large or glamorous.  You sit down at the worn English pub table and order.  The cute cockney waitress casually mentions that the band’s on its third number, which shifts your attention to the show. Crammed on the relatively small stage are six young men - one energetic singer, three guitarists, one drummer and one on piano.   They're slightly scruffy but really good, as they run through another fifteen songs that include Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley's, and other recent rock and roll hits, although there's a Muddy Waters-bluesy feel that sometimes sneaks through. An hour later, after your second pint, it looks like the band’s set is about to wrap up.  Even though the music is REALLY good, you're tired and head out for your hotel.

Jones

Richards and Jagger

The date is July 12, 1962 and, while you didn’t realize it, you were a witness to one of the great moments in musical history – the first live performance of the Rolling Stones.  That night they were billed as "The Rollin' Stones".  On stage were Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones (guitar), Ian  Stewart (piano), and Dick Taylor (bass) and Tony Chapman (drums). Jones and Stewart wanted to play Chicago blues, but were agreeable to the Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley songs of Jagger and Richards.  Fifty years later, Jagger and Richards are still playing together, even though they haven't always been on speaking terms.

Stewart

Chapman

Taylor

The history of the 1960s is necessarily full of both events that were obviously significant at the time, and events, like the Stones' gig at The Marquee, that were insignificant at the time and only become historic because of what happened afterward.  Still, wouldn't you like to have been our imaginary tourist on Oxford Circus?

I couldn’t see the Olympics live?

Telstar I

No, there were no live overseas broadcasts before the 1960s.  Today we take for granted the pioneering technology that was one of the hallmarks of this remarkable decade. 

On July 11, 1962, Telstar 1, the world’s first private communications satellite, relayed the first television pictures through space — a non-public transmission of a flag outside the satellite earth station in Andover, Maine.  It had been launched the day before.  On July 23, 1962, it relayed the first publicly available live transatlantic television signal – a  broadcast featuring CBS's Walter Cronkite and NBC's Chet Huntley in New York, and the BBC's Richard Dimbleby in Brussels. The first pictures were the Statue of Liberty in New York and the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Walter Cronkite

Thor-Delta rocket launch

 Belonging to AT&T, the original Telstar was part of a multi-national agreement between AT&T, Bell Telephone Laboratories, NASA, the British General Post Office, and the French National PTT (Post, Telegraph & Telecom Office) to develop experimental satellite communications over the Atlantic Ocean. Ironically, it was rendered inoperable only a few months later by high altitude nuclear weapons testing, but it remains in orbit to this day.

Campbell Soup? Really?

The first art-gallery exhibition of pop art on the West Coast opened on July 9, 1962 in the Ferus Gallery of Los Angeles.  It featured a one-man show by Andy Warhol, who was a leading figure in the pop art movement. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity culture and advertisement that flourished by the 1960s. 

Andy Warhol

Pop art is a movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States.  It employs aspects of mass culture, such as advertising, comic books and mundane cultural objects, emphasizing the banal or kitschy elements of any given culture, most often through the use of irony. It is generally understood to be a reaction to the ideas of abstract expressionism – the popular as opposed to elitist culture in art. It arguably reached its height of popularity in the mid 1960s.

“You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve?”

On July 5, 1962, noble laureate William Faulkner died of a heart attack at age 64.  Faulkner only became famous after receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature n 1949. He won two Pulitzer Prizes – in 1954 for A Fable and again in 1962 for his last novel, The Reivers.  His significance to the history of the 1960s is primarily as a milestone in the passing of a literary generation that included Earnest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald.  

Although he wrote his first novel in 1925, his income in the 1930s and ‘40s came primarily from screenwriting.  One of his most famous was the 1944 film To Have and Have Not, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.  Based on the Hemingway novel of the same title, It contains one of the classic movie lines of all times:

 If you like old movies and have never seen this one, it's definitely worth watching.

Hemingway and Faulkner had something of a rivalry.  Faulkner once said about Hemingway:

"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary."

Hemingway, in his turn, said of Faulkner:

“Does he really think big emotions come from big words?”