History Lessons What Business And Management

Can Learn From The Great Leaders Of History

http://www.nd-warez.info/
 History Lessons
What business and management can
learn from the great leaders of history

Jonathan Gifford

http://www.nd-warez.info/
Copyright © 2010 Jonathan Gifford
First published in 2010 by Marshall Cavendish Business
An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International
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 CONTENTS

Introduction v

1. CHANGING THE MOOD 1

Bernard Montgomery 7
Elizabeth I of England 14
Nelson Mandela 21

2. BOLDNESS OF VISION 29
Abraham Lincoln 34
Pericles of Athens 43
Winston Churchill 51

3. DOING THE PLANNING 61

Napoleon Bonaparte 66
Lee Kuan Yew 76
Martin Luther King 84

4. LEADING FROM THE FRONT 93

Horatio Nelson 99
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk 106
Muhammad Ali 116

5. BRINGING PEOPLE WITH YOU 125

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand Périgord 131
George Washington 138
John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough 148

6. MAKING THINGS HAPPEN 159

Oliver Cromwell 164
George S. Patton 174
Zhou Enlai 182

iii
7. TAKING THE OFFENSIVE 191
Hannibal Barca 197
Saladin 207
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson 215

8. CREATING OPPORTUNITIES 225

Genghis Khan 231
Chiang Kai Shek 239
Marco Polo 250

Notes 259

Selected bibliography and further reading 263

iv
 INTRODUCTION

istory Lessons starts from the assumption that management, at

H any level, has a lot to do with leadership. An effective manager
needs a whole array of talents, and now that we have begun to take on
board the concept that people should not be managed at all, rather
that managers should ideally lead their teams to the successful
fulfilment of their tasks, so leadership skills for managers have come
to the fore.
This book is based on the premise that there is no one kind of
perfect manager or leader and that a search for the set of
characteristics and skills that represent the ideal leader is doomed
(happily) to failure. Leaders, like the rest of us, come in all different
shapes and sizes: meticulous and visionary; outgoing and retiring;
impulsive and cautious; subtle and direct. This book sets out to look
at what the great leaders from history have actually done—to see how
they behaved; to learn what we can from their actions. History Lessons
attempts to give readers enough history to provide some sort of
insight into the real issues faced by each of the leaders, and the context
in which they made their decisions. There is also, I hope, enough detail
about these leaders’ lives to give some idea of the kind of people that
they were; of the personal background and historical context that
helped to shape their personalities and influence the decisions that
they took and the plans of action that they devised. Leadership and
management are intensely human activities—the leaders of the past
were essentially no different from the leaders and managers of today.
It is from their entirely recognisable human qualities that we can learn
the most useful lessons.
The book does not attempt to set out any particular historical
theory about individual leaders: the historical facts presented here are
those that are generally accepted to be true (historical truth being,
inevitably, an elusive thing). Equally, the book does not follow any
particular management theory. In fact, History Lessons sets out to be

v
a theory-free zone—readers are invited to draw their own conclusions
and to find their own parallels between the decisions and actions of
these leaders from history and the issues that they face in their own
working lives. The one thing that every manager may take from these
accounts of the great leaders from the past and the more recent
present is, I hope, inspiration.
There are various things that leaders throughout the ages have all
done; various skills, abilities, and characteristics that they have all
demonstrated. The complete list of ‘things that great leaders do’ is no
doubt a long one. In History Lessons I have selected eight skills and
abilities that, in my opinion, represent many of the essential things that
any leader should be able to do and—ideally—should be very good at.
If you can glance down this list and say to yourself, “On reflection, I do
all of those things and, come to think of it, I do them rather well,” then
your future as a leader in your own field is secure. Many great leaders
in history have demonstrated only a few of these particular skills and
abilities, but this was still enough to secure their place in history.
The chosen list of things that leaders do and the characteristics that
they display is this:

• Changing the Mood

• Boldness of Vision
• Doing the Planning
• Leading from the Front
• Bringing People with You
• Making things Happen
• Taking the Offensive
• Creating Opportunities.

Changing the Mood is chosen to open the book, since this is one of the
hardest things that a new manager has to do, and also one of the most
subtle. There are no hard and fast rules for achieving this; no easy
method even for measuring the current mood and noting its
improvement. But when the mood is bad no organization can thrive,

vi
and is unlikely even to survive. When the mood is good, then things
really start to happen. The leader who manages the switch from the
former to the latter will have made a flying start. In some extreme
cases, managing such a change would represent a lifetime’s work
well spent.
Boldness of Vision probably gets enough press already: “It’s the vision
thing.” We tend to assume that only leaders of nation states and Chief
Executive Officers need to worry about vision, but, in fact, every
manager, at every level, needs to have a vision. Another word for vision
is just ‘strategy’: it informs everything that you do. If you start to do
things that do not cohere with your overall strategy—your vision—then
you will begin to fail, or at least to waste a great deal of time.
Doing the Planning is often underrated. There is an inevitable sense
in which a great deal of planning is an entirely obvious and routine
part of any manager’s work—you plan to deliver result A by time B.
But it is the hidden planning that often reveals the leaders of true
genius: they have their vision of what they want to achieve and they
labor quietly but diligently to plan how they will bring it
about. These are the leaders who suddenly astonish with the
dramatic results of their actions. Their results are not, actually,
astonishing—they have been carefully planned.
Leading from the Front is another of those apparently dramatic
management skills that, in fact, everyone should aspire to. There are
many examples of leaders whose selfless and conspicuous bravery has
propelled them to fame and glory: men and women who have
inspired huge devotion amongst their followers and who have led
people to achievements of which they would not have imagined
themselves capable. Leading from the front is not necessarily as
glamorous as this; in fact there are many deeply unglamorous and
unpleasant tasks that have to be done in any organization. The
manager who steps in occasionally and does one of these arduous
things is leading from the front and demonstrating a core aspect of
great leadership—that you do not expect your team to do things that
you are not prepared to do yourself. There is another sense to the

vii
notion of leading from the front: people lead from the front when
they simply stick to their principles; when they insist on doing
what seems right to them in the face of all opposition. This is just as
brave (and sometimes just as foolhardy) as leading troops into
enemy fire.
Bringing People with You is another potentially elusive ‘must have’
for managers. You can tell people what to do; indeed, you can scream
at them until you are blue in the face (I have seen this done on many
occasions, in many different and sometimes imaginative ways) and
they will not budge. And, indeed, why should they? What, as they
rightly say (or mutter), is in it for them? Great leaders are able both to
inspire and to create a substantial common interest: we are all in this
together; your success is my success. Great leaders also recognize the
rights and expectations of others; they are the great diplomats of the
world and the antitheses of the great dictators.
Making Things Happen is a less elusive skill. For many people, this
is the very essence of leadership—a leader can almost be defined by his
or her ability to make things happen: to get people to do things that
they would not have done without the leader’s inspiration and
guidance; to change the world around them. But making things
happen can be a bit one-dimensional. Some of the outstanding
movers and shakers of history have not been, in the broadest sense, the
truly greatest leaders. Their psychological make-up sometimes makes
them constitutionally unable not to make things happen—they see
the world as a series of errors crying out to be corrected; a collection
of other people’s messes begging to be tidied up. They tend to be a bit
too certain that everything would go to hell in a hand cart without
their personal intervention. Sometimes they are right, but the greatest
leaders combine this characteristic with several of the other, more
subtle leadership skills.
Taking the Offensive is one of those actions that can sort the men
from the boys and the women from the girls. It is arduous and potentially
dangerous and very often it would be much less painful simply to put up
with things as they are; to hunker down in our foxholes and try to cope

viii
with what the opposition is throwing at us. But no really great leader
will allow the opposition to keep him or her permanently on the
defensive, nor will they accept that things are simply as they are and can
never be changed. Taking the offensive is one of the many leadership
abilities that are most clearly demonstrated in the military world—in
the world of physical confrontation—but that is in fact needed in every
field of human endeavor. The manager who takes the offensive
against any apparently intractable problem in their organization is
demonstrating the same leadership skills as the battle commander who
takes the fight to an apparently invincible enemy and wins an audacious
victory against all odds. Some people also take the offensive not in
organizational but in personal terms. The individual who stands up for
change in the face of ingrained and established custom and practice is as
daring as the most glamorous cavalry commander.
Finally, Creating Opportunities is perhaps one of the most subtle
of the arts of management and leadership; a kind of making your own
luck. Funnily enough, the end result—the apparently surprising run
of good results; the optimism that begins to flow through the
organization; the dawning of a golden era in which everything seems
to go right for your team—stems precisely from your having
successfully demonstrated all (or most) of the key leadership
attributes set out in this particular list. If you have created the right
mood in your organization, set out your vision and done your
planning; if you are leading from the front and bringing your people
with you in other ways; if you are making things happen and are
taking the offensive, then, strange as it may seem, your luck will
improve. You will find that you have set up opportunities that your
team can now happily seize upon. You are now, thanks to all of your
diligent preparation, magically in the right place at the right time. The
end result will (by definition) be a team effort—your leadership skills
will have created the conditions and the environment in which success
can be achieved by everyone in the organization. Your team begin to
bring successes to your door; unexpected and unplanned-for
opportunities present themselves.

ix
 
Choosing great leaders from history is an inevitably contentious
matter. Many of the leaders in History Lessons are included because
they would be expected to feature on anybody’s list of ‘great leaders’:
Hannibal and Napoleon; Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill;
Pericles of Athens and Nelson Mandela. Several leaders are chosen
from the great events of recent history; from World War II and from
the great ideological and political struggles in the Far East that
preceded and followed that conflict. The twentieth century is
over-represented as a result, but for the (I hope) justifiable reason
that this time of global change and violent upheaval is still very
recent history, and that the scale of the struggle demanded that people
who might otherwise have led quite mundane lives, and to whom
we can very easily relate, were suddenly called upon to make
the most difficult leadership decisions in the most desperate of
circumstances.
There is an inevitable bias towards empire-builders and generals.
Most of recorded history, sadly, pays little or no attention to the great
educators, the great merchants, or the great business leaders of the
day. There are not enough female leaders included in this book. There
has been an attempt to include people who have had great influence
on people’s lives without being leaders in quite the normal sense:
people who have inspired others, changed their point of view, or set
them off in new directions, rather than having led or directed them:
Marco Polo; Talleyrand; Martin Luther King; Elizabeth Garret
Anderson; Muhammad Ali.
Finally, there has been an attempt—doomed, sadly, to failure—to
break out of the straightjacket of a Western perspective. Great leaders
of the East have been included to remind us in the west that there have
always been great civilizations—and great leaders—south and east of
the Mediterranean. There are huge omissions that it is beyond the
scope of this book to address: many great nations and cultures have
no leaders included here to represent them.

x
 1
changing
the mood
 ne of the most significant, and difficult, tasks that can face a new
O manager is to change the mood of their team or organization. It
could be argued that this is always a job that needs to be done, since
the mood before your arrival is not your mood, just as the overall
culture of the organization is not yet your culture. But in many cases
the situation is more urgent, or significant, than that.
This can take many forms; in a results-driven organization it is
likely to mean that people have stopped believing that they can
succeed. There is some insurmountable obstacle in the way: the
product is not right; there is not enough marketing support; the
competition are too clever; the machines are too slow; the buyers have
bought the wrong merchandise; suppliers keep letting you down;
senior management don’t know what they are doing; the current
economic climate makes success impossible; the targets are too high;
the bonuses are too low; the team can’t cope with the workload;
nobody has any back-up. It’s just not working.
In a service organization the bad mood can take many forms, but
it amounts to a similar thing: the team don’t feel that they have to put
themselves out; they’re not paid to be nice to people; customers are
ridiculously demanding; there are too many customers; it’s not
possible to keep everybody happy all of the time; this is somebody
else’s job not theirs; it can wait; it doesn’t matter.
In extreme cases, genuinely bad conventions take hold. Print workers
on Fleet Street newspapers in the bad old days became accustomed to
‘Spanish practices’. Management, desperate to get newspapers out on
time, would do anything to avoid a stoppage. A complete culture of
abuse became the norm: phantom casual workers signed on as
M. Mouse and receiving a shift payment; money changed hands in
brown envelopes to fix a mysterious problem with the presses; people
did a brisk trade in counterfeit goods from lockers that ‘custom and
practice’ dictated should never be inspected. The worst cases have a
parallel with accusations of institutional racism: the organizations
concerned have become so infected with a particular attitude that they
no longer even recognize that they have a problem.

3
 Changing the mood in cases like this is a very tough job, but it can
be done. The one certainty is that the mood will not be changed by
confrontation, by telling people that this will all change—or else. The
three leaders from history in this section demonstrate three different
approaches to the problem.


The most direct example is probably that of Lieutenant-General
Bernard Montgomery, who took over the British Eighth Army in
North Africa following a series of defeats by the brilliant German tank
commander, Erwin Rommell. Eighth Army command had lost faith in
their ability to defeat Rommel. There were elaborate plans for
defending against Rommel’s next attack, and a whole drawer-full of
fall-back positions; there were no plans for driving Rommel out of
North Africa. Montgomery was not Churchill’s first choice for the
command; Churchill was persuaded to offer the job to Montgomery
when his predecessor was shot down on an internal flight across the
Libyan desert.
Montgomery sized up the situation with astonishing speed and
took immediate control. In a classic speech he electrified his staff with
his clear vision of what they would do next and how they would
ultimately win. An army that was convinced of its own worth but
baffled by its failures against Rommel could suddenly believe in itself
again. There was a clear plan of action and infectious self-confidence.
“This Rommel chap is definitely a nuisance, so we will hit him a crack
and be done with him,” said Montgomery. The previous command
had become so spooked by Rommel that the army was forbidden to
mention his name; the Commander in Chief had issued an order
insisting that Rommel be referred to as “the enemy” or “the Germans,”
signing off (and rather undermining his position) by saying, “PS. I
am not jealous of Rommel.”1
The transformation in mood achieved by Montgomery in a matter
of days was startling. Winston Churchill, visiting the army a week or

4
so after Montgomery’s arrival, could hardly believe the change. Eighth
Army stopped Rommel in his tracks for the first time with a
well-prepared defensive line and then built up its forces, with
American aid, until the final complete defeat of Rommel’s Afrikakorps
at the Second Battle of El Alamein. The Axis forces were driven out of
North Africa.
A rather different kind of mood-change in a very different era was
achieved by Queen Elizabeth I of England in the sixteenth century. She
began her reign with the nation embroiled in uncertainty and fear.
Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII, had broken with the Church of Rome
and created the Church of England; the new Protestant religion had
taken firm hold in England, but a substantial minority of subjects held
to their Catholic faith. Elizabeth’s sister, Queen Mary, had attempted to
turn back the clock to Roman Catholicism and to terrify her Protestant
subjects out of their new faith by burning them as heretics. After her
death, England faced the real prospect of invasion from Spain: Queen
Mary had married King Philip of Spain, who could now argue that he
had a claim to the English throne. Fear of Catholicism and fear of the
Catholic enemy went hand in hand to create a dangerous atmosphere
of suspicion and paranoia. Elizabeth, herself a Protestant, introduced
reforms that would establish the Protestant faith in England, but also
relaxed punishments for non-conformity and showed, by personal
example, that her Catholic subjects were not to be demonized or
excluded. In these relatively un-dramatic ways—forcing clear but
moderate legislation through in the face of opposition from the
Bishops—Elizabeth re-introduced an atmosphere of tolerance that
enabled England to avoid the religious wars that plagued the continent
for years to come. After the apparently miraculous defeat of the
Spanish Armada, she was also able to engender a more general mood
of success within the country; a feeling that to be English now
amounted to something; that the country was secure and even
flourishing. There was great exuberance in the arts, especially in
literature, with playwrights such as Shakespeare, Marlow, and Johnson
writing some of the finest works of the English theatre.

5
 Nelson Mandela is another kind of mood-changer altogether. To
understand Mandela’s achievement it is necessary to remember that
during the apartheid period and the civil unrest that it created, Nelson
Mandela was clearly perceived to be a terrorist and a communist,
apparently in league with foreign powers, determined to bring down
the South African state and install a black communist regime that
would be implacably hostile to whites. Even when a move towards a
democratic settlement seemed possible, many white South Africans
believed that a black majority government would lead to persecution
of the white minority. Mandela’s Truth and Reconciliation
Commission took much of the poison out of the bitter recriminations
that both sides had stored up against the other, but in a real sense it
was simply the personality of Mandela himself that provided the cure;
calm, smiling, dignified, inclusive. White South Africans realized
slowly that they were no longer the reviled outsiders that they had
feared they would become. They were all still South African. There
was a new mood in the country.

6
 bernard montgomery
(1887–1986)
The war in North Africa had begun well for Britain. Italy had entered
the war in June 1940 as an ally of Germany and had invaded Egypt
from Italian Libya, in the hope of capturing the Suez Canal. In
November 1941, Commonwealth forces successfully pushed Italian
forces out of Egypt, overrunning most of Libya and capturing 113,000
Italian prisoners. Before the Commonwealth troops could drive the
Italian army out of North Africa, they were diverted to defend Greece.
This allowed time for Hitler to support his ally, Mussolini, by
despatching the German Afrikakorps to North Africa, commanded by
Erwin Rommel.
Rommel quickly drove the British out of Libya, striking too quickly
to allow the build-up of defensive positions, despite his inferior
strength. When one of his commanders protested that he could not
continue the drive forward because his vehicles were in poor
condition, Rommel made the marvellous, Napoleonic remark that,
“One cannot permit unique opportunities to slip by for the sake of
such trifles.”
Rommel successfully outflanked all of the Allied forces in North
Africa. He swept past the strategic port of Tobruk, but failed to trap
the bulk of the British Commonwealth Western Desert Force as he
had hoped. Rommel then laid siege to Tobruk. He was beginning to
run rings around the British and Commonwealth forces in North
Africa. Churchill planned to replace the Commander in Chief of the
Western Desert Force, Auchinleck, with General Alexander. His own
choice to head up Eighth Army itself was Lieutenant-General William
Gott; a large and ebullient fighter, loved by his soldiers and an
inspiring leader at battalion or divisional level. Gott’s plane was shot
down on take-off as he was making an internal flight across the desert
and he was killed along with 14 other passengers. With Gott’s death,
and against Churchill’s instincts, the Chief of Staff, Alan Brooke,

7
recommended Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery for the job.
Churchill reluctantly agreed: Montgomery was self-righteous,
high-handed, conceited, and boastful. As it turned out, Montgomery
was precisely the right man for the job. In many ways, Montgomery
was a great general. In his later career as Field Marshall, “Monty” failed
to rise to the statesmanlike levels of diplomacy needed for truly
successful high command. But in North Africa, he was to turn a
dispirited army, expecting to fail, into a successful unit that would
turn the tide of the war in the Allies’ favour.


The British made two attempts to relieve Tobruk, both of which were
costly failures. Rommel was hugely outnumbered, but he neatly avoided
an attempt to encircle him, concentrated his forces, and launched a
counter-attack. He was stopped only just short of Egypt. Had the Axis
forces reached Egypt, the effects on the Allied war effort would have
been devastating: supplies that could no longer be shipped through the
Suez Canal would have to make the slow journey around South Africa’s
Cape of Good Hope. German access to the oilfields of the Middle East
could have had an even more drastic effect on the balance of power.
Rommel was temporarily forced to retreat to his defensive lines but
soon received vital supplies and new tanks; he won a dramatic victory
in the Battle of Gazala, west of Tobruk. The British began a headlong
retreat to the east to avoid being cut off—known to British
Tommies as the ‘Gazala Gallop’. Only Tobruk stood between Rommel
and Egypt; after a fierce onslaught, the city surrendered. Its
33,000 defenders were all captured: only after the devastating fall of
Singapore to the Japanese earlier in the same year had more British
Commonwealth troops been captured in a single defeat. It was a
disaster. Rommel, with his inferior forces, had completely out-
maneuvered the British.
Rommel’s new drive to the East was held up at El Alamein, a key
defensive position on the North African coast. El Alamein controlled

8
a bottle-neck through which the Axis forces would have to pass in
order to reach Egypt. In the first battle of El Alamein—a bitterly
fought stalemate—the Eighth Army lost 13,000 men to Rommel’s
7,000, though Rommel could afford the losses less than the British.
Both sides dug in. The Eighth Army was frustrated and dispirited.
Morale was at an all-time low.
Churchill replaced Auchinleck with General Alexander, and,
reluctantly, he appointed Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery
to the key task of commanding the Eighth Army, a role that Auchinleck
had taken on in addition to his role of Commander-in-Chief.
Montgomery took over command immediately on his arrival and
earlier than Auchinleck had planned, much to the latter’s annoyance.
But Montgomery had no time to lose. There was much to be done. He
called his senior staff to a meeting in their desert headquarters:

“I want first of all to introduce myself to you. You do not know me.
I do not know you. But we have got to work together; therefore we
must understand each other and we must have confidence in one
another. I have only been here a few hours. But from what I have
seen and heard since I arrived I am prepared to say, here and now,
that I have confidence in you. We will then work together as a team;
and together we will gain the confidence of this great army and
go forward to final victory in South Africa.
“I believe that one of the first duties of a Commander is to create
what I call ‘atmosphere’; and in that atmosphere, his staff,
subordinate commanders and troops will live and work and fight.
I do not like the general atmosphere I find here. It is an atmosphere
of doubt, of looking back to select the next place to which to
withdraw, of loss of confidence in our ability to defeat Rommel,
of desperate defence measures by reserves in preparing positions
in Cairo and the Delta. All that must cease. Let us have a
new atmosphere.
“The defence of Egypt lies here at Alamein […] What is the point
of digging trenches in the Delta. It is quite useless; if we lose this

9
 position we lose Egypt; all the fighting troops in the Delta must
come here at once, and will. Here we will stand and fight; there will
be no further withdrawal. I have ordered that all plans and
instructions dealing with further withdrawal are to be burned, and
at once. We will stand and fight here. If we can’t stay here alive, then
let us stay here dead.
“I want to impress on everyone that the bad times are over. Fresh
divisions from the UK are now arriving in Egypt, together with
ample reinforcements for our present divisions. We have 300 to 400
new Sherman tanks coming and these are actually being unloaded
at Suez now. Our mandate from the Prime Minister is to destroy the
Axis forces in North Africa; I have seen it written on half a sheet of
notepaper. And it will be done. If anyone here thinks it can’t be
done, let him go at once; I don’t want any doubters in this party.
It can be done, and it will be done; beyond any possibility
of doubt.
“Now I understand that Rommel is expected to attack at any
moment. Excellent. Let him attack. I would sooner it didn’t come
for a week, just to give me time to sort things out. If we have two
weeks to prepare we will be sitting pretty; Rommel can attack as
soon as he likes, after that, and I hope he does.
“Meanwhile, we ourselves will start to plan a great offensive; it
will be the beginning of a campaign which will hit Rommel and his
Army for six right out of Africa […] What I have done is to get over
to you the atmosphere in which we will now work and fight; you
must see that that atmosphere permeates right down through the
Eighth Army to the most junior private soldier. All the soldiers must
know what is wanted; when they see it coming to pass there will be
a surge of confidence throughout the army. I ask you to give me
your confidence and to have faith that what I have said will come
to pass.
“There is much work to be done. The orders I have given about
no further withdrawal will mean a complete change in the layout
of our dispositions; also that we must begin to prepare for our great

10
 offensive […] The great point to remember is that we are going to
finish with this chap Rommel once and for all. It will be quite easy.
There is no doubt about it. He is definitely a nuisance.Therefore we
will hit him a crack and finish with him.”2

Montgomery’s speech is quoted here nearly in full, partly because it is

not widely available and partly because it is a classic of its kind. If the
tone of voice is a little contrived—even for the 1940s—this was not
missed by his audience. One of Montgomery’s Intelligence Officers
described the speech as “straight out of school speech day”—but he
went on to add that the effect was one of “exhilaration.” Other officers
talked of the “electrifying” effect of Montgomery’s speech; about his
“professionalism.” One officer said,“Monty absolutely deserved all the
credit he could get for the way he changed us. I mean, we were
different people. We suddenly had a spring in our step.”3
Montgomery’s great assets were his meticulous planning and his
immense (and potentially infuriating) self-confidence. His analysis of
the situation at Alamein was perfect: the British armored Corps had
been, “[…] too brave. They always attack.” German tanks would take
shelter behind their anti-tank guns, which had a longer range than
the guns of the British tanks; once the anti-tank guns had done their
damage, the superior German tanks would join the battle and
Rommel could use his cavalryman’s genius to the full. As a result, the
British had fought a series of losing cavalry engagements and Army
headquarters had developed a system of ever-more complicated
defensive arrangements. The whole system prevented any
concentration of force, either in attack or defence. Behind these
defensive/offensive screens was the ultimate defensive line, back near
the Nile Delta. This was all about to change, with troops being pulled
up from the Delta to reinforce the position at El Alamein.
Montgomery pulled all of the troops up forward, to the strong
defensive position offered by the ridge of Alam El Halfa, southeast
of El Alamein. Here he dug in not only his anti-tank guns but the
tanks themselves, using them as stationary gun emplacements.

11
Montgomery’s plan was to let Rommel attack Alam El Halfa—indeed
to encourage him to do so—while building up his forces for a strong
counter-attack, using the American-supplied, powerful Sherman
tanks that were on their way to North Africa (though not quite so
soon as Montgomery had implied in his speech). It was a good plan,
well-conceived and well-thought-through. The effect on the Eighth
Army of having such a plan laid out clearly before them was,
indeed, electrifying.
Montgomery had taken command on August 13th. Six days later,
Winston Churchill paid the army a visit. He was astounded. He talked
of, “[…] a complete change of atmosphere […] The highest alacrity
and activity prevailed. Positions are everywhere being strengthened
and extended, forces are being sorted out and regrouped in solid
units.”4 He was impressed by the speed with which Montgomery had
grasped the essentials of the situation, with the clarity of his plan, and
by the way his self-confidence had infected the whole army. Churchill
sensed what he and Britain so desperately needed: a victory.
Rommel did launch his expected attack. Nothing illustrates
Montgomery’s confidence in his planning more graphically than the
fact that, when woken by his Chief of Staff to be told that Rommel
was attacking, Montgomery lifted his head from the pillow, muttered,
“Excellent, excellent,”—and went back to sleep.5
Rommel’s forces, attacking at night under a full moon, were spotted
by the RAF and bombed; they were also harassed by British armored
units with instructions to inflict maximum damage and then retreat.
These flanking attacks also forced the German forces to turn north
towards the prepared defences of Alam el Halfa. The panzers broke
through to the lines in the evening.
The combined artillery of the dug-in anti-tank guns and tanks held
off the German attack. There was a real danger that individual
commanders would launch counter-attacks—which is what Rommel
wanted most of all—but Montgomery had drummed the plan into his
troops. Rommel was horrified when the British did not move out to
meet him. “The swine isn’t attacking,” he complained. Rommel was

12
being forced to fight on ground chosen by the British, instead of facing
brave but badly organized attacks by armored units that he could
outmaneuver and outgun. Rommel attacked again next day but could
make no headway; he withdrew. The German high-command berated
Rommel for not pursuing the offensive. The official reasons given for
this were shortage of petrol, Allied air superiority, and the lack of an
element of surprise. In fact, Rommel knew that he had been
outmaneuvered—in a strategic sense. Rommel, the master of
maneuver, had been presented with a powerful defensive line that he
could not break through, outflank, or ignore.
Montgomery, in his turn, was criticized for not delivering a killer
blow against Rommel’s retreating forces. He bided his time while he
was reinforced with British Commonwealth forces and American
Sherman tanks. Germany, embattled on the Eastern Front with Russia,
was unable to resupply the Afrikakorps. Montgomery launched a huge
air and artillery bombardment and then drove wedges of armor
through Rommel’s lines, forcing a retreat to the west as far as Tunisia.
Victory in North Africa denied Axis forces access to the oil of the
Middle East and was the first major victory of World War II. Churchill,
with his usual ear for a telling phrase (but borrowing heavily, in this
case, from the French Napoleonic diplomat Charles Maurice de
Talleyrand), said, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of
the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” And he also said
(not quite accurately, but in homage to the turning point that victory
in North Africa represented), “Before Alamein, we never had a victory.
After Alamein, we never had a defeat.”

13
 elizabeth i of england
(1533–1603)
Elizabeth grew up in a time of great religious and political turmoil, in
an atmosphere of fear and in the constant shadow of violent death.
She proved to be one of life’s great survivors: her fierce intelligence,
strong will, and quick wits kept her alive when advisors to her sister,
Queen Mary, were recommending that Elizabeth’s execution was
essential for the stability of the kingdom. When she became the Queen
of England, she vowed to take “good advice and counsel” and was
determined to rule with the support of a broad consensus of the
English people. A religious settlement was the most pressing priority,
not least because of the impossibility of separating religion from both
national and international politics, and Elizabeth’s very first
Parliament was called upon to enact radical and far-reaching
legislation on religious matters. This made the Protestant faith the
established Church of England, with the monarch as its head, but
reduced the penalties for heresy, so that dissent or non-cooperation
were no longer such deadly matters.
Elizabeth successfully trod a middle line between her Catholic and
her more radical Protestant subjects. The sheer length of her reign
ensured that her essentially moderate approach prevailed, and resulted
in a great stabilization of the nation. The country’s successful, if partly
fortuitous, defeat of the mighty Spanish Armada created a sense of
national confidence. The English began to feel at ease with themselves
and to be proud of their achievements. There was a great flourishing
of the arts, especially in literature (Shakespeare, Marlow, Johnson,
Spencer) and a growing sense of having lived in a golden age.
Elizabeth saved England from the vicious religious divisions that
continued to plague neighbors such as France, and laid the
foundations for future prosperity and expansion.

14
 
Despite famously marrying six wives, Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII,
had only three children by these marriages: Mary, Elizabeth, and
Edward. Mary was the daughter of Henry’s first wife, Catherine of
Aragon, daughter of the King of Spain. Mary was raised (like Henry
himself) as a Catholic. Catherine gave birth to four other children,
who were either stillborn, or died soon after birth. When the Pope
declined to annul Henry’s marriage to Catherine, Henry decided to
form his own church and to allow his own divorce. A number of Acts
of Parliament were passed, recognizing Royal Supremacy over the
church. England had broken with Rome. Henry married Anne Boleyn,
who gave birth to Elizabeth, but failed to produce the desired-for
son and was executed. Henry’s third child, Edward, was born to his
third wife, Jane Seymour, who died less than two weeks later from
infection. On Henry’s death, Edward became England’s first
Protestant King at the age of nine, but was to die, aged only 15, of
tuberculosis. Catherine of Aragon’s daughter, Mary, became Queen
and rode into London with her younger sister, Elizabeth, amidst
cheering crowds.
Mary reinstated the Catholic Church and married Philip, heir to
the Spanish throne. She restored the heresy laws and set about burning
Protestants. A serious rebellion, led by Thomas Wyatt, hoped to put
Elizabeth on the throne in her place. The rebellion failed and Wyatt
was executed. The young Elizabeth was sent to the Tower of London,
protesting her innocence: under close questioning she failed to
provide her interrogators with any evidence of her direct involvement
in the plot. Mary’s advisers nevertheless argued that Elizabeth would
have to be executed to prevent future plots centered on her. In the
absence of hard evidence against her, and with the reluctance of the
Privy Council to see a Tudor Princess executed, Elizabeth was moved
from the Tower to house-arrest in Woodstock, Oxfordshire.

15
 It was in this atmosphere of fear and revolt that young Elizabeth
learned her lessons in power politics. She was only 20 years old when
she had been taken by barge to the forbidding Traitor’s Gate at the
Tower of London; she was 25 when she became Queen on her sister’s
death. Her illegitimacy in the eyes of the Catholic Church gave her
little option but to pursue her father’s break with Rome, and her
Protestant faith gave her every incentive.
Since the birth of Protestantism could be ascribed to the letter of
Martin Luther protesting about certain practices of the Catholic
Church in 1517—a mere 32 years before Elizabeth’s coronation—the
great majority of Elizabeth’s bishops were still, in effect, Catholic. Even
Henry VIII himself had been a practicing Catholic; he had simply
declared that he, and not the Pope, was the head of the Church in
England. Elizabeth set the tone for her administration by arresting two
of Queen Mary’s more aggressively Catholic bishops—both of whom
had taken an active part in the prosecution of Protestants. Both
worthies suffered nothing greater, however, than arrest.
In her first Parliament Elizabeth put forward the Act of Supremacy.
Her sister Mary had repealed their father’s legislation establishing the
monarch as head of the Church. Elizabeth’s Act established the
monarch as Supreme Governor of the Church. This proved a less
contentious title than “Supreme Head”, which had caused
consternation (and some amusement) among senior clerics, since it
was obvious from biblical authority that a mere woman could no
more be Head of the Church than she could, for example, be a
doctor—or indeed a priest. The bill was passed easily by the commons
but with difficulty in the Lords, where every bishop voted against the
bill. Once passed, however, the Act required anybody taking up an
official position in government or church to swear the Oath Of
Supremacy recognizing the Queen as head of all matters spiritual as
well as temporal, and renouncing all “foreign jurisdictions […] and
authorities.” Penalties for not swearing the oath were, however,
reduced. Under Henry, failure to swear had carried the death penalty.
Under Elizabeth, a first refusal could result in a fine and a second in

16
imprisonment. Only the third refusal would be treated as treason,
punishable by execution.
Elizabeth then proposed her Act of Uniformity, which compelled
the use of the Book of Common Prayer in church services, and made
attendance of church on Sundays compulsory, on pain of a fine of one
shilling—more than £10 in modern terms, a considerable sum for the
poor (money raised by these fines, ironically, was to be used to help
the poor). The Book of Common Prayer was toned down to remove
some of its more flagrantly anti-Catholic sentiments. References to
“The Bishop of Rome and his detestable enormities” were removed
and churchgoers were no longer required to pray for the conversion
of Roman Catholics, as well as for that of Jews and “infidels.” The Act
of Uniformity scraped through the House of Lords by three votes.
Again, every bishop voted against the Act.
For the rest of her reign, Elizabeth fought to ensure that her
Catholic subjects were not unnecessarily persecuted, though their
influence in public affairs inevitably declined. She continued
publically to associate with prominent Catholic families who had
opposed the Acts. She saw Catholic subjects who were supportive of
the monarchy as considerably less dangerous than more radical
Protestants, whose articles of faith tended against any form of superior
authority. Elizabeth’s approach to the fundamental and critical issue
of religion in English politics was firm, thorough, pragmatic, and
essentially fair.
After the passing of the Acts there was a virtual cull of bishops: three
were imprisoned for their flagrant support of Catholicism and every
bishop other than the Bishop of Llandaff (who had signed the Oath
of Supremacy) was removed from their bishopric and replaced with
men who accepted Elizabeth’s central position—even if, as was often
the case, their Protestantism was significantly more extreme than
her own.
The two other great crises of Elizabeth’s realm were the threats
posed by Mary, Queen of Scots and her allies, the French, and the
threat of a Spanish invasion.

17
 Mary, Queen of Scots’ grandmother was Henry VIII’s sister; her father
was James V of Scotland; her mother was from the powerful French
dynasty of the Dukes of Guise. The French constantly threatened to use
their alliance with Scotland as a platform for the invasion of England.
This threat was neutralized by a treaty with well-disposed Scottish lairds
that effectively ended the ‘Auld Alliance’ between Scotland and France.
Mary, Queen of Scots, was imprisoned.
Spain now began to threaten. England had begun increasingly to
side with the Dutch in their rebellion against Spanish rule (of the
Spanish Netherlands). Elizabeth’s favourite pirate, Sir Francis Drake,
had been pillaging Spanish colonial interests with the clear support of
his Queen. A Spanish plot to assassinate Elizabeth was uncovered (or
partly fabricated) by the spymaster Walsingham. Mary, Queen of Scots
was implicated and executed. Philip (who had not been a great
supporter of Mary, Queen of Scots, because of her links to his enemy,
France) decided for entirely unrelated reasons to invade England, the
throne of which had, after all, been left to him in the will of his late
wife, the other Mary, Elizabeth’s sister. The intrepid Drake burned
part of the Spanish fleet at Cadiz, delaying the invasion, but in
July 1588, the great Armada—130 ships carrying 8,000 sailors and
18,000 soldiers—sailed for England. The Armada planned to
rendezvous with a land army of 30,000 men in Flanders prior to
an invasion of England. At Tilbury, in the face of this terrifying
invasion, Elizabeth made her greatest speech to her troops and to
the nation:

“My loving people, We have been persuaded by some that are careful
of our safety, to take heed how we commit ourselves to armed
multitudes, for fear of treachery; but I assure you I do not desire to live
to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear. I have always
so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength
and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and
therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my
recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of

18
 the battle, to live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God,
and for my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood, even
in the dust.
“I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I
have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too,
and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe,
should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather
than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I
myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of
your virtues in the field.”

Drake’s fire-ships scattered the Armada from its anchorage off Calais
and a well-fought attack by the English drove the Armada off up the
east coast of England. The Spanish were forced to sail around the
north of the British Isles to reach the Atlantic and return to Spain:
fierce westerly storms wrecked some 24 Spanish ships on the coasts of
Ireland. More than a third of the great Armada failed to return
to Spain.
Elizabeth’s later reign was marked by increasing concern about
foreign Jesuit Catholic priests entering England from the Continent
and spreading sedition; repression of Catholics within English society
increased. Elizabeth was equally harsh on the Puritan wing of her
Protestant church. Many of her more extreme Protestant subjects had
seen the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity as a compromise—and
so, brilliantly, they were. Elizabeth’s great success was in establishing
some kind of structure—in this case, the Church of England—that
could find a middle ground of national support in the face of the
potentially hugely damaging forces of differing religious beliefs.
Despite her own firm Protestant faith she managed, unlike her sister,
Queen Mary, to avoid fanaticism. She viewed religious faith as
essentially a personal matter: if that faith strayed into the realm of
politics, then it had to be dealt with; if not, it could be left alone. Her
contemporary, Francis Bacon, the philosopher and statesman,
summed this up brilliantly:

19
 “Her Majesty, not liking to make windows into men's hearts and
secret thoughts, except the abundance of them did overflow into
overt express acts and affirmations, tempered her law so as it
restraineth only manifest disobedience.”

Though she outstayed her welcome to the point that there was a
sense of national relief at her eventual death (her later reign was
marred by unsuccessful minor wars, rising prices, and rising taxation,
not helped by poor harvests), Elizabeth’s long reign had given the
country stability and, most importantly, a sense of identity. Before
Elizabeth there was uncertainty as to whether the nation was Catholic
or Protestant; it had seemed entirely possible that the nation would
acquire a Spanish King (Philip) or a French/Scottish Queen (Mary,
Queen of Scots; next in line to the throne after the childless Elizabeth).
By the end of Elizabeth’s reign, the nation knew that it was Protestant,
but that the Church of England had proved to be a broad church
where many found continuity of religious observance. Dissenting
Catholics were, in general, not persecuted or pursued. More especially,
the nation knew that it was English: Shakespeare’s ‘History Plays’ can
be seen as a dramatic exploration of ‘Englishness’, stretching back to
medieval times and culminating with the Tudors. Elizabeth’s reign
had created a new national mood.

20
 nelson mandela
(b. 1918)
Nelson Mandela changed the mood of South Africa to an extent that
seems unbelievable, even with hindsight. For decades, black and white
South Africans had been embattled in an increasingly bitter conflict.
Civil war seemed increasingly likely—at times, South Africa seemed
already to be in a state of civil war. Nelson Mandela himself was
regarded as a violent terrorist leader, in league with foreign powers,
determined to overthrow the government of South Africa and to
install a black communist regime that was expected to be implacably
hostile to the white minority and their way of life. Even when a
democratic solution seemed possible, it was believed by most South
African whites that a black majority government would both ruin the
country and oppress the white minority. In reality, soon after Nelson
Mandela’s ANC party won a majority in South Africa’s first ever
multi-racial elections in 1994, making Nelson Mandela the President
of the Republic of South Africa, people began to come together.


Mandela, the son of a chieftain from Transkei, took a first degree by
correspondence course while working as an articled clerk at a law firm
and went on to study law. He joined the African National Congress
(ANC) in 1942. In 1948, the Afrikaner-dominated National Party won
the election and imposed a system of segregation—apartheid—of
people by race: white, black, colored, and Asian. The ‘race’ of all
citizens was shown on their passes. It was illegal to marry, or to have
sex with a person of another race. Committees sat to decide on the
appropriate classification of people whose race was difficult to
determine, sometimes splitting up families whose members were
assigned to different racial groups. Black people were declared to be no
longer citizens of South Africa, but of ten ‘homelands’ based on tribal

21
territories. They were allowed to vote only for the government of their
“homeland,” which was, in any case, only nominally independent of
the South African government: black people had been effectively
disenfranchised. Their dispersal to the ten supposedly autonomous
homelands ensured that the black majority in South Africa was
neutralized electorally.
Movement of black people was strictly controlled to prevent
migration to the mainly white cities, where the bulk of employment
was to be found. Black workers who wanted a job in ‘South Africa’
(outside of the homelands) required a work permit. They were not
allowed to bring their families to work in the cities, but lived in
male-only hostels, separated from their families for long periods. The
work permit covered only one area, typically a township. To be found
in a different area was to be arrested as an ‘illegal immigrant’ and
deported to one’s homeland.
Added to all of this was the indignity of the many measures of
‘petty-apartheid’—the racial segregation of trains, hospitals,
swimming pools, cinemas, parks, and beaches—and the realities of
second-class wages, education, and opportunities. The reality of
educational policy for blacks could not be more brutally spelled out
than it was by H.F. Verwoerd, Prime Minister of South Africa from
1958–1966, speaking in the debate on Bantu education in 1953:

“When I have control of Native education, I will reform it so that

Natives will be taught from childhood that equality with Europeans
is not for them […] (the Ministry) will know for what class of higher
education a Native is fitted, and whether he will have a chance in
life to use his knowledge.”6

In 1944 Mandela and others formed a Youth League of the ANC, calling
for non-violent protest to establish black self-determination. In 1950,
18 black workers were killed after a labor walk-out. In 1952, the ANC
set out to ask the government to repeal “six unjust laws,” promising a
campaign of civil disobedience led by volunteers, with Mandela as

22
Volunteer-in-Chief. The volunteers marched into townships without
permits; appeared on the streets after curfew; used whites-only train
carriages. Eventually Mandela and 21 other leaders were arrested under
the new Suppression of Communism Act: they were sentenced to nine
months hard labor, but suspended for two years—a relatively lenient
sentence. The judge determined that they were guilty of ‘statutory
communism’ (based on the notion that all protest must be
communist-inspired) which he admitted, however, had “nothing to do
with communism as it is commonly known.”7 Nevertheless, his
judgment required Mandela to resign from his leadership position
within the ANC and he was banned from appearing at public meetings.
In 1956 Mandela was arrested, along with the president of the ANC
and 150 others, and charged with treason. The Treason Trial dragged
on for five years, ending in 1961 with the acquittal of all the accused.
In 1960, a crowd of many thousands converged on a police station in
Sharpeville, provoking arrest for not carrying their pass books—a
deliberate act of civil disobedience. The crowd was buzzed by Sabre
jet fighters to try to panic them into dispersing; then Saracen armored
vehicles were lined up; then the police opened fire. The official death
toll was 69 dead, including eight women and ten children, with 180
injured. In the aftermath of the shootings, the ANC was banned.
It was clear that non-violent protest had run its course and failed.
The ANC, now an illegal organization, went underground. Mandela
formed the military arm of the ANC—Umkhonto we Sizwe or “Spear
of the Nation,” often abbreviated as MK—which began a campaign of
sabotage. Nelson traveled around Africa, seeking support, military
advice, and training. On his return he was arrested for leaving the
country illegally (black Africans were not allowed passports) and for
initiating a strike against the newly declared Republic of South Africa,
which had left the British Commonwealth following a referendum
from which blacks—some 70 percent of the population—had been
excluded. Mandela was sentenced to five years in jail. While serving
that sentence, he was linked to acts of sabotage and charged with high
treason, which carried the death sentence.

23
 In his statement from the dock at the opening of the defence
statement, Mandela admitted from the outset that he had helped to form
the MK military wing; that he had played a prominent role in its affairs
and that he had planned acts of sabotage. Mandela then eloquently
spelled out the background to his actions and his political philosophy.
The ANC had been banned, removing any lawful means of protest.
Violence had become inevitable because non-violent protest had been
met with new and increasingly harsh laws and, finally, with a massive
show of force.
Mandela’s actions had not been influenced by outside foreign
powers:

“I have done whatever I did, both as an individual and as a leader

of my people, because of my experience in South Africa and my
own proudly felt African background, and not because of what any
outsider might have said.”

Nor was he influenced by communism: the ANC had cooperated with

communists because they shared the common goal of bringing an end
to white supremacy, but the ANC had never advocated a revolutionary
change in the economic structure of the country, nor had it
condemned capitalist society. Mandela commented that, from his
reading, Marxists seemed to regard the parliamentary system as
undemocratic and reactionary: “On the contrary, I am an admirer of
such a system.”

“Our complaint is not that we are poor by comparison with people

in other countries, but that we are poor by comparison with white
people in our own country, and that we are prevented by
legislation from altering this imbalance.
“Above all, we want equal political rights, because without them
our disabilities will be permanent. I know this sounds revolutionary
to the whites in this country, because the majority of voters will be
Africans. This makes the white man fear democracy.

24
 “But this fear cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the only
solution which will guarantee racial harmony and freedom for all. It is
not true that the enfranchisement of all will result in racial
domination. Political division, based on color, is entirely artificial and,
when it disappears, so will the domination of one color group by
another. The ANC has spent half a century fighting against racialism.
When it triumphs it will not change that policy […]
“During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of
the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I
have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of
a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in
harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope
to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am
prepared to die.”8

Mandela was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment with hard
labor. He was to spend the next 27 years in prison, 18 of them on
Robben Island. In this time he became an international figure and a
symbol of the struggle of black South Africans against apartheid. As the
sixties and seventies progressed, opinion moved against the South
African government. Anti-apartheid boycotts of South African goods,
banks, and sports spread across Europe and America.
In 1982 Mandela had been moved from Robben Island prison to a
maximum security prison outside Cape Town, where he spent most of
the next six years in solitary confinement. Secret talks between Mandela
and representatives offered Mandela his freedom if he would renounce
violent action, break with the Communist Party and abandon the
principle of majority rule. Mandela refused to renounce violence while
the government refused to share power with black people, reiterated
that the ANC had never been controlled by communists but that he was
not prepared to denounce them, and insisted that the government must
accept majority rule. But he proposed preliminary talks to open the way
for negotiations, saying that it was time for all leaders to set aside
preconditions and start the debate “for a new South Africa.”

25
 The extent to which Mandela maintained his leadership position
within the ANC while in prison is remarkable. One of the reasons for
his move from Robben Island prison may well have been the position
of respect that he held with other imprisoned ANC members, and his
continued influence over them and the movement. Foreign diplomats
visiting Mandela in prison in the search for a settlement had been
impressed by his ability to speak for the movement without consulting
with colleagues. Despite his apparently isolated position, he obviously
knew precisely what the ANC would or would not accept, and was
able to speak for them.
By the late 1980s, South Africa was becoming ungovernable.
Sanctions were beginning to hurt the economy. Street violence was
increasing. President Botha imposed a crackdown: a nationwide state
of emergency increased police powers; townships were surrounded,
roads blocked. Thousands were detained and sometimes tortured.
Opposition bases in neighbouring countries were attacked by the
army and air-force in cross-border raids. Militants in the ANC and
the Pan African Congress turned to terror tactics, planting bombs in
restaurants, shopping centers, and government buildings. The ANC
started a campaign to make townships ungovernable through rent
boycotts. This ran out of control as ‘people’s courts’ turned on local
authorities and accused them of helping the government, handing out
brutal punishments including the fatal ‘necklacing’: murdering
victims by placing a burning tire around their neck.
International pressure for the release of Mandela increased. In 1989,
President Pieter Willem Botha suffered a mild stroke and was replaced
by F.W. de Klerk. A year later, de Klerk announced Mandela’s freedom.
A gray-haired but upright Mandela emerged into a glare of publicity
that took him by surprise; the world was impressed by his dignity,
fortitude, and resolution.
De Klerk took the historic step of legalising the ANC and 60 other
banned organizations. Oliver Tambo, President in Exile of the ANC,
stood down and Mandela was unanimously elected President of the
ANC. Within six months of his release, Mandela suspended the ANC’s

26
armed struggle, alienating his more hard-line members. De Klerk and
Mandela signed the historic Record of Understanding, setting up a
freely elected constitutional assembly that would draw up a new
draft constitution.
In April 1994 South Africa’s first ever multi-racial elections were
held, with all citizens eligible to vote. Violence on both sides continued
up until Election Day, but 20 million South Africans turned out to
cast their vote. The ANC won 63 percent of the vote; Nelson Mandela
was the new President of South Africa.
Mandela now began the most impressive phase of his leadership. He
had spent a quarter of a century in prison and had every right to feel
bitterness toward the party who had put him there. Given their
intransigence in government, he would also have been forgiven for
denying them ministerial roles. At the same time, he was only now
discovering the extent to which the previous government—and even
his old negotiating partner de Klerk, with whom he was to shared the
Nobel Peace prize—had been complicit with the infamous Third
Force: the shadowy group of security and ex-security officers who had
fomented and encouraged violence between different black
organizations in an attempt to ‘divide and conquer’ the black majority.
But Mandela set out to create a government of national unity.
His first task was to help his own organization, the ANC, to make
the immense transition from being a slightly disorganized
group of revolutionaries, who had spend most of the last
34 years ‘underground’ as a banned organization, into a party of
government of a complex modern state. His next task was to assemble
his cabinet.
Old enemies sat down together, and proved surprisingly
cooperative. The cabinet reflected all of the country’s racial groups.
The Afrikaners of the National Party seemed committed to making
the coalition work; they in turn were pleasantly surprised to hear ANC
members arguing amongst themselves—they had expected them to
have a party line thrashed out in advance. Mandela handled the
cabinet with a light touch, listening impassively; making the

27
occasional contribution. In committee meetings he was decisive,
coming quickly to a judgment after a short brief.9
Mandela set out on a symbolic campaign of personal forgiveness.
He had learned to control his emotions during the long years of
refinement; he channelled what anger and bitterness he must have felt
into positive action. He visited ex-President Botha (whom the Truth
and Reconciliation Commission judged to have “facilitated a climate
in which […] gross violations of human rights could and did occur”);
he invited the former commander of Robben Island prison to dinner;
he had lunch with the Prosecutor from his trial. When the South
African rugby team, the Springboks, celebrated their return to
international rugby after the lifting of sporting boycotts, Mandela
walked onto the field after the Springbok’s victory over New Zealand,
wearing a green Springbok shirt, and handed the trophy to an
astonished captain Francois Pienaar. For many, the Springboks were
a symbol of white Afrikaner racial superiority. Afrikaners at the game
and watching on television felt that they had been offered
understanding and had been welcomed into the new fold.
Mandela’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a
compromise, but a brilliant one. During the hard bargaining of the
negotiations, the National Party had insisted on a general amnesty for
the security forces for any actions carried out during the struggles. A
deal had been thrashed out: there would be no ‘general’ amnesty, but
amnesties would be granted to individuals who told the truth about
their action, provided that they could prove that these actions had
been politically motivated. Many grisly details emerged of torture and
murder by government agencies. Some dark secrets of the ANC and
other black groups also emerged. The nation would learn the truth,
and could decide if it could forgive or not, but there would be no acts
of vengeance.

28
 2
boldness of
vision
 eaders are often judged by the vision that they bring to their
L organization. It is probably a mistake to imagine that every
organization is susceptible to a new grand vision. The great leaders
from history tend, by definition, to have been leaders of a nation, an
empire, a movement. Winston Churchill set out a vision for the British
people that said that they could, and should, resist the spread of Nazi
Germany. It seemed impossible for a small nation—still reeling from
the effects of the World War I and the Depression—to stop such a
mighty war machine, but Churchill persuaded the nation that it could,
just somehow, achieve exactly that. There was no doubt about
the vision:

“Victory—victory—at all costs, victory, in spite of all terror, victory,

however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there
is no survival. Let that be realized; no survival for the British Empire;
no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival
for the urge and impulse of the ages, that mankind will move
forward toward its goal.”10

Most organizations are faced with something less dramatic than

imminent invasion by a hostile force bent on world domination
(although, in a business sense, that scenario may sound eerily familiar
to you). A great vision for any organization is both simple and, well,
bold, but it need not be grand. What, after all, are you leading your
team or organization for? There will be targets to be achieved and
directions to be set, but these are the essential running, the
unavoidable management of your business. A vision is something else:
an overriding sense of purpose, a raison d’être, a corporate identity
(in the real sense of the phrase, as opposed to the more usual
“what-color-should-our-logo-be?” sense).
At this more understandable, more mundane level, it becomes
clear that every leader does indeed need a vision. Boldness is, after
all, a matter of degree, but a vision, by definition, is something
that everybody in the organization can grasp; a simple answer

31
that can instantly be given to the question, “What are we trying
to achieve?”
The leaders from history in this section were able to offer their
nations a truly momentous vision, a vision that changed the course of
history. What is interesting is that they had not been born, as it were,
with this vision. They had not been carrying it around, waiting to
proclaim it to the right audience. They found themselves in a
particular set of circumstances; with a particular set of issues—and
suddenly it all became clear. In order to lead their country forward,
they were able to articulate what everybody needed to hear.


Abraham Lincoln is perhaps most remarkable for the fact that he
started his presidency of the United States of America with,
understandably, a conservative position: he was simply desperate to
hold the United States—still a very young nation—together. The new
nation’s radical experiment in republican government was in danger
of fragmenting into a collection of loosely associated states; of ceasing
to be a nation. Lincoln set out at first only to prevent the secession of
the Southern States, and preferred not to address the question
of slavery in states where it was long-established, deeply as he
loathed the institution of slavery. He sought, at first, only to prevent
the spread of slave ownership into new territories as America
expanded to the west. As the American Civil War progressed, he
realized that the moral issue was in fact the core issue; that the
pragmatic solution of merely holding the states together was no
solution. The vision that he offered was suddenly crystal clear in his
own mind, as it would soon be in the nation as a whole: “A nation
conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are
created equal.”
Pericles of Athens, the great Athenian statesman, gave his fellow
citizens a sense, firstly of what it meant to be citizens of the world’s first
democracy, and then of the greatness that could accompany that.

32
Athenians, he said, were different from other people; they served no
master but themselves; they followed no laws other than those that they
had set themselves. This set them apart from other nations and gave
them the opportunity for greatness—which, in ancient Greece, meant
the opportunity to rule over many of the other city-states, to accumulate
great wealth, to encourage the arts and philosophy, and to build great
buildings, like the Parthenon, so that all might see the true worth—the
glory—of Athens. What was most impressive about Pericles’ vision for
Athens is that he offered Athenians not what they wanted but what he
believed to be in the best interests of Athens. The Periclean Age is one
of the golden ages of history; its culture still inspires us today.
Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain during World
War II, demonstrated that, at times, boldness of vision can take
precedence over every other leadership quality. Churchill was in many
ways an admirable man and a strong leader: brave, intelligent,
eloquent, perceptive, and at times brilliant. At other times he was a
one-man disaster area. But his knowledge of the history of the British
people—and his conviction that the nation was up to the momentous
challenge that faced it—allowed him to articulate what perhaps no
other politician would have dared even to conceive. Faced by the
overwhelming might of the German army and with insufficient
resources to undertake a war of such magnitude, Britain might
sensibly have sought an accommodation; might, perhaps, have traded
a degree of independence for security from outright invasion.
Churchill, through his remarkable speeches, inspired the incredible
dedication and self-sacrifice shown by the people of Britain
during the war years. He made the nation, still suffering from the
effects of the Depression, feel that it was still capable of great resolve
and mighty endeavors.

“Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear

ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last
for a thousand years, men will still say,‘This was their finest hour’.”11

33
 abraham lincoln
(1809–1865)
Abraham Lincoln had most, and possibly all, of the qualities that are
needed in a great leader. He had a sharp and enquiring mind, able to
absorb large quantities of information. Helped by his study and
practice of the law, he could consider every facet of an argument, and
then present a closely-argued narrative that spelled out the most
compelling interpretation of the salient facts. He was a great orator,
speaking sometimes at length and in great detail, and at other times
with a breathtaking concision and eloquence. He was prepared and
willing to compromize, but held strong bedrock convictions from
which he would not budge: he would compromize on the solution,
but not on the principle. He had great mental toughness and physical
stamina: he worked hard. He was a good judge of people; he assembled
good teams and helped to bring people of differing opinions together
so that they would work towards the common goal. When he found a
colleague whom he could trust, he gave them considerable freedom
of action. As President of the nation, he had a clear and detailed vision
of the way in which he wanted that nation to develop, and was able to
pursue that vision single-mindedly through the most difficult of
imaginable political circumstances: a civil war.


“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this
continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal.”

When Abraham Lincoln made one of the world’s most famous

speeches, at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in November 1863, he made this
proposition sound unquestionable. America’s Declaration of

34
Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson in 1776—fourscore and
seven years before Lincoln’s Gettysburg address—had clearly said, “We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Every American knew that.
The problem was that the definition of liberty at the time was
contentious and far from self-evident. As Lincoln himself said later,
“The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty and
the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all
declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the
same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do
as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with
others the same may mean for some men to do as they please with
other men, and the product of other men’s labor.”12 What Lincoln was
referring to was, of course, slavery. But to the farm-owning citizens
of the slave states, slaves were a part of their property—as essential to
their capacity to work the soil and raise crops as were their tools,
wagons, and other items. To take away their property was to deny them
the ability to create their own livelihood, and thus to deny them their
liberty. In this the Southern States were harking back to an early
American definition of what it meant to be a citizen and a ‘free
man’—a citizen was able to support himself; he had property, or at
least his skills and the tools of his trade. The idea of a wage laborer
being a full citizen was novel, while slaves were not considered to be
citizens in any meaningful sense. A Supreme Court decision in 1857
concerning slave-owners’ rights to take their property (including
slaves) into the new territories simplified matters with a fearsome
clarity: slaves were not persons under the Constitution, and therefore
had no right to liberty themselves.
At the time of the War of Independence, it was already clear to many
Americans that slavery would become a dangerously contentious issue
amongst the thirteen states that made up the new United States. George
Washington himself was a Virginian plantation owner who, like all of

35
his peers, owned slaves. The big, labor-intensive plantations of the South
were entirely dependent on slaves; slave-labor underpinned the whole
economy of the Southern States and slaves represented a significant
proportion of the property of land-owners. The Constitution (adopted
in 1787) addressed the issue of slavery, but entirely inconclusively: the
importation of slaves was permitted; escaped slaves should not be
assisted and should be returned to their owners; slaves were to be
recognized in terms of the population of any state as ‘other persons’
who should be counted as three-fifths of a citizen. Slavery was implicitly
rather than explicitly recognized, and a specific article forbade any
amendments or new legislation at a national, Congressional level
regarding slavery for 20 more years, until 1808. The Constitution was,
in effect, ducking the issue and hoping that some kind of consensus
might emerge in 20 years time. It did not.
Many individual states did abolish or phase out slavery, establishing
themselves as ‘free states’ as opposed to ‘slave states’. As early as 1787,
Congress had passed the Northwest Ordinance, which set up the
principle that the original 13 states on America’s east coast would
expand westwards by the creation of new states rather than by the
expansion of the existing states. Slavery was banned in these new
western territories; the Ohio River became the border between the
free states to the north and the slave states to the south.
In 1803, Napoleonic France sold their last remaining American
territories to help fund the new revolutionary republic’s wars against
the monarchies of old Europe. The French territory of Louisiana was
big: it encompassed modern-day Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri,
Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, parts of Minnesota, most of North and
South Dakota, parts of New Mexico, Texas, Montana, Wyoming,
Colorado, and Louisiana west of the Mississippi. The territory
represents about 828,000 square miles or 23 percent of the modern
United States. The Americans paid France 15 million dollars
(including cancellation of debt).
The opening up of the new territories began a political wrangle as
to whether they would be ‘free’ or ‘slave’ states—a serious political

36
issue since two Senators per state were elected to the Senate and there
was great concern that neither faction should predominate. In 1820 a
compromize was reached that would allow the new state of Missouri
to be a slave state, but which banned slavery in the rest of the ‘Missouri
Territory’—the territory bought from France. The inclusion of
Missouri into the Union tipped the balance of slave to free states in the
former’s favor by 12 states to 11. Maine was admitted to the Union as
a free state to keep the political balance.
In 1854, an Act to open the new northwestern territories of Kansas
in the mid-west and Nebraska to its north, confirmed that settlers
would be allowed to vote as to whether territories should be free or
slave states. This appeal to “popular sovereignty” attempted to
establish the principle that slavery was an issue on which Congress
should not impose its will on the people. It drew a 45-year-old lawyer
from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, to return to politics and to help in
the formation of the new Republican Party. In a famous speech,
Lincoln’s deep-seated hatred of slavery was made clear:

“This […] covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I can not but
hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself.
I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just
influence in the world—enables the enemies of free institutions,
with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites—causes the real friends
of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces
so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with
the very fundamental principles of civil liberty—criticizing the
Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right
principle of action but self-interest.”13

The new Republican Party was opposed to slavery and espoused a

modernizing agenda, with emphasis on building railroads, industry,
and cities, improving education, and establishing a national banking
system. They promised free homesteads to new farmers and
propounded the benefits of the free labor market. The new Republican

37
Party represented a real and direct threat to the southern slave states’
entire way of life. In many ways, it was not simply the issue of slavery
that divided the nation, but a way of living: the patrician, affluent,
landed, agrarian society of the south opposed to the new, modern,
increasingly industrialized states of the north, built on the free labor
market and the rights of the individual.
In 1858, Lincoln accepted the Republican nomination to the Senate.
Lincoln’s eloquent and forceful speeches against slavery made him
something of a national figure. In 1860, Lincoln won the nomination
as Presidential candidate for the Republican Party. He was far from the
strongest candidate at the outset but his origins as a poor
homesteader’s son from the new western territories (born in a log
cabin in Kentucky; moved to Illinois) gave him a strong appeal to
settlers in the new western states. Ironically, his ‘moderate’ stance on
slavery was in his favor—several abolitionists in the Republican Party
presented the anti-slavery case in the light of a new and more perfect
‘second American revolution’ that would free black Americans from
slavery, just as the first revolution had freed Americans from British
rule. Lincoln’s main advantage was a split in the opposing Democratic
Party. He was elected with only 40 percent of the popular vote.
Lincoln’s moderate stance over slavery may have helped to get him
elected as the first ever Republican President, but it didn’t do any
good. Seven Southern States, led by South Carolina, declared that they
would secede from the Union to form a new nation—the Confederate
States of America. They argued that the new Republican government
was no longer working in their best interests and they exercised their
Constitutional right to a new form of government: a confederacy.
From the outset, Lincoln’s primary aim was to maintain the Union.
He supported an Amendment that would have prohibited the banning
of slavery in the border states where it was currently permitted. This
was hoped to encourage states such as Missouri and Kentucky to
remain in the Union—though their support was less whole-hearted
than Lincoln at first imagined. Lincoln was against the spread of
slavery into new states, but he did not set out to abolish slavery in

38
states where it was established. He saw the war at first as a kind of
police operation—a question of putting down a rebellion within
the nation.
Lincoln had hoped to persuade the border states to begin a policy
of gradual emancipation of slaves, with slave-owners compensated by
the government. He believed that if the border states moved away
from slavery, this would persuade the Southern States that they could
never hope for the border states’ support in the war, and would
demonstrate that the tide of opinion was turning against them. When
the border states rejected the plan, Lincoln changed his mind. He
began work on an emancipation plan with the fervor of a man who
has resisted his best instincts in order to pursue a policy of possible
compromize, and can now follow his heart. Lincoln announced that,
as of January 1st 1863, he would proclaim freedom for all slaves in
states then in rebellion against the North: “I never, in my life, felt more
certain that I was doing right, than I do in signing this paper.” He then
began to work on the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution,
banning slavery throughout the United States.
In July 1863, Union forces won the bloody three-day battle of
Gettysburg and halted the Confederate General Lee’s second attempt
to invade the north. Lee retreated to the south. There had been around
50,000 American casualties at Gettysburg; at the dedication of the
Soldiers’ National Cemetery, Lincoln made the famous address which,
in effect, redefined the aims of the war. The war was no longer an
attempt to bring rebellious states back into the union, it was a moral
struggle to achieve the “rebirth of freedom” and of the distinctive, and
still precarious form of government that the American Revolution had
created, a “government of the people, by the people, for the people:”

“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this
continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal.
“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that
nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long

39
 endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come
to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those
who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether
fitting and proper that we should do this.
“But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot
consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living
and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our
poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long
remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did
here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the
unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so
nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great
task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take
increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full
measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead
shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a
new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the
people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

One day after Lee’s defeat at the Battle of Gettysburg, there had been
another Unionist victory at Vicksburg on the Mississippi, when
General Ulysses S. Grant had driven Confederate forces back into the
city of Vicksburg and successfully besieged the city. From now on,
Lincoln put his trust in Grant, who showed a dogged tenacity and a
will to push forward. Grant, with William T. Sherman, launched a
coordinated attack against the Confederacy on all fronts. Where there
had previously been an attempt to avoid destruction of property in
the Southern States, there was now the merciless intent to remove their
capacity to wage war. Crops and livestock were destroyed, rail tracks
were ripped up and bent around trees; any useful infrastructure was
destroyed. Civilian deaths, however, remained low.
Despite Grant’s advances, the war still looked like a bloody
stalemate and in 1864 Lincoln’s re-election as President seemed
unlikely. A war-weary North began to contemplate the possibility of

40
an independent South. There were informal peace negotiations, but
both sides were intransigent: the South wanted independence; Lincoln
would offer nothing but unconditional surrender. The days of possible
compromize were over.
Lincoln was saved by a stunning victory in the south: Sherman
captured Atlanta, Georgia. Lincoln was re-elected. Sherman began to
fight and burn his way further south towards Savannah while Grant
drove Confederacy forces back down the Shenandoah Valley. The war
was being won. Early in 1865, Robert E. Lee was forced to retreat from
Richmond and after a retreat of nine days, surrendered to Grant at
Appomattox Court House. Grant offered generous terms of surrender
and worked hard to allow the Confederate Army to stand down with
their pride intact.
Grant accepted Lee’s surrender on April 9th 1865; on April 14th
Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre by John Wilkes Both, a Confederate
spy who had previously planned to kidnap Lincoln and exchange him
for Confederate prisoners, but had finally been driven to murder by
Lincoln’s recent speech promoting voting rights for black Americans.
Lincoln died the next day.
Lincoln had set the tone for a spirit of reconciliation in his Second
Inaugural Speech:

“Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty

scourge of war may speedily pass away […] With malice toward
none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us
to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind
up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the
battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may
achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and
with all nations.”14

Lincoln’s political light-footedness was remarkable in someone so

relatively inexperienced. He was a master at keeping conflicting groups
working together towards the common goal, even when there were

41
great ideological differences between them and when his own
leadership was not particularly highly-rated. He dealt masterfully with
the slave-owning border states who stayed in the union, seeing them
as an essential ideological buffer zone between the free state members
of the union and the slave state secessionists (“I hope to have God on
my side, but I must have Kentucky”); when it seemed that a war-weary
north would give up the fight and allow the Southern States to become
independent, he maneuvered them into a position of total non-
compromize that clarified the only possible successful outcome of the
war for the north: unconditional surrender and the reinstatement of
the union. His timing with regards to the emancipation of slaves was
impeccable. Had he entered the war on a strong abolitionist platform,
he would not have brought the border states, or even general northern
opinion, with him. If he had delayed pursuing the emancipation issue
much longer, the war, and an exhausted nation, might have swung in
favor of an independent Confederacy. He gave the nation the vision
that it needed at exactly the moment when most people were ready to
receive it.

42
 pericles of athens
(c.495–429 BCE )
Pericles, the great Athenian statesman, was born around 490 BCE.
Greece at the time was a collection of city states engaged in a more-or-
less permanent state of rivalry and warfare, occasionally managing to
form a united front against the common enemy, Persia. Though
Pericles was only one of several elected generals, he came to be the
effective leader of Athens. In Athens, every free (that is, not enslaved)
male Athenian was a member of the Assembly. This was a relatively
small number—perhaps 43,000 people, of which a quorum of 6,000
was sometimes required to pass business. These manageable numbers
allowed a remarkable experiment in total democracy. This was not
representational democracy; everybody got to vote, by show of hands,
on the key issues of the day (apart from women and slaves, obviously).
Pericles’ ‘leadership’ of Athens was based entirely on his powers of
persuasion. Though accused of populism for introducing, for
example, payment for members to attend the Assembly (before this
measure, only citizens wealthy enough to spend time away from their
home and their land could afford to attend the Assembly), Pericles
was not a populist. A calm and famously incorruptible man, he
inspired Athenians to believe in the potential greatness of their city
state. The Golden Age of Athens attracted the greatest poets,
playwrights, philosophers, architects, and artists to the city. This
Golden Age of Athens is synonymous with Periclean Athens.
In Greece around the sixth century BCE, some city states were ruled
by kings and others by the aristocratic heads of great families in an
essentially tribal structure. Occasionally a political opportunist or
“tyrant” would seize power, often with popular support: the word
acquired its negative connotations a little later. Rule by aristocrats
favoured the rich; the growing class of merchants and the poorer
members of society might fare better under the leadership of a tyrant.
It was the power struggle between aristocracies and tyrants—between

43
oligarchy and tyranny—that was to create the conditions for the birth
of democracy. When the last tyrant of Athens was overthrown by a
leading clan, one family seized power with the aid of Sparta, and began
to expel other families hostile to them. The people of Athens rose up
and besieged the upstarts and their Spartan allies on the Acropolis for
two days before expelling them from the country. One of the
triumphant great families—the Alcmaeonids —had little option but to
reward the citizens who had seen off their rivals with some form of
power-sharing. Their leader, Cleisthenes, created ten new tribes drawn
from different parts of Attica—the country surrounding Athens. Old
tribal loyalties were broken. Each of the ten new tribes was now
represented in a Council, the central administrative body; on key issues
Council needed the endorsement of the Assembly, to which every free
adult male belonged.
This radical form of democracy was to last for another 180 years,
evolving over time but never straying from the basic principle that
the citizen body—the demos—made all of the decisions about the
government and administration of the state. In Athens the demos
consisted of every free Athenian male over the age of 18. Citizens over
the age of 30 could put themselves forward for membership of the
Council. Members were finally appointed by lot. They served for one
year, and could serve not more than twice. They met daily, prepared
business for the assembly and ensured that decisions were
implemented and kept within budget. The key administrative
positions—financial controllers, inspectors, architects—were also
elected by lot for one year and only for one period of service. At the
top of the pyramid were the military generals—the strategoi (from
which the word strategy is derived)—which was the only role that was
elected and not chosen by vote. Generals could serve indefinitely, but
were elected annually.
Although the election to government post by lot rather than merit
looks alarming to modern eyes, there was a strict system of
supervision, audit, and control. Council members were scrutinized
before they were able to put their name forward for selection by lot.

44
Incompetence was punished by fines, exile, or—ultimately—
execution. Many military commanders were prosecuted for failure
and could be executed. Even the great Pericles was prosecuted,
stripped of his rank of general, and fined, though he was re-elected a
year later. Despite Pericles’ role as General, he had no executive power
to impose decisions and, like any other citizen, had just one vote in the
Assembly. If Pericles was to lead Athens to follow a particular course
of action, he had to rely on his powers of persuasion.


Pericles was born some years after the creation of a democratic Athens.
The democratic reformer, Cleisthenes, was his mother’s uncle. He grew
up in a time of radical change brought on by invasions from Persia, as
Darius the Great attempted to extend his empire. Some Greek city
states were already under Persian rule; others were allies. The
remaining states were forced to cooperate to defend themselves. At the
great battle of Marathon, in 490 BCE, the Athenians, supported only by
neighboring Plataea, defeated a much larger Persian army. After
Marathon, an Athenian statesman, Themistocles, persuaded the
national Assembly to use money from a newly-discovered silver mine
to build a fleet of warships.
Ten years after their defeat at Marathon, the Persian returned under
Xerxes, son of Darius. Their route through central Greece was
famously blocked by Leonidas and the 300 Spartans at the narrow
pass of Thermopylae; their sacrifice bought the Athenians time. The
Persians advanced from Thermopylae, burning towns in their path,
including Athens. Sparta argued for sealing off the Peloponnese (the
southernmost tip of mainland Greece, where Sparta was located) with
a defensive wall across the narrow Isthmus of Corinth. Themistocles
argued, correctly, that the Persian fleet could still land armies behind
the wall at will. He lured the Persians to attack the Athenian fleet in the
narrow straits at Salamis. The onshore morning breeze hemmed the
Persian ships into the narrow straits, leaving little room for maneuver.

45
Ships rammed each other and locked together; what was essentially a
land battle on board a mass of ships ensued. The Greeks triumphed:
some 200 Persian ships were sunk; many Persians (who could not
swim) were drowned; those who reached the shore were slaughtered.
Without a navy, the Persians were unable to supply their army. They
retreated over the bridge of ships that they had built across the
Hellespont—the narrow strait separating Europe from Asia Minor,
where the city of Constantinople would later be founded. Xerxes left
a large army behind to defend captured Greek territories, but this was
defeated by combined Greek armies.
At this time, Pericles was a teenager. His family was rich and
aristocratic, and the young Pericles was given the best education that
money could buy. Since Athens in the fifth century BCE was the
birthplace of one of the most significant intellectual revolutions in
the history of mankind, that education was very good indeed.
Pericles mixed with the great philosophers of the day: he heard
Zeno lecture; Protogoras and Anaxagoras were his friends. Anaxagoras
had a particular influence on Pericles, instilling in his student
something of his own spirit of rational, scientific inquiry into the
natural world.
Pericles took himself and high office very seriously indeed. In the
vibrant atmosphere of Athens, this of course led to a degree of
criticism, and even abuse. The poet Ion accused Pericles of being
“over-assuming and pompous.” He felt that beneath Pericles’
aristocratic poise was an element of superiority and scorn for lesser
mortals. Pericles also suffered some less high-minded criticism. He
seems to have been born with an odd-shaped, elongated skull. His
contemporaries called him “squill head” (Schinocephalos), after the
bulbous sea onion plant, or squill. There was no place to hide in
democratic Athens, even for the aloof young Pericles. Plutarch records
an anecdote about Pericles being “reviled […] all day long” in the
market place by somebody who was obviously not a fan. Pericles
maintained a dignified silence and went about his business. The man
then followed him home, still shouting abuse. Pericles—ever the

46
aristocrat—sent a servant out with a torch to light the man’s
way home.
Pericles was famosly calm and measured. Nothing, it seems, could
disturb his composure. He was also famously incorruptible—his
family wealth being a guarantee that Pericles had no reason to be so
tempted. He kept himself aloof, avoiding dinner parties, putting in an
appearance at family weddings but quickly excusing himself.
Perhaps the most distinctive characteristic of Pericles was his skill
as an orator. The closest that we have to a record of Pericles’ real
speeches are those written down by his contemporary, the historian
Thucydides. We cannot be certain whether it is the voice of Pericles or
that of Thucydides that we read today; what is certain is that
Thucydides felt that these speeches were impressive enough to be
recorded—presumably as accurately as possible—while the effect of
Periclean oratory on the Athenian Assembly is a matter of record. Like
any great speaker, Pericles used his powers to inspire and to persuade,
but contemporaries agree that he never took a populist approach; he
never tried to sway people’s emotions. His great strength seems to
have been in conveying something of his own lofty concerns: he set
out a vision of the greatness of Athens, and the Athenians rose to the
challenge. They knew that they were different: unlike that of
other Greek city-states, the future of Athens lay in its own hands.
Pericles was elected as a general (the only official post that he ever
held) every year from 443 to 429 BCE, but the Athenian people could
choose not to elect him; even the great Pericles could be removed
from office.
The goals that Pericles put in place for this new democracy were
unashamedly imperialistic. Athens was the leader of the Delian
League, a league of Greek states allied against Persian attacks. Tributes
were collected from the Allies to fund the League’s defence. Athens
removed the treasury of the League from the island of Delos, with the
excuse—perhaps genuine—that it was exposed to being raided by the
Persians. Athens did indeed provide the necessary weapons, ships, and
armor for the League’s defence but soon found, in peaceful times, that

47
the fund was in surplus. The excess was used to fund a lavish building
program in Athens, the most notable aspect of which was the
Parthenon, temple of Athene—protector of the Athenians—which
also became the new treasury. Pericles and Athens were unashamed.
The glory of Athens reflected the glory of all Greece. Their protecting
goddess Athene was, appropriately, the goddess of war. She was also
the patroness of craftsmen—the perfect symbol for the industrious
and ingenious Athenians. The Athenians saw something god-like in
their striving for glory as they rose above the envy and resentment of
the allies.
Periclean Athens attracted the great poets and playwrights of the
day: Aeschylus was an established tragedian; Euripides and Sophocles
were contemporaries. The comic playwright Aristophanes was a
relative youngster (born around 456 BCE). The great philosophers
Socrates, Anaxagoras, Parmenides, and Protagoras, and the historian
Herodotus, were all Periclean Athenians.
Athens had always been ruthless in her control of the empire:
rebellions by disaffected oligarchies within the league were vigorously
put down. Some smaller rebel states became colonies of Athens,
populated by Athenians. Colonials retained their citizenship of Athens
and were given land from which to earn their livelihood. They were
also obliged to maintain arms in order to defend the colony.
Athens faced other, more serious revolts, and was not always
successful in containing them. Sparta, Athens’ old rival for pre-
eminence in Greece, formed its own league of states from the
Peloponnese archipelago. Around 432, Pericles imposed a trade
embargo on Megara, one of Sparta’s allied states, on the grounds that
they had trespassed on sacred grounds. Sparta threatened war and
demanded the expulsion of the Alcmaeonid family, including Pericles,
from Athens, in a clear attempt to create a rift between Pericles and the
Athenians. Pericles persuaded the Assembly to make no concessions
to the Spartans on the grounds that if they made concessions now,
the Spartans would be sure to return with further demands later.
Sparta invaded Attica. Pericles persuaded the rural population of

48
Attica to retreat to within the walls of Athens. With access to the sea,
Athens was able to raid allied Spartan territories—though not Sparta
itself, safe in the interior of the Peloponnese.
After a raid on Megara, Pericles made a funeral oration for the
fallen, part of which has become famous for its description and praise
of Athenian democracy:

“Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighbouring states;

we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its
administration favours the many instead of the few; this is why it is
called a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice
to all in their private differences; if to social standing, advancement
in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations
not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty
bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by
the obscurity of his condition. The freedom which we enjoy in our
government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far from
exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel
called upon to be angry with our neighbour for doing what he likes
[…] But all this ease in our private relations does not make us
lawless as citizens. Against this fear is our chief safeguard, teaching
us to obey the magistrates and the laws, particularly such as regard
the protection of the injured, whether they are actually on the
statute book, or belong to that code which, although unwritten,
yet cannot be broken without acknowledged disgrace.”15

The Spartans looted the Athenian countryside. Plague broke out in

overcrowded Athens. Pericles was finally brought to trial for his
policies, stripped of his title as strategos, and fined. Pericles lost many
friends, his sister, and his two legitimate sons to the plague. At the
death of his last legitimate son, Pericles’ famous reserve and
self-control collapsed. This was the end of his dynasty; he broke down
in tears. Later, Pericles pleaded with the Athenians to change his own
law demanding that citizens have Athenian parents on both sides. In

49
tribute to Pericles they did so, legitimizing his ‘half-Athenian’ son by
his long-standing mistress, Aspasia.
Pericles himself died of the plague in 429 BCE but not before he had
been reinstated as strategos. On his deathbed, he said that his proudest
boast was that, “No Athenian ever put on mourning because of
me”—a reference to the fact that Pericles was unable to command,
only to persuade, so that any Athenians who had died in battle had not
died because of him; what the Athenians did, they did not because
Pericles imposed it on them, but as a result of their own decisions.
After Pericles, the power of Athens declined. The damage done
by the war with Sparta was perhaps irreparable, and subsequent
statesmen failed to inspire and lead as Pericles had done.
Pericles’ greatest error was his failure of diplomacy in allowing
the Thirty Year Peace with Sparta to come to an end. The ultimate
failure of Athenian democracy was caused, sadly, by what critics had
always foretold: total democracy is easily subverted and led astray by
leaders who seek merely popular approval. Relying on chance to
produce a constant supply of statesmen like Pericles is not a
good plan.
Perhaps the last word should go to Pericles, as quoted by Thucydides:

“All who have taken it upon themselves to rule over others have
incurred hatred and unpopularity for a time: but if one has a great
aim to pursue, this burden of envy must be accepted, and it is wise
to accept it. Hatred does not last for long; but the brilliance of the
present is the glory of the future stored up forever in the memory
of man.”

50
 winston churchill
(1874–1965)
Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill was born into the English
aristocracy in the family’s ancestral home of Blenheim Palace, built
for John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, on behalf of a grateful
nation, after his victories in the wars of the early eighteenth century.
As a young man, Winston was brave and audacious, fighting in the
many little wars of a British Empire on which the sun had not yet
begun to set. He entered Parliament and rose to the rank of
minister—not before, however, he had ‘crossed the floor’ of the House
of Parliament, moving from the Conservative party to the Liberal
party and making long-standing political enemies in the process. As
President of the Board of Trade for the Liberal government Churchill
became the perhaps unlikely proponent of a number of social
measures, revolutionary for their time. Later, as First Lord of the
Admiralty, Churchill built up the navy in response to Germany’s
dramatic program of naval expansion: a dangerous challenge to
Britain’s naval supremacy. At the outbreak of the World War I,
Churchill had done more than most to put his country onto a war
footing. He entered the war with resolution and determination, using
the navy to land brigades in Northern Europe in an attempt to slow
down the advancing German army. And then Churchill made a very
big mistake: far from the last mistake of his long career.
At the outbreak of World War I, the Ottoman Empire had sided
with Germany. The Ottoman Empire, with its capital at
Constantinople, controlled the Dardanelles, the narrow straits (less
than one mile wide at the narrowest point) leading from the
Mediterranean to the Black Sea via the inland sea of Marmara. At their
northern limit lies the Bosporus, the entrance to the Black Sea.
Straddled across the Bosporus lies the great city of Constantinople.
The Dardanelles are the ancient Hellespont—the divide between
Europe and Asia.

51
 Churchill wanted control of the Dardenelles, allowing the Allies to
support Russia via the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Russian success
on the Eastern Front would take pressure off the Western Front, in
France. Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, seemed to believe that
this was a job that the Navy could handle by itself. A fleet of obsolete
battleships—obsolete in the sense that they could not be put up against
the newly-built German battleships in the North Sea, unlike Churchill’s
recently commissioned fleet of new dreadnoughts—could be put to
good use in the Mediterranean theatre. There was to be no troop
support on the ground: the flotilla carried enough troops to control an
area that was confidently expected to be subdued by British sea power.
Churchill had underestimated the number of Turkish troops in the
area, partly as the result of a faulty report by T.E. Lawrence—an
intelligence officer who was to become famous as Lawrence of Arabia.
Nevertheless, the Dardanelles forts shelling the attacking fleet soon
began to run out of ammunition. Their communications were cut;
guns were being knocked out by the naval bombardment; an easy
passage into the Sea of Marmara and on to Istanbul was forecast by
the Allies. Then Allied ships began to blow up.
A French battleship exploded and sank. The minesweepers—
manned by civilian crews and under fire from the forts on
shore—retreated, leaving the straits largely un-cleared of the charted
minefields. What was worse was that an entirely new line of mines
had been laid, in secret, ten days before the attack. It should have been
expected and planned for. Three British battleships were hit by mines;
two sank. Two further French battleships were badly damaged. The
naval commander called for a retreat. Churchill maintained that had
they persisted, the attack would have been successful—but a more
likely scenario is that the ships would have been stranded in the Sea
of Marmara with a minefield between them and the Mediterranean
and insufficient troops to force an attack on Constantinople. The
naval failure was bad; worse was to follow.
Australian and New Zealand troops stationed in Egypt were sent to
the Dardanelles, along with British and French contingents. It took

52
them six weeks to assemble the invasion force; the Turks (amply
forewarned by the failed naval attack) prepared their defences.
Mustafa Kemal, a 34-year-old lieutenant colonel in the Turkish army
(and the future President of the Independent Republic of Turkey)
played a key role in the defence. The Allied troops disembarked on
defended beachheads as if nothing had been learned from the Western
Front about the devastating effect of modern weapons in defensive
positions: several landing forces lost between 60 and 90 percent of
their force in casualties.
A beachhead was achieved, but the battle continued for nearly nine
months, through the fierce heat of summer, with its plagues of flies
and epidemics of disease, and into the freezing, wet winter. At one
point storms flooded the battlefield, washing unburied bodies into
the trenches. At other times troops died of exposure in fierce blizzards.
Allied troops were evacuated in January 1916; the political fall-out in
London had already begun. The Liberal Prime Minister, Henry
Asquith, was forced to form a coalition government with the
Conservatives; a condition of this coalition was the dismissal of
Churchill from his post as First Lord of the Admiralty. Churchill
retained a post in cabinet in the meaningless role of Chancellor of the
Duchy of Lancaster.
In a typically Churchillian move, Winston resigned from the
cabinet to fight on the Western Front in command of an infantry
battalion. He is reputed to have asked to be posted to the front line,
possibly because front line troops were allowed alcohol, whereas his
battalion headquarters were teetotal. He endured real hardship
alongside his troops, but after six months on the frontline, Churchill
asked to be allowed to return to his pressing Parliamentary duties. His
timing was fortunate though his bravery, as ever, is unquestioned; had
he delayed by six weeks his battalion would have been caught up in the
Somme offensive, with its appalling casualty rates. Churchill was back
in Parliament, but his career seemed to be over.

53
 
As a young man, Churchill had scraped into the Royal Military
Academy at Sandhurst, thanks to the private tuition that his father
had paid for in order to coach Winston through the examinations at
which he had never excelled. Military life suited Churchill; he set off
on his chosen career, aided at every step by his family connections.
His mother’s influence secured a place in the glamorous 4th Hussars,
who were posted to India for routine service. His mother was also to
prove extremely useful in helping Winston to fulfil his ambitions as a
writer: she persuaded the Daily Telegraph to accept his despatches, for
the handy sum of five pounds per column. Churchill also managed to
get himself commissioned by the Allahabad Pioneer, which could
count Rudyard Kipling amongst its previous correspondents.
Churchill saw action in northwest India (modern-day Pakistan).
His account of the siege of Malakand, in The Story of the Malakand
Field Force, sold very well. He later fought in the Sudan under Lord
Kitchener with the 21st Lancers and took part in one of the last cavalry
charges made by the British army. Churchill wrote of his experiences
in The River War. By the time Churchill sailed to South Africa to take
part in the war between Britain and the Boers, as a correspondent for
the Morning Post, he was on his way to becoming famous and
commanded high fees for his lectures. When his troop train was
ambushed by the Boers, Churchill was captured along with the rest
of the British. He escaped and was smuggled, on a rail truck, helped
by sympathetic strangers, to British South Africa. His exploits made
him a household name throughout the British Empire. His book,
London to Ladysmith via Pretoria, sold well enough to make him
financially independent. Churchill returned home in 1900 to become
a Member of Parliament.
Elected as a member of the Conservative party, Churchill crossed
the floor of the British Parliament in 1904 to join the Liberals, largely

54
over the issue of his support for free international trade and against
the tariffs that the Conservatives sought to impose in order to protect
Britain’s economic pre-eminence.
Under Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, Churchill joined
the cabinet as President of the Board of Trade. There, this son of the
aristocracy helped to introduce Britain’s first minimum wage, set up
the first Labor Exchange to help the unemployed find work, and
helped to introduce a National Insurance Act to provide a limited
form of unemployment, health, and pension insurance for working
families. Later he supported the People’s Budget—a reforming budget
aiming to increase tax on the rich in order to support welfare reforms.
Subsequent governments and other ministers (especially the Liberal
firebrand Lloyd George) were to receive more credit than Churchill
himself for the revolutionary social policies that he helped to
set in motion.
In 1910 Churchill became Home Secretary, and later First Lord of
the Admiralty. Germany was expanding its navy in an attempt to
challenge Britain’s command of the oceans, a supremacy unchallenged
since the battle of Trafalgar. Britain’s merchant navy, which carried
over 50 percent of the world’s goods, would have to be protected.
Churchill fought in cabinet to match the German Navy’s force. He
even attempted to negotiate with the German Kaiser to stop this
particular arms race. By the time of the outbreak of World War I in
1914, Britain had a fleet of modern oil-powered dreadnoughts and a
fledgling naval air arm. Churchill had also been instrumental in the
development of the tank: naval research funding was used to develop
“Landships.” The first tanks used naval guns, as the army had no
canon designed to be fired in a confined space. The tank program was
seen by most people at the time as a waste of money.
Churchill started the war well but came to grief after the
Dardanelles disaster. He was brought back as Minister of Munitions
by his old ally in the earlier Liberal Reforms, David Lloyd George, now
Prime Minister. After the end of the war, Churchill became Secretary
of State for War and for Air, where he became determined to stop the

55
growth of Bolshevism in Russia and supported Allied intervention in
the Russian Civil War. In 1922, Churchill lost his seat in the general
election. He failed to be re-elected in another general election the
following year, standing again for the Liberal Party. In 1923 he fought
a by-election as an Independent and lost again. Surely, this time,
Churchill was down for the count.
In 1924, Churchill stood again as an Independent in yet another
general election—and won his seat. A year later, he rejoined the
Conservative Party, saying that, “Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain
amount of ingenuity to re-rat.” He was made Chancellor of the
Exchequer by Stanley Baldwin and presided over the disastrous
reintroduction of the Gold Standard and the return to the pre-war
dollar exchange rate. This led—as predicted by many—to a full-blown
depression and, ultimately, to the General Strike. Churchill is said to
have favoured using machine guns on striking miners (“Either the
country will break the General Strike, or the General Strike will break
the country”16) and looked with some fondness on the activities of
Benito Mussolini’s fascists in Italy as being the best antidote to
the dangers of creeping Bolshevism. He even had hopes that the
emerging German fascist, Adolf Hitler, might “go down in History as the
man who restored honour and peace of mind to the great Germanic
nation and brought it back […] to the forefront of the European
family circle.”
The Conservatives lost the general election in 1929. In the course of
the 1900s, Churchill managed to antagonize most of the Conservative
Party leadership over his vehement opposition to Home Rule for India
and his support of King Edward VIII in the Abdication Crisis.17
In these ‘wilderness years’ Churchill nevertheless, and despite his
self-confessed preference for fascism as the lesser of two evils as
opposed to communism, saw more clearly than most the growing
likelihood of a major conflict with Germany. He spoke consistently
in the House of Commons for the development of the Royal Air Force
and the need to create a Ministry of Defence. He fiercely criticized
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain for signing the Munich

56
Agreement, which granted Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland to Hitler’s
Germany (Germany had already annexed Austria) on the agreement
that this would mark the end of Hitler’s territorial ambitions. It
gave Chamberlain the opportunity to declare, “Peace in our time:”
Churchill’s analysis was more accurate: “You were given the choice
between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will
have war.”
At the outbreak of World War II, Churchill was brought back to
the cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty. After Germany’s
lightning invasion of France in 1940, Chamberlain resigned
and Churchill became Prime Minister and was asked to form an
all-party government.
Churchill’s success as a war leader was very mixed. His military chief
of staff for most of the war, General Sir Alan Brooke, wrote that,
“Winston had ten ideas every day, only one of which was good, and he
did not know which it was.” Several of them were really quite bad. He
was obsessed with attacking Germany through Norway, which is
probably a military impossibility. Despite his experience with
Gallipoli, he continued to look for ‘imaginative’ ways of attacking the
enemy’s flanks: an attack on the Greek Dodecanese Islands ended in
disaster. Churchill’s experience of fighting the Boers, who waged such
a successful ‘hit and run’ war against regular British troops, gave him
a lasting belief in the effectiveness of behind-the-lines operations by
groups of partisans. Churchill encouraged resistance in countries such
as Greece and the former Yugoslavia; the Nazis crushed this resistance
with appalling ferocity at little or no cost to their military machine.
Churchill’s fond memories of the relatively good behavior of British
troops to their plucky Boer foes belonged to a different era.
But Churchill’s constant search for a chance—almost any
chance—to hit back at the enemy occasionally paid dividends: on the
eve of the Battle of Britain—the battle for air supremacy prior to the
planned German invasion of Britain—Churchill, remarkably, sent
Britain’s last significant tank force to Egypt to prevent Mussolini from
seizing Egypt and the Suez canal; the vital link between the

57
Mediterranean and Britain’s empire in the East. In December 1940,
the British Western Desert Force drove Mussolini out of Egypt and
captured 113,000 Italians. In a parody of Churchill’s great speech
about the Battle of Britain (“Never […] has so much been owed, by
so many, to so few”), relieved Britons joked that, “Never has so much
been surrendered by so many, to so few.” The Italian defeat prompted
Hitler to despatch Erwin Rommel to North Africa with his
Afrikakorps. Britain, having won the Battle of Britain by the skin of
its teeth, and having prevented the loss of the Suez Canal and the
oilfields of the Middle East, was still in the war.
The nation could not have come to this point without the inspiration
offered by Churchill. After the fall of France, the defeat of the British
Expeditionary Force and the humiliating evacuation from Dunkirk, a
sensible nation might have sought terms with Germany. The Britain of
Churchill’s imagination was greater than its reality, but by his dogged
insistence on resistance at all costs, Churchill brought the government,
and then the nation—through the eagerly-awaited broadcast of his
speeches via BBC Radio—to believe in Churchill’s inspiring vision of
their better selves.

“I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined the
Government, ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and
sweat’. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We
have before us many, many long months of struggle and of
suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by
sea, land, and air, with all our might and with all the strength that
God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never
surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That
is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word:
Victory—victory—at all costs, victory, in spite of all terror, victory,
however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there
is no survival. Let that be realized; no survival for the British Empire;
no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival
for the urge and impulse of the ages, that mankind will move

58
forward towards its goal. But I take up my task with buoyancy and
hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among
men. At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all, and I say, come,
then, let us go forward together with our united strength.”18

“Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization.

Upon it depends our own British life and the long continuity of our
institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the
enemy must very soon be turned on us now. Hitler knows that he
will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand
up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may
move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the
whole world, including the United States, including all that we have
known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age,
made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of
perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties,
and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its
Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This
was their finest hour’.”19

59
 3
doing the
planning
 ne of the most underrated accomplishments of any manager is
O planning. Not in the obvious sense in which planning is one of
the key functions of every managerial job specification (many
managers’ jobs consist of very little else than planning, that is ensuring
that a certain result has been delivered by a particular deadline) but
rather in planning the broad outline of what it is that you intend to
achieve in your current role.
It is dauntingly easy to get bogged down in the details of any job.
Sometimes simply keeping things running on a day-to-day basis
seems like a pretty big achievement. In fact, that always feels like a
pretty big achievement, because it is. But every manager needs also to
find the time to plan exactly how they intend to achieve their broader
objectives on the timescale that they have allowed themselves. The
really great planners are the ones who seem able to hold huge amounts
of information in their heads, who never for one moment lose sight
of the objectives, or of the precise order in which they should be
achieved. As a result, such managers seem to pull off a succession of
miraculous successes. They are not, of course, miraculous; they are
the product of meticulous planning.


The first two leaders from history in this chapter are brilliant examples
of this technique: Napoleon’s greatness as a military strategist was
founded largely on the painstaking and detailed planning that he
undertook for all of his projects. Napoleon had a mind like a filing
cabinet—capable of storing and retrieving huge amounts of
information, seemingly without effort—and this formidable machine
ticked away at all times, tuning ideas over, seeing how they might work,
thinking through the logistical implications of every possible course
of action. When Napoleon set anything in motion, he had thought
through how it would be accomplished, often in astonishing detail.
Lee Kwan Yew created the economic miracle of Singapore, the newly-
independent and relatively insignificant island that had become the

63
smallest nation in Southeast Asia and of which he had become Prime
Minister. This miracle was the result of single-minded application and
an extremely thorough planning process. Lee created an Economic
Development Board to attract outside finance and to pull in any outside
talent that was needed. He employed a Dutch economist, Dr Albert
Winsemius, to advise him and the Board. Singapore developed a major
oil-refining capacity and turned the old British dockyards into the most
modern ship-building and repair facility between Europe and Japan.
With no oil of its own, Singapore became a major refinery, shipping oil
via the Persian Gulf and distributing refined products on to Indonesia,
Australia, and other countries. Southeast Asia’s first container-ship
terminal was built, with 24-hour berthing. Lee passed new legislation
allowing a crackdown on corruption: Singapore began to offer a
low-wage, stable, and corruption-free manufacturing base for foreign
investment. Housing developments sprang up alongside the factories
and the office complexes. Singapore was transformed from a collection
of swamp villages to a high-rise, modern city; its manufacturing services
diversified into higher technologies. A program of education was started
to supply the knowledge workers that Singapore needed for the future.
Lee’s one-party state ran Singapore like a corporation; Singapore at the
time was not a model liberal democracy. But as an example of the way
in which a substantial modern economy can be built virtually from
scratch, Singapore is a stunning example of the power of planning.
Martin Luther King makes an unlikely bedfellow for Napoleon and
Lee Kwan Yew. One thinks of King for his astonishing powers as an
orator; for world-changing speeches such as his “I Have a Dream”
speech, delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington
D.C. in August 1963. But it is useful to remind ourselves that figures
like King do not emerge suddenly onto the world stage, make brilliant
speeches, and change opinions overnight. They spend most of their
lives doing far more mundane things—like planning. King’s strategy
to end racial discrimination in America was based on a carefully
planned series of actions and events, all of which required great
organizational skills and much tedious legwork—fund-raising, sitting

64
on committees, writing letters, organizing demonstrations, registering
black voters, spending time in jail. Whereas Napoleon’s astonishing
military victories changed the political face of Europe overnight,
Martin Luther King’s minor victories, his small steps forward, his little
breakthroughs, the media coverage of unacceptable acts of violence
against peaceful black demonstrators, all reached a tipping point in
the major cultural shift marked by the passing of the Civil Rights Act
of 1964—helped on its way by King’s “I Have a Dream” speech after
the March on Washington in 1963; all made possible by years of hard
work and planning.

65
 napoleon bonaparte
(1769–1821)
Napoleon is known as one of the great military commanders of all
time—possibly the greatest. He was also a remarkable leader in the
most general sense. His leadership skills were based on a wide range of
personal characteristics and strengths. He had a remarkable memory,
able to store and recall huge amounts of information in great detail.
He could focus on any issue for very long periods of time without
losing concentration; his keen intelligence and his shrewd grasp of the
key issues of the day gave him a commanding air of authority. He was
personally brave, to the point of a kind of fatalism (“the bullet has not
yet been made that has my name on it”); he had the ability to inspire
others, and to drive them very hard. He had great breadth of vision;
huge self-belief; and considerable personal charm when necessary.
Napoleon was a great showman. In both military and civic matters
he liked to astonish, to dazzle. He was able to do this because he had
always done the planning. Napoleon’s agile mind was always turning
things over, investigating the options, thinking of alternatives. He had
a mind like a filing cabinet, but he also used some important tools to
help his memory. He used a system of record books of key
governmental and military information, constantly updated by clerks
and all presented in precisely the same format. The internal
organization of these books could not be changed without Napoleon’s
agreement; he knew exactly where he could find the information that
he wanted.20 He described his own mind as being like a cabinet, with
information stored behind certain doors. If he wanted to think about
a certain topic, he opened the relevant drawer in his mind—and there
it was. When he wanted to sleep, he closed all of the doors and he
slept.21 One senses that the record books, laid out in their precise way,
were uploaded into the compartments of his mind.
This astonishing mental resource meant that Napoleon was able to
plan, not only in broad brush strokes, but in detail. When he

66
conceived of a grand plan, he also supplied the logistics to deliver that
plan, down to the last detail. Napoleons astonishing victories owed
little to luck (though there is always fortune in battle, both good and
bad). His victories—his success in many fields—owed almost
everything to his meticulous planning.


Napoleon Bonaparte rose from relative obscurity—the second son of
minor Corsican nobility—to become Emperor of France. The scale of
his achievements changed the face not only of France, but of Europe.
Napoleon’s first and greatest success, the one from which all others
flowed, was as a military commander. He transformed the battlefield
tactics of the late eighteenth century, using only the raw materials that
had been available to any commander for most of the past
100 years. Napoleon’s genius was to realize that the same military
components—lines, columns, and squares of men, artillery, cavalry—
could be used in a much more fluid way, rapidly changing tactics
throughout a battle and looking always for the opportunity suddenly
to concentrate forces at the opponent’s weakest point.
Napoleon lent his military might to assist a coup d’état against the
ineffectual government of the Directoire that had emerged after the
overthrow of the extremists who had plunged the Revolution into the
nightmarish Jacobin Terror. Napoleon then unexpectedly seized control
of the coup itself and emerged as First Consul of the three new Consuls
appointed to head up the new government. Napoleon began steadily to
consolidate his powers: for the French he represented the strong hand
that would safeguard the hard-won benefits of the revolution. In 1802,
a plebiscite confirmed Napoleon as Consul for Life.
In the early days of his civic administration, in the short period of
peace that France enjoyed after Napoleon had for the second time
defeated the Austrian Empire and their allies in their attempts to undo
the Revolution and restore the French monarchy, Napoleon
demonstrated that his brilliance was not confined to military matters.

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He set about rationalizing and modernizing France’s archaic civil
administration, started ambitious building programs, created the
Bank of France to stabilize the currency and the economy, established
an enduring system of secondary education, and reached a pragmatic
entente with the Catholic Church. At this stage of his career, he was
also able to delegate effectively, appointing the Second Consul,
Cambacérès—a great legal brain and a brilliant administrator—to
lead the team of lawyers that would create the Code Civil des Français;
the so-called Napoleonic Code, which codified many of the civil rights
for which the Revolution had been fought. The existence of the Code,
now enshrined in law, gave the citizens of France a reason to believe
that their hard-won rights and freedoms would not be snatched away
from them. For many there were also concrete gains arising from the
purchase of property belonging to the previous aristocracy, the crown,
or the church. All of this gave France a good reason to support the
man who seemed able to defend the new Republic from the
monarchies of Europe, who regarded the very existence of republican
France as a threat to their existence.
The peace between Britain and France foundered and Britain
declared war, blockading French ports. A plot to assassinate Napoleon
was uncovered and Napoleon seized the opportunity to have himself
crowned as Emperor. With the risk that all of the revolutionary gains
could be lost at a stroke if Napoleon were killed, the creation of a
hereditary emperor of France was seen, perversely at first glance, as the
best way of preserving the revolution.
Napoleon turned his attention on Britain, whose growing industrial
wealth enabled her to become the paymaster of the allies ranged
against France, stiffening their resolve with “British Gold.” He built
up a huge army and a fleet of barges at Boulogne. He devised an
over-elaborate plot for the French navy to break out of British
blockades, join up with the Spanish fleet in the West Indies and lure
the British fleet to attack them there. The combined French and
Spanish Fleet would then give the British the slip and return to control
the English Channel. It was a strategy that Napoleon might just have

68
been able to pull off on land, but he never did quite grasp that things
are different at sea, that inconveniences such as winds and tides could
interfere with the best-laid plans.The French and Spanish fleet finally
ended up back in Cadiz, blockaded by the Royal Navy. Napoleon’s
plans to invade Britain were now unrealizable and were abandoned
finally when Britain convinced Russia and Austria to join a new
coalition against France. The combined armies of Austria and Russia
began to mobilize against France.
Napoleon had already considered this eventuality and held an entire
plan of campaign in his head. In an unbroken six-hour stint he dictated
to his secretary a meticulous plan for the deployment of his Grande
Armée (of nearly a quarter of a million men) in an unbroken six-hour
stint. He was about to dispatch 210,000 troops from northern France to
the Danube, collecting 25,000 Bavarian allies along the way: an
unprecedented number of men traveling more than 200 miles in the
remarkably short time of 13 days.22 It was considered to be an impossible
feat of logistics, and all of the plans for this deployment—down to the
most remarkable detail of marches, supplies, river-crossings, timings,
overnight stops—were held in Napoleon’s head.
Napoleon now carried out one of his classic army maneuvers on a
grand scale, surprising the Austrians with both the speed and
direction of his attack, cutting them off in the fortress city of Ulm on
the upper reaches of the Danube. The Austrian General Mack was
forced to surrender his 30,000 men without any significant battle
having been fought. At the same time, Napoleon, furious at the French
navy’s failure to implement his over-elaborate strategies for the
invasion of Britain, had unwisely ordered the allied French and
Spanish fleet to sail to the Mediterranean to support his land attack;
an unnecessary risk. Villeneuve sailed out of Cadiz and was destroyed
by Admiral Nelson in the battle of Trafalgar, two days after the
surrender of Ulm. The French navy never recovered in Napoleon’s
lifetime; Britain had control of the oceans.
Napoleon turned his attention to the Russians; his plan to encircle
them in turn was spoiled when the brilliant but impetuous

69
commander of cavalry, Murat, was deflected from his goal by the
understandable lure of seizing Vienna, the ancient capital of the
Habsburg Holy Roman Empire. The wily Russian General Kutuzov
withdrew his forces across the Danube while his rearguard created the
impression that the Russians would, indeed, stay to defend Vienna.
Murat was completely hoodwinked; he rode towards Vienna while
Kutuzov escaped to the north. Napoleon was furious. He was now in
a very exposed position; his troops were exhausted after eight weeks
of campaigning. His lines of communication were very stretched. The
Austrian armies in the Alps were marching towards the Danube; the
Russians had met with the remnants of the Austrian Army in the
interior and now numbered some 90,000 men. Napoleon was exposed
between a rock and a hard place. He decided to attack.
Napoleon’s overarching battle strategy was simple: he wanted to
engage the enemy and to destroy their army, so that they no longer
represented a meaningful threat. Now, from a position of apparent
weakness, he lured his enemy toward the battle that was his best hope
of success. It was a gamble, but not a desperate one: lines of retreat
were still open to him.
Napoleon marched north from Vienna, deep into Moravia (Czech
Republic). He left two army corps behind to defend against attacks
from the south, making his apparent forces some 53,000 strong: the
Russian and Austrian allies were nearly twice as strong, with 89,000
men. Napoleon was sure that they would not be able to resist the
temptation to attack the outnumbered French army; once they had
taken the bait he would call up the reserves from Vienna to bring his
strength up to 75,000: a more reasonable match.23
The Allies watched as the French army seemed to walk into a trap.
They proposed an armistice (to give the Austrian army in the Alps
sufficient time to advance from the south). Napoleon seemed eager
to agree.
Napoleon had chosen the ground for his battle very carefully: the
apparently innocuous territory near Austerlitz, with various minor
streams flowing north to south beneath a low plateau—the Pratzen

70
Heights. Every element of the terrain was to play its part; the battle was
already being fought (and won) in Napoleon’s head. “Gentlemen,” he
said to his officers, “examine this ground carefully. It is going to be a
battlefield; you will have a part to play upon it.”24 Napoleon continued
his grand deception: French troops had occupied the strategically
valuable high ground of the Pratzen Heights; as the Allied forces
approached, they were ordered to withdraw in apparent confusion.
Napoleon requested a meeting with Tsar Alexander, but was fobbed
off with a member of the Tsar’s military staff. Napoleon allowed
himself to be harangued by the young firebrand (probably one of the
hardest things that Napoleon ever forced himself to do). The young
Russian Count, bursting with pride at having browbeaten the mighty
Napoleon, returned to the Allied headquarters convinced that he and
his colleagues were on the brink of a great victory.
Napoleon now planned the destruction of the armies set against
him. The French army corps left behind at Vienna were summoned to
Austerlitz by forced marches. They covered 80 miles in 50 hours,
snatching a few hours sleep and being fortified by huge allowances of
wine. Napoleon deliberately extended the right wing of the French
army, while his left wing was held securely by troops and cavalry. The
Allies had seized the obvious strategic position of the Pratzen Heights
after they had been abandoned, dramatically, by the French: as they
looked down on Napoleon’s dispositions it was obvious to the
Austrian and Russian Allies that they should launch their main attack
against the French right wing. Smashing through, they would
both outflank the French line and cut them off from their line of
retreat to Vienna.
The night before the battle happened to be the anniversary of
Napoleon’s coronation as Emperor of France. Napoleon issued an
Order of the Day, encouraging the troops with a kind of reversal of the
usual leading from the front: so secure was Napoleon in the loyalty of
his troops that he promised to stay out of danger unless they
faltered—at which moment Napoleon would join the battle and
expose himself to danger.

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 “Soldiers, I shall in person direct all your battalions; I shall keep out
of range if, with your accustomed bravery, you carry disorder and
confusion into the ranks of the enemy; but if the victory is for a
moment uncertain, you shall see your emperor expose himself in
the front rank.”25

Was any other commander so certain of the devotion of his troops

that he could inspire them by threatening to appear in their front
ranks if they should falter?
Napoleon was led through the camp by a torchlight procession of
his troops, celebrating the anniversary of the Emperors’ coronation.
The army went into a kind of frenzied adoration of their great
commander; this was their own celebration of his official coronation,
so stiffly conducted one year earlier in Notre Dame Cathedral, with
Napoleon overdressed in ermine. “This is the finest evening of my
life,” Napoleon said to his aides. It may well have been: never happier
than when he was basking in the uncritical adulation of his army,
Napoleon was on the eve of his greatest triumph. After Austerlitz,
though there were many more victories to come, Napoleon began to
limit access to his Imperial person, to ignore well-meaning (and
well-founded) advice, and to start on the slippery slope toward
full-blown megalomania, toward wars that were driven not by the
need to defend France but by the desire to expand the empire. He was
perhaps never again so much at one with his nation and with his
beloved army.
The French troops from Vienna began to arrive at the French camp
on the very eve of the battle after their astonishing march. The Allies
attacked the apparently weak French right flank before dawn; the
French were involved in a desperate and bloody struggle and fell
back—this was no elegant feint; the troops on that wing took heavy
casualties. So certain were the Allies that the route to victory lay
through the French right flank that they poured troops from the
center of their position—the Pratzen Heights—to attack the French
right wing.

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 A heavy fog filled the valley beneath the Heights; it served to conceal
the troops that Napoleon was gathering at his center. As the sun broke
through the mist at nine o’clock—”the glorious sun of Austerlitz”—the
French stormed the Pratzen Heights.
The Allies desperately tried to reverse the flow of troops from the
wing back to the center; there was a fierce battle for control of the
Heights, but the French eventually prevailed, moving artillery and
troops and finally the Imperial Headquarters up onto the heights
where they could command the entire battlefield. By the early
afternoon, the whole Allied center had been pushed off the Pratzen
Heights, and the Allied troops who had so recently been driving back
the French right wing were now surrounded as new French troops
poured off the Pratzen Heights to their rear. The Russians and
Austrians lost 15,000 killed with 12,000 taken prisoner: nearly one
third of their force. The remainder of the army was scattered: the
Russians retreated through Hungary and Poland. The day after the
battle, the Austrian Emperor asked for an armistice.
The Austrian and Russian armies had been destroyed at Austerlitz,
which was always Napoleon’s overriding goal: not simply to win a
battle but to destroy the enemies’ armies as a fighting force. Napoleon
imposed punitive and humiliating terms on Austria, dismantling the
Holy Roman Empire, a confederation of European states that had
been ruled from Vienna for 500 years. This became increasingly the
pattern for future Napoleonic victories: ignoring the advice of his
Foreign Minister, the brilliant diplomat Charles Maurice de
Talleyrand, Napoleon tended increasingly to impose peace settlements
that left the enemy humiliated and resentful, but in a position to
rebuild their forces and seek revenge.
In 1812 Napoleon invaded Russia, seeking his trademark rapid
victory. After an unsuccessful attempt to destroy the Russian army in
a maneuver near Smolensk, the two armies finally met in a bloody but
inconclusive engagement at Borodino, near Moscow. The Russians
retreated further, abandoning Moscow to the French but stripping it
of supplies. Having taken Moscow, Napoleon expected the Russians to

73
capitulate. Moscow was set on fire, probably by Russian saboteurs.
Napoleon stayed in Moscow too long, finally ordering the retreat as
winter temperatures plummeted. The Grand Armée was annihilated
in the appalling retreat.
Napoleon started to raise a new army, but his enemies smelled
blood. Napoleon was finally defeated at Leipzig in the Battle of
Nations where half a million troops fought each other; the biggest
European battle until the World War I. Napoleon fought on in a
number of brilliant defensive battles as the Allies invaded France, but
was completely outnumbered. Paris was taken by the Allies; Napoleon
abdicated and was exiled to Elba. The hugely fat Louis XVIII was
restored to the throne.
Napoleon escaped from Elba with a few hundred of the old guard
whom he had unwisely been allowed to retain and began a
triumphant procession to Paris; Louis XVIII and his aristocratic
supporters fled the country. Napoleon promised a new constitutional
government and an end to war; certain that the allies would move
against him, however, he threw himself into financing and raising a
new army, working non-stop, sleeping for perhaps three hours a day.
His intellect was as sharp as ever; he was determined once more to
drive events by the sheer force of his personality. But there was bitter
resentment in the country at the new conscription and the threat of
renewed war; many troops were required to keep down potential
revolts. Napoleon flew into frequent rages and began to drive his
Minister of War, the faithful Marshal Davout, to breaking point. The
Prussian, and their British allies were massing in Belgium.
Napoleon showed all of his old strategic brilliance, attacking the
Prussians before they could join forces with the British; destroying his
enemy in detail before they could mass against him. He defeated the
Prussian army, but some of the old fire seemed to be missing, both in
Napoleon and in those of his Marshalls who had not deserted the
Napoleonic cause—and the revolution—and gone over to the
restored monarchy. Marshal Ney, the man who had heroically
commanded the rearguard on the retreat from Moscow, was slow to

74
attack Wellington’s troops at Quatre Bras, losing vital time. The next
day, heavy rain delayed the French attack; in the meantime the
Prussian commander, Marshal Blucher, having given his word to
support Wellington, had prevented his defeated troops from retreating
back to the east. Fortified with gin and garlic, he marched to meet
Wellington, as promised. Ney wasted the French cavalry in repeated
charges against the stout defence of Wellington’s infantry. The arrival
of the Prussians sealed the French defeat.
The government in Paris deserted Napoleon; he attempted to
escape to the United States but was prevented by a British naval
squadron and finally surrendered formally on board one of their
ships. He hoped to be allowed to settle in Britain, but was transported
to his final exile in St Helena, where he died in 1821.

75
 lee kwan yew
(b. 1923)
Lee Kwan Yew created the city state of Singapore. He turned a small
island that was significant only for its strategic importance as a naval
base serving the British Empire’s southeast Asian colonial interests, into
one of the four Asian Tiger economies, alongside Hong Kong, Taiwan,
and South Korea. There was absolutely nothing inevitable about this; it
happened because of the vision of one man. Lee Kwan Yew’s relationship
to Singapore is perhaps best seen as that of a Chief Executive Officer to
a corporation. If we were considering Lee’s career as that of an executive
rather than that of a politician we would say, without reservation, that
his rise to power was brilliantly but ruthlessly orchestrated; that his
sharp, legally-trained mind had a crystal-clear grasp of the issues
involved and of the interests of the key players, whom he masterfully
manipulated; that he made use of various factions to facilitate his own
road to power, and that he then unceremoniously (and successfully)
dumped them once power had been achieved. We would say that his
vision for his corporation’s future was equally single-minded, and that
every obstacle to the fulfillment of that vision was brilliantly overcome.
We would say, as analysts or as potential investors, that Lee’s efforts on
behalf of his corporation had led to unprecedented growth and financial
success, to the great benefit of his workforce and his shareholders.
Reservations about Lee stem from the fact that he created modern
Singapore from the position of a politician rather than as an Executive
Officer, and that what reads like firm action in the corporate world can
translate as repressive behavior in the political arena. The cost of
Singapore’s Capitalist Statism, however—which has many similarities to
the political regime and economic policies of the early Republic of
Turkey, founded by Mustafa Kemal—can be measured only in lost
liberties and in degrees of state interference.

76
 
The island of Singapore was acquired for the East India Company—the
quasi-governmental trading organization for the British Empire—by
the marvellous eighteenth-century figure of Sir Thomas Stamford
Bingley Raffles, in 1819. The island became a British colony in 1824
and became a British Crown Colony in 1867. All of which glosses over
the fact that the island had been a significant trading post for the
Indonesian people for a thousand years or so before a decline in the
fourteenth century, and long before the rise of the British Empire.
Singapore became an important trading post on the spice route
from Indonesia to the west, and then a significant British naval base,
built particularly to counter the threat of rising Japanese influence in
the region. Unfortunately, when the Japanese did attack Singapore in
1942, during World War II, having fought their way down through
Malaya, the British contingent collapsed within days, leading to the
largest surrender in the history of the British Army—80,000
surrendered at Singapore, joining the 50,000 troops who had already
been captured on the Malaysian mainland. Winston Churchill called
it the “biggest disaster and worst capitulation in British history.”
The fall of Singapore had a two-fold effect on young Lee Kwan Yew
and his contemporaries. Lee, whose Chinese great-grandfather had
emigrated to Singapore in the late 1800s, and who was 19 years old
when Singapore was captured by the Japanese, would never forget the
effects of foreign domination:

“[The Japanese] made me, and a generation like me, determined to

work for freedom from servitude and foreign domination. I did not
enter politics. They brought politics to me.”26

The second effect on Lee and his contemporaries was the vivid realization
that the mighty British Empire was not all-powerful. Even after Britain,

77
in the magnificently-uniformed person of Lord Mountbatten, accepted
the surrender of Japan alongside representatives of the other Allies,
Britain’s humiliating defeat by the Japanese still resonated.
Lee learned Japanese and became a translator for the official
Japanese news agency. He fled from Singapore in the last days of the
war and hid in the Malayan interior until the British arrived. Lee, a
fearsomely bright student, was in a hurry to get on with his studies.
His parents found him a civilian berth on the troop-ship Britannia; he
arrived at Liverpool, traveled to London and spent one term at the
London School of Economics before winning a place at Fitzwilliam
College, Cambridge, where he took a double first in law. He returned
to Singapore and started work as a lawyer in a well-known firm before
setting up his own practice with his wife, whom he had met at
Cambridge, and his elder brother. The politics of Singapore were
changing rapidly; it was not a question of whether Singapore would
become independent but when, and who would benefit most. Lee set
out to ensure that he would emerge in a position of political control.
His vision never wavered, though events took various turns that even
the clear-sighted Lee could not have predicted.
Communism was an inescapable part of the post-war politics of
Singapore, Malaya, and Southeast Asia as a whole. When China had
emerged from the World War II and its own war with Japan, the
Communist Party of China had defeated their Nationalist opponents
to emerge as the new rulers of China. The Singaporean Chinese had
been significant fund-raisers for both parties—Communist and
Nationalist—during the Sino-Japanese War.
Communist groups in Malaya had fought a war of resistance
against the Japanese. The Malayan Communist Party, formed in 1930,
demanded an end to British Colonial rule. After the Japanese invasion,
the Party formed the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army, and were
supported with British arms. At the end of the war, they were legally
ratified in recognition of this wartime collaboration against the
Japanese. Later, the Communist Party used violent action in support
of union demands. As increasing violence led to the threat of a

78
full-scale rebellion, the British colonial government declared a State of
Emergency in 1948 that would not be lifted until 1960. The Malay
Communist Party was suppressed once more; their anti-Japanese
forces re-emerged as the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA)
and fought a guerrilla war against Commonwealth forces. Support for
the MNLA came substantially from Malaya’s three million Chinese.
Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, the war against the French in Vietnam
would end in 1954, with communist forces, backed by China and the
USSR, driving the French out of Indochina. The Second Indochina
War—The Vietnam War—would begin in 1959.
Britain was determined to avoid a communist government in a newly
independent Singapore. Ironically, since Lee Kuan Yew would eventually
emerge as the leader of one of the bastions of capitalism in Southeast
Asia, Lee initially tied his flag to left-wing causes in order to harness
their popular support. He later comprehensively severed all ties with
his former allies, arresting some and exiling others.
Lee made a name for himself in Singapore as legal counsel for two
left-wing issues. He represented the Postal Worker’s Union during a
strike and was rarely out of the local papers, issuing a barrage of
statements and letters to editors. Lee helped to win significant
concessions for the Union from the colonial government. Student
activists who were backing the strike turned to Lee to defend them
against charges of sedition for the publication of a student journal.
Lee—ironically, given his later repressive dealings with the
Singaporean press—argued for the inviolable right of the students to
freedom of speech. The charges against the students were dismissed;
the high-profile case established Lee as a champion of the left.
Lee began to focus on a political career—the goal of all of his
previous efforts. He and a group of like-minded friends formed a new
political party, the People’s Action Party (PAP). Lee became
secretary-general. The new party had solid Trades Union support. The
elections in 1955 were fought on a limited franchise—the bulk of the
Chinese population was still disenfranchised, but those Chinese with
dual citizenship of both the United Kingdom and of the Colonies were

79
entitled to vote for the first time. Lee knew that to attract the Chinese
vote he needed a left-leaning, communist-friendly agenda. He was
about to play a remarkably subtle political hand: harnessing
pro-communist support without being taken over by them, while
remaining the leader of choice for anti-communist supporters.
The new party’s platform was unashamedly populist: repeal of the
State of Emergency imposed after the Communist insurrection in
Malaya; independence for Malaya and Singapore; Malays (and
Singaporeans) to take on the running of the civil service; universal adult
suffrage. At this point, Malaya and Singapore saw themselves as one
nation, though Singapore was predominantly Chinese, while Malaya
was a mixture of ethnic Malay, Chinese and other ethnic groupings.
Prominent Malayan politicians joined Lee and his colleagues on
electioneering platforms. The relationship would later fall apart.
Lee continued to play both sides of the electorate. With several
prominent left-wing members of the PAP in jail (conveniently enough
for Lee’s leadership) the PAP nevertheless needed the section of the
vote that these imprisoned figures represented. The PAP campaigned
on a platform promising that they would refuse to assume power
unless the Trade Unionists were released from prison. In the elections,
the PAP won 43 of the 51 constituencies with 54 percent of the
total vote.
There was one last-minute hurdle. When the executive committee
came to choose a Prime Minister, Lee was shocked to find that he had
a serious rival. Ong Eng Guaan had been elected with an impressive
77 percent of the vote in his constituency. He was popular,
larger-than-life, and had been a very successful mayor of Singapore.
He had the popular touch: on the day of his inauguration as mayor,
he had set off firecrackers outside City Hall and got himself arrested.
He refused to wear the colonial wig and regalia and performed his
mayoral duties in his shirt sleeves. It is hard not to like Ong’s way of
handling people whom he felt to be wasting time in meetings at City
Hall. To encourage committee members to be more concise, Ong
would make tactful suggestions, such as, “Shut up,” “Sit down,” “Get

80
out,” or “Blab, blab, blab, blab.”27 The vote between Ong and Lee was
split down the middle; Lee was saved when his ally, Toh Chin Chye,
exercised his casting vote, as Party Chairman, in Lee’s favor. Lee Luan
Yew, at the age of 36, was Prime Minister of Singapore.
Lee began to lobby for Singapore to be united with an independent
Malaya—Malaya had become an independent state in the British
Commonwealth in 1957. Lee argued that Singapore, left on its own,
could fall into the hands of the communists. One of the most
compelling reasons for Malaya to accept Singapore into the greater
Federation of Malaysia was the fear of a communist state off the
southern tip of Malaya. In fact, Lee cracked down so hard on
communists in Singapore that, over the next year or two, this threat
was soon proved to be non-existent. Lee worked hard to have his
Singaporean political party, the PAP, accepted into the Federal
Government, but was rejected. He almost certainly had plans to
become Prime Minister of Malaysia. The two sides fell out over Lee’s
political ambitions, exacerbated by the issue of race: Malaysia’s
population was almost equally split between Malay and Chinese
citizens, with about 20 percent made up of other ethnic groupings.
When Lee formed an opposition grouping in Malaysia based on his
predominantly Chinese PAP, this polarized politics between Malay and
non-Malay groupings; there were riots between Malays and Chinese. It
seemed possible that Lee wanted to form a rival Federation based on
the predominantly Chinese states of Singapore, Sarawak, and Sabah
(the latter two being Malaysian states on the island of Borneo).
Singapore was ejected from Malaysia in 1965, and became the Republic
of Singapore.
With Singapore unexpectedly independent and thrown onto its
own resources, Lee set about planning the development of the
economy with impressive single-mindedness. He established the
Economic Development Board, which set out to attract both foreign
investment and any necessary outside expertise. The Board itself was
staffed with experts in every necessary field. Lee employed a Dutch
economist, Dr Albert Winsemius, to help develop the country’s

81
national economic strategy. Singapore had traditionally relied on
entrepot trade—its geographical location gave it the perfect position
from which to buy goods from shippers who did not want to
undertake the full journey between, for example, east and west, and to
sell them on, at a profit, to more distant customers in both markets
(the French word entrepôt translates as “between two places”).
The developing plan was to transform Singapore from an
entrepot economy to an industrialized manufacturing base within
ten years.
Lee was conscious that his neighbors, Malaysia and Indonesia, would
be increasingly keen to cut out the middle man and that, with the world
shrinking daily, shipment direct from supplier to customer on a
world-wide basis would become increasingly common. This did not
mean that Singapore’s location on the main shipping route from the
Far East to Europe was a shrinking asset: Singapore built Southeast
Asia’s first container-ship terminal, offering a 24-hour berthing system
to speed-up turnaround. In the first ten years of Lee’s Prime Ministry,
the volume of cargo handled by Singapore doubled. The island, with
no oil resources of its own, developed a major oil-refining capacity;
crude oil was imported via the Persian Gulf, and shipped on as refined
products to markets from Indonesia to Australia.
When the British decided to close their huge naval base in Singapore,
it was a potentially devastating blow. Lee turned it into a tremendous
opportunity: he persuaded British Prime Minister Harold Wilson not
to destroy the base, which was normal practice (to prevent naval
facilities from being used by a hostile power) but to allow Singapore to
develop it for civilian use. Singapore became the best-equipped
shipbuilding and ship-repair yard between Japan and Europe.
New legislation gave the Corrupt Practices Investment Bureau
substantial powers to investigate and prosecute anyone suspected of
corruption. Civil Service salaries were improved and reviewed
regularly to remove the incentive for corruption. An Employment Act
guaranteed an absence of labor disputes and wage restraint by making
arbitration compulsory. Singapore could offer foreign investors

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relatively inexpensive industrial labor costs with a stable and
corruption-free administration. Equally important were Singapore’s
strong work ethic and can-do attitude. Singapore was beginning to
emulate the other ‘tiger economies’ of Southeast Asia. Unemployment
fell dramatically between 1965 and 1973. Huge housing developments
sprang up on land reclaimed from swamps or from the sea itself.
Slums disappeared. Industrial, shopping, and office complexes
were built.
Lee decided that Singapore should be “Clean and Green”. Teams of
gardeners appeared and began planting. Shop owners were obliged to
keep their shop fronts clean and tidy; littering became a relatively
serious offence.
By the end of the 1960s, Singapore was ready to offer more than a
stable and low-cost manufacturing base; a new industrial development
was planned to deliver sophisticated and capital-intensive factories
producing high-technology goods: cameras; electronics; machine tools.
The country could afford to be more selective about its inward
investment—new criteria looked at investment proposals that
developed worker skills, offered technological growth and had
guaranteed export potential. Singapore began to develop as a financial
market. By the end of the 1960s there were more than 20 foreign banks
on the island; Asian dollar deposits were tax-free (compared to the 15
percent tax on deposits in Hong Kong); hard currencies were
exchanged free of charge. Growing American interest in Southeast Asia
made Singapore a vital part of the flow of American capital towards the
region—and later of European capital also. Dr Winsemius, the
economic advisor, encouraged new investment in further education:
the unemployment issue had been effectively solved, what was needed
now were higher-level skills and knowledge-based services.
Singapore ranked 19th on the World Bank’s 2007 list of GDP per
capita. The United States ranked 10th. Japan ranked 20th.28 It is
amazing what planning can achieve.

83
 martin luther king
(1929–1968)
Martin Luther King, a Baptist preacher, developed an emotionally
charged style of address that led, in time, to his being proclaimed as
one of America’s greatest orators. His themes were constant and
fundamental: the obvious injustice of a system that created a form of
second-class citizenship for citizens of a nation built on the premise
that all men are created equal, and the call for non-violent protest as
the morally acceptable means of confronting injustice.
It would be tempting to focus on King’s inspirational speeches as his
best claim for greatness as a leader. But the speeches were what brought
King to international acclaim once he had worked his way onto a
national and international platform: his hardest work as a leader had
been undertaken, years before, in the arduous, unglamorous, and
unrewarded efforts to organize local action—in the hard graft of the
committee room; in the raising of funds and the distribution of leaflets;
in the finding of allies, supporters and well-wishers; in the
encouragement of groups of people faced with violent intimidation
and under the constant strain of fighting the establishment without
any of the weapons of power. Like the great generals whose dramatic
victories are the result not only of hard-fought battles, but also of all
the detailed strategic and logistical planning, so King’s later speeches
should be seen in the context of a life dedicated to a cause; of two
decades of planning and hard work. His “I Have a Dream” speech has
gone down in history as a defining statement of black Americans’
struggle for equality. It would not have the resonance that it does
without the long history of hard-won minor victories and significant
milestones that King’s movement had achieved previously on the long
road to freedom.
King’s own activism was sparked by the apparently mundane actions
of one black woman from Montgomery, Alabama: Rosa Parks. One
day in 1955, Rosa had taken her seat in the ‘colored’ section of a

84
Montgomery bus as usual, but as the bus filled up the driver moved the
‘colored’ sign further back, asking Rosa and other black passengers to
give up their seats for white passengers. Something in Rosa snapped.
She refused to give up her seat and was arrested and convicted of
violating a local ordinance. Black churches organized a one-day boycott
of local buses. Following the success of this day of action, an
organization known as the Montgomery Improvement Association
(MIA) was formed. The Association elected as their President a relative
newcomer to the area, the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King. The bus
boycott was resumed and was to continue for over a year; buses stood
idle; the bus company’s finances began to suffer. Black churches were
burned and bombed by segregationists; King’s own home was
firebombed. King’s MIA negotiated special rates with black taxi drivers
to help black people to travel about town (taxis were also segregated);
when the city declared these reduced fares to be illegal, they organized
car-pools. Legal activists took up other cases of racial discrimination
on buses: in December 1956 the United States Supreme Court declared
racial segregation on buses to be unconstitutional.
In order to sustain the momentum of the Montgomery civil rights
victory, King, with other black leaders, founded the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957. He established himself as its
leader; toured, gave speeches, wrote about the events in Montgomery.
King was more than a great public speaker. He did the hard and
unrewarding work that created an organization that could bring about
the dreams that he spoke about so eloquently. He also put his life
in danger.


Martin Luther King was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in the Southern
States of the United States of America, in 1929. His father was a Baptist
minister, as was his mother’s father. King grew up in a middle-class
family in the most affluent society the world had ever seen. In the
1920s, America severely restricted the tide of immigration from

85
Europe that had populated the vast continent and settled down
to the business of creating wealth via industrial-scale farming and the
mass production of consumer goods. Great swathes of America
entered the middle-classes; it was a time of radios and electrical
appliances, of suburbs and cars: by the year of Martin Luther King’s
birth, there were nearly 30 million motor vehicles on the road—one
for every citizen in five. For the one in ten citizens who were black
African-Americans, however, the American dream proved to be
elusive, especially in the Southern States, where segregation was a
legally-sanctioned facet of everyday life. King studied theology,
philosophy, and ethics at theological college. He was introduced to the
non-violent activism of Mahatma Ghandi that was to have such a
profound influence on him. He went on to take his doctorate in
Theology at Boston University.
Thirty-four years after his birth, King was to write a letter in
response to a statement in which white, liberal clergymen—people
sympathetic to the Civil Rights cause—had called for a halt on protest
marches aimed at ending the racial segregation of stores in
Birmingham, Alabama. Direct action incited hatred and violence, they
argued, no matter how peaceful the actions might be in themselves.
King’s written response to these clergymen spells out the difference
between the white and the black perspective, and the reason why black
Americans “find it difficult to wait.” King was in jail in Birmingham
at the time, for defying a court injunction banning further
demonstrations in the city, and his response was later published as his
Letter from Birmingham Jail. Although King makes reference to the
violence—sometimes fatal—that was still commonly inflicted on
blacks by whites in the southern states, with virtual impunity, it is the
more widespread and commonplace insult, the everyday humiliation,
that King tries to bring home to his white colleagues.

“We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and
God-given rights. The nations of Africa and Asia are moving at
jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we creep

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 at horse and buggy speed toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch
counter […] when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick,
and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast
majority of your 20 million negro brothers smothering in an
air-tight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when
you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech
stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year old daughter
why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been
advertized on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes
when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and
see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little
mental sky […] when you take a cross-country drive and find it
necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners
of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you
are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading ‘white’
and ‘colored’ […] when you are forever fighting a degenerating
sense of ‘nobodiness’ […] then you will understand why we find it
difficult to wait.”29

Four years after the Supreme Court’s decision that segregation on

buses was unconstitutional, it further ruled that any racial segregation
in transport facilities was illegal: interstate movement and commerce
was vital to the economy of the United States, passengers of any race
should not be forced to accept segregated facilities in states even where
law or custom enforced general segregation. The “Freedom
Rides”began. Mixed-race teams of students traveled from Virginia,
through the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, ending in
New Orleans. The Freedom Riders insisted on using the “Whites Only”
facilities at bus stations where segregation was in force. In Anniston,
Alabama, the bus was attacked and its tyres slashed. As the
crippled bus ground to a halt out of town on the highway, it was
firebombed. A mob attempted to barricade the doors, intending to
burn the occupants alive. An under-cover agent drew his gun and
forced the mob back from the door. The escaping Freedom Riders

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were beaten by the mob; Alabama state troopers arrived to see off
the attackers.
At Birmingham, the riders were again set upon by a mob,
apparently aided by the police under the Commissioner for Public
Safety: Bull Connor. The attackers used baseball bats, lead pipes, and
bicycle chains. Two riders were hospitalised, one white, one black.
With all of the riders injured, and the bus companies unwilling to
provide drivers, the rides were nearly discontinued. Many of the
original riders flew on to the planned rally in New Orleans. Diane
Nash, leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, sent
more riders.
It was now May 1961. The government of President Kennedy (just
five months into his presidency and fresh from the Bay of Pigs disaster,
a calamitously bungled invasion of neighboring communist Cuba,
intended to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro) began to take
an interest through the office of the Attorney General, Robert
Kennedy, the President’s younger brother. In Birmingham, with the
bus station surround by a violent mob, the Greyhound bus driver
refused to travel further. Robert Kennedy put pressure on both the
bus companies and the Alabama Governor, John Patterson. Patterson
was able to play a tricky and legally consistent game: he was the elected
Governor of a state that had chosen a segregationist policy. If the
government wanted to send in troops to support the “outside
agitators” who were in Alabama to “foment disorders and breaches of
the peace” and, for example, the state police and fire brigade were to
strike in protest at this federal intervention, then would the
government be responsible for any subsequent damage to the city?
President Kennedy, soon to meet the Russian President Nikita
Khrushchev in Europe and on the point of asking Congress to increase
spending on nuclear weapons to strengthen his hand in the escalating
Cold War, did not want to walk into the negotiating chamber on behalf
of the free world with embarrassing pictures splashed over the
international media of Federal troops trying to prevent American
citizens from assaulting their black fellow-citizens. The need for the

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President to call in the Army to help get a bus out of a station in Alabama
could also raise fundamental questions about Kennedy’s competence
and his ability to deliver on recent sweeping promises to take the country
into a new era of civil rights for all. The fact that the President had
depended heavily on southern votes for his recent election may also have
been at the back of his mind. His brother, Robert Kennedy, the Attorney
General, assembled a makeshift team of Marshalls from Federal bodies
such as the US Border Patrol, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms, and even prison officers.
Greyhound Buses put pressure on their unfortunate drivers to get
back behind the wheel; Patterson supplied a police escort, sirens
wailing, to the city line, where the convoy was picked up by the
police. With a highway patrol plane in the air and a posse of
reporters following, the convoy sped on to Montgomery. At
Montgomery city limits, the protective convoy disappeared. The bus
drew into Montgomery station and into the hands of a waiting mob.
Black and white Freedom riders, news photographers and reporters,
and Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s negotiator, John Seigenthaler,
who had driven to meet the bus and had gone to the aid
of a female Freedom Rider being attacked by the mob, were
viciously beaten.
The next day, people began to gather in the Montgomery church of
King’s lifelong associate, Ralph Abernathy. (Abernathy was to join King
in jail on 19 different occasions; King was to claim that jail held no
terrors for him more fearful than Abernathy’s snoring.) Freedom
Riders, pointedly not identified by name, were recognizable in the
church by their bandages. King had flown into Montgomery, raising
new government fears about the legal complications of protecting King
himself. He went to Abernathy’s church. There were some 1,200 people
in the church by nightfall. A huge mob of some 3,000 had gathered
outside. Robert Kennedy mobilized his makeshift army of Marshalls,
a handful of whom made a fragile barrier against the mob. King
insisted on going outside to address the mob, but was hauled back
inside as bricks and missiles were hurled.

89
 Petrol bombs were thrown over the Marshalls’ line, burning in the
streets short of the church. A car was set on fire. The ministers inside
the church led the congregation in hymn-singing, interspersed with
appeals for calm. Some men in the church reached for weapons with
which to defend themselves and their families. King made a dramatic
telephone call to Robert Kennedy, pleading for federal aid to prevent
a massacre. Kennedy knew that further Marshalls were on the way,
but could offer no assurance as to when they would arrive: they
arrived before the phone call ended and fired tear gas at the crowd.
The crowd regrouped; someone threw a brick through the church
windows. Tear gas began to fill the church itself. Robert Kennedy
decided to call his brother, the President—but John F. Kennedy was in
Virginia: would it be legal to move troops before papers could be got
to the President for signing?
In the end Governor Patterson forestalled the need for Federal
troops by sending in the Alabama National Guard. King preached
to the besieged congregation, blaming Governor Patterson’s
pronouncements about the Freedom Riders for having created the
atmosphere of violence in which such terror could thrive.
The Kennedy government began to feel that the Freedom Riders
had made their point, and that to persist was to tarnish the reputation
of America abroad. They struck a deal with the governors of Alabama
and Mississippi: the states would protect the riders from mob
violence, but the government would not prevent them from arresting
riders who violated state laws on the use of segregated facilities. The
riders kept coming and the jails filled up. Eventually, in 1961, the
Kennedy administration leaned on the Interstate Commerce
Commission to end segregation of all interstate transport.
King’s campaign continued on every front: he organized action for
black voters’ rights, for labor rights, and for equality of education.
Throughout the 1960s the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) spied
relentlessly on King in an attempt to prove that his organization was
infiltrated by communists (it would have been so much easier for the
American conscience to accept that King’s activities were driven by

90
subversive forces, rather than being driven by the unpleasant realities
of American society).
When jailed in Birmingham in 1963, King was campaigning for the
de-segregation of downtown city stores. After his release from jail on
appeal, High School students joined the marches as the enthusiasm of
their elders waned. There were scenes of schoolchildren being attacked
by police dogs; the nation began to demand an end. Birmingham’s
businessmen agreed to de-segregate their stores; in the wake of the
agreement, King’s hotel and his brother’s home were bombed. Blacks
rioted in response.
In 1963, as the culmination of the ‘March on Washington’ in which
black and white leaders called for the speedy passage of the promised
civil rights bill, a crowd of a quarter of a million Americans heard
King deliver his electrifying “I Have a Dream” speech. Two weeks later,
white supremacists in Birmingham bombed a Baptist church, killing
four black girls attending Sunday school.
In 1964, King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. By then, President
Kennedy had been assassinated. It was President Lyndon Johnson who
passed the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964, guaranteeing equal access
for all citizens to public facilities, to employment, and to education.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 extended the vote to previously
disenfranchised African-Americans in the South. In 1968 King
was killed by a sniper’s bullet on the balcony of his hotel in
Memphis, Tennessee.

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 4
leading from
the front
 othing is more impressive in a manager than to lead from the
N front. This can take many forms, the most obvious of which is
the traditional concept of not asking anybody else to do what you
wouldn’t do yourself—of exposing yourself to danger along with your
troops. The military analogy is not so far-fetched: it is inspiring when
a manager picks up the phone to talk to a key client if there is a
problem; when they step in to mediate a dispute; when they stick their
neck out to make the case to senior management for the needs of their
own team or division; when they take on a difficult interview with the
media; when they are seen to be out and about promoting the
organization to the outside world. The first leader from history in this
chapter, Admiral Lord Nelson, personifies this ideal. A brilliant
strategist famous for building a unique rapport with his colleagues
—his “band of brothers”—Nelson inspired because he always led
from the front. He was the first to put himself in the way of danger.
The other two leaders personify different ways of leading from the
front. Mutafa Kemal—the founder of modern Turkey—was brave in
an entirely Nelsonian way, leading his troops fearlessly from the front
in both World War I and the subsequent battle for Turkish
independence. But Kemal also demonstrates another way of leading
from the front: by the strength of your conviction, the passion of your
vision, and the depth of your commitment. Kemal was determined
that an independent Turkey would survive the dismantling of the
Ottoman Empire. He had no real grounds to hope that this could be
achieved, but he did it anyway. His conviction, his belief, and his sheer
industry inspired a nation to follow him.
The last example, Muhammad Ali, is similar, but with the striking
difference that Ali did not set out to lead anybody to any particular
destination. What Ali did was to insist on his right to be his own
man—to refuse to conform to the expectations that society had for
him. “I know where I’m going and I know the truth, and I don’t have
to be what you want me to be.” It is a difficult example for a manager
to follow—sometimes even a dangerous one—but there are times
when you need to make a stand on an issue simply because you

95
are absolutely convinced that it is the right thing to do, regardless of
the opinions of everybody else. If you are right (and let’s hope you
are) then people will begin to follow you.


Nelson had become famous throughout the Royal Navy for his audacity
and his personal bravery. At the battle of St Vincent, Nelson broke out
of formation to attack Spanish ships that he feared would escape if the
fleet continued with the maneuver that the admiral had commanded.
He risked being court-martialled, but hoped that there was sufficient
leeway in the interpretation of the admiral’s signal to justify his actions,
if necessary. Being Nelson, he probably did not agonize over this
decision: his burning ambition was always to engage the enemy. His
74-gun ship, HMS Captain, broke away from the British line and
engaged three much larger Spanish ships, exchanging broadsides for an
hour, inflicting much damage and being hit hard herself. Nelson then
led his crew to board one of the Spanish ships, crossing over from that
ship to another that had become entangled with it. Nelson accepted the
surrender of both vessels. It was actions such as these that created real
devotion in the men who served with Nelson. They would follow him
anywhere and they were prepared to die for him. His most famous
victory, at Trafalgar, involved an unusual and dangerous maneuver:
Nelson led his ships—and those of his vice admiral, Collingwood—at
a right angle to the enemy’s line of ships, instead of sailing parallel to
them for the traditional exchange of broadsides. He meant to break
through and split the French and Spanish line, and knew that as they
passed through the line they could fire their cannons down the entire
length of the enemy ships, inflicting great damage. He intended to
destroy the allied flagship and, having broken the line, utterly to destroy,
piecemeal, the French and Spanish Fleet. But Nelson knew that his ships
would take heavy fire as they approached the enemy in this formation,
and would be unable to bring their own broadsides to bear. Nelson, in
breach of all tradition, put his own flagship at the very front of the line.

96
 Mustafa Kemal created modern Turkey. He salvaged the nation from
the wreckage of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, when
the ailing empire—“the sick man of Europe”—was being carved up by
the victorious Allies. He then transformed the nation, economically and
socially. He abolished the Sultanate and established a secular state. He
set up a one-party state and a kind of state-sponsored capitalism, but he
also established universal suffrage for both men and women
(enfranchising women before, for example, France or Italy), and laid
the foundations for the multi-party democracy that would emerge after
his death. Kemal had always led from the front. He showed conspicuous
bravery and great leadership skills during the Allied invasion of Gallipoli
at the start of World War I. As the Allies prepared to divide up the
Ottoman Empire between them, Kemal became determined to save
Anatolia—the peninsula between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean
that was the homeland of the Turkish-speaking people—and create the
Republic of Turkey. With a few remnants of the army that had fought
in the Great War, he set up a new Nationalist Party and an alternative
government in the interior and, by single-handedly bombarding the
Sultan’s government with telegrams, brought about the resignation of
the Sultan’s chief minister, the Grand Vizier, and the promise of new
elections. The Nationalist Party won a majority; British troops invaded
Constantinople and dissolved the new Parliament. Kemal retired to the
interior again and built up the army, fighting a stubborn resistance
against Greek forces that began to spread throughout Anatolia to claim
territory for Greece. Kemal inspired a heroic resistance and finally
forced the Greeks to abandon Turkey. The British signed an armistice
and a new treaty recognized the independence of the Republic of
Turkey. Kemal was honored with the name of Atatürk—Father of
Turkey. Few leaders have featured quite so prominently at the forefront
of an entire movement: Kemal had decided that a Republic of Turkey
should be established; he brought it into being by the force of his will
and his inspiring leadership.
Muhammad Ali is an unusual example in this context, because he
was not a leader and never set out to be one. In the process of his

97
remarkable career, however, Ali became the hero of a generation. Having
won the title of heavyweight boxing champion of the world, Ali
converted to Islam and joined the radical Nation of Islam—an
organization that seemed to set itself against everything that the white
establishment held dear, and had been declared to be “un-American”
by the state of California. Later, at a time when the war in Vietnam still
had broad popular support, Ali refused to be drafted into the United
States army. He succeeded in making the point that black Americans
didn’t have to fit the stereotype of what constituted “a good
representative of their race.” In doing this, Ali proved simply that he
would be his own man whatever the cost—and for a time that cost was
severe; he was stripped of his title and banned from boxing. Ali finally
won his court case against the government and was recognized as a
conscientious objector; he regained his license and fought his way back
to becoming heavyweight champion of the world once more. Ali shows
how it is possible to lead from the front by having faith in yourself and
your own convictions.

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 horatio nelson
(1758–1805)
Horatio Nelson—Lord Nelson as he became—was an odd-looking,
likable, passionate, and intelligent man with many human frailties,
including sea-sickness, vanity, and an ill-considered and very public
adulterous affair with the wife of the British Envoy to Naples. Nelson
inspired huge confidence and fanatical loyalty amongst his officers
and crew. In July 1797, during the Napoleonic wars, Nelson was
leading an attack in small boats on the town of Cadiz, when they were
boarded by Spanish defenders. Nelson was at the forefront of the
hand-to-hand fighting: his life was saved on two occasions by his
coxswain, John Sykes, who parried one sword blow to Nelson’s head
with his bare arm. “Thank God, sir, you are safe,” said the badly-
wounded Sykes.
Nelson’s effect on morale is shown in his officers’ letters. When he
arrived off Cadiz in September 1805, shortly before the battle of
Trafalgar, one captain wrote, “Lord Nelson is arrived! A sort of general
joy has been the consequence, and many good effects will shortly arise
from our change of system.” The last point is interesting: it is not just
Nelson’s presence that is an inspiration to his men; Nelson’s methods
are known to be effective—he knows his stuff. Nelson was constantly
experimenting and innovating. “He possessed the zeal of an
enthusiast,” wrote Nelson’s second-in-command at Trafalgar, Admiral
Collingwood, after Nelson’s death, “and everything seemed, as if by
enchantment, to prosper under his direction. But it was the effect of
system, and nice combination, not of chance.”30
Nelson is often thought of as being a shining example of a leader
who genuinely empowers his team, which he was. In the
Mediterranean, with his first fleet, he wrote in a letter home: “Such a
gallant set of fellows! Such a band of brothers! My heart swells at the
thought of them!”31 Nelson had indeed cultivated the captains of his
fleet with regular meetings and suppers on board his flagship. Nothing

99
is more independent than a fighting ship at sea, not simply because
any warship was expected to be a self-contained unit, re-supplying
itself and even repairing itself during tours of duty that could last for
years, but also because, in the smoke and chaos of battle, signalling
(by flags) was utterly unreliable and sometimes impossible. Before an
action had started, a commander needed to be certain that the
captains under his command understood the general plan of
attack—the broad strategy and the most likely tactical developments.
By spending time with his “band of brothers” discussing strategies
and tactics, outlining possible plans of attack, discussing the enemy’s
strengths and weaknesses, Nelson brought his fellow captains to the
point where they began to think like him—to the extent that, in a
sudden, unplanned engagement, they could be hoped to react exactly
as he would himself.
Like any great leader, Nelson had many strengths. Perhaps his most
defining characteristic, one which he demonstrated throughout his
career, was his outstanding personal bravery and his habit of leading
from the front. Nelson was always in thick of it. He had lost an arm
and an eye on separate occasions leading attacks on the enemy on
shore. He never asked his crew to do anything that he would not do
himself and, as a result, he could be certain that they would follow him.


Nelson was born in 1758 and enrolled in the Royal Navy at the age of
12 quickly becoming a midshipman. He saw action in the American
War of Independence and by the age of 20 was captain of a 28-gun
frigate. By 1798, he was in charge of his own fleet, in the Mediterranean.
Britain, with other European Allies, was at war with the new,
revolutionary French Republic. France’s most formidable general, the
young Napoleon Bonaparte, had assembled an expedition to Egypt; his
success there could lead to a threat to British interests in India.
Nelson’s primary objective was to prevent the French expedition
from sailing. He failed utterly in this when his flagship, Vanguard, was

100
dismasted in a storm; the French fleet of warships and troop carriers
passed by while Nelson carried out repairs to his ship in Sardinia.
Nelson then sailed to Alexandria; the French arrived in Alexandria the
day after Nelson left the port. It took Nelson another month
of fruitless searching before he received confirmation that the French
were indeed in Egypt.
It was during this time, in command of his first fleet, that Nelson
began to develop his unique leadership style. Some of the captains in
his fleet were known to him from other, earlier campaigns. Others
were entirely new faces. Nelson set up a series of suppers on board his
flagship. The various captains began to come together as a genuine
team. Nelson encouraged a free-ranging discussion of the means by
which the French Fleet could be discovered and engaged; the team
began to absorb the ideas and attitudes of their admiral—one of the
great ‘natural’ leaders of all time.
The concept of the “band of brothers” was mentioned explicitly by
Nelson for the first time after the coming Battle of the Nile, as he
strove—like any good manager—to ensure that each of his captains was
recognized for their part in the event. Nelson, again like any good
manager, reserved the right, in private, to assess and weigh more
critically the contribution played by each captain. Some of the “band of
brothers” off the coast of Egypt were not called upon again. But Nelson’s
notion of the admiral and his captains as a “band of brothers”was more
than just window-dressing. He knew that his own success depended on
the individual and unpredictable contribution of each of his
commanders as events unfolded. Nelson gave his men the cause, the
commitment; he bound them up with his own zeal. He shared his
thoughts on strategy and tactics with them in depth. He ensured that
they fully understood their mission. And then he let them loose.
The English fleet found Alexandria full of French transport ships,
but not the French warships. The next anchorage was Aboukir Bay, to
the north. With evening approaching, they found the French fleet
anchored in line in the Bay, protected on the landward side by shallows.
Nelson immediately decided to attack and ordered the ships to form a

101
line of battle. As they approached the anchored French fleet, his
commanders seized the initiative. Captain Foley, in HMS Goliath,
spotted that the French ships were anchored at their bows only; if they
had enough water to swing at anchor then there was enough water for
Foley to sail between them and the shore. The French, believing
themselves protected to landward, had not even cleared for action on
that side. More ships followed Foley, one of them running aground;
the rest attacked from the seaward side. The British ships had the wind
at their backs; the last ships in the French line were not able to sail up,
against the wind, to help the defence. The English ships worked their
way down the line, pouring shot from both sides into the French fleet.
The French flagship was the massive L’Orient: 120 guns; the biggest
warship of her day. L’Orient inflicted serious damage on the English
HMS Bellerophon, but then caught fire. Other English ships joined the
attack. The French Vice-Admiral, de Brueys, lost both his legs. With
his stumps tourniqueted, he directed the action from a chair until a
cannonball destroyed what was left of him. Later that evening
L’Orient’s magazines blew up. The stunning explosion stopped the
battle for some 30 minutes, after which it resumed, though less
forcefully. When fighting stopped at dawn the next day, 11 French
battleships and two frigates had been taken or sunk. The French navy
in the Mediterranean had been destroyed.
Nelson became a national hero. Three things stand out from this
action. Firstly, Nelson never lost sight of the need to engage the enemy.
It may seem obvious, but many other commanders in similar
situations failed to do so. Secondly, Nelson saw his objective as the
need to destroy his opponent: to make them no longer a fighting force;
many commanders lacked his will for total engagement and
settled for an honourable result. Finally, Nelson expected his captains
to act on their own initiative and put them in a position to be able to
do so.
Nelson was also prepared to disobey orders—or at least, not to
follow them—if his instincts told him that the route to victory lay
elsewhere. One year before the Battle of the Nile, in 1797, Nelson was

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under the command of Admiral Sir John Jervis when the British fleet
attacked a much larger fleet of Spanish warships. Jervis ordered the
British fleet to form a line of battle ahead and astern of his flagship
Victory. Nelson’s ship was near the end of the line. The British fleet
split the Spanish fleet in two, allowing the British to fire on them in
both directions. Passing through the Spanish position, the fleet began
to turn through 180 degrees to renew their attack.
Nelson—at the end of the line—was close to the half of the Spanish
fleet now sailing in the opposite direction; he did not believe that the
whole fleet could stay in line and make the turn in time to prevent the
Spanish from escaping. He decided that he could interpret a second
signal of Jervis (“Take suitable steps for mutual support and engage
the enemy as coming up in succession”) as an excuse to disobey Jervis'
previous instruction to form a line. He broke away and attacked the
passing Spanish ships, including the massive Spanish flagship, the
four-decker, 130-gun Santisima Trinidad. Other British ships came
quickly to Nelson’s aid. With his ship now so badly damaged as to be
almost unmanageable, Nelson managed to put her alongside the
Spanish San Nicolás, which had also become entangled with another
Spanish ship, the San José. Nelson and his marines boarded the first
vessel, and then went across her to board the second. The engagement
was an emphatic victory for the British, who had been outnumbered
by 27 ships to 15. Nelson reported to Admiral Jervis on board Victory
and reported that, “The Admiral embraced me, said he could not
sufficiently thank me, and used every kind expression that could not
fail to make me happy.”
Had he failed, Nelson could have been court-martialled for
disobeying orders in the face of the enemy. He had risked his entire
career. But it is worth noting that the Navy was not so hidebound by
discipline that it insisted on court-martialling Nelson, even if only to
exonerate him. Nelson had good reason to believe that success would
bring reward—not criticism. At the Battle of Copenhagen (1801)
Nelson more flagrantly ignored a command from his superior officer.
Nelson’s ships had carried out an audacious attack on the Danish fleet

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through narrow and treacherous channels and were beginning to
overwhelm Danish defences when Admiral Parker ordered a general
recall, believing that the battle was going badly. Not only would this
have wasted the initiative, but Nelson’s ships would have been forced
to retreat across the line of fire from a still-active section of the Danish
defences. Nelson turned to his flag-captain and said, “Foley, you know
that I have lost an eye,” (Nelson had lost his right eye in Corsica in
1794, when a cannonball impact threw stones and sand into his face;
he lost his right arm in 1797, leading an attack on Santa Cruz in
Tenerife), “and have a right to be blind when I like; and damn me if
I’ll see that signal.”32 Nelson was victorious. The phrase “to turn a
blind eye” had entered the English language. In the event, Admiral
Parker was ordered to hand over his command to Nelson. To some
extent, the navy expected and encouraged independence of mind in
its commanders. More importantly, it encouraged success.
Nelson’s final moment of glory came, of course, at Trafalgar in 1805.
The British had been blockading the combined French and Spanish
fleet in Cadiz when the French Admiral Villeneuve finally left the safety
of the harbor in response to a foolish and perhaps spiteful command
from Napoleon, ordering the fleet to sail to the Mediterranean to assist
the land attack on Austria. When Nelson arrived with the fleet, it would
be wrong to imagine that he was rejoining his “band of brothers.” Of
the captains of the 27 ships of the line that Nelson commanded, only
eight had served with him before. Nelson’s success did not depend on
the support of a closely-knit team; it depended on the brilliant use that
he was able to make of any team put at his disposal. Nelson circulated
his plan of attack. It contained the apparently laconic order: “In case
signals can neither be seen nor perfectly understood, no captain can do
very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of an enemy.” This was
in fact a precise instruction as to the tactics that Nelson wanted his
captains to employ. French and Spanish ships tended to fire high,
attempting to dismast the opponent. British gunners fired faster and
more accurately than their opponents and were instructed to fire low.
Nelson knew that firing into ships’ hulls at close quarters could do

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immense damage to men and guns, putting a ship out of action more
effectively than destroying her rigging. This was the kind of pell-mell
action that Nelson wanted.
Nelson and his second-in-command Collingwood broke with all
convention by sailing at the head of their two columns: flagships were
traditionally placed at the center of the line of battle. The two British
lines attacked at right angles to the line of enemy ships rather than
passing alongside them to exchange broadsides in the traditional way.
Nelson meant to split the French and Spanish line of ships into three
sections and to destroy the enemy fleet piecemeal. Attacking the
enemy in this manner meant that the leading British ships were
exposed to fire for a desperately long time as they approached, without
being able to return fire with broadsides of their own. Nelson, sailing
at the head of his own column in HMS Victory, had placed himself in
the position of most danger: he would not ask another captain to do
anything that he was not prepared to do himself. Once the British
ships had engaged with the enemy, passing through the enemy line at
right angles, the British gunners were able to fire, one by one, through
stern or bow of the enemy ships, inflicting terrible damage as
cannonballs ricocheted through the whole length of gun-decks,
smashing guns and men alike. The center and rear of the enemy line
was destroyed. Nelson was hit by a musket ball, fired by a French
sharpshooter from the rigging of one of the enemy ships that he had
so closely engaged, and died below decks three hours later.
What sets Nelson apart as a leader is his refusal to accept qualified
success. He wanted victory. He was prepared to override his orders
and ignore his superiors in order to achieve this. He seemed to want
fame and to enjoy it, but he was prepared to risk his career and his
life to pursue what he saw as his role in the navy: the destruction of
the enemy. He also knew that his fellow commanders were not there
to follow his detailed orders but to achieve the common end by
whatever means they saw fit. There are no detailed orders for victory.
At the end, far more than most commanders, he was able to say, with
every justification: “Thank God, I have done my duty.”

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 mustafa kemal atatürk
(1881–1938)
Not many leaders get to create a nation state. Mustafa Kemal did just
that as the tottering Ottoman Empire was being dismantled at the end
of World War I by the victors; especially by Great Britain, France,
and Italy.
Mustafa Kemal had distinguished himself during the war, especially
in the defence of Gallipoli against British and Allied forces. He had
shown himself to be a man who would lead from the front in the most
extreme circumstances, showing great bravery and also considerable
military acumen. After the war, with the Ottoman Empire about to
be carved up in the most cynical way by the victorious powers, Kemal
decided that the Turkish nation would be independent. He had little
reason to believe that this could be achieved. In conversation with an
American General who was about to report back on the political
situation in the remnants of the Ottoman Empire, Kemal stated that
he intended to make Turkey an independent state. The General
pointed out that this was beyond hope, that there was no military or
political logic that could justify such a faith. “What you say, General,
is true,” said Kemal. “What we want to do, in our situation, is
explainable neither in military nor in any other terms, but in spite of
everything, we are going to do it, to save our country, to establish a free
and civilized Turkish state, to live like human beings. If we can’t
succeed,” he continued, “we prefer, being the sons of our forefathers,
to die fighting.”33 The general was impressed.
This could, of course, have been the wild talk of any idealist, but
Kemal was no mere dreamer. He organized what meagre materials he
had; he used the few legitimate tools of political power at his disposal
to get himself into a position of authority, from which he negotiated,
with considerable success. When fighting began, he created an army
out of nothing and defeated his enemies. Starting from nowhere,
Kemal persuaded both the outside world and his own countrymen

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that his vision was achievable, and then he made it happen: he led
from the front and brought people with him. Since Kemal’s vision of
modern Turkey was radically different from that of many of his
compatriots, he brought them with him, in many cases kicking and
screaming. He also established a one-party state. However it is fair to
say that Kemal’s vision was always that Turkey should move towards
the modern democracy that it has since become. In 1934, Turkey, still
a one-party state, granted full voting rights to women, a decade before
France and Italy.
Mustafa Kemal always wanted to be a soldier. He went to military
high school and then on to military college. In 1905 he graduated
from the War Academy. In 1908, Kemal had some involvement in a
minor rebellion—the Young Turk Revolution—that forced the Sultan
of the Ottoman Empire to reinstate the Parliament that he had
suspended. Kemal had far more involvement in various other
nationalist secret societies that he helped to found, such as
“Fatherland”, which eventually became part of the Committee of
Union and Progress (CUP). Soon after his graduation he was arrested
for political agitation and banished to the State of Damascus, Syria,
and was lucky to escape a second arrest before being sent to organize
resistance among the Libyans against the Italian invasion of North
Africa in 1911.
The first Ottoman leader to call himself “Sultan” had been Murad
I, in 1359. With the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman
state became an Empire; in 1517 the Ottoman Sultan also became the
Caliph—the head of the whole Islamic community. The Caliphate
had moved from Baghdad in 1258 after the city had fallen to Hulagu
Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan. The Caliphate had been taken on
by the Mamluk Sultans of Cairo, but after their defeat in 1517, had
been passed on to the Ottoman Sultan, Selim I (father of Suleiman
the Magnificent). The Sultan was the all-powerful head of the mighty
Ottoman Empire; as Caliph, he was head of all Muslims. These ancient
titles, embodied in Sultan Mehmed VI, were about to be overturned
in a remarkable revolution.

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Kemal fought in the various minor wars that preceded World War I.
Having been involved in Libya against the Italian invasion of Libya in
1911, he again saw action against Bulgaria in the Balkans in 1912. By
1914, he was a lieutenant colonel. At the outbreak of war, the Ottoman
Empire sided with the Central Powers—Germany, Austria-Hungary
and their empires—and Kemal was posted to Gallipoli to resist the
Allied landings, following Churchill’s failed naval expedition to
attack the Dardanelles and open the Black Sea to Allied shipping. The
Ottoman army mounted a brave and well-organized defence.
Opposing the landing of Australian troops at an unexpected location
to which the current had carried the Australian boats, Kemal exceeded
his authority by ordering his best regiment, the 57th, to move up to
some high ground that would command the landing area. In his order
of the day he wrote, “I do not order you to attack, I order you to die.
In the time it takes us to die, other troops and commanders can come
and take our place.” Most of the 57th did die in that battle, and the
Anzacs were so shaken that their commander asked that night to be
evacuated. They were instructed to hold on and dig in because other
attacks would take the pressure off their beachhead. The Turks also
dug in.
A German commander was impressed by Kemal: a “clear-thinking,
active, quiet man who knew what he wanted. He weighed and decided
everything for himself, without looking elsewhere for support or
agreement to his opinions.”34 What Kemal wanted was for his troops
to push the invaders back into the sea or die in the attempt. Kemal
demonstrated his own readiness to die with conspicuous bravery and
sang froid. As a succession of shells dropped in a pattern ever-closer to
his trench until it was a certainty that the next would be a direct hit,
he refused to take cover: “It’s too late now. I can’t set my men a bad
example.” By chance, there was no next shell.35

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 Kemal went on to fight the Russians in the Caucasus Campaign: for
centuries the Russians had wanted control of the Bosporus and the
Dardanelles (and, by definition, of Constantinople), to give them
access to the Mediterranean from the Black Sea. They planned to settle
Cossacks in the area. Early defeats by German Armies in Prussia, on
Germany’s Eastern Front, compelled Russia to withdraw half its
troops from the Caucasus; when the Russian revolution broke out in
1917, the Russian army began to disappear altogether. One of the few
Turkish successes of the Caucasus war had been a briefly successful
counter-offensive by Mustafa Kemal. The end of the war found Kemal
in Aleppo, in northern Syria, facing the advancing troops of British
Field Marshall Allenby. Kemal established a defensive line on the
Jordan that became the territorial basis for the eventual armistice.
The Ottoman Empire had sided with the losers of World War I and
was greatly weakened by the war itself. The Triple Entente of Britain,
France, and Italy had been planning the carve-up of the ailing empire
since early in the war. The oil deposits of the Middle East were the main
focus, and there were other territorial interests in the Empire’s previous
territories from Italy, France and, in particular, Greece. The finances of
the empire were to be controlled by the Allies. The straits between the
Black Sea and the Mediterranean—the Bosporus, the Sea of Marmara,
and the Dardanelles—were to be international waters; certain ports
including Constantinople were to be international Free Ports. Britain
was given a mandate in Mesopotamia, with an oil concession granted
to the Turkish Petroleum Company (later renamed as the Iraqi
Petroleum Company). Britain was also to administer Palestine.
Territory around Smyrna on the western coast of Anatolia (the
peninsula between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean that makes
up most of modern Turkey) was to be occupied by Greece but
nominally owned by the Ottoman Empire. At the end of five years
there was to be a plebiscite to ask if the local population would like to
become a part of Greece. Italy had occupied the Dodecanese during
the wars of 1911–12 and would keep these islands; southern and
western Anatolia would be a “Zone of Italian Influence”; Syria and

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southeastern Anatolia would be a Zone of French Influence. Nobody
was quite sure about where Kurdistan’s borders should be (not even,
to be fair, the Kurds themselves). A referendum was planned, but the
issue was never settled, leaving that contentious issue completely
unresolved. The whole arrangement was an imperial carve-up with a
distinctly nineteenth-century flavor. This Treaty of Sèvres, as the
proposed agreement was known, would surely have been ratified if it
were not for one man: Mustafa Kemal.
Sultan Mehmed V had died just before the end of World War I. His
successor and brother, Mehmed VI, offered no resistance to the
victorious Allies’ plans for the dismemberment of his empire. The
Ottoman Parliament had been dismissed once again. The Turkish
army was disbanded. Kemal, already a general without a job, found
his rank and responsibilities (and salary) reduced. The Sultan
launched a wave of British-supported arrests of political figures. It
became increasingly likely that Kemal would be arrested soon. He
began to talk to like-minded allies about a movement of national
resistance. The nationalist mood was stronger in the interior than in
Constantinople and was being encouraged by local actions against the
Greeks now moving into the Anatolian mainland: Greece, with the
increasing support of the British Prime Minister, Lloyd George, was
pursuing the ‘Grand Idea’ of an expanded Greece that would include
all of the areas that had come under Hellenistic influence across the
ages. This included a significant area of the western coast of Anatolia,
on the Aegean coast.
The Grand Vizier was the Sultan’s Chamberlain and head of the
government, whose offices were known as the Sublime Porte. (The
courtyards inside the gates of palaces and cities in the Middle East
were traditional gathering places, and the gate (porte) to the Grand
Vizier’s Palace in Topkapi, Constantinople—where foreign
ambassadors to the Ottoman capital were welcomed—was known as
the Sublime Porte.) The Grand Vizier now looked for an officer who
could restore order and allow the British Authorities to pursue their
plans. A minster who was supportive of nationalist aims put Kemal’s

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name forward for the job; another well-wisher in the ministry helped
to extend Kemal’s powers. Despite the Grand Vizier’s suspicion of
Kemal, he was glad to get him out of Constantinople: Kemal was
despatched as Inspector-General with two army corps at his disposal,
with direct control over five provinces and indirect control over five
others. The Sultan’s Grand Vizier had been encouraged to hand
substantial powers to the man who was about to destroy them both.
In May 1919, 20,000 Greek troops landed at Smyrna. The local Greek
population took to the streets in welcome. Turkish troops surrendered
and were marched to the waterfront. As they passed they were struck
and their fez snatched from their heads. The fez had been the
traditional headgear of the Ottoman Empire since medieval times; its
lack of a brim allowed the wearer to press his forehead to the ground
during prayer as required by the Muslim faith. To the Christian Greeks,
the fez was a symbol of their ancient enemy, the Turks, and their
Islamic faith. One Turkish colonel refused to take off his fez and stamp
on it; he was shot. Later, the Greek troops lost control and shot
hundreds of Turkish troops, whose bodies were thrown into the sea.36
Constantinople was in uproar; the Sultan wept—though if he had
paid any attention to the plans of the Allies, he should not have been
surprised. Kemal sailed for the port of Samsun, in northern Turkey,
ostensibly to take up his Inspectorate. The British had woken up, too
late, to the danger that he represented. Kemal ordered the boat to stay
close to the Turkish coast in case the British tried to intercept them,
but they made their landfall safely. He began to rouse the locals, who
were largely unaware of the Greek landings at Smyrna. Meetings were
held at mosques. Kemal made contact with all Turkish army units
surviving in Anatolia.
The telegraph system was much more widespread than the
telephone, and Kemal made full use of it. He bombarded the War
Ministry with complaints about British activities: unauthorized troop
movements; support for Greek partisans. The British demanded his
recall. Kemal moved inland. He sent a circular to all local provinces
requesting their attendance at National Congresses at Sivas in the west

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and at Erzurum in the east. The British tried to round up all
armaments in the region, but were met with cheerful obstruction.
There were “a suspiciously large number of accidents on the railway”
—the British official was forced to take to a camel caravan when the
railways were at one time out of action for several months. An artillery
park with 40 modern guns was discovered. The Turks smote their
foreheads: these guns had, most regrettably, been “overlooked.”37
Telegrams to Kemal came thick and fast, calling on him to return to
Constantinople, where his life and freedom were guaranteed by the
Sultan. He was called on to resign his office as Inspector-General.
Kemal did finally resign before he might be dismissed, but was very
anxious about the effect that his lack of a formal role would have on
his followers. His Chief of Staff declared that he could no longer
report to Kemal, since he had no military capacity, and asked to
whom he should now deliver his documents. It was only when a senior
officer saluted Kemal and told him that the officers and men
still accepted him as their commander that Kemal knew that
his prestige had survived his official rank. His carriage was
delivered, complete with cavalry escort. It had been a dangerous and
significant moment.
The Congresses at Erzurum and Sivas drafted what was to become
the National Pact, which insisted on the preservation of Turkey’s
existing frontiers and called for the election of a provisional
government. The Sublime Porte issued a warrant for Kemal’s arrest.
Kemal hit the telegraphs again, making contact with military
commanders and civil authorities around Anatolia. He was given a
mandate to act on their behalf. He telegraphed an ultimatum to the
Grand Vizier, signed in the name of the Congress, declaring that the
cabinet was coming between the nation and its Sultan. It declared that
Congress would now deal only with the Sultan.
The General Assembly of the Sivas Congress announced that a
Representative Committee would act as a provisional government and
maintain order in the country in the Sultan’s name until a new
government could be formed that had the confidence of the nation.

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The Committee had never in fact met. Kemal signed all documents on
the Committee’s behalf with a seal. The Congresses had been real
enough: with some semblance of a democratic mandate, Kemal was
now waging war on the government virtually single-handed.
Kemal’s control of communications was his key strength. Telegrams
continued to arrive at the Sublime Porte from Kemal’s network of
military commanders and regional civic authorities, demanding the
resignation of the government. The British knew that only a
withdrawal of the Greeks from Smyrna would placate the Nationalists,
and this was not an option. To commit troops to suppress the
Nationalist uprising would be to start a new civil war with an
uncertain outcome. The British began to withdraw troops from
flash-points in Anatolia to avoid escalating the conflict. The Sultan
forced the resignation of his Grand Vizier, and installed a Ministry of
Conciliation to organize elections for a new parliament. Kemal had
brought down the government.
The promised new elections returned a predominantly nationalist
parliament which ratified the National Pact—the document spelling
out commitment to an independent Turkey. British warships arrived
at Constantinople under cover of darkness. British troops occupied
the city and the ministries; parliament was dissolved. Kemal convened
the first Grand National Assembly of Turkey at Ankara, in central
Anatolia. The President of the previous parliament was persuaded to
make way for Kemal by becoming Vice-President to Kemal’s President.
The Assembly drafted a Constitution Act, which struggled with the
issue of establishing the sovereignty of the people while retaining
the sovereignty of the Sultan, which the Assembly was committed
to preserving. This played well in the country, which was not ready
to envisage a nation without a Sultan. Kemal, however, managed to
sideline discussions on the future of the Sultanate, while the Assembly
confirmed the unconditional sovereignty of the people: a fundamental
conflict that Kemal would soon resolve.
The Nationalists had continued to acquire arms; most were
smuggled by nationalist supporters, but the country’s enforced

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multi-nationalism began to play its complicated part—the Italians,
who did not like the Greeks, began to sell arms to the Nationalists.
The French seem simply not to have been too bothered; they allowed
a large cache of arms to be stolen by Nationalists in Gallipoli,
apologizing that they had been “outnumbered” by the raiders.38 In
August 1920 the Sultan’s Grand Vizier signed the Treaty of Sèvres,
confirming the Allies partition of the Empire. Greek troops began to
move out through Anatolia. The Grand National Assembly voted
through legislation authorizing the raising of a National Army that
counter-attacked, finally stopping the Greeks at the Battle of Sakarya,
which lasted for 21 days. During the battle, Kemal, as Commander-
in-Chief, had said, “You will no longer have a line of defence, but a
surface of defence […] all of Turkey shall be our surface of defence.”39
This determined defensive strategy led the Greeks to decide that their
losses were too heavy to sustain; they began a retreat to Smyrna on
the coast. They asked the Allies for assistance, but the Allies had begun
to see that the Treaty of Sèvres was unenforceable. They offered the
Nationalists a modified version of the treaty, but Kemal rejected it.
An all-out attack by the Nationalists drove the Greeks out of Smyrna.
In October 1922, the British signed an Armistice with the Nationalists
and it was agreed to settle the remaining issues at Conference in
Lausanne the following month. Before the conference could begin,
the National Assembly passed a motion instigated by Kemal to abolish
the Sultanate. The last Sultan left Constantinople for Malta on a
British battleship. The Ottoman Empire had ended. The Treaty of
Lausanne recognized the republic of Turkey as an independent state.
Kemal was elected President and began a series of dramatic reforms.
Kemal began to secularize the state, abolishing the Caliphate. The
powers of the Caliphate were transferred to the Grand National
Assembly and, despite sporadic attempts to recreate the institution
elsewhere, the title has been inactive ever since. Kemal also abolished
religious orders such as the Dervishes, along with religious courts and
the practice of polygamy. A rebellion against this secularization was
put down, allowing Kemal to repress all political opposition through

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a Maintenance of Public Order Act. The original Grand National
Assembly had been replaced by a new parliament consisting almost
entirely of Kemal’s new People’s Republican Party. An assassination
attempt allowed him to remove some old political enemies from a
rival political party, the Committee of Union and Progress (of which
Kemal had once been a member) by the effective expedient of having
them hanged. This was Kemal’s only major purge. Thereafter the new
republic was essentially a one-party state.
Kemal’s reforms continued and included the social and political
emancipation of women, and the creation of a thoroughly
modernized education system, drawing heavily on the advice of
American educationalist, John Dewey. In the absence of foreign
investment or oil reserves, Atatürk established a statist economy that
carefully nurtured the tobacco and later the cotton industries. He
helped to create a national rail system and a modern banking and
finance system. Kemal had not only established an independent
Republic of Turkey from the collapsing Ottoman Empire in the face
of the intentions of the victorious allied powers and of the territorial
ambitions of Greece, he had revolutionized the new nation’s
administration, and set it on the road to becoming a modern,
democratic, industrialized state.

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 muhammad ali
(b. 1942)
Muhammad Ali is a leader who did not set out to be a leader. He was
never a leader of men, but he became a role model and a hero; he
allowed people to think that they could behave in a different way.
He did this by being his own man, despite the fact that this brought
the weight of the whole American establishment down on
his head.
In the 1960s, to be the professional heavyweight boxing champion
of the world seemed more important than it does today. The sport, the
championship, the fighters themselves, all seemed more significant
than they do now. When Cassius Clay, as he was then called, took the
title from Sonny Liston and said, “I am the greatest,” it didn’t seem
like a foolish boast. Boxing matches of the time were shown live only
on close-circuit TV. When Muhammad Ali—Clay’s then-new Islamic
name—fought Sonny Liston for a second time, millions of Americans
watched the rebroadcast of the fight. It seemed to matter; it was a big
thing. And, in America, in the 1960s, this big thing was inevitably tied
up with money, politics, and race.
When Clay had declared his conversion to Islam and his
membership of the radical black Nation of Islam, it was like a slap in
the face for the white boxing establishment. Cassius Clay, a young
black kid, was supposed to be grateful for the opportunities that
professional boxing had offered him, and for the rewards that would
now be showered on him as Champion of the World. He was also not
supposed to make a fuss about being black; in fact, the good-looking
pale-skinned Clay had looked like being a black boxer that white
America could welcome: clever, funny, non-threatening. When
Cassius Clay declared that he was abandoning his ‘slave’ name of Clay
and that he would now be known as Cassius X (the Nation of Islam
later gave Cassius the honor of his own “original” name of
Muhammad Ali) he said a simple but powerful thing. He said, “I know

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where I’m going and I now the truth, and I don’t have to be what you
want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.”
Ali later refused to be drafted for the Vietnam War. He challenged
the establishment. He lost everything for a time, and then he won it
all back. He became a hero for a generation of Americans, black and
white—and for people around the world, especially in Africa. Now,
American Presidents are keen to be seen alongside Ali and
non-governmental organizations are grateful for his support for
programs of hunger relief and conflict resolution.
The lesson for modern leaders is difficult. There are times when
you have to be your own person: when you have to ignore all of the
pressure and stick to what you want to do. It’s dangerous, but it can’t
be wrong. As Ali said, “I have lost nothing. I have gained the respect
of thousands worldwide. I have gained my peace of mind.”


On the eve of Cassius Clay’s big moment—his fight in 1964 against
Sonny Liston, heavyweight champion of the world—there were
rumors that Clay, as Ali was still known, was involved with the Nation
of Islam: a radical black group. President John Kennedy had been
assassinated in November 1963 and the Civil Rights Act, introduced by
Kennedy in an attempt to end racial discrimination, had not yet been
passed by his successor, President Johnson. The bitter riots in
Birmingham, aimed at ending racial segregation in the southern
American states, had happened the previous year, as had the March on
Washington and Martin Luther King’s epoch-changing, “I Have a
Dream” speech. When young Cassius Clay got home to Louisville from
the 1960 Rome Olympics four years earlier, having won the
light-heavyweight boxing gold medal, he had been refused service in
a ‘whites-only’ restaurant: “With a gold medal round my neck, I
couldn’t get a hamburger in my home town.” 40 Racial tensions in
America were still high and race was a big political issue. Now Clay,
with a chance (though it was seen at the time as a very small chance

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indeed) of winning the greatest individual prize in American sports,
was flirting with a group that had been declared ‘un-American’ by the
state of California: a black organization that seemed to stand against
everything that America held dear.
America had got used to the idea of black boxing heroes, but only
relatively recently. Jack Johnson became the first black heavyweight
champion in history in 1908, when he beat the Irishman, Tommy
Burns, in Sydney. The New York Times made the politics of the
situation crystal clear: “If the black man wins, thousands of his
ignorant brothers will misinterpret his victory as justifying claims
to much more than mere physical equality with their white
neighbors.”41 You can’t state a racist claim any more clearly than that.
Johnson beat a succession of Great White Hopes and became the most
famous black man in America. He went out with white girls and was
eventually nailed on a trumped-up charge under the notorious Mann
Act for the prohibited “transport of women across State lines for
immoral purposes”; he went into exile in Mexico to avoid a prison
term. In 1915 he was persuaded back to face the latest Great White
Hope, Jess Willard, and was counted out in the 27th round. Jackson
said he stayed on the canvas to give himself a better chance of getting
back to the States. He returned five years later and served a year in
prison. It was more than 20 years before another black sportsman had
a shot at the heavyweight title.
In the 1920s, the white champion Jack Dempsey had simply refused
to fight any black opponents; nobody thought that this reduced his
claim to be champion. In the 1930s came Joe Louis: talented, black,
and very conscious of the historic precedents for black fighters in
America. His team coached him to win every contest by a knock-out,
if possible, to avoid the bias of white judges, and never, ever, to be
caught alone with a white woman.
Ironically, Louis’ balancing act as a successful black boxer was made
even more precarious by the burden of politics that was laid on his
shoulders. He beat the Italian boxer, Primo Carnera, in 1935, when
Mussolini was preparing to invade North Africa. The two boxers

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struggled unsuccessfully to avoid the pre-match build up of Africa
versus Italy. Louis won in the sixth round. In 1936, Louis was beaten by
the German, Max Schmeling, in a contest that the Nazi party was keen
to portray as a triumph of Aryan superiority. Louis won the world title
in 1937 from James Braddock (“The Cinderella Man”) and in 1938 he
faced Schmeling in a rematch. The black athlete Jesse Owens had
dismayed the Nazis by his success at the Berlin Olympics of 1936: Louis’
fight with Schmeling was equally laden with political symbolism. It was
made crystal clear to Louis by the full weight of the American
establishment that it was expected—as his patriotic duty, in the cause
of anti-fascism and as an example of the decent behavior expected from
his race—that he should beat the living daylights out of Schmeling.
Louis did exactly that within two minutes of the first round.
For the first time in American history, the black guy had won and
everybody was delighted. The black man had done the right thing by
his race and by his nation. This was a victory for freedom against
fascism. The distinct lack of everyday freedoms for American blacks
would not be allowed to cloud the issue. Louis fought nearly 100
exhibition bouts for (segregated) American troops around the world
during World War II—getting no reward above his GI’s pay. Back
home, after the war, he was pursued by the federal government for back
taxes. He took up wrestling to pay the rent, and ended up being
wheeled out at Las Vegas to meet and greet the high rollers.
The role-models for future black fighters had been cast. From the
establishment’s point of view, there were the bad guys like Johnson,
and the “good representatives of their race,” like Louis. Floyd Patterson
fitted well into the latter mold, but at least he managed to do well from
it. He was the youngest man ever to win the heavyweight title; he got
rich and was invited to the White House. He married a white girl and
moved into a white neighborhood: a perfect example of integration.
Sonny Liston was not a good representative. He learned boxing in the
state penitentiary, came out, and made a living as ‘muscle’ for debt
collectors. He was convicted again for the offence of assaulting a police
officer outside his own home—what, exactly, the police officer was

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doing outside Liston’s house was not raised in court. The conviction
made it harder to get fights; he became more dependent on backing
from organized crime. In Philadelphia, Liston was arrested 19 times,
once—surprisingly—for impersonating a police officer. When he left
Philadelphia for Denver, Liston said, memorably, “I would rather be a
lamppost in Denver than the mayor of Philadelphia.”
Liston got to fight Patterson. The establishment made it very plain
which side they were on: Patterson got messages of support from JFK,
Ralph Bunche and Eleanor Roosevelt. The president of the National
Boxing Association said, in the well-worn phrase, that Patterson was,
“a fine representative of his race.”42 Liston knocked Patterson out in
the first round to become heavyweight champion of the world. In the
rematch, ten months later, he did it again.
In the perverse logic of racism, when Cassius Clay fought Liston in
1964, Clay was another ‘Great White Hope’. An Olympic amateur
boxing champion, pale-skinned, well-behaved, articulate, playing the
marketing game, hyping the fight, going with the money, Clay
lambasted Liston as “a big ugly bear”: “I’m gonna give him to the local
zoo after I whup him […] I’m young, I’m handsome, I’m fast, I can’t
be beaten […] He’s too ugly to be the world champ. The world champ
should be pretty like me.”43 For “big ugly bear” the white establishment
could happily substitute “big ugly black man.” Clay was sounding like
a champion they could do business with.
The promoter of the fight nearly cancelled the match when he
heard the rumor of Cassius Clay’s involvement with the Nation of
Islam. Clay had been seen with Malcolm X, a Nation of Islam
firebrand who was in fact temporarily suspended from the
organization for making inflammatory remarks about the recently
assassinated President Kennedy. The Nation of Islam wanted to
distance itself from moderate Christian leaders like Martin Luther
King. The Nation was everything that white America didn’t want them
to be; black, proud, African, non-Christian, anti-integration. But, in
the fight world, money talks. Sonny Liston was the seven-to-one
favourite to win the fight; the only interest in the match was to see

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exactly how the loud-mouthed, boastful young Clay would get beaten.
Clay managed to avoid admitting an involvement with the Nation but
also promised there would be no public confirmations or denials
about the Nation before the fight. The match went ahead. Clay beat
Liston in seven rounds.
Clay was now the heavyweight boxing champion of the world. Huge
wealth, fame, and the warm embrace of the establishment all
beckoned. Clay announced his conversion to Islam and his
membership of the Nation. He would now be known as Cassius X
—discarding the surname that some African slaves took on from their
white owners after emancipation. It was seen, though it should not
have been, as a kick in the teeth for white America, for boxing, and for
the establishment.
Clay set out his case for being seen as a “good boy” to the press. “I’m
no troublemaker […] I’m a good boy. I have never done anything
wrong. I have never been in jail. I have never been in court. I don’t
join any integration marches. I don’t pay attention to all those white
women who wink at me […].” It was all sounding quite hopeful until
the sting in the tail: a simple but searing statement of individuality: “I
know where I’m going and I know the truth, and I don’t have to be
what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.”44 The
establishment didn’t miss the message. The one thing that Clay was
not supposed to be was his own man, let alone declare a different
allegiance: non-American; non-Christian; African; Islamic. It
got worse.
Malcolm X took Cassius X to the United Nations to meet African
delegates. Cassius X said, “I am the champion of the whole world,”
and I want to meet the people I am champion of.”45 He then
announced a tour of Africa and Asia, accompanied by Malcolm X.
Suddenly, two African-Americans were acting as diplomatic
representatives of their fellow black citizens of America and bypassing
all normal diplomatic channels. Cassius X had only recently flunked
the qualifying test for eligibility for the US Armed Forces because of
his writing and spelling skills. Cassius insisted that he had tried his

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hardest to pass. Then the Nation of Islam bestowed a rare honor on
Cassius: an “original” name. He was to be known as Muhammad
Ali—a name more in keeping with the new champion’s role as an
international ambassador for the faith. Few American sports
journalists used the name at first, though the British press did.
In 1966, with the American war in Vietnam intensifying, the
required pass-rate in the qualifying test for the armed forces was
lowered: Ali retrospectively passed the test and was eligible for combat.
He made it plain that he did not intend to be drafted. Ali’s off-the-cuff
remark at the time was, “Man, I ain’t got no quarrel with them
Vietcong.” With this simple statement, Ali had done it again. The
individual was not supposed to question the state. If the man said you
were at war with the Vietcong, then you were; your personal opinion
was not a issue. Ali had raised the spectre of the popular consensus for
the war (or the lack of it). In the case of his refusal to fight, it was
difficult to cast the traditional slur of cowardice on the heavyweight
champion of the world. At the time of Ali’s outburst against the
Vietnam War, he was a lone voice within the establishment of
sportsmen or popular performers, other than those few with
long-standing connections to the political left. Most people still
supported the war. Life magazine had run a special issue entitled,
“Vietnam: the War is Worth Winning.” TV and newspaper coverage
supported the war effort.
As the war progressed, both the toll in American lives and the
disproportionate cost that the black community was being asked to bear
also became clear: a far higher proportion of blacks eligible for the draft
were actually drafted than was the case for whites. Black casualty rates
in Vietnam were also disproportionately higher; blacks were far more
likely to get killed in combat than their white comrades because they
were more likely to be given frontline roles. Ali’s stance resonated
increasingly strongly with both black and white citizens as America
became increasingly less confident of the war’s moral justification. In
1967, Ali refused to step forward for his induction into the US Armed
Forces and was warned that he was committing a felony. On the same

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day, his license to box was suspended and he was stripped of his
world title.
Ali filed for deferment as a conscientious objector. Judge Lawrence
Graumann ruled that Ali was “sincere in his objection on religious
grounds to war in any form.” The Justice Department argued that
Ali’s objections were “racial and political” and overturned the
recommendation. At the retrial two months later, the jury convicted
Ali after deliberating for only 21 minutes. The judge imposed the
maximum sentence. The case went to appeal, but the sentence was
upheld. The case was referred to the Supreme Court. Ali was looking
at a long jail sentence.
In 1970, the New York Supreme Court judged that Ali had been
unfairly denied a boxing license; at least he was able to box again. Ali
stopped Oscar Bonavena in the 15th round at Madison Square
Gardens, giving him a chance to regain the heavyweight
championship from Jo Frazier, who had gained the title in Ali’s
absence. Frazier was undefeated. In March 1971 Ali met Frazier
in an epic attempt to regain his title. He lost on points, and
was knocked down by Frazier in the 15th and final round. It was his
first professional boxing defeat, but later that year the Supreme Court
reversed Ali’s conviction for refusing the draft. He was a
free man.
Ali fought his way back to a title fight; he lost to Ken Norton (who
broke Ali’s jaw) and then beat Norton in a rematch. George Foreman
won the heavyweight championship from Frazier, and Ali
subsequently beat Frazier in 1974. In October that year, Ali got his
shot at the new world champion, and regained the heavyweight
championship of the world from George Foreman in the
world-famous “Rumble in the Jungle” in Zaire.
By taking a principled stand on matters of individual conscience,
Muhammad Ali became, unintentionally, a great leader. Ali helped to
establish the right of America’s black citizens to be citizens on their
own terms, without having to conform to a particular set of
expectations. Ali became an iconic leader for a generation of people,

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black and white, across the world. Ali never asked that everybody
should follow him or adopt his philosophies, he merely asked for the
right to hold his own opinion. His simple statement of where he stood
and of what he intended to be shook the establishment into
recognizing that there were different ways of being an American
citizen. Though this had special resonance for African-Americans at
the time, it had an equally strong impact on their white fellow-citizens,
uncertain as to how to respond to an establishment that they
felt had lost touch with their own values. Few people who have set
out to be leaders have been as successful in changing hearts and
minds as was Ali in his un-chosen role as an opinion-leader for
1960s America.

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 5
bringing
people with
you
 here is no hierarchy of talents for management; some managers
T have certain strengths, others have other strengths. Nevertheless,
it is hard to imagine a successful manager who is not able to bring
people with them.
Bringing people with you is not one skill, but a set of skills. Some
managers bring people with them because they are good speakers.
They may or may not be good at motivating people face to face, but
if you put them on a podium, or behind a microphone, then they are
able to inspire an audience to follow them to the ends of the earth.
Others achieve the same ends, more painstakingly, through their
actions. They keep on doing the right thing, consistently, until people
can see the intention that runs through their actions. At that point,
like-minded people tend to come on board and to follow that leader.
The third kind of manager, probably the rarest of all three, is the
genuine diplomat. These managers, the diplomats, highlight the
inevitable tension that lies in the concept of bringing people with you.
With their own team, leaders want to set out the real facts of the
matter as persuasively as possible and to have their team members
wholeheartedly buy-in to the proposed plan of action. In the wider
context within which an organization works, managers must also try
to bring along their various constituencies—customers and suppliers;
the local community; the media; the industry—without them having
bought into the plan in the same way. These constituencies may be
brought with you by a combination of factors, including appeals to
self-interest and common interest. They may come with you, but only
because there is something in it for them.
History has plenty of examples of great leaders who were not great
diplomats. Often they had shown great diplomatic skills at the beginning
of their career in bringing together interested parties and placating
hostile factions—but forgot these skills or the need for them once they
had established themselves in a position of power. The perfect manager,
the master of every technique, will combine the rhetorical skills of a
Pericles, the persistent tenacity and transparent decentness of an
Abraham Lincoln, and the seductive diplomatic finesse of a Talleyrand.

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Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord—or plain Talleyrand, as he
has fortunately come to be known—seemed to possess the devilish
skill of persuading people to do the exact opposite of what they had
intended to do, by bringing them to the realization that it was in
following Talleyrand’s proposals that, after all, and surprisingly, their
true interests lay. People didn’t wake up the next day hating Talleyrand
and wondering how they had let themselves be talked into doing
something that they now regretted; they woke up the next day
wondering why they had been so slow in coming to the right
conclusion. Talleyrand was self-serving in the extreme, and yet his
actions were more in the interests of France than were those of his
master, Napoleon. Talleyrand saw the world of European politics as a
subtle and shifting pattern of allegiances and favors; a world in which
deals had to be struck in the constant attempt to serve everyone’s
self-interest as well as one’s own. Napoleon saw Europe as a collection
of enemies that needed to be subdued and bent to his will. Talleyrand’s
approach was better, and more sustainable.
George Washington is almost too large a figure from whom to draw
small conclusions. It is interesting—and alarming—to speculate what
might have happened if a man of a lesser stature than Washington
had taken up the presidency of the new United States of America, and
indeed, whether the collective states would have been happy to elect
anybody else as their President (Washington was elected twice with
100 percent of the electoral college votes; something that has never
been repeated). Washington, as a General, had delivered victory
against the British colonial powers; the 13 states huddled on America’s
eastern seaboard were now independent. Army officers, alarmed by
the weakness of the Continental Congress during the war, urged
Washington to become the head of state, the king of the new nation,
to prevent another foreign power from quickly overpowering it.

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Washington refused, with sincere indignation. He had been as keen as
any man to shake off a foreign government that sought to put limits
on what George Washington and his fellow Americans could do,
without him—or they—being able to influence the actions of that
foreign power in any significant way. If George Washington now
became the new king in the land, then other people’s liberties
would be restricted in the same way that his had previously
been restricted by the British. He and his fellow colonists had
fought a war of independence to establish a republic; a republic it
would be.
By refusing the chance to become king of the new country,
Washington proved that he was the man most fitted to become its
elected president. After his unanimous election, he at first refused a
salary, but then recognized that a presidency without pay would only
be open to rich men, like himself. President Washington was given
remarkable powers by the 1st United States Congress, which he
quickly restrained in practice by establishing what was, and was not,
the role of the government’s Executive. By proving that it was possible
for a president to run a country without becoming a dictator
—something that neither England’s Oliver Cromwell had managed a
century earlier, nor would France’s Napoleon Bonaparte some
20 years later—Washington was instrumental in establishing a
successful republican form of government: of the people, by the
people, for the people, as Abraham Lincoln would later write. You
can’t bring people with you much more than that.
John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, rose to great wealth from a
position of relative poverty: his father had fought for King Charles
during the English Civil War and had been heavily fined by a
victorious Parliament for his pains. Young Churchill was given a place
at court by the newly-restored but impecunious Charles II; he became
a page to James Stuart, the younger brother of Charles II, and learned
the skills of a courtier. Churchill quickly proved himself to be a brave
fighting man and a great general. His loyal support of James, a
Catholic, during plots to prevent James’ accession to the throne

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(because of his Catholicism), earned Churchill his first ennoblement.
He was later to desert his master when James was overthrown by
William of Orange and his wife Mary (James’ sister), in England’s
Glorious Revolution. The new king and queen never quite trusted the
turncoat Churchill; it took all of his diplomatic skills to stay in a
position of influence and he was briefly imprisoned in the Tower of
London on suspicion of plotting to restore James to the throne. After
the death of Mary, and then William, Queen Anne came to the British
throne and the Churchill family fortunes improved. Churchill was put
in overall command of the Allied Dutch, Austrian, and German forces,
fighting against Louis XIV of France. Marlborough’s diplomatic
handling of the Allied forces enabled him to win a great victory
despite, in effect, the wishes of his Dutch allies—though his
diplomatic skills were such that the Dutch probably didn’t even notice
that Churchill had acted entirely unilaterally.

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 charles maurice de
talleyrand-perigord
(1754–1838)
Talleyrand was Napoleon’s Foreign Minister and later Grand
Chamberlain and Vice-Elector of the Empire. Mannered, devious,
gammy-legged, a consummate diplomat, Talleyrand’s aristocratic
background led during the French Revolution to the issue of a warrant
for his arrest, but he had wisely absented himself—first to England
and then to America—and survived when so many of his peers were
executed. He has been described, variously, as ‘the Prince of Diplomats’
(which he was) and as a cynical and opportunist racketeer and traitor
(which he also was, but in the most distinguished way).
Talleyrand was a contradictory figure, in many ways. Everything
about Talleyrand was redolent of pre-revolutionary France, of the old
regime: his elaborate, old-fashioned style of dress; his habit of rising
late in the morning and greeting visitors in his dressing room as the
whole elaborate Talleyrand façade was created; his languid manners;
his view of politics. “Those who did not know the years before 1789,”
said Talleyrand, “do not know the true sweetness of life.” And he
expressed his disdain of generals rather neatly: “War is much too
serious a thing to be left to military men.”
Talleyrand watched with growing horror as Napoleon moved from
the successful defence of France’s borders against the monarchies of
Europe—who wanted to undo the effects of the French Revolution—to
expansionary wars that gave Napoleon great glory (and much-needed
cash in the form of war reparations from conquered territories), but
that did nothing for France’s long-term security, and disturbed the
delicate diplomatic balance of Europe: something that Talleyrand had
helped to cultivate for all of his adult life. Talleyrand felt so
strongly about Napoleon’s alliance with Russia that he resigned as
Foreign Minister. Napoleon saw the alliance (at least for a few moments)
as a coming together of the great Emperors of East and West and

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hoped to persuade Russia to join his great scheme: a Europe-wide
embargo on trade with England—that “perfidious Albion” who had
disturbed all of Napoleon’s plans. Talleyrand saw the alliance as a gross
disturbance of the balance of European power. He began to accept
payments from both the Russian Tsar and the Austrian Emperor to
advise them how best to deal with Napoleon. Talleyrand also kept up
his relations with the exiled Bourbon King and was, eventually, to
welcome the restored Louis XVIII back to his throne after Napoleon’s
final defeat. “Treason,” said Talleyrand in a different context, “is a matter
of dates.”
Talleyrand’s diplomacy, though self-serving, was undertaken in the
best interests of France, as Talleyrand saw them, and Talleyrand was
usually right. He was one of the great persuaders; someone who led
others not by being in a position of command but through influence,
reason, and an exceptionally acute understanding of human nature.
Talleyrand, always an opponent of violence, was a master of the subtle
art of achieving a balance of self-interests in order to bring about
settlements with real foundation, in stark contrast to the settlements
imposed by Napoleon by force of arms. “The art of statesmanship,”
said Talleyrand, “is to foresee the inevitable and to expedite
its occurrence.”


Born into the aristocracy in Paris in 1754, a deformed foot prevented
Charles Maurice from taking up a career in the army. Talleyrand
himself ascribed the limp to a childhood fall, but it seems certain that
he suffered from a congenital ‘club foot’. This led the young Talleyrand
towards the other traditional career for minor aristocrats—the
church—despite a rather obvious lack of any significant faith. In 1789,
thanks to paternal influence, he became Bishop of Autun.
Surprisingly—or in Talleyrand’s case, probably presciently—he
supported the revolutionary cause at the outbreak of the Revolution,
assisting in writing the Declaration of the Rights of Man and proposing

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the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which nationalized the church. He
was excommunicated by Pope Pius VI for his pains and resigned his
bishopric, a self-defrocking that also allowed him to marry.
Talleyrand was apparently extremely attractive to women, which
seems to have been due more to his wit than his looks. A Scottish peer
remarked at the time that Talleyrand was, “the most disgusting
individual I ever saw. His complexion is that of the corpse
considerably advanced in corruption.” This seems to have been a
reasonably fair comment since, when Talleyrand died, the restored
King Louis XVIII commented, on being informed of the death, “But
there is no judging from appearances with Talleyrand.” This excellent
bon mot may have been as much a reference to Talleyrand’s famous
immobility of face as to its complexion; his face never betrayed his
thoughts, nor his emotions.
Returning from America in the safer political climes of 1796,
Talleyrand became Foreign Minister for the Directoire (the
revolutionary government that emerged after the Terror) but
subsequently aided Napoleon in his 1799 coup against the Directoire,
a charge that Talleyrand vehemently but unconvincingly denied
—Talleyrand had cultivated the obviously talented Napoleon from the
early days, throwing a magnificent ball for him on his return from
Egypt. Later, Talleyrand was made Napoleon’s Grand Chamberlain and
Vice-Elector of the Empire, but he resigned after the Franco-Russian
Alliance made at Tilsit in 1807, in despair at Napoleon's continued and
increasingly megalomaniac drive towards the domination of Europe.
Prior to his alliance with Russia, Napoleon had smashed the Russian
ally, Prussia, whose great military reputation from the glory days of
Frederick the Great concealed a rigidly disciplined but outmoded
military organization. Napoleon went on to defeat the Russian forces
in turn, but charmed the young and impressionable Tsar Alexander
and offered both reasonable terms and a vision of Napoleon and
Alexander as Emperors of the whole world, divided into East and West.
In contrast, Napoleon imposed humiliating peace terms on Prussia,
including the payment of massive war reparations. Great swathes of

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Prussian territory west of the river Elbe were ceded to become the
Kingdom of Westphalia, of which Napoleon’s brother Jerome was to be
King. Prussian territories in Poland became part of the Grand Duchy
of Warsaw. The beautiful Queen Louise of Prussia (described by
Napoleon as “the only real man in Prussia”) broke down in tears—and
was consoled by the ever-solicitous Talleyrand. It helped greatly to
confirm Talleyrand’s position with the aristocracy of Europe as a man
they could deal with. Talleyrand, for entirely sound diplomatic reasons,
was set against the new alliance with Russia and the treatment of
Prussia. The latter’s humiliation, in fact, spurred Prussia on to
modernize not only its army but its entire state. A resurgent Prussia
was to be a key factor in Napoleon’s ultimate defeat.
Talleyrand had continued to keep in contact with all of France’s
enemies—with the exiled Bourbons, with Emperor Francis of Austria,
and Alexander, Tsar of Russia—accepting, indeed demanding,
payments from all parties. Talleyrand had never had any scruples
about acquiring wealth along his diplomatic path. He made a killing
when the Treaty of Amiens was signed in 1802, bringing a temporary
peace between France and Great Britain, by buying Belgian bonds very
cheaply—because he was one of the very few people in the world who
knew that a condition of the treaty was that Belgian bonds would,
indeed, be honored.46 He also accepted payments from various
German rulers during Napoleon’s reorganization of German
princedoms in return for protecting or enlarging their territories.
Talleyrand’s continued intriguing led Napoleon famously to
denounce him to his face in 1808 as “a shit in silk stockings.”
Talleyrand limped out of this dressing- down saying merely and, one
likes to believe, languidly, “It is a pity that so great a man should have
been so poorly brought up.”47
What had led to Napoleon’s rage was Talleyrand’s plot, in
partnership with Fouché, Napoleon’s sinister Chief of Police (a man
who knew where all the bodies were buried, in many cases literally),
to carry out a coup to replace Napoleon with Murat, the charismatic
cavalry commander whom Napoleon had first made Marshal, then

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Duke and, finally and recently, King of Naples—an impressive career
path for the son of an innkeeper. To face down the coup, Napoleon
had left the war in Spain at a time when his continued presence could
have been critical; with Napoleon gone, his marshals failed to smash
the retreating British army under Sir John Moore, which was able to
fight a tenacious retreat to Corunna and be evacuated by the Royal
Navy, though without Sir John, who was killed in the defence
of Corunna.
It is surprising that Napoleon did not have Talleyrand shot. There
does seem to have been something of a personal bond between the
two men; Talleyrand’s charm was famously hard to resist. On his side,
Talleyrand constantly acknowledged his (sometimes reluctant)
admiration of Napoleon’s drive and ambition, and of the bonds that
had been forged between them in their common efforts for the
revolutionary cause: “There are bonds that last a lifetime, and those
I have contracted with the Emperor will last to my dying day.”48
Napoleon always acknowledged enjoyment of his late-night
conversations with Talleyrand in the early days of power, as the two
men—so brilliant in their very different ways—plotted and planned
to defend the new Republic against the hostile monarchies of Europe.
Later in Napoleon’s career, after Talleyrand had resigned as Foreign
Minister, the Emperor would feel the lack of his old friend’s uncanny
knack of getting things done, of oiling the wheels of international
diplomacy. When Talleyrand’s successor was taking too long to
negotiate the essential cash reparation from Austria, after the Austrian
Empire had suffered yet another defeat at the hands of the French,
Napoleon lost his temper with his new minister. “In Talleyrand’s time,”
said Napoleon, “we would have taken perhaps 60 million, and he
would have had ten million,” (that is to say, ten million francs would
have been quietly siphoned off as a reward for Talleyrand’s efforts),
“but it would all have been finished two weeks ago. Now do it.”
Talleyrand was indeed a born intriguer, but one who arguably had
the greater interest of France more to heart than did Napoleon, who
was beginning to become dangerously megalomaniac. “He is

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intoxicated with himself,” said Talleyrand, who believed that France,
having stabilized the revolution and regained her natural borders of
the Pyrenees, the Rhine, and the Alps, should hold back from any
further expansion of empire and work instead to form powerful
alliances with the old European powers. Talleyrand saw the war in
Spain for the pointless diversion that it was; he felt even more
strongly—with even more vindication—about Napoleon’s later
invasion of Russia.
It is probably dangerous to take anything that Talleyrand said of
himself as anything other than self-serving, but this passage from his
memoirs seems believable: “I therefore served Bonaparte when
Emperor as I had served him when consul: I served him with devotion
so long as I could believe that he himself was completely devoted to
France. But when I saw the beginning of those revolutionary
enterprises which ruined him, I left the ministry, for which he never
forgave me.”49
It was Talleyrand who, after Napoleon’s defeat and exile to Elba,
would lead the Provisional Government under the restored Bourbon
King Louis XVIII, and who negotiated for France at the Congress of
Vienna, achieving an extremely lenient peace settlement for France.
The victorious Allies had not even intended for France to be
represented at the Congress. Talleyrand suspected, quite rightly, that
the Allies intended to knock France back into a secondary position in
European politics. As the representative of King Louis, Talleyrand
inveigled his way to the conference table and began to play the four
major powers off against each other, while subtly creating discontent
among the minor powers of Europe who, also quite rightly, were
mistrustful and resentful of the intentions of the big four: Austria,
Prussia, Russia, and Great Britain. Talleyrand’s first action was to
unravel the Alliance. What could this word “Allies” mean when the
alliance had existed only in order to defeat Napoleon, who was now
successfully deposed? For his part, Talleyrand represented the interests
of his patron, King Louis whom, after all, the erstwhile Allies had
fought a war to reinstate.

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 Talleyrand not only completely unravelled the Allies’ plans to force
a settlement on France that would weaken her future position in
Europe, he outrageously brokered a secret deal between France,
Austria, and Great Britain agreeing that each would supply 150,000
men to aid the others in the event of aggression from Russia or
Prussia. Talleyrand had exposed the secret fears at the heart of the old
Alliance. France, far from being sidelined, was back at the heart of
European politics, restored to her 1792 borders.
Napoleon’s return from Elba undid much of Talleyrand’s good
work, leading as it did—after Napoleon’s final defeat and exile to
St Helena—to the far more stringent second settlement of 1815, which
reduced France further to within her boundaries of 1789.
The last word should go to Talleyrand:

“We have learned, a little late no doubt, that for states as for
individuals, real wealth consists not in acquiring or invading the
domains of others, but in developing one’s own. We have learned
that all extensions of territory, all usurpations, by force or by fraud,
which have long been connected by prejudice with the idea of
‘rank,’ of ‘hegemony,’ of ‘political stability,’ of ‘superiority’ in the
order of the Powers, are only the cruel jests of political lunacy, false
estimates of power, and that their real effect is to increase the
difficulty of administration and to diminish the happiness and
security of the governed for the passing interest or for the vanity of
those who govern […]”50

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 george washington
(1732–1799)
George Washington, the first President of the United States, led the
revolutionary army that was to defeat the British Empire, and turned
the 13 east-coast colonies—from Massachusetts and New Hampshire
in the north to South Carolina and Georgia in the south—into the
13 “United States” of America. In the late eighteenth century, outside
of the original 13 colonies, the majority of the land west of the
Appalachians belonged to American Indians, and the land west of the
Mississippi was claimed by Spain. The modern United States of
America was still a long way in the future.
A man of commanding personal presence, Washington came to
personify the struggle against the British. As commander-in-chief of
the Continental Army, as it was known, he fought a dogged war for
eight long years, suffering some heavy defeats but also some occasional
victories of great psychological significance. His true genius lay simply
in keeping the Continental Army intact as a fighting unit. The army
survived a terrible winter in the second year of the war, losing a quarter
of its strength (it had been only a meager 10,000 men to begin with)
to starvation and disease. Washington seemed to hold the army
together by sheer willpower and force of personality. Morale improved;
men re-enlisted, and new recruits arrived. Eventually, aided by the
French, the colonists wore the British down; after a decisive American
victory at Yorktown, the British granted the 13 colonies their
independence. A new nation had been born. A group of senior officers
from the victorious American army, concerned at the weakness of the
Continental Congress (delegates from each of the colonies who had
been running the war effort and were now running the country), were
determined to install Washington as an effective monarch to guarantee
the stability of the new nation. Washington refused.
It takes a man of rare moral fibre to turn down a kingship. Great
leaders are prone to decide that, come to think of it, they probably are

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the one person best-placed to assume complete control after all. Oliver
Cromwell had failed the test in England in the middle of the
seventeenth century, and turned the fledgling English republic into a
military dictatorship, which soon lapsed back into a monarchy.
Leaders with their hands on the levers of power at times of great
revolution tend not to let go of those levers. Washington did.
Washington fervently believed in the republican virtues for which
he had fought. He had come to have a great distaste for being a
second-class citizen—a colonist—subject to laws and taxation
imposed by a distant king and parliament. He had a pretty high
estimation of his own worth; as a land-owning aristocrat he had
always struggled with the notion that anybody else was better than
him, but he had the moral rigor to understand that everybody else
had the right to feel the same way as he did. Washington—the man
who could have been king—chose instead the correct path of
empowering other people. He brought the nation together under his
careful Presidency at a time when it could so easily have fragmented,
or been hijacked by a lesser man than Washington. He served his first
term in office, and reluctantly accepted a second term—and then he
went home.


Washington was born into a relatively prosperous plantation-owning
family in Virginia. His brother married a daughter of Colonel Fairfax,
one of Virginia’s most powerful landowners, and when his brother
died of tuberculosis, he inherited the substantial estate (with its
18 slaves) when he was 20 years old.
Washington joined the Virginia militia and was sent by the
Governor of the colony (a British appointee, of course) to French
territories in the north, to warn the French not to stray across the
borders, near Lake Eyrie, onto land occupied by Britain. The French
laid claim to a vast region of territory, known as Ohio Country, west
of the Appalachian Mountains and east of the Mississippi, running

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the length of the sub-continent from the great Lakes to the Gulf of
Mexico. One hundred years earlier, the great French explorer, La Salle,
had claimed the whole of the Mississippi basin for France, and had
explored the Ohio River Valley. The French declined to retire as
requested and moved further south. Washington reported back on
French movements; the French and Indian War was about to begin—a
war between Britain and France, with American Indians fighting on
both sides.
Washington acquitted himself relatively well in the wars against the
French, and showed conspicuous bravery. He rose to the rank of
Brigadier and fought alongside regular British troops. In 1758 he
resigned his commissions and returned to his plantations in Virginia,
marrying a wealthy widow of his own age and acquiring considerably
more land. He became a prominent citizen of the colony, just at the
time when Britain decided that the colonies in North America should
contribute to the cost of the war that had recently been fought against
the French in order to maintain the colonists’ territories and freedoms.
Parliament passed a Stamp Act in 1765, raising money by taxing all
official documents, such as legal documents, wills, and permits. It was
not expected to be a controversial measure, but the colonists had
extremely strong opinions about the difference between taxation with
their consent—taxation by their local, elected government—and
taxation without their consent, imposed on them by a distant
Parliament in London, in which they had no representation. “I think
the Parliament of Great Britain has no more right to put their hands
into my pocket, without my consent,” wrote Washington, “than I have
to put my hand into yours, for money.”51 “No taxation without
representation!” became a popular rallying cry.
Washington had, like many colonists, already been offended by the
Royal Proclamation of 1763. This attempted to consolidate British
ownership of the territory won from the French in the war, and
banned anyone from the 13 colonies from buying land or settling west
of the Appalachians. Washington, like many others, had already laid
claim to lands in the Ohio valley. Washington’s growing anti-British

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conviction was more economic and personal than ideological. He had
always had an aversion to authority and, as a wealthy landowner and
a man of some standing in Virginia, he was deeply averse to the notion
that a distant Parliament that he could not influence could affect his
wealth, his opportunities, or his status.
Resistance to the Stamp Act spread, with secret societies threatening
violence on anybody who sold the stamps; Washington supported a
boycott of British goods. The Stamp Act was in fact repealed (Benjamin
Franklin eloquently argued the American case in the British Parliament)
but Parliament retained the right to raise further taxes and in 1767
imposed a tax on paint, lead, paper, glass, and tea. Although the taxes on
items other than tea were also repealed (as British exports of these taxed
items to the colonies sharply declined), the tax on tea remained. It led
to widespread smuggling of tea by enterprising Americans who,
naturally, also encouraged a boycott of British tea, imported from
China. Stocks of unsold tea built up in the warehouses of the
British-owned East India Company; the British government passed an
Act allowing the Company to sell tea without payment of any tax to
Britain, enabling them to undercut even smugglers’ prices. A group of
Bostonian businessmen (and smugglers) dressed themselves up entirely
unconvincingly as Mohawk Indians and dumped a shipment of East
India Company tea into the waters of the city’s harbor—the Boston Tea
Party. Nothing else was stolen. A padlock that had been broken was
anonymously replaced with a new one a little later.
Ironically, the great Benjamin Franklin himself—hero of the repeal
of the Stamp Act—had proposed the tax break for the East India
Company, which was struggling not only because of the American
boycotts but also because of war and famine in India and an economic
slowdown in Europe. It was thought that the colonists would benefit
from (and be grateful for) the lower price of tea. In fact, since the
smuggling of tea into North America was so widespread as to
constitute a significant local industry, the tax break to the giant East
India Company was seen as another example of oppression by
the British.

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 This colorful act of economic sabotage, however, shocked even
those British politicians who had been well-disposed to the colonists.
It was not merely a symbolic gesture: the tea was worth at least
£10,000 at the time—equivalent to around £1m today. Parliament
closed Boston port until the cost of the dumped tea was repaid
(Benjamin Franklin spoke in favor of repayment), imposed martial
law on Massachusetts and passed other Acts felt to be repressive.
Washington had been a member of the Virginia ‘House of
Burgesses’ (a kind of locally elected parliament) when it was
disbanded by the British Governor. He was instrumental in setting up
unauthorized meetings that called for the boycott of British goods
and was elected as a delegate to the First Continental Congress in
Philadelphia, 1774, which supported the boycott and proclaimed their
opposition to the “Intolerable Acts” that the British Parliament had
passed after the Boston Tea Party. Conflict was rapidly approaching.
The British occupation of Boston was a watershed for Washington;
when Washington attended the Second Continental Congress, he wore
his Virginia Militia uniform—the only man to do so.
By this time (May 1775) the first shots of the war had been fired.
The month before, the British had moved to seize weapons stockpiled
by local militia in Massachusetts, but riders (including the famous
Paul Revere) had roused the countryside. In a clash at Lexington,
British troops fired on ‘minutemen’ (militia men ready to respond ‘at
a minute’s notice’), killing several. At Concord, the British met a large
force of minutemen and retreated back to Boston, where they were
besieged. When the Second Continental Congress met in May, it was
known that British forces were on the way by sea to relieve Boston.
Congress voted for the formation of a Continental Army and, the next
day, George Washington was elected as Commander-in-Chief.
Virginia’s support for the revolution—as the richest and most
populous colony—was essential, and Washington was the most
eligible Virginian. His protests that he was not equal to the task may
have been genuine—Washington had commanded nothing bigger
than a regiment, and his military experience told him that a motley

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army of colonial militiamen was unlikely to defeat one of the most
powerful professional armies in the world.
Washington took control of the Continental Army in July 1775 and
continued the siege of Boston, eventually forcing the British, under
General Howe, to withdraw by moving heavy artillery (and a number
of dummy cannons) to a commanding position above the city. The
British withdrew south to New York, and Washington moved after
them. Congress issued the Declaration of American Independence
and a British expeditionary force of 33,000 troops set off across the
Atlantic. The first set-piece battle (and the biggest of the entire war)
took place at Long Island, where the Continental Army of about
20,000 men was heavily defeated by a British force of similar size, and
driven back to Brooklyn Heights. Washington managed to withdraw
to Manhattan, but Howe later landed a force to recapture New York
City and drive the colonists back to Harlem Heights. Washington was
eventually forced to retreat to New Jersey and then across the
Delaware River into Philadelphia. The Americans had lost 5,000 men
killed or captured; with desertions running rife, Washington’s army
in New Jersey in November 1776 numbered around 6,000. The
revolution was on the point of extinction. Fortunately, General Howe
subscribed to the eighteenth-century notion that wars could not be
fought in winter (he had also notably failed to destroy the Continental
Army when it was trapped in Manhattan). His troops retired to their
winter quarters around Trenton. At Christmas, Washington launched
a daring attack across the Delaware and captured 1,000 British troops
at Trenton. The British despatched General Cornwallis with 8,000
men to crush Washington, but Washington outflanked Cornwallis by
means of an overnight march to attack his rear-guard at Princeton,
winning another vital victory.
These victories were small, but they had immense psychological
advantage. Everything had seemed lost, but now there was hope. But
in both of these separate attacks, Washington had effectively risked
the entirety of his tiny revolutionary army. From this point, he decided
that the route to success was survival and doggedness (two very

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Washingtonian attributes) and that the best way to win the war was
not to lose it. Washington took his army into winter quarters at
Morristown, New Jersey. Most of the revolutionary army had been
enlisted on one-year contracts. As enlistments expired in January
1777, the strength of the Continental Army was probably a derisory
3,000.52 Washington asked Congress for the power to raise a standing
army. Standing armies were, of course, anathema to republican
revolutionaries, but these were desperate times. Washington got his
powers to raise troops—but was left with the laborious task of dealing
directly with each individual state in order to do so.
The British government proved the depth of their resources by
continually resupplying the British Army in America; they could do
this because they were a sovereign nation, able to raise taxes and fund
a national debt. The Continental Congress, in stark comparison, was
hamstrung by the very principles that had caused the rebellion against
Britain. If the colonists did not want to be taxed or legislated for by a
parliament in London, no more did they want to be governed by a
Continental Congress—which also operated on the basis of one state
one vote, and could not therefore claim to fairly represent the nation
as a whole. Washington sent his Circulars to each individual state,
asking for men, supplies, and money to help the war effort. As the war
progressed, he became more and more convinced of the need for a
central body that could coordinate and fund the war effort. Despite his
increasing frustrations with Congress, Washington never lost sight of
the essential need for civilian control of the war effort, nor did he
challenge their authority: the Continental Army must be subordinate
to the Continental Congress.
In the following year, 1777, General Howe set out to take
Philadelphia, seat of the Continental Congress, the revolutionary
government. Washington put his army—now up to 11,000 men
—between Howe and Philadelphia, but was outmaneuvered; British
troops walked into Philadelphia unopposed, the disgruntled Members
of Congress having fled the city, muttering about Washington’s failure.
Washington had, in fact, cleverly extricated his army from the defeat,

144
a war-saving maneuver for which he got no thanks. In the north,
however, one of Washington’s generals had won a deeply significant
victory: a British army marching out of Canada heading for Albany,
New York, was successfully ambushed and harassed by American
militia, and finally defeated at the Battle of Saratoga. Morale, much
battered by the loss of Philadelphia, revived. The French, who were keen
to strike back at the British after their disastrous losses in the French
and Indian Wars, came into the war on the revolutionaries’ side.
Washington and his army survived the terrible winter at Valley
Forge, Pennsylvania, to emerge greatly reduced but intact and highly
motivated, with Washington now established as the leader of the Army
and, increasingly, as father of the nascent nation.
The British left Philadelphia and retired to New York, now
potentially at risk from attacks by the French navy, where Washington
kept them pinned down. The French navy were in fact more interested
in capturing British possessions in the Caribbean than in attacking
the mainland. The Royal Navy moved south to protect British interests
in the Caribbean, making combined operations easier in the south
than in the north. After initial successes under General Cornwallis,
the British found themselves unable to win a decisive victory or to pin
down the opposing army. The British moved back north to Yorktown,
from where they planned to be shipped by the Royal Navy to New
York. A crucial French naval victory against the Royal Navy at
Chesapeake Bay meant that Yorktown could now be neither evacuated
nor resupplied; Washington and his French ally Rochambeau raced
south and besieged Yorktown. The surrender of Cornwallis in October
1781 marked the effective end of the war, as support in London for a
continuation of the conflict in America evaporated.
It was at this point—with victory apparently won but far from
secure—that the army, unimpressed by the behavior of the
Continental Congress during the war, sought to make Washington a
monarch, to prevent the new nation from succumbing sooner or later
to some foreign power. A meeting was called to coordinate strategy
amongst dissident officers; Washington cancelled the meeting on the

145
grounds that only he had authority to order such an event, and
convened instead a meeting of all officers. He spoke eloquently and
forcefully against any notion of creating a king, monarch, or dictator.
He identified himself with the revolution and with the struggle of the
army, but drew the conclusion that any attempt to enthrone him
would be a repudiation of all that they had fought for together, and as
an assault on his personal integrity:

“Let me conjure you, in the name of our common country, as you

value your sacred honor, as you respect the rights of humanity, as
you regard the military and national character of America, to
express your utmost horror and detestation of the man who
wishes, under any specious pretences, to overturn the liberties of
our country […]”53

Washington did not believe—demonstrably—in the desirability of

kings. Happily, he did believe in the need for strong government. Even
more happily, he believed that this government must be civilian and
not military. Washington had demonstrated these beliefs time and
again during the war of independence.
Washington retired from the army and went back home to his
plantations in Virginia. By showing that he chose not to assume the
mantle of absolute power, Washington, of course, proved that he was
precisely the man who should be at the head of the new nation. When
the new Constitution was thrashed out, Washington was elected as
the first President of the United States, winning 100 percent of the
electoral votes (something that no future president ever achieved).
The Presidency was designed with Washington in mind; he was given
considerable freedom of action, because he was trusted not to abuse
that freedom. It is fortunate that he lived up to people’s great faith in
him. Many of the revolutionaries had an inbuilt distrust of any form
of central authority, which reminded them of the bad old days under
British rule. The new Constitution was much more concerned with
how Presidents were to be elected or removed than it was with spelling

146
out the Presidential powers. Washington had no illusions about the
need for central control, but knew that this should be within the
framework of a democratic system whose power derived from the will
of the people which, in turn, would guarantee its citizen’s essential
freedoms, rights, and wellbeing. He was convinced that the United
States had to be a nation, and not merely a confederation of states, or
it would rapidly succumb to the influence of the other great
nations—Britain, France, Spain—who were still controlling, or
seeking to control, vast swathes of North American territory.
Washington was the perfect embodiment of the kind of leader who
could govern a people who were very reluctant to be governed at all.
He turned the Constitution into a workable instrument of
government. It is entirely possible that, without Washington, the great
American republican experiment might have failed, as it was widely
expected to do.
Washington at first declined a salary ($25,000 per annum) on the
grounds that his was a public service that should not be rewarded, but
then accepted the salary so that the future presidency should not
become a rich man’s preserve. He opposed the idea of party politics.
He reluctantly accepted the second term of office to which he was
elected in 1792, and then refused a third, establishing the practice that
would become law when the 22nd amendment was passed in 1947.
He retired gratefully to his home in Virginia and died in 1799. He
caught cold, having failed to change his clothes after inspecting his
farm on horseback, in freezing rain. He developed a sore throat and
pneumonia, but probably died because of excessive blood-letting by
his doctors, leading to dehydration. The British Royal Navy lowered
its flags to half-mast in his honor.

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 john churchill, duke of
marlborough
(1650–1722)

John Churchill lived in one of the most turbulent periods of English

and European history. He was born during Cromwell’s Protectorate
—England’s brief flirtation with Republicanism. Charles II was restored
to the throne when Churchill was 16, marginally improving the family
fortunes. John’s father, Winston Churchill (an ancestor of the British
Prime Minister, Winston S. Churchill), had fought on the Royalist side
in the English Civil War and been fined by Parliament as a result.
Charles, though relatively impoverished, recompensed Winston for his
losses and found him a minor government position—though Winston
still died a debtor. Winston’s son, John, became page to Charles’ younger
brother, James, Duke of York, while John’s sister became Maid of
Honour to James’ wife, Anne Hyde, the Duchess of York—a gesture that
had the advantage of not involving Charles in the expenditure of any
hard cash, a commodity of which he was rather short. It seems likely
that the young John Churchill decided at an early age that he would
never be poor again, and he would not let matters of mere principle
stand in the way of his first objective if he could possibly help it.
Thanks to his wits, charm, courage, and military prowess,
Marlborough rose to the very top of English society. He became one
of England’s greatest generals and lived through the reign of five
British monarchs: Charles II, James II, William and Mary (joint
monarchs), Anne, and George I. In Europe, Churchill fought in the
complex struggles between the various European powers of the time,
including Spain, France, the Dutch Republic, the Holy Roman Empire,
and the German princedoms. Having grown up at court as page to
the young James, Duke of York, Churchill became the consummate
courtier. He was handsome, charming, subtle and discreet: a natural
diplomat. His great success in command of Allied forces in Europe

148
owed as much to his diplomatic skills in keeping the various elements
of the alliance more or less on-message as it did to his considerable
military skills. Churchill was also prepared to act unilaterally if he felt
that his diplomatic skills would not persuade his colleagues to take
the necessary course of action—relying, of course, on his ability to
make everything all right again after the event.
Like probably all great diplomats, Churchill was loyal to his masters
right up to the moment when it became obvious that they were no
longer on the winning side. Later in life, he deserted his old master
James, who had then become King James II on the death of his
brother, Charles II, and sided with the Dutch Prince, William of
Orange, a grandson of Charles II and the husband of James’ own
daughter, Mary. William and Mary, both Protestants, were invited by
Parliament to rule as joint monarchs in place of the Catholic James II,
who was deposed in what became known as the Glorious Revolution.
Churchill, probably the one commander who could have defeated
William’s invading forces, switched sides at the vital moment,
ensuring William’s victory.
Although Churchill was an outstanding general, his achievements
in life were due mainly to his ability to thread his way through the
minefields of political favor (he was imprisoned in the Tower of
London for suspected treason at one point in his life) and to master
the complicated command structures of the various European
alliances for which he fought. Churchill’s greatest skill lay in bringing
people with him.


When Charles II married his Portuguese wife, Catherine of Braganza,
she brought with her a substantial dowry, including £300,000 in cash,
and the cities of Bombay and Tangiers. The Earl of Clarendon, father
of Anne Hyde, Duchess of York, and a key counsellor to both Charles
and his father, noted that when Charles first heard of Catherine’s
dowry, he “seemed much affected.” Young Churchill had made the most

149
of his position at court. At the age of 17 he obtained a commission as
an ensign in the King’s Own Company of the 1st Guards (later called
the Grenadier Guards). He was posted to the newly acquired city of
Tangiers and gained useful military experience fighting the Moors.
There is a suggestion that the handsome young Churchill had already
caught the eye of one of Charles’ many mistresses, the beautiful Barbara
Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland (who was also Churchill’s second
cousin). What is certain is that, on his return from Tangiers, Churchill
was soon sharing his favors with the notorious Barbara, who was to
bear six illegitimate children acknowledged by Charles as his
own—hence the “Fitzroy” surname that they were allowed to adopt.
One of these children may, in fact, have been young Churchill’s. There
is a marvellous story that the king nearly surprised the two in bed
together, but that either Churchill leaped out of a window and escaped
or that he hid in a wardrobe and was discovered. If the second story is
true, then it is said that Churchill and Villiers begged the king’s
forgiveness on their knees and that Charles, with the moral realism of
a man who knows that he is standing in a glasshouse holding a handful
of pebbles, declared merely that Churchill was “a rascal,” and forgave
them both. Villiers gave Churchill the handsome sum of £5,000, which
gave the young rascal a useful start in life.
Despite Churchill’s father’s wish that he should marry into money,
he later married for love. However, his wife, Sarah Jennings, was the
childhood friend of Princess Anne, daughter of Churchill’s boss, James,
Duke of York. Sarah became Anne’s most trusted friend and confidante
and when Anne became Queen (after the death of her older sister,
Mary, and Mary’s husband William), Sarah was to become one of the
most influential women in the country. The queen did finally tire of the
strong-willed Sarah and banished her from court, but by that time
Sarah Churchill was Duchess of Marlborough and she and John were
amongst the wealthiest of Queen Anne’s subjects. The route to such
fame and fortune was, however, far from straightforward.
In 1672, Churchill saw action at sea with his master, James, against
the Dutch Provinces. A year later he fought with the Duke of

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Monmouth for the French against the Dutch at the siege of
Maastricht. In return for this support, Charles had received a useful
payment of cash from the French. The Duke of Monmouth, James
Scott, was another illegitimate son of Charles (by Lucy Walter, who
by this time was dead). Charles recognized James as his son, but not
as his heir. There were rumors that Charles and Lucy had secretly
married, in which case Monmouth would be the rightful heir to the
British throne. Churchill fought alongside Monmouth at Maastricht
with a “forlorn hope” of 30 men who captured part of the citadel and
held out all night against Dutch attacks. Churchill is reputed to have
saved the Duke’s life; certainly his bravery was commended by Louis
XIV of France (“The Sun King”) and noted by Charles II.
Some years later, Churchill gained his first diplomatic experience as
part of an English delegation, seeking to negotiate a treaty with the
Dutch provinces and Spain against France; Churchill impressed
William of Orange with his negotiating skills. On his return to
England, Churchill found that his Catholic master, James, had been
excluded from London as hysteria grew about a “Popish Plot”,
supposedly discovered by a man called Titus Oates, and said to reveal
plans by the Catholic Church to assassinate Charles II. Charles was
distinctly unimpressed and unfazed by this tale, but his more
anti-Catholic ministers were keen to believe the story, which was
designed to prevent James from ascending to the throne. Churchill
stayed with his master, James (in exile in Brussels and then in
Scotland). When the plot was proved to be a fabrication, allowing
James to return to London, Churchill was rewarded with a Scottish
peerage and the Colonelcy of the King’s Own regiment of Dragoons.
(Dragoons were mounted soldiers carrying firearms—originally a
primitive kind of flintlock musket called, in French, a dragon.)
At the death of Charles in 1685, James became King James II.
Churchill’s old commander and comrade-at-arms, the Duke of
Monmouth, led a rebellion against the new king, pursuing his own
claim to be the rightful heir. One supporter of Monmouth’s claim was
a young Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe. The revolt was

151
defeated at the battle of Sedgemoor and the victory was seen (with
justice) as being due to the efforts of Churchill rather than to his
unimpressive commander, the Earl of Feversham.
Monmouth was captured and beheaded, and a witch-hunt against
Monmouth’s supporters was conducted via the “Bloody Assizes” of
the infamous Judge Jeffreys. No distinction was made between passive
and active support of the rebellion (the charge being one of treason).
Over 1,400 people were convicted and sentenced to death. In the end,
320 people were hanged (or, far worse, hanged, drawn, and quartered)
and the remainder were deported to the plantations of the West Indies
as indentured servants (a form of slavery). Many more died of typhus
in England’s filthy gaols before they could be transported.
There is an argument that the brutality of this repression was the
first step in Churchill’s growing disenchantment with his old master,
James. He had also seen, during James’ exile in Scotland, his master’s
disturbingly vicious suppression and persecution of a revolt by radical
Protestant Covenanters, often using Catholic Highlanders to defeat
and purge their Protestant fellow countrymen. What is certain is that
Churchill was to abandon his King during the coming revolution
—the Glorious Revolution.
James, a man of far more rigid principles and far less common sense
than his brother Charles, continued to demonstrate an alarmingly
single-minded tendency to divide the country on sectarian lines. He
commissioned a large standing army, staffed predominantly by
Catholics, in both England and Ireland. When Parliament sought to
challenge this, he prorogued Parliament. Recent English history had led
to a well-grounded fear both of Kings with a belief in the divine right
of the crown (like James’ father, Charles I) and of standing armies—like
the Parliamentarian New Model Army of the English Civil War, which
had refused to disband after the Civil War and which came, briefly, to
run the country under Cromwell. Matters came to a head when James’
second wife, the Italian Mary of Modena (his first wife, Anne Hyde, had
died in 1671) gave birth to a son, James Stuart—a Catholic heir to
the throne.

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 Before that birth, James’ older daughter Mary had been heir to the
throne. Mary had been raised as a Protestant at the wise insistence of
Charles (who had almost certainly been a Catholic throughout his life
and who ‘converted’ quietly on his deathbed). Mary had married
William, Duke of Orange in 1677: they were both the grandchildren
of Charles I and first cousins (which meant that William’s father-
in-law, James, was also his uncle). Mary would have been first in line
for the throne of England on James’ death, and William third. The
birth of James Stuart tipped the balance in their favor: Parliament
invited William to become joint monarch of England with his wife, in
a constitutional monarchy based on the Bill of Rights—a
revolutionary document that laid the basis for Britain’s modern
constitutional monarchy, and ensured that future monarchs would
be governed by Parliament.
William landed at Torbay at the head of some 14,000 elite Dutch
mercenary troops—rather in conflict with Parliament’s initial
suggestion that a token force would be sufficient. James faced the
invaders at Salisbury. Churchill argued for an attack; the unimpressive
army commander (Feversham again) advised a retreat. James himself
was suffering from one of the nosebleeds to which he was notoriously
prone, and took this as a bad omen. It may be that Churchill would
have fought for James had the King shown any semblance of resolve,
but Churchill only ever wanted to be on the winning side; he must
have seen that his old master was doomed. He defected to William.
On the following day, James’ daughter, Anne, firm friend of the
Churchills, did the same, deserting her own father’s cause.
James fled to the continent; William and Mary were crowned.
Churchill was rewarded by being made Earl of Marlborough, but neither
William nor Mary really trusted him, partly because of his previous
attachment to James II and partly because of the Churchill family’s close
relationship to Princess Anne, Mary’s sister. Churchill—we must now
call him Marlborough—spent several years campaigning in France
(England had declared war as part of a Grand Alliance against Louis
XIV’s expansionist plans) and, as ever, acquitted himself well.

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 The Glorious Revolution was so-called because it was a bloodless
affair, at least on English soil, but blood was to be shed in Ireland. In
1690, James attempted to regain his throne but was defeated in Ireland
at the Battle of the Boyne. Marlborough went to Ireland after the
battle and won victories, but was not given any command
independent of William. Marlborough lobbied against William’s
appointment of Dutch commanders in the English army and planned
to move two resolutions in the House of Lords, proposing that foreign
officers could not hold commissions in the English army and that all
Dutch troops would be sent home. This was both brave and rash of
the usually cautious Marlborough. It can only be that he felt very
strongly about the presence of foreign officers within the British Army
and the presence of foreign troops on British soil—something
dangerously close, for Marlborough, to a matter of principle.
In 1692 Marlborough was suddenly dismissed from all his army
and government posts. It does seem certain that Marlborough had
remained in contact with his old master, James. With Marlborough,
this is less likely to be evidence of subversion and more likely to be an
insurance policy against the far from unthinkable restoration of a
Stuart monarchy. Suddenly, amid rumors of a Jacobite invasion
supported by France, a treasonable letter was produced, apparently
signed by Marlborough amongst others. (The term Jacobite refers to
a supporter of James Stuart, and has no connection with the later
radical French revolutionary Jacobins, named after their meeting place
in a monastery in the rue St-Jacob in Paris.) Marlborough and the
rest were sent to the Tower of London. The great Marlborough
languished in a traitor’s prison.
The letter was soon shown to be a forgery and the alleged plotters were
released. Marlborough’s return to full favor was a slower process. Queen
Mary—who had taken against Churchill from the first—died in 1695,
and he returned to court. Some years later there was a reconciliation
with William, but William himself was to die in 1702. Queen Anne—that
great friend of John and Sarah Churchill—was on the throne and war on
the continent had escalated. Marlborough’s moment had come.

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 The Habsburg Spanish King, Charles II, sickly from generations of
Habsburg in-breeding, died childless and left his kingdoms to the
grandson of the Bourbon Louis XIV of France. The Habsburg Holy
Roman Emperor, Louis I, was keen to protect his dynasty. The Grand
Alliance, formed earlier to resist Louis XIV, was reconvened to resist
this new threat of French aggrandisement. Marlborough was put in
charge of Allied British, United Provinces (Dutch), and German forces
against the French in support of Austria and the Holy Roman Emperor,
Leopold. It cannot have seemed long ago that he was fighting with the
Duke of Monmouth for the French against the Dutch.
Churchill’s powers of command were hedged by limitations: it took
all of Churchill’s considerable diplomatic powers of tact and
persuasion to manage the operation with any success. He could not,
for example, give direct orders to Dutch troops unless they were
actively fighting alongside British troops; in every other situation he
had to consult with Dutch political advisors.
Marlborough’s main brief was to defend the Dutch territory against
the French. He performed well, capturing Liège and several other
towns from the French, for which he was rewarded with a full
Dukedom. But the French also planned a direct attack on Vienna,
capital of Leopold’s Holy Roman Empire, across the Alps from
northern Italy, supported by their Bavarian allies in the west and helped
by a Hungarian revolt against the Empire in the east. Success would
force the Emperor Leopold out of the war and see the collapse of the
Alliance. If the French were successful, the war was lost. Marlborough
saw the danger, but knew that he could not convince the Dutch to fight
on the Danube, so far south of their immediate concerns. He got
permission from the Hague to march to the Moselle river but, once
there, wrote to the Dutch to say that the situation impelled him to take
his troops into Germany to join their German allies in order to protect
the Empire and the Alliance. A letter could, after all, take some time to
arrive. Marlborough reassured the nervous Dutch that in the event of
a counter-attack by the French in Marlborough’s absence, he could
ferry troops down the Rhine at speed in barges.

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 The French Marshall, Villeroi, stationed in the Low Countries near
Brussels, was intended to pin down Marlborough’s army in the region
of Maastricht. As Marlborough set off for Coblenz, where the Moselle
River meets the Rhine, he was shadowed all of the way by Villeroi.
Marlborough crossed the Rhine, but turned south along its eastern
bank, suggesting that his target might be Strasbourg, to the south in
Alsace. Marlborough finally swung his army east, towards the Danube,
and his destination was finally in no doubt: Bavaria, and on to Vienna.
Along the route, Marlborough had been joined by Allied Hanoverian,
Prussian, and Danish troops as he marched to join forces with the
Austrian commander, Prince Eugene. The French quickly attempted
to devise a strategy to counter Marlborough’s unexpected line of
attack but, in a recurring lesson from history, the centralized French
line of command prevented the one man who knew what was actually
happening on the ground—Villeoi—from taking independent and
speedy action. Any change of plan had to be authorized by Versailles.
Marlborough had brought his army 250 miles from the Low
Countries to the Danube in five weeks. It was a masterpiece of logistical
planning. When the army reached its chosen destination, it pitched its
tents, boiled its kettles and sat down to rest; Marlborough had managed
his lines of supply so that everything they needed was to hand. The
French, in contrast, had faced a tough march through the passes of the
Black Forest in an attempt to head Marlborough off at the Danube. The
difficult roads had proved treacherous for the supply wagons; local
peasants, the victims of French foraging, managed to do away with
several thousand French soldiers as they passed through the forests.
As the Franco-Bavarian armies sought to avoid a battle until
sufficient forces could be brought up, Marlborough started to lay
waste to the Bavarian countryside in order to force the issue. In the
final, hard-fought Battle of Blenheim, Marlborough and Eugene
inflicted a crushing defeat on the French and Bavarian armies. Vienna
and the Alliance were saved, and Bavaria passed into the hands of the
Allies. There were more battles to come, but Blenheim is seen as the
pivotal victory that prevented what might have been a subsequent

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domination of Europe by France, and an entirely different future
for Europe.
Marlborough was rewarded by a grateful Queen Anne, and a
grateful nation, with the grant of the Royal manor of Woodstock, in
Oxfordshire, and a huge grant of £240,000 to build a palace.
Marlborough contributed to the building works, which were to finally
cost in the region of £300,000 (about £17.5m in modern terms). The
rest of Marlborough’s life was not plain sailing. Despite further
dramatic successes against the French, politics at home became ever
more fraught. His wife, Sarah, finally fell out of favor with Queen
Anne, partly for her vigorous support of the Whig Party, of whom
Marlborough was a favorite and supporter. The Whigs finally lost
power to the Tories; Marlborough was relieved of his post as
commander-in-chief in 1711 and accused of various charges of
embezzlement, all of which failed on the basis that the (very
substantial) monies that Marlborough had earned during his tenure
of senior military positions were based on long-established and
common precedent (or in some cases had been explicitly provided for
under the Queen’s signature), and that most of the money so earned
had been spent on creating an intelligence network in the interest of
the nation’s security. Some of the payments were nevertheless declared
to be illegal, but these were overlooked. It can never be denied that
Marlborough was particularly interested in the potential financial
rewards of his many official titles and posts.
Marlborough and his family spent some years in exile on the
continent but, after the death of Queen Anne and the accession of the
Elector of Hannover as King George of England, Marlborough was
welcomed back and restored to the role of Captain-General of the
armed forces. The years, however, had taken their toll. Marlborough
suffered a series of strokes, and died in 1722.

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 6
making
things happen
 ne of the most basic things that a manager has to do is to make
O things happen. As a junior, or even a middle manager, it will do
you no harm at all to be seen rolling up your sleeves and sorting out
whatever mess you may have inherited: whether it be completely
revamping the training program, overhauling the bonus system, or
making sure that everybody really understands the provisions of the
Health and Safety Act. But, interestingly, each of the three leaders from
history in this section illustrate the subtle point that the really effective
managers are the ones who make things happen by means of good
strategy and direction—by employing top-class team members and
empowering them to take action—rather than by personally taking a
problem by the shoulders and shaking some sense into it.


Oliver Cromwell and General George Patton were archetypical men of
action. They were constitutionally unable to see things in a mess and
not to sort it out themselves. Oliver Cromwell famously, but entirely
unconstitutionally, threw the remnants of the English Parliament out
of the House of Commons. Eventually, and to his great discredit, he
ended up running the country himself, rather badly. Cromwell had
helped to create a remarkable army for the Parliamentarians in their
fight against the injustices of which they felt King Charles was guilty;
Cromwell built up and commanded the best-organized cavalry troop
in the country and went on to be a highly successful general. With
King Charles arrested and Parliament uncertain as to how to proceed,
Cromwell seemed oblivious to the fact that by leading the army to
London in order to force Parliament to take the right (Cromwellian)
course of action, he was guilty of behavior as high-handed and
absolutist as any of which King Charles stood accused.
George Patton, like Cromwell, couldn’t stop himself from sorting
things out by personal and physical intervention. After the D-Day
landings and the subsequent bitter fighting in the narrow hedgerows
of Normandy, the Allied forces struggled to get their troops and armor

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out of the Cotentin Peninsula and found themselves snarled up in the
little town of Avranches. Faced with a potentially invasion-
threatening traffic jam in this small provincial French town, Patton
jumped out of his jeep and onto a traffic policeman’s box in the town
center and started personally to direct traffic; it began to flow. Patton
went on to lead his troops in an unstoppable dash across occupied
France toward Germany. If the petrol hadn’t run out, Patton might
well have driven straight to Berlin (though, being Patton, he hadn’t
really thought through whether he would have any sort of back-up
or support when he entered German territory). Neither Patton nor
Cromwell could help themselves. They had to make things happen;
themselves; straight away. They were both, as it happens, cavalrymen;
possibly addicted to the exhilaration of the charge—the decisive
moment in which the opposition is swept away. As a manager, you
may want to have a cavalryman in your team: every army needs its
cavalry, for quick, decisive action that strikes terror into the heart of
the opposition. There is room for a bit of the cavalryman in every
manager (male or female) but the clever manager never allows the
urge to change things to override the strategic issue. Most importantly,
if you can delegate the necessary action, then you should. You are
supposed to make things happen, not to do it all yourself.
Zhou Enlai is a different example of a manager who made things
happen. Zhou, actually, is the perfect example of a manager who
spends his or her working life sorting out the messes that their bosses’
madcap schemes have landed them in. That sort of problem,
obviously, no longer arises in modern management, but it used to be
quite common. Tragically, the madcap schemes of Zhou’s boss, Mao
Zedung (also often written as Mao Tse Tung) led to the deaths of
millions of people, which Zhou was unable to prevent. When Zhou
showed Mao the figures that showed how production had slumped
during the pointless and vicious Cultural Revolution—the last
paroxysm of unbridled Maoism—Mao had enough sense remaining
to call a halt. Zhou himself was nearly “purged”, but Mao knew that it
was Zhou who kept China running. Zhou worked phenomenally

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hard; he established a routine of working until five in the morning
and then sleeping until ten. The things that he had wanted to make
happen for China were spelled out in the Four Modernizations that he
got to the forefront of the agenda toward the end of his
life: the modernization of agriculture, of industry, of defense, and of
science and technology. A sound agenda for any national leader.

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 oliver cromwell
(1599–1658)
Oliver Cromwell proved himself to be, above all else, a man of action;
a man who lived in remarkable times who, when called upon, found
himself capable of remarkable deeds. Cromwell was a country squire
from a Cambridgeshire family that had seen better times. His father
died when the young Cromwell was still at University; his studies were
cut short and he could have expected to spend the rest of his life
tending his fields and raising children. Instead, he became a highly
proficient cavalry leader; invented the concept of a professional
standing army (as opposed to an army of regiments raised by wealthy
men, or troops of foreign mercenaries); toppled and executed a King,
and then rose to reign, in effect, in the King’s stead. The fact that
becoming the ruler of the nation was in direct opposition to everything
that Cromwell had stood and fought for during the Civil War seems to
have been lost on Cromwell himself. Presumably he would argue that
he was a decent and godly man doing his best to run the country as it
should be run (something that, sadly, could not be left to other, less
reliable folk), whereas Charles I had been an unprincipled tyrant
serving only his own ends.
Oliver Cromwell was that most dangerous of men: he believed that
he could see God’s intentions here on earth and was convinced that he
knew what God wanted men to do. When things weren’t going the way
that God and Oliver wanted, he would lose patience, tip over tables,
bundle people out of rooms, call in the troops—and take over. Cromwell
would have made a good medieval baron (just as he was a very good
military commander); but he made a very bad parliamentarian. As a
result, Cromwell unfortunately makes a bad role model for leaders in
modern consensual organizations, except in one sense: if you wanted
somebody who could make things happen—somebody who would sort
things out when the going got rough—then Cromwell would be your
man. And in that sense, there is still much to be admired about him.

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When Cromwell was born in 1599, Elizabeth I was still on the throne
(she died in 1603). Cromwell was born into a moderately prosperous
family of country gentlemen. Oliver’s great grandfather was knighted
by Henry VIII; his grandfather was knighted by Elizabeth I. Cromwell’s
uncle, another Oliver, entertained King James I so lavishly at
Hitchinbroke (granted to the family by Henry VIII) that James
returned several times for more. The expenditure nearly ruined the
older Oliver, who was eventually forced to sell the great house. Young
Oliver, though from the poorer side of the family, grew up in the
classic tradition of minor English gentry, loyal to King (or Queen) and
country. It would have seemed a monstrous notion in the early 1600s
to imagine that this young gentleman would grow up to overthrow
and execute his King, Charles, the eldest son of the King James whom
Oliver’s uncle had entertained too well.
Oliver was educated at Huntingdon Grammar School. The master
of the school, Thomas Beard, was also a friend of the family. A fiercely
anti-Catholic protestant, Beard believed strongly in “Providences”
—the visible signs of God’s will at work on earth, brought about by
his chosen instruments, in order to reward the just and punish the
wicked. It was a belief that the young Cromwell seems to have taken
to heart.
Cromwell continued his education at Cambridge University. He was
always more physical than intellectual; a man of action rather than a
deep thinker. His studies were cut short by the death of his father. He
returned home to look after his mother and sisters and seems, during
this period, to have been given to drinking and brawling. “Here comes
young Cromwell,” the landladies of the local taverns would call, “Shut
up your doors!”54 Cromwell married in 1620, at the age of 21, and said
goodbye to those rowdy days. Some years later, after a period of
depression, he experienced a religious conversion to a radical form of

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Protestantism. Cromwell became the Member for Huntingdon for the
Parliament of 1628–29. Parliaments were summoned by the king only
when he had need of them—almost always when he had need of their
agreement to raise further taxation, in this case to fund a war with
Spain. Parliament was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with this
one-sided arrangement. Great religious and ideological shifts were
taking place in Britain in the seventeenth century; a questioning of all
forms of authority—religious and secular. Unfortunately, Charles
Stuart, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, was the monarch least
well-equipped to handle such shifts with any political acumen.
The 1628 Parliament put to the king a “Petition of Right” raising
fundamental questions about the relationship between monarch and
subject on issues such as taxation without the consent of Parliament,
and arbitrary imprisonment contrary to the ancient rights enshrined
in Magna Carta. Charles’ financial straits forced him to accept the
Petition, but he argued that it only confirmed ancient rights and did
not affect his royal “prerogative.” The king, answerable to God alone,
retained the right to make laws without Parliament and to raise
taxation without Parliament in times of national emergency. When
the Parliament of 1628 was dismissed, less than a year later, Charles
ruled without Parliament for more than a decade.
The embers of conflict were smouldering on several fronts and
Charles managed to fan each one into flame. The most contentious area
was religion: Charles, married to the Catholic Queen Henrietta Maria
of France, favored a more ceremonial Church of England at a time when
any suggestion of ‘popery’ was abominated by most Protestants. Many
Protestants were also keen to move from a church controlled by a
hierarchy of bishops and clergy to a Presbyterian church—one
controlled by elders of the church community. Some, the Independents,
held the more radical view that individual communities could interpret
scripture for themselves without any church hierarchy.
Parliament was finally recalled in 1640, promptly dismissed, and
then recalled once more. In August 1642, Charles raised the Royal
Standard at Nottingham—a feudal call for men to rally to their king.

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Parliament also began to raise troops. Charles declared that he fought
for “the Protestant religion, the laws of England, and the liberty of
Parliament,” Parliament issued a commission to raise troops “for King
and Parliament.” Charles had succeeded in provoking a civil war with
subjects who still favored a monarchy. It wasn’t the idea of a kingship
that they objected to; it was Charles himself.
Cromwell went home to Cambridgeshire and raised a troop of
soldiers for the Parliamentary cause. Like the majority of the
Parliamentary army, Cromwell had never seen any form of military
service. He had been a good “committee man” in Parliament and a
forceful, though rambling and inelegant speaker. His main interest
had been the rooting out of “popery”. He now found himself at the
head of a troop of cavalry.
Cromwell proved to be a quick learner and a forceful leader of men.
He watched the early successes of the Royalist cavalry, led by one of
the King’s German nephews, the dashing Prince Rupert. At the Battle
of Edgehill in 1642, early in the Civil War, Rupert’s cavalry had
overwhelmed their opposition. In the exhilaration of success, however,
Rupert’s cavalry swept on beyond the battlefield, chasing fugitives and
plundering baggage trains, returning to the field to find that the battle
had turned against them in their absence. Cromwell knew that he
needed “men of a spirit that is likely to go on as far as a gentleman will
go”—that is to say, men committed to the Parliamentary cause, in the
way that the aristocracy were committed to the Royalist cause.55 He
looked for these amongst men like himself—“godly” men. Cromwell
trained them hard and imposed strict discipline. They enjoyed some
early successes, which Cromwell ascribed to God’s favor.
His troopers’ discipline was demonstrated in the significant battle
of Marston Moor in July 1644. After a successful clash with Rupert’s
cavalry, Cromwell restrained his troop from the traditional hot
pursuit; they regrouped and charged unexpectedly into attacking
Royalists on the far wing of the battle, turning a deteriorating position
into a significant Parliamentarian victory. For Cromwell, it was not
only the discipline, but also the godliness that created success. Without

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it, one could not expect the Lord’s favor. There are reports of
Cromwell’s “wild glee” on the eve of battles, certain of the Lord’s
support: “I could not, riding alone about my business, but smile out
to God in praises, in assurance of victory, because God would, by
things that are not, bring to naught things that are.”56
Cromwell’s troops had proved their worth against experienced and
professional cavalry, led by a highly talented commander, Prince
Rupert. Cromwell, however, complained about the rest of the
Parliamentarian army—the “profaneness and the impiety and the
absence of all religion, the drinking and the games”. “Until the whole
army were new modelled,” he wrote, “and governed under a stricter
discipline, they must not expect any noticeable success in anything
they were about.”57 The army was indeed “new modelled”: the New
Model Army was created, with Thomas Fairfax in command and
Cromwell his second as Lieutenant General of Horse. The army
quickly showed its worth, despite being lampooned by one Royalist
commander as the “New Noddle.” It was a good joke, but one that
turned sour for the King’s forces as the disciplined and well-trained
army showed its worth in battle. By 1646, the King had fled from his
temporary capital of Oxford, which later fell to a siege by Cromwell.
Charles later surrendered to a Scottish Parliamentarian army.
It was all over, or it should have been. Cromwell retired to civilian
life—a mere MP once again. His sole concession to his greater
eminence was to move his family to London. The years that followed
could so easily have had many different outcomes. Parliament was
now predominantly Presbyterian. The Army was predominantly
Independent (like Cromwell himself). Some more radical
Independents believed in complete individual liberty of conscience
—a dangerously anarchical idea for the times. The Presbyterians in
Parliament were now keen to disband the New Model Army. The
Army had many grievances, primarily about the substantial arrears
in their pay. When asked to discuss disbandment, the Army countered
with a petition for the payment of arrears and indemnity against any
future prosecution. A leading Presbyterian Member of Parliament,

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Denzel Holles, proposed a resolution that would make protesting
Army officers “enemies of the state.” Battle lines were being drawn up.
The King began to play all sides off against the other. He had already
set in motion a plot to use Scottish support to regain his throne in
return for the establishment of a Presbyterian Church. The
Presbyterians in Parliament were now actively considering this option.
Many soldiers and officers would also have favored the restoration of
Charles if the right to follow their own religious beliefs had been
guaranteed. Parliament voted to disband the Army in stages.
As events unfolded, on every occasion Cromwell seemed undecided
as to his true role as he tried to represent both Parliament and the Army.
The King, in captivity at Holdenby, was seized by the army and brought
to Newmarket, in the Army’s heartland. Cromwell was suspected of
being responsible and fled from London in the early hours after hearing
that Parliament planned to arrest him: at this point, Cromwell was seen
as being the Army’s man, and a threat to Parliament. The Army then
marched toward London with Cromwell at their head. Cromwell had
initially been reluctant to take this action, but persuaded himself that
the Army would march anyway and that he could be a moderating
influence. The Army demanded the impeachment of 11 Members of
Parliament who had been active in calling for the disbandment of the
army. The 11 MPs fled from London.
Army officers, including Cromwell, approached the King with
moderate proposals: they wanted freedom of religious observation;
Parliament was to meet every two years; there would be a better
distribution of Parliamentary seats; the bishopric would be
abolished—but Charles would be restored to his throne. Charles
seems to have missed the point that the New Model Army was at that
point the most powerful force in the land and that it was offering him
a very moderate deal in exchange for the retention of the monarchy.
Charles prevaricated, thinking that there were better deals to be done.
In London, Presbyterian supporters mobbed Parliament in protest
against the growing predominance of Independents in Parliament and
in support of the reinstatement of the King, in exchange for the

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promised Presbyterian Church. The 11 Presbyterian MPs who had
earlier fled from the Army returned to Parliament; the Speaker and
some 60 Independent MPs fled in their turn. The mob demanded the
King’s return to London. Charles now firmly rejected the Army’s offer
of a settlement, believing that events were moving in his favor.
Members of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords
appealed to the Army for protection from the mob. The Army, led by
Oliver Cromwell riding at the head of his own regiment, marched on
London. The Speaker was restored to Parliament. The 11 Presbyterian
members, condemned by history to an increasingly farcical role, took
themselves off again. Cromwell did not emerge from this episode as a
fully-fledged military dictator. The significance of the Army’s
involvement seemed, if anything, to have been lost on him.
Attendance at Parliament dwindled and the Army Council became
increasingly the power in the land.
At this point, Cromwell appeared to be attempting to moderate
opinion. The Army, still trying to decide what constitutional
settlement should result from its recent sacrifices, met near their
headquarters in Putney for a series of debates, and proposed several
sweeping political innovations such as the introduction of universal
male suffrage (one man one vote) and even free schooling and health
care, all of which were seen as dangerously radical at the time. One
group, known as The Levellers, proposed an extreme egalitarian form
of social model. Cromwell made increasingly vague and meaningless
speeches and generally tried to calm the tone of the debate. In
Parliament, however, Cromwell argued that the soldiers, having
conquered a kingdom, surely had the right to give that kingdom
laws—though only by submission to Parliament.
The machinations of Charles finally came to fruition: there was a
Royalist uprising in Wales and a Scottish invasion of England in the
north. Cromwell, now commander of the Army, put both rebellions
down. At Preston, Cromwell crossed the Pennines to make a surprise
attack on the much larger Scottish Army moving south into England.
This was Cromwell, the man of action, at his forceful best.

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 This new outbreak of war spelled the death of Charles Stuart.
Elements in Parliament were still prepared to negotiate with Charles,
but the Army had had enough. The Army marched again on London,
and as Members arrived at the House of Commons on December 6th
1648, they found the House surrounded by troops. They were met by
a certain Colonel Pride, with a list in his hand. Some members were
arrested, others barred; some were allowed through after signing a
declaration disavowing the continued negotiations with the King;
some had been Army loyalists all along. It was a full-blown military
coup. Parliament was now controlled by the Army.
Cromwell managed to delay his return to London from the north
until the evening of that same day, to announce that he had no idea
about the purge, but that, “since it was done, he was glad of it, and
would endeavor to maintain it.”58 Charles I was speedily tried and
executed for treason, despite the absence of any legal basis for either
the court or the charge of treason, a crime that could only be
committed against the monarch.
After the King’s execution, Cromwell became a Member of the
Council of State—a powerful member, but no more than that. He was
sent by the Council to pacify Ireland, which he did so bloodily that by
many he is remembered primarily for this brutal action. He went on
to defeat a Scottish uprising in support of Charles’ son, the man who
would be Charles II.
Cromwell returned to London as a conquering Caesar. The Rump
Parliament (the remnants of the purge by Colonel Pride—‘Pride’s
Purge’) had failed to offer any new constitutional solution for the
country or to establish a new, tolerant national religious framework.
Cromwell had demanded that the Rump give way to a new Council,
but it suddenly emerged that the Rump had gathered to pass an Act
prolonging its own sitting. Cromwell came to House, listened for a
time, and then began to speak. As he spoke, his anger mounted; he
began to pace the floor. He abused the members, calling them
whoremasters, drunkards, corrupt and unjust: “Perhaps you think this
is not Parliamentary language; I confess it is not, neither are you to

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expect such from me […] it is not fit that you sit at Parliament any
longer. You have sat long enough unless you had done more good.”
As one brave soul protested, Cromwell exploded: “I will put an end to
your prating. You are no Parliament. I say you are no Parliament.
I will put an end to your sitting.” He called in his musketeers and
pointed at the speaker: “Fetch him down.”59
Even after the expulsion of the Rump Parliament, Cromwell did not
emerge with supreme power, the Council of Officers proposed that
the functions of parliament should be carried out by a Nominated
Assembly of 140 “godly” men, with the laudable intention of
representing a broad range of religious opinions. Still essentially
puritan in character, and with several extreme opinions represented,
it was alarmingly referred to as the “Parliament of Saints”; Cromwell
was exhilarated: this was surely what God had intended. The
“Saints”failed to agree any new religious or constitutional agreement
and voted for their own dissolution. Cromwell was invited to become
Lord Protector.
As Protector, Cromwell was most impressive in his attempt to find
a religious settlement that would tolerate broad differences of religious
opinion. He could not, however, restrain himself from trying to
improve the morals of the nation. After a Royalist uprising, he
imposed a form of direct military rule by Major Generals: committed
puritans who also tried to improve the nation's manners and prohibit
their more dubious pastimes, such as bear-baiting, horse racing,
cock-fighting, and stage plays. “Unruly” taverns were closed. There
were penalties for adultery, swearing, and blasphemy. Matters such as
adultery and fornication had previously been dealt with by church
courts as sins; now they were crimes. The Adultery Act of 1650 made
these crimes punishable by death, though this was never enforced.
The rule of the Major-Generals lasted for only one year. Parliament
was recalled and offered Cromwell the kingship and a revised
constitution. Cromwell refused the crown, on the biblical grounds
that the Lord had seen fit to allow him to remove a king, and that
therefore he should not seek to restore the office: “I will not rebuild

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Jericho.” In 1657, Cromwell was re-installed as Lord Protector, this
time with greater powers and much pomp and ceremony. He died in
1658. The Protectorate had not been made hereditary, but Cromwell
had been allowed to name his successor. His son Richard, perhaps
fortunately, was no Oliver. With heavy irony, Richard was deposed by
an Army coup, which ushered in the restoration of King Charles II.

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 george s. patton
(1885–1945)
“I don’t want to get any messages saying,‘I am holding my position.’
We’re not holding a goddamned thing. We are advancing
constantly and we are not interested in holding onto anything,
except the enemy's balls. We are going to twist his balls and kick
the living shit out of him all of the time. Our basic plan of operation
is to advance and to keep on advancing regardless of whether we
have to go over, under, or through the enemy. We are going to go
through him like crap through a goose; like shit through a tin horn!
From time to time there will be some complaints that we are
pushing our people too hard. I don’t give a good goddamn about
such complaints. I believe in the old and sound rule that an ounce
of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder we push, the more
Germans we will kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our
men will be killed. Pushing means fewer casualties. I want you all to
remember that.”60

George S. Patton was in command of the US Third Army in the lead-up

to the Allied invasion of northern Europe in 1944, as the final effort to
defeat Nazi Germany got under way. Patton knew where he was headed.
Not for Normandy; that was just the jumping-off point. He and the
Third Army were going to Berlin, and when he got to Berlin and found
Hitler, he was “going to personally shoot that paper-hanging goddamned
son of a bitch just like I would a snake.”61 But there was much more to
Patton than his blood and thunder speeches and his deliberate use of
profanity. Patton believed above all things in training and discipline, in
being prepared to meet the enemy. “If men do not obey orders in small
things, they are incapable of being led in battle. I will have discipline—to
do otherwise is to commit murder.”62 Patton trained his men hard and
insisted on tight discipline: sloppiness, lack of alertness, waiting in
foxholes for the enemy to come to you—these were what got you killed.

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“No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by
making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”
Patton, as his superiors were well aware, was not a well-rounded
leader. He was, as you may have guessed, no diplomat. His aggression,
his will to fight, and his determination to instill the same fighting
spirit in his troops and officers often spilled over into inappropriate
treatment of his subordinates. Alan Brooke, the British Chief of
General Staff, thought that Patton was, “a dashing, courageous, wild
and unbalanced leader good for operations requiring thrust and push
but at a loss in any operation requiring skill and judgment.”63 It is a
harsh but not entirely inaccurate picture. On the other hand, it is
interesting to consider which Allied commander the German High
Command most feared. The answer? George S. Patton.


Patton was a cavalryman at heart. He received his commission as a
cavalry officer in 1909. He even developed a new type of sabre
—the Patton Sabre—for cavalry use and felt obliged to explain why he
had not been able to use a sabre when pursuing and killing three of
Pancho Villa’s Mexican bandits in New Mexico in 1916: Patton
couldn’t use a sabre because he was on foot, not on horseback. He and
his men had driven to a suspected bandit hideout in their cars and
jumped straight from their vehicles into a gunfight. If anyone
exemplifies the quite sudden switch in warfare from cavalrymen on
horseback with sabres to cavalrymen in vehicles with guns, it is Patton.
He saw action in World War I with the new United States Tank Corps;
was wounded and decorated. Patton’s experience of World War I
forged his passionate belief in the pointlessness of holding positions.
After the war he and an army colleague, Dwight D. Eisenhower, both
lobbied for the further development of armored warfare, but with little
success. Patton returned to the cavalry.
In August 1944, the Allied invasion of Normandy after the D-Day
landings was becoming bogged down in the deadly hedgerows and

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lanes of that region, in what a German corps commander at the time
called “a monstrous bloodbath.” The Allied commanders had become
embroiled in a bloody battle to gain and hold territory, slowly
pushing forward on an extended front and securing their lines of
communication. There was a real risk that the war would degenerate
into static lines of battle, horribly reminiscent of World War I. The
one man whose every instinct was against this—Commander of the
Third Army, George S. Patton—was currently in the doghouse and
not keen to step out of line with his commanding officer, Omar
Bradley, or with Bradley’s boss, Patton’s old friend Eisenhower. Patton
had suffered a succession of PR disasters—a harsh welcome for the
outspoken old warrior to the new world of media exposure and the
sensitivities of the folks back home.
Patton had an unholy love of battle and the enterprize of war.
“Compared to war, all other human endeavor shrinks to
insignificance,” he said. “God, how I love it.”64 Patton was intensely
emotional about the bond between fighting men and about the
courage of the ordinary soldier. It got him into trouble in Sicily in
1943 where he was commanding the Seventh Army. Visiting wounded
soldiers in hospital he was, as ever, deeply moved. When he found an
uninjured soldier suffering from what we might now call shell-shock,
he was incensed. In his rage he struck the man; the press got hold of
the story, and it cost Patton his command of the Seventh Army. It
could easily have also cost him any future role in the final victory
against Germany: a role that he saw as his destiny.
Patton should have been basking in praise as the liberator of Sicily’s
capital Palermo and the joint victor, with the commander of the
British Eighth Army, Bernard Montgomery, of the race to take
Messina (Patton was always intensely competitive; he got there first).
Instead, as a storm of adverse publicity began to erupt in the American
press, his commanding general, Eisenhower, was struggling to decide
whether not merely to strip Patton of command, but also to send him
home in disgrace. Eisenhower needed Patton for a role in the coming
conflict in northern Europe and knew that Patton was “a truly

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aggressive commander.” Eisenhower’s real and nagging doubt about
Patton was whether his vanity, his desperate search for military glory,
might lead him to make wrong and costly military decisions. As it was,
Patton was forced to apologize personally to every division of the
Seventh Army—though in some case his attempts to apologise were
drowned by cheers of support. At one such gathering (of the 60th
Regiment, 9th Division) the troops just shouted “Georgie! Georgie!”
and threw their helmets in the air. He finally gave up the attempt to
make his speech, and as his staff car drove off, he stood up in the car
to take the salute of the regiment, helmets now firmly back on heads,
chinstraps properly fastened in the approved Patton fashion. Tears
streamed down his face.
Patton was no longer in the field of candidates for command of all
US ground forces in Europe. Later, as the invasion of Europe drew
closer, Patton didn’t even get the army command that he so
desperately wanted: the First Army—the army chosen to spearhead
the cross-channel invasion. The job went to Omar Bradley. Patton
was heartbroken.
With supreme irony, the German High Command thought that the
whole affair was a ruse; Patton was the man they feared most.
Wherever the main thrust against them came, they were convinced
that Patton would be at its head. They could not believe that he would
be relieved of his command over such an incident. This speculation
helped immensely in the final (real) Allied plot to convince Germany
that the attack on Europe would come, not via Normandy, but by way
of Calais, spearheaded by Patton who, without any real active
command to occupy him, was busy making speeches for the benefit
of German spies about his intention to do exactly that, at the head of
an entirely fictional invasion force.
In the end Patton got control of the Third Army, though it was
unclear exactly what role was expected from the Third in the coming
invasion, and the suspicion lingers that Patton’s superiors hoped that
they might not have to call on him. His speech to his staff officers at
their headquarters in England was classic Patton:

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 “I can assure you that the Third United States Army will be the
greatest army in American history. We shall be in Berlin ahead of
everybody. To gain that end we must have perfect discipline […]
You are here to fight […] ahead lies battle. That means just one
thing […] you can’t afford to be a goddamned fool, because in
battle, fools make dead men.”65

Patton’s way of working with his new Army demonstrates his

true strengths. Patton wanted discipline, and he wanted efficiency.
Everyone worked seven days a week. Everyone wore steel helmets,
neckties, leggings, and side-arms. Briefings were punctual and short;
once they were over, he had no interest in staff officers hanging around
to “show willing.” Every campaign was discussed in detail by senior
commanders: everyone got to have their say. Once a plan was decided,
the debate was over; it would be implemented (preferably “with
violence”). Orders were clear and simple, often one page of paper. One
of Patton’s most enlightened maxims was, “Never tell people how to
do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their
ingenuity.” Officers were given their tasks politely and left to get on
with it in their own manner.
He insisted on strict discipline: “There is only one kind of
discipline—perfect discipline.” In one of his speeches to the troops he
illustrated his point with one of his graphic (and almost certainly
fictitious) illustrations. “There are 400 neatly marked graves somewhere
in Sicily, all because one man went to sleep on his job. But they are
German graves, for we caught the bastard asleep before they did.”66
Patton’s Third Army broke out of Brittany in a remarkable feat of
military logistics—moving 200,000 men and 40,000 vehicles through
the tiny roads of Avranches, at the base of the Cotentin peninsula.
Patton famously jumped onto a police box in the center of town and
personally directed the log-jammed convoy, which slowly but surely
began to flow. The Third Army emerged onto the plains of southern
Normandy with divisions intact and ready to advance at speed. Bradley
was convinced that their first objective was to secure the deep-water

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port of Brest on the most westerly tip of Brittany. It was only when
Allied Headquarters realized that Brittany was a false objective (in the
event, Brest proved to be too far away usefully to supply a frontline
moving rapidly to the east) that they finally tore up the paper strategy
and responded to the opportunities that events on the ground had
presented to them. The Third Army was finally released from the
distraction of Brittany and sped eastward: bypassing fortified positions;
defeating German positions by maneuver rather than assault.
Patton was in his element. He tore through France in a victorious
charge, like one of his ancient heroes. Soon Patton was able to claim
that they had “advanced farther and faster than any army in the
history of war.”67 They overran German defences, side-stepped
fortifications—leaving them to be mopped up later—and moved so
fast that they prevented the German army from organizing successive
defensive positions.
Eventually, this heroic dash ground to a halt as fuel began to run
out. Eisenhower needed to keep the Allied advance moving on all
fronts. He agreed to divert fuel to Montgomery’s British 21st Army
Group ‘Market Garden’ operation—the ultimately unsuccessful
attempt to cross the Rhine, Germany’s great natural western border,
at Arnhem, using paratroopers carried by a fleet of gliders.
Patton had reached the Lorraine in eastern France; he had roared
past Verdun—scene of bitter trench warfare in World War I—and was
close to Metz, on the Moselle river. A little farther on lay Germany’s
western defences—the Siegfried line—which were then still sparsely
defended. Beyond that lay the Rhine. “Dammit, Bradley,” begged
Patton, “just give me 400,000 gallons of gasoline and I’ll put you inside
Germany in two days.”68 It was not to be. The pause allowed Germany
to regroup its defences and, since Patton was considered to be a greater
threat than Montgomery, German defences gathered at the old
Siegfried line facing Patton’s attack.
Montgomery’s attack on Arnhem failed. Germany gathered its forces
for a desperate counter-offensive through the forest of the Ardennes.
The Allies were taken by surprise; there was a real risk of the Germans

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achieving their goal of bursting out of the Ardennes and turning north
to the coast at Antwerp, splitting the Allied forces in two and destroying
all Allied armies north of the new line. Hitler believed that this would
force the Allies to surrender. German troops poured through the small
roads of the Ardennes forest as they had in 1940. Paratroopers of the
American 101st Airborne Division reached the key road junction of
Bastogne by truck and put up a stiff resistance, holding up the advance.
Called on to surrender, the acting commander of 101st replied with
the historic one-word answer: “Nuts!” A translator was summoned by
the confused German commander to interpret the precise colloquial
meaning of this enigmatic response.
On December 19th 1944, Patton and the other Allied generals were
summoned to Verdun for an emergency meeting with Eisenhower.
Patton was certain that the Third Army would be called to help the
First Army, which was facing the brunt of the German attack. Patton
had briefed his staff at 7.00 a.m. that day; within two hours they had
devised a plan to take three divisions to relieve the First Army by one
of three possible routes. They gave each route a codename: when
Patton was given his brief at Verdun he would phone with the
codeword for the chosen line of attack. The Third Army could begin
to move almost immediately. Patton was at Verdun for the 11.00
meeting. When it came to Patton’s turn to volunteer what the Third
Army could contribute to the situation, he confirmed that he could
attack with three divisions in 48 hours. There was genuine disbelief:
Eisenhower at first assumed that Patton was being boastful as ever,
and reprimanded him. It began to dawn on the meeting that Patton
was deadly serious: “When can you start?” he was asked; “As soon as
you’re through with me here,” he replied.69
Patton pulled off his momentous maneuver; the Third Army had to
change direction by 90 degrees in freezing weather, often in the dark,
and attack an entirely unexpected target. It was something that had
never been done before in so short a time. Patton spent the next few
days driving around the Third Army’s positions. He visited seven
divisions and briefed every one in detail, making adjustments to

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dispositions, chatting to GIs, making sure that everyone knew what
was needed of them. As the Third Army moved, night and day, Patton
was everywhere, driving in an open-top jeep in freezing
temperatures—his face actually frozen on occasions—so that the
troops could see that he was driving forward; sometimes he got out
and helped shove vehicles back onto icy roads. Everywhere he went he
was cheered by his troops, inspired by just a sight of ‘old blood and
guts’. Bastogne was relieved on December 26th.
The vicious Battle of the Bulge was still to come—a desperate
battle in freezing conditions that cost up to 100,000 casualties on
both sides. The German losses were more significant, because
they were irreplaceable. The German reserves thrown into this last ditch
offensive were now gone, and the Luftwaffe was fatally damaged.
Patton continued throughout the battle to demonstrate the intense
level of personal, on-the-ground leadership that had enabled the
Third Army to make its famous maneuver to relieve Bastogne. One
historian has said that Patton’s greatest achievement as a leader was his
ability to make things happen—his outstanding ability as a mover and
shaker. Patton’s own verdict is certainly that of a great leader: “Yes, we
broke all records moving up there. It was all done by the three of us
[…] me, my chauffeur, and my chief of staff. All I did was tell my
division commanders where they’d got to be tomorrow. Then I let the
others do it.”70
Patton got to cross the Rhine with his army in March 1945, with
the German army in full retreat. Characteristically, Patton urinated
flamboyantly in the Rhine: “I have been looking forward to this for a
long time.”71 He died in a mundane car accident on his way to a
pheasant shoot in Germany in December 1945, after the German
surrender, one day before he was due to return home. But Patton had
always dreaded the come-down after his historic action in Europe:

“Civil life will be mighty dull—no cheering crowds, no flowers, no

private airplanes. I am convinced the best end for an officer is the
last bullet of the war. Quelle vie.”72

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 zhou enlai
(1898–1976)
A dedicated and lifelong communist, Zhou Enlai’s political instincts
were moderate and progressive—unlike those of many of his fellow
communists. Famous for his punishing work routine, despite
increasingly fragile health, Zhou worked all his life to improve the lot
of the Chinese people. He also worked to mitigate and even subvert the
more destructive policies of Chairman Mao Zedong: Mao was
Chairman of the Communist Party of China; Zhou was Premier of
the People’s Republic of China. Zhou was attempting to run the
country while Mao, the most powerful man in the Party, was busy
having revolutionary ideas.
Zhou can be criticised for not having taken a stance against
disastrous policies with which he clearly disagreed, but it also could be
argued that by surviving—when so many of Mao’s opponents worked
so hard to engineer his downfall (and at a time when downfall could
be fatal)—Zhou was able to retain his influence and to continue
to move China’s development in a positive direction, away from
the destructive chaos and the impractical, ideologically-driven
programs advocated by Mao. The affection with which Zhou is
remembered in China today, where he is often referred to as “beloved
father of modern China,” suggests that Zhou’s compromises were
correct, and arguably self-sacrificing. It is also likely that Zhou simply
considered it his duty to continue to work for the People’s Republic
and for the Party, even when the Party had taken a direction that he
considered to be wrong.
Zhou was a tireless and fearsomely efficient administrator. His goal
was always to modernize China through increasing use of technology
and modern skills, often in the face of massive ideological bias: Zhou
constantly promoted the importance to China’s development of
knowledge-workers, even when all such “intellectuals” were being
condemned and even purged as non-revolutionary. He used his subtle

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intellect to turn ideologues’ arguments against them. One of Zhou’s
most defining characteristics was his commitment to talking to
people—not arguing, but talking. When the hot-headed Red Guards
of Mao’s Cultural Revolution were running out of control, Zhou
seemed at times to be the only voice of reason—in an entirely literal
sense—facing armed groups fired-up on ideology and brute power;
talking, cajoling; insisting that issues be resolved by dialog and not by
force. Zhou was one of the twentieth century’s great diplomats,
both at the highest international levels and down on the shop
floor. More than anything, Zhou was tireless in promoting his
program, in making things happen, even in the face of potentially
lethal opposition.


At the end of World War II, the Communist Party of China (CPC)
took control of China, ousting Chiang Kai Shek’s Nationalist Party.
The Republic of China set up a government in exile on the island of
Taiwan; the Communist People’s Republic of China became the
government of mainland China.
The People’s Republic of China began life ominously. Mao
instigated the mass execution of so-called counter-revolutionaries:
the definition was wide-ranging and included members of the
Nationalist Party (Kuomintang), former employees of Western
businesses, members of the rural gentry, businessmen, and
intellectuals. At least one million people died, probably considerably
more. Another million or more were transported to “Reform through
Labor” camps. It is impossible to imagine that Zhou can be exonerated
from complicity in these bloody purges.
China embarked on a Russian-financed Five Year Plan to boost
industrial output, reducing China’s almost total dependence on
agriculture. Land was redistributed from landlords and wealthier
peasants to poorer peasants. Zhou set about the reconstruction,
welcoming support from communist and non-communist alike: “All

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those who can contribute to the rebuilding of China must do so. We
welcome them irrespective of politics.” Nearly half of the ministers
appointed by Zhou to the State Council were non-communists.73
Working at a fearsome pace—he had a routine of working until five
in the morning and rising again at ten—Zhou set about undoing the
damage done by decades of warfare, and to begin the industrialization
and modernization of China.
In January 1956 Zhou delivered a report to the CPC, entitled On the
Question of Intellectuals, in which he argued implicitly against the
demonization (and worse) of China’s “intelligentsia” and explicitly for
China’s desperate need for scientists, teachers, and “knowledge-
bearers” to transform China from an essentially medieval agricultural
society into a modern state. “All our plans for development, our
advance, depend on the proper use of the knowledge-bearers […]
Without scientists, without teachers, we shall not be able to lift
ourselves out of backwardness.” Zhou pre-empted the classic Marxist
concern that the revolution belonged to the proletariat—the workers:
“Mental labor and manual labor are both needed. Our intellectuals, by
deploying mental labor, are part of the working class.”74 Mao, with his
tendency towards radical involvement from the grass roots up, was
not content with embracing this idea as a guiding principle:
intellectuals must be encouraged to criticise; the party must be
‘rectified’ through critique. Over time the country’s “intellectuals,”
many of whom had suffered beatings and abuse, became emboldened.
They told the party what they really thought. Among the entirely
sensible and reasonable demands for such essentials as a proper legal
system and police regulation came criticism of the Communist Party
and even of Mao himself (and, indeed, of Zhou). Some non-
communist party leaders thought that some sort of power-sharing
might be acceptable: perhaps different parties should be allowed to
govern in turn. It had all got out of hand.
The Communist Party stepped in. There was such a backlash against
intellectuals—now clearly shown to be of unsound and “rightist”
opinions—that some historians believe that Mao had encouraged the

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movement in order to identify subversives so that he could move
against them. The total number of deaths in these “anti-rightist” purges
could well be in the millions.75 Zhou attempted to protect the
non-party members of his cabinet, but ultimately failed. In a sense, the
non-party members were lucky: party members who had joined in the
criticism were in general harshly (i.e. fatally) dealt with; many
non-party members’ lives were spared, but Zhou’s plans to harness the
skills of non-party intellectuals in his cabinet were at an end.
Mao’s next Big Idea was the Great Leap Forward. There had
already been a degree of collectivization of agriculture leading to
“higher-cooperatives,” which brought several hundred family units
together into communal units. The process was now accelerated:
private plots ceased to exist; thousand of family units were brought
together to work on communal farms. Wages were replaced by
“points.” Mao also introduced a technologically illiterate drive to
double steel production by encouraging local steel furnaces. Steel
manufacture needs controlled, high-temperature furnaces that enable
iron to combine with carbon to make steel. It is possible to make steel
in small furnaces, but only if you know what you are doing—
ironically, it was a skill well-known to the ancient Chinese. As
unrealistic production targets were forced on local communities,
manpower was recruited from agriculture, factories, schools, and
hospitals. All kinds of metal utensils were requisitioned to meet the
targets. Woods were cut down; furniture and doors were used to fuel
the backyard furnaces. The end result was poor-quality pig iron of
little value. Many dams, canals, and other engineering projects, built
by peasant labor without supervision by engineers—forbidden by
Mao on ideological grounds —also proved to be useless. Zhou had
rashly commented about the haste of these ideas and was obliged to
write a “self-criticism.” “I have committed errors,” said Zhou. “My
thinking has not caught up with the thinking of Chairman Mao.”76
As agricultural output fell, China was hit by bad weather, floods,
and even plagues of locusts (Mao had also instigated a “Kill a
Sparrow”campaign, because sparrows eat grain; unfortunately, they

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also eat a lot of insects, such as locusts.) Grain production fell by 15
percent in 1959, and a further ten percent in 1960. Local officials tried
to pretend that the policy was working by inflating figures for harvests:
when they were required to requisition grain to send to the cities or
for export, they found themselves obliged to deliver a percentage of
their own inflated figures. Peasants went hungry. Starvation set in.
The total death toll of this man-made disaster is estimated to be in
the tens of millions.77
The disaster was a political blow for Mao. He relinquished the role
of President of the People’s Republic to Liu Shaoqui, who denounced
the Great Leap Forward at a Party Conference in Beijing. Liu and
another moderate, Deng Xiaoping, the General Secretary of the
Communist Party, began to plot to move Mao into a symbolic role
and to take over control of economic policy. There was a period of
general liberalization. Zhou, with his customary diplomacy, refrained
from criticising Mao directly. In one of his trademark sleights of hand,
he quoted Mao in apparent support of a line of thought that was
diametrically opposed to Mao’s current position:

“There has been a bad tendency in the party for the past three years.
There is not enough democracy. Our aim is to liberate thought, to
abolish superstition, to dare to speak, to think, to act […] We must
speak the truth, encourage democracy, strengthen it in the party. This
is the thought of Mao Zedong for Party Building.”78

Despite Zhou’s clever words, democracy—in its usual form—was the

last thing on Mao’s mind. Mao was in danger of being sidelined. He
launched his counter-attack: the Cultural Revolution.
Mao seemed to have a genuine belief in the role of disorder: as
revolutionary movements accumulate bureaucracy and lose the cutting
edge of their vision, so they must be purged in a brief spell of violent
anarchy, driven by the people, the masses. Mao seems to have seen
himself as the Chinese Monkey King—a rebellious spirit causing uproar.
Even he was dismayed by the anarchy that he was about to let loose.

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 A new problem had arisen within the party, said Mao, the problem
of “revisionism”—of capitalist tendencies appearing within the party, of
elitism and bureaucracy that divorced the party from the people. Mao
accused Zhou himself of being a threat to the Party’s revolutionary
spirit. But Mao’s new revolution was to be much more than a debate
amongst Party members: the masses would be set free to purge the
country, bypassing the Party hierarchy. Students, peasants, workers, and
soldiers were all called upon to abolish the “Four Olds”: old customs, old
culture, old habits, old ideas. It was a wide brief. The Red Guards—a
term used for all young people embarking on Mao’s new mission—were
offered free travel to anywhere in the country. Exhilarated by their new
powers and fired up with revolutionary fervor, they began to take China
down the road of mere anarchy.
Tribunals were set up to try capitalist-roaders and anti-
revolutionaries. People were beaten and humiliated. There were many
suicides and many murders. Teachers, academics, writers, and
journalists were attacked; museums, temples, and shrines were
ransacked; ancient books and works of art were destroyed. The human
cost was very high. One poignant personal note was recorded by the
Chinese author Han Suyin, who records the words of her own niece:
“In our school we were told to beat our teacher. We did, and he died.”79
Mao’s aim in launching the Cultural Revolution was quickly
achieved: party members who could be accused as capitalist-roaders
would find a mob of Red Guards camped outside their homes,
screaming slogans night and day. Wall-posters and banners became a
popular way of denouncing politicians. Zhou was to be attacked later
by these means: “Which class does Zhou represent?”; “Ten questions
to address to Zhou”; “Bury Zhou alive.”80
Liu Shaoqui was sent to a detention camp, where he died. Den
Xiapoing was sent for re-education on three different occasions,
ending up as a worker in an engine factory. He was later rescued by
Zhou and brought back into politics.
During these terrifying times, Zhou trod a difficult path, rescuing
those whom he could, but never stepping so far out of line that he

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became an easy target for the Red Guards. His favorite ploy became
the despatch of senior figures who were at risk to Hospital No. 301,
which was reserved for high-ranking party members. The medical
staff at the hospital were happy to diagnose illnesses that prevented
their ‘patients’ from leaving the hospital grounds. Zhou smuggled
many targeted party figures into Hospital No. 301, from which they
emerged, years later, miraculously cured. He closed museums to
protect their contents and drew up lists of temples and shrines that
were to be preserved as national treasures—though this was often
ignored at a local level. On occasions, Zhou would join the ranks of
those denouncing “enemies of the people” so that he would be
included in the panel of those who would pass verdict on them,
whereupon Zhou would plead extenuating circumstances.
During the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s last wife, Jiang Qing, had
become a power in her own right at the head of the infamous Gang
of Four. The relationship between the Gang and Mao himself is
unclear, but the Gang were at the heart of the worst, later excesses of
the Cultural Revolution. In 1967, the Gang of Four began the ultimate,
logical extension of the anarchic madness of the Cultural Revolution:
the Red Guards should now take over the army, the final symbol of
hierarchical authority. The Red Guards stole weapons from the PLA
(People’s Liberation Army) and looted army barracks while helpless
officers looked on. Rival gangs of Red Guards began to shoot each
other with the liberated weapons.
Zhou continued to run China. By 1967, 40 million workers
demanded to be allowed to travel to Beijing to parade before Mao
Zedong, as millions of Red Guards had done. Zhou wisely limited
delegates to one or a few per factory. Factory workers in Shanghai
overthrew their local government, unassisted and therefore untainted
by any army involvement. The Gang of Four were ecstatic: here was
true workers’ power, unmediated by any party, government or military
involvement. Zhou presented the figures on the economy to Mao.
Production was collapsing; the Chinese economy was facing ruin.
Mao called in the Peoples Liberation Army to end the Cultural

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Revolution. The Red Guards’ power over the army came to an abrupt
halt and army units moved into areas controlled by the Red Guard.
Mao began the “Down to the Countryside Movement,” which
required all recent middle-school graduates (the bulk of the Red
Guards) to move to the countryside and work on the land. The Red
Guards were being sent off to earn their proletarian callouses on the
land. They were allowed back to the cities a decade later.
Mao’s Cultural Revolution had achieved its political aim—his
opponents had all been purged—at the expense of bringing the entire
country to the brink of anarchy. Zhou Enlai, the survivor, remained
and began to reassert his program. Mao named his successor as Lin
Biao, a man who seemed merely to parrot Mao’s thoughts. Lin can
not have been quite so subservient, however, as there are indications
of a KGB plot to assassinate Mao involving Lin Biao. Soon afterwards,
Lin died in a suspicious plane accident over Mongolia, apparently
trying to flee China after the failure of a planned coup or assassination
attempt.
The Gang of Four continued to attack Zhou, but by 1975 he was
able to reassert his prime concerns: the Four Modernizations—of
agriculture; of industry; of national defence; of science and
technology. Zhou had already achieved perhaps the greatest
diplomatic achievement of his policy of establishing normal relations
between China and the outside world: the visit of United States
President Richard Nixon to China in 1972.
In 1974, Zhou was diagnosed as having bladder cancer; he began to
delegate work to Deng Xiaoping, now Executive Vice Premier—the
man whom Zhou had rescued from a tractor factory and restored to
office. Zhou died in 1976, eight months before his Party Chairman
Mao Zedong. After Zhou’s death, the Gang of Four hoped at last to
seize power. Deng Xiaoping delivered Zhou’s funeral oration; there
was an outpouring of national grief. Later that year, on the traditional
day of mourning, huge crowds gathered in Tiananmen Square in
Beijing, to mourn the dead premier. The Gang of Four cleared the
square, accused the mourners of being “counter-revolutionary”, and

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put Deng Xiaoping under house arrest under suspicion of having
organized the event. The public reaction against this action hastened
the political end of the Gang of Four. Deng Xiaoping—heir to Zhou’s
modernizing and liberal agenda—became the de facto leader of China
after Mao’s death, repudiating the Cultural Revolution and ushering
in the liberalizing Beijing Spring.
Zhou Enlai is widely regarded as one of the twentieth century’s
greatest negotiators: calm, reasonable and subtle; able to turn
opponents’ arguments on their heads; a master, in times of political
turmoil, of making the politically correct statement that nevertheless
expressed the view that he wished to promote. He negotiated with
Soviet Russia and the USA in times of international crisis—he was
Foreign Minister during the Korean War when Chinese troops directly
entered the conflict against the USA, but it was also his initiative that
saw ambassadorial talks between the two countries begin again in
Warsaw. He was central to negotiating the peace settlement between
France and Vietnam at the 1954 Geneva Conference, to end the
French Indochina War. He was also instrumental in supplying Chinese
aid to the Vietcong in the war against America—the Vietnam
War—that followed the French Indochina War.
Zhou developed relations between China and Africa, and with
neighboring Asian countries. His greatest diplomatic achievement is
still seen—by both China and the West—to be his ‘ping-pong’
diplomacy with the United States, by means of which the two
countries eased diplomatic hostilities by negotiating a series of sports
exchanges, and which led eventually to President Nixon’s symbolic
visit to China early in 1972. The People’s Republic of China had been
admitted to the United Nations some months earlier, in late 1971.
China, thanks largely to the tireless efforts of Zhou in maintaining
dialog with all parties, both inside China and internationally, was once
again a major player on the world stage.

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 7
taking the
offensive
 e have to put up with the fact that a lot of management
W terminology borrows heavily from military concepts: we take
on the opposition head-on or we try to outflank them; we discuss our
strategies and our tactics; we worry about our logistics; we attack new
markets and we defend our market position.
There is a good reason for this: for several millennia, the most
common testing ground of our leadership skills has been warfare.
Also, and perhaps equally significantly, it was the military affairs of
nations that were recorded in detail. Complex leadership decisions
within sophisticated political structures will have been taken by
statesmen throughout the ages: sadly, we know very little about them.
We can see glimpses of this civilian leadership through the
documentation of advanced societies with surviving written records
such as ancient China, Athens, and Rome; nevertheless, we still know
a great deal more about Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul than we do
about his contemporaries’ political actions in the senate, or about the
leadership shown by Roman businessmen in developing the
international trade in copper.
There is also something dreadfully compelling about leadership in
times of war—it has always provided the most demanding testing
ground of leadership skills. The stakes are so high: life and death; the
survival of nation states; the creation of empires; the overthrow of
oppressive governments. We should be conscious and wary of the
tendency to link corporate affairs with military thinking, since
modern corporate life is not actually warfare (no, really)—but
nevertheless, there is still a great deal to be learned.
As a manager you will, at several key moments in your career, have
to seize the initiative; you will have to take the offensive. A review of
many managers’ careers would show that they have, in fact, spent their
time defending a position; they have “stopped things from getting any
worse” or, less negatively, “have maintained our very high standards.”
It is a job that has to be done, but it does not represent great
leadership. Great leaders counter-attack. They defend a position but
then they shake the opposition with some unexpected move—now it

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is the turn of the opposition to try to hold on to what they have. This
kind of action is not the preserve of major corporations. The head of
a school can decide to manage the school successfully and to keep his
or her various constituencies—pupils, parents, local authorities,
government watchdogs—entirely happy. Or they can decide to take on
ambitious new programs and challenging targets to try to take the
school to a different level. A small business can make a living doing
what it does very well, or it can decide that it could be a much bigger
business. It can take the offensive.


The first two leaders from history in this section are, indeed, military
men. Hannibal’s name entered the hall of fame 2,000 years ago as the
man who took the fight to the enemy. Carthage and Rome were the
two great rivals for control of the Mediterranean. Carthage had
recently been heavily defeated by Rome and was paying crippling
annual indemnities to her conqueror. Hannibal’s father conceived a
strategy that his son executed: Hannibal conquered southern Spain to
provide the Carthaginians with new resources, and then he attempted
the impossible: he attacked Rome itself. Hannibal famously crossed
the Alps with a large army and a number of war elephants, in the face
of hostile tribes and apparently impossible physical obstacles. He
surprised the Romans and defeated their first attempt to stop him in
northern Italy. He then performed another impossible task, crossing
the “impassable” marshes at the mouth of the River Arno on the
northwest coast of Italy. His troops were unable to sleep for three
nights as they waded through water; they snatched what sleep they
could on abandoned wagons, supply packs, or on the carcasses of dead
animals—such as those of Hannibal’s last remaining elephants.
Hannibal emerged behind the Roman army that was supposed to be
preventing his attack on Rome. He destroyed it in a surprise attack
and then met the Romans again in a major engagement at Cannae.
His tactic of enveloping the Roman army within the pincer movement

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of the two wings of his army has been successfully copied by
commanders ever since. Hannibal stayed in Italy, undefeated, for 15
years, but never received enough local support or reinforcements from
Carthage to be able to take Rome itself.
Salāh ad-Dı̄n Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb (Saladin), by way of contrast, did
lead his people to the victory of which he dreamed, although the final
achievement of his grand vision was only fully realized a century after
his death. Saladin’s goal was to drive the Christian Crusaders out of
the Middle East. The Crusaders had established the Kingdom of
Jerusalem on the Levantine coast after their conquest of the holy city
of Jerusalem in 1099. Their small but significant kingdom had become
a potentially permanent feature of the region’s local politics. The
Middle East at the time was more like a collection of city states than
of nations. Local rulers sometimes fought the Crusaders and
sometimes they fought each other. Sometimes they formed alliances
with the Crusaders against their local enemies. Very often, and
understandably, they just tried to keep their heads down. To achieve
his grand strategy, Saladin needed first to unify the region, and then
to inspire it with the common objective of expelling the Crusaders.
He achieved this unification with the occasional use of force but, more
typically, through negotiation and diplomacy. Finally, he led the
combined Islamic forces against Jerusalem, the symbolic capital of the
Crusaders’ empire, and re-conquered the city—showing great mercy
to the inhabitants, in stark contrast to the Crusaders’ own bloody sack
of the city 88 years earlier. The capture of Jerusalem was to be Saladin’s
greatest achievement. The Crusaders were reduced to occupying a
rump kingdom, based around the city of Acre on the Mediterranean
coast. This Kingdom of Acre, as it became known, was finally swept
away a little over 100 years after Saladin’s re-conquest of Jerusalem.
Saladin had united the factious groupings of the region’s city states in
a common cause against the invaders. He refused to accept the new
status quo represented by the Crusaders’ invasion of the region, but
taking the offensive was, in his case, far from a simple act of bravado
and aggression; Saladin’s claim to fame as a great leader lies in his

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ability to use his diplomatic and political skills to create a coalition of
forces with a common aim: to take the offensive.
There is another side to the idea of taking the offensive: the notion
of attacking an apparently impregnable position; something that
seems so well-defended that it is impossible to defeat. History shows
us that this is never the case. A smaller force can defeat a larger one;
the greatest citadel can be brought low. The technique remains the
same in every case: to concentrate one’s own forces; to strike an
unexpected blow at a vital point of the opposing forces; to use speed,
maneuverability, and surprise to catch the opposition unawares. All of
these techniques translate directly into modern corporate affairs. So,
who better to illustrate this militaristic theory than an apparently
unassuming young Victorian lady from a middle-class family from
Suffolk, England? Elizabeth Garrett Anderson wanted to be a
doctor—a simple enough ambition that brought her into direct
conflict with the all-male Victorian medical profession, who blocked
her every attempt to advance, with defences as strong and daunting as
any heavily-defended military position. Garret Anderson was the
Hannibal of her day: she took the fight to the enemy; she constantly
surprised them with her audacity; she out-maneuvered them all and,
finally, she wore them down with her tenacity. She refused to give
up—even when she could have achieved her goal simply by moving
to America. Unlike Hannibal, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson laid siege
to the capital of her enemies and succeeded in razing it to the ground.

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 hannibal barca
(247–183 BCE )

Hannibal had the advantage that he was brought up to be a leader. His

father, Hamilcar, had been commander of the Carthaginian forces
against Rome in what is known as the First Punic War; his son was
brought up, famously, to hate the Romans, and to expect to lead
a Carthaginian army against them. Hannibal’s brother-in-law,
Hasdrubal, who took command of the army when Hamilcar died,
appointed Hannibal as head of cavalry when he was just 21-years-old.
It could be that Hannibal was simply an able soldier who, thanks to his
family connections, was given early promotion, but there are clear
indications that Hannibal was a natural leader. The Roman historian
Livy (who never missed an opportunity to portray Hannibal, Rome’s
most feared enemy, in an unflattering light) wrote this:

“No sooner had he arrived than Hannibal drew the whole army
toward him. The old soldiers fancied they saw Hamilcar in his youth
given back to them; the same bright look; the same fire in his eye;
the same trick of countenance and features. But soon he proved
that to be his father’s son was not his highest recommendation.
Never was one and the same spirit more skilful to meet opposition,
to obey, or to command. It was hard to decide whether he was
more dear to the chief (Hasdrubal) or the army. Neither did
Hasdrubal more readily place anyone at the head when courage
or activity was required, nor were the soldiers under any other
leader so full of confidence and daring. He entered danger with the
greatest mettle, he comported himself in danger with the greatest
unconcern. By no means could his body be tired, his ardor damped.
Heat and cold he suffered with equal endurance […] The time of
waking and sleeping depended not on the distinction of day and
night. What time was left from business he devoted to rest, and this

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 was not brought on by either a soft couch or by quiet. Many have
often seen him covered by a short field-cloak lying on the ground
betwixt the outposts and the sentinels of the soldiers […] He was
by long odds the best rider, the best marcher. He went into battle
first, he came out of it the last […] Hannibal served three years
under Hasdrubal’s supreme command, and left nothing
unobserved which he who desires to become a great leader ought
to see and to do.”81

During the nearly 15 years that Hannibal was to spend in Italy,

undefeated by the Romans despite being a short march away from
Rome for all of this time, Hannibal was never significantly reinforced
by Carthage: he recruited new troops from local tribes; as the years
passed, the army with which he had marched from Spain to Italy had
disappeared and been replaced by soldiers who had never known his
father or his brother and who owed no allegiance to either Carthage or
to Hannibal. Pay was scant or absent; food was short; for all of his last
years in Italy it must have been clear that Hannibal could not defeat
Rome. Yet he never faced a rebellion and his army never deserted him.
Hannibal was one of the great military strategists of all time. The
Romans relied on discipline and manpower to win their battles: they
marched up to the front and slugged it out with their opponents.
Hannibal, like Alexander the Great, the young Greek military genius
who had conquered most of the known world a century earlier, used
maneuver, stratagems and the concentration of forces at decisive points
to defeat much larger Roman forces. The Romans adopted a strategy
of containment of Hannibal’s army in the later years; it seemed that
none of their generals would risk facing Hannibal in battle. When
Hannibal was recalled to defend Carthage against direct attack by
Rome, he was finally defeated by a Roman general who made good use
of what were essentially Hannibal’s own strategies—an inventive
approach to the battlefield that would never have occurred to a Roman
before Hannibal had demonstrated what was possible. Hannibal,
without any cavalry, nearly won that last battle—but not quite.

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Carthage, on the north coast of Africa, is located on a spit of land that
juts out from the North African coast opposite Sicily. All ships passing
between the eastern and western Mediterranean have to pass the
relatively narrow channel between Carthage and Sicily: it was a key
strategic location. Carthage became a major Mediterranean power. As
such, the city-state came inevitably into conflict with Rome, as the
Italian city-state began its rise to power. The final defeat of Carthage
(nearly 40 years after the death of Hannibal) shifted the future center
of western civilization from the coast of North Africa to Europe. Rome
destroyed Carthage completely—its city walls and its harbor were
dismantled and its people were killed or sold into slavery. Legend has
it that the Romans then sowed the fields of Carthage with salt so that
no crops could be grown there. This is extremely unlikely, as the
rapidly expanding city of Rome soon came to rely heavily on grain
imported from North Africa, and the legend may well stem from a
twentieth-century source.
Carthage lost their first major war with Rome (the First Punic War)
when Hannibal was a young boy. The Romans had destroyed the
Carthaginian fleet. They took control of Sicily from Carthage and
imposed a huge annual indemnity on Carthage for the next ten years,
crippling the city’s finances. A little later, Rome also conquered the
Carthaginian islands of Sardinia and Corsica. Rome, not Carthage,
was now the preeminent naval power in the area. They took to calling
the sea around Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia Mare Nostrum “our sea.”
As the Roman Empire expanded, the whole of the Mediterranean was
to become Mare Nostrum.
Hannibal’s father, Hamilcar, proposed a grand strategy to the
impoverished and defeated Carthaginians: they should conquer
Spain—a country rich in natural resources—to provide them with a
new base of money and men with which to renew the attack on Rome.

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If Hamilcar represented the war faction in Carthage, then his political
enemy Hanno represented the peace faction. Hanno had been keen
for Carthage to acquire more territories in Africa (which had financial
benefits for Hanno) rather than to fight a war with Rome. He
demobilized the Carthaginian fleet in 244 BCE, while the Romans were
building the fleet that would be instrumental in the defeat of Carthage
three years later. He then refused to pay the mercenaries who had
fought for Carthage, provoking a revolt. His attempt to lead the army
to defeat the mercenaries failed, and he handed over control to
Hamilcar, who succeeded. It was in the interval caused by
this distraction that Rome seized Corsica and Sardinia. When
Hannibal was in Italy, it was Hanno who led the faction opposing the
despatch of the reinforcements that would almost certainly have
resulted in the defeat of Rome. Hanno, like two other Carthaginian
Hanno’s, was known as “the Great.” In his case, it is very hard to
see why.
Hamilcar, without a fleet, had to march his troops through North
Africa and then ferry them across the Straits of Gibraltar. He
succeeded in conquering much of southern Spain. When he was killed
in battle, his son-in-law Hasdrubal took command, and negotiated a
truce with Rome—which was invading Spain from the North—that
made the Ebro River a border between Carthaginian and Roman
territorial ambitions. Hasdrubal also began a tentative alliance with
the Gauls of the Po River valley in northern Italy in order to threaten
Rome, which quickly made a pre-emptive strike and annexed the Po
valley. When Hasdrubal was assassinated, Hannibal took control of
the army in Spain. Rome made an alliance with a Spanish city south
of the Ebro, which Hannibal felt to be a breach of the treaty. He
besieged and captured the city; Rome protested, but Hannibal’s
popularity in Carthage made the government stand firm: war between
the two city states was declared once more.
Hannibal’s father, Hamilcar, had already conceived of a plan to attack
Italy from the west, across the Alps. Hannibal decided to put this plan
into action. It was an astonishing undertaking. Hannibal’s whole

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strategy for invading Italy was based on the idea that the Italian tribes
and city states—like those in the Po valley—would join Carthage in a
war against Rome. He crossed the Pyrenees, fighting the local tribes,
and marched through Gaul managing, in general, to reach an agreement
with local chiefs. A Roman force had been despatched to stop Hannibal
from crossing the Rhone; he turned north. It has never been certain
where Hannibal crossed the Rhone, but recent theories suggest it may
have been at or near Montelimar, and that he marched into the Alps up
the Drôme valley with some 40,000 infantry, 8,000 cavalry, and 37 war
elephants. In the mountains the army faced appalling weather, hostile
tribes, treacherous roads, and deadly precipices. Hannibal lost half of his
force and most of the famous elephants crossing the Alps. However, he
achieved his objective: the Romans were taken by surprise as an army
suddenly appeared in the north of Italy, in the Po valley. The consul
who had been sent to stop Hannibal from crossing the Rhone hurriedly
shipped his army back to Italy by sea. The Gauls of the Po valley joined
forces with Hannibal against Rome.
Hannibal moved down the Po valley and won an early minor
victory thanks to his superior cavalry, encouraging more local tribes
to support him. Another Roman consul was ordered to bring his army
back from Sicily to join forces with the army shipped back from
France. The first major engagement was at the river Trebia, a tributary
of the Po. Hannibal’s cavalry made an appearance near the Roman
camp and allowed themselves to be driven off, retreating across the
Trebia. The Romans, who were probably too keen to engage the
enemy, sent their whole army across the river to meet the main
Carthaginian force. The Carthaginian and Roman cavalry
—Hannibal’s cavalry included his terrifying elephants—were both
positioned at each end of the lines of infantry to protect their
vulnerable flanks.
Hannibal’s cavalry began to push back the Roman cavalry; the flanks
of the Roman line were exposed and attacked. At this point, a force of
light infantry and cavalry that Hannibal had hidden in the steep banks
of a nearby stream attacked the rear of the Roman forces. The Roman

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army broke; many were drowned trying to cross the River Trebia; others
were trampled beneath the elephants; most were cut down.
The Romans withdrew to the south; to reach Rome Hannibal
needed to cross the Apennine Mountains that run diagonally down
the backbone of Italy from north to south. The main road across the
mountain was guarded by a Roman army. The other route to Rome
was impassable: it was blocked by the huge marshes around the mouth
of the River Arno. It is not certain that Hannibal actually said: “We
will either find a way, or make one.” If Hannibal didn’t actually utter
the words, then he should have done, and somebody else must have
written them into history for him. Hannibal led his troops through
the marshes. They marched for four days and three nights, unable to
sleep except on wagons, dead animals, or discarded packs because
there was no dry land. There were many casualties—including
Hannibal’s last remaining elephants—but he emerged into southern
Italy, cutting off the defending Roman army from Rome itself. He
began to pillage the countryside that the Roman army was supposed
to be protecting to draw them into battle. The Romans again rushed
to meet Hannibal with their full force, and he met them on the
northern shores of Lake Trasimene, where he had laid the perfect
ambush. He concealed his troops in the heavily wooded hills above
the lake; the road ran beneath them on the shores of the lake. His men
lit campfires on distant hills to persuade the Romans that the
Carthaginians were still ahead of them. As the Roman army entered
the road along the lake’s northern borders, Hannibal’s troops sealed
off the exit and attacked. The Romans were unable even to form a line
of battle. About 15,000 Romans were killed or drowned in the lake;
another 5,000 were captured. The vanguard of 6,000, which had been
drawn away from the battle by Carthaginian skirmishers, were
captured the next day and sold into slavery; perhaps 10,000 managed
to return to Rome. The entire army was destroyed. Hannibal lost
between 1,500 and 2,500 men.
In their panic, Rome appointed a dictator, Fabius Maximus. Fabius
chose a strategy of avoiding battle with Hannibal (giving rise to the

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word Fabian—“a cautious strategy designed to wear out an enemy”).
Fabius failed to pin down Hannibal, who extricated his whole army
from the region around Naples, right from under the nose of Fabius,
and moved to Puglia, on the Adriatic coast. Rome dismissed Fabius
and resumed Consular elections, appointing two Consuls, Varro and
Pallus. In the Roman Republic, Consuls, the highest elected officials of
Rome, were also expected to do duty as army commanders. Success in
battle, in Rome’s highly militarized society, was a sure route to
political success.
Hannibal had taken Cannae, on the fertile plains of Puglia, a vital
source of food for Rome. The Consuls marched to meet Hannibal
with an army of unprecedented size; nearly 90,000 men. The battle of
Cannae is one of the masterpieces of ancient warfare. Its strategy of an
encircling pincer movement has been copied by generals throughout
the ages to modern times. The two Roman consuls, by republican
tradition, took command on alternate days. Hannibal knew his
opponents: Varro was the more impetuous and reckless; he had won
a minor skirmish against Hannibal’s troops earlier, and was eager for
the kill. Hannibal tempted Varro into battle on an open plain where
there was no cover for one of Hannibal’s ambushes; Varro
strengthened his center in order to smash through the Carthaginian
center. The wings of the opposing armies, as ever, were covered by
cavalry. Hannibal’s was better, both in quality and in number.
Hannibal also made use of the variable quality of his infantry: he
placed his weakest, newly-recruited local troops at the center—facing
the awesome might of the strengthened Roman center—and placed
his veteran Carthaginian troops on the wings. As the battle progressed,
Hannibal, at the center, in the thick of battle, organized on orderly
fall-back of the center, which had started the battle in a crescent
formation, bulging out towards the enemy, but which slowly allowed
itself to be forced into a concave formation, drawing the enemy into
the center. As more and more Roman troops were poured forward
into the attack, their room for maneuver—even the room to wield
their weapons—became limited. The Carthaginian cavalry to the left

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had defeated their Roman counterparts and now raced along the rear
of the Roman army, attacking the Roman cavalry at the far side of the
battle from behind and cutting them down. As the Romans pressed
ever forward into the weakening Carthaginian center, certain of
victory, the veteran troops on Hannibal’s wings began to crowd in on
their flanks: the Romans were being forced into a wedge-shaped trap
that was closing around them. The attack of the successful
Carthaginian cavalry from their rear sealed the trap.
The Roman army was, quite literally, slaughtered. Of some 87,000
Romans, only 14,000 escaped; 50,000 were killed and the rest were
taken captive. Hannibal was only interested in prisoners who might
genuinely defect to his side: allies of Rome, not citizens. Hannibal was
urged to march on Rome, but he calculated that final victory could
only be achieved if the Italian tribes and city states would side with
him against Rome. If he attacked Rome and lost, it was all over—and
he had no siege equipment or experience in siege warfare. If he stayed
in Italy as a magnet for disaffected forces, he might find allies that
would ensure the defeat of Rome.
The Romans showed their mettle in this crisis. Every man over
17 years of age was enlisted. Engineers strengthened the city’s
fortifications. Women were forbidden to cry in public. Rome would
fight to the last man. A long stalemate ensued. Hannibal enlisted the
support of Macedonia and Syracuse, and the Italian city of Capua
came over to the Carthaginian side, but reinforcements from Carthage
were blocked by the pusillanimous Hanno. Hannibal remained in
southern Italy, holding his increasingly rag-tag army together and
running circles around the Roman armies, who dared not face him
in a set-piece battle.
Rome slowly began to wear Hannibal down. Capua fell to Rome
after two sieges; the Romans conquered Syracuse and defeated a
Carthaginian army in Sicily. Hannibal’s last hope was his brother
(another Hasdrubal) who retraced Hannibal’s footsteps across Spain,
France and across the Alps. His crossing of the Alps was far easier than
Hannibal’s, partly because many of the bridges and constructions that

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Hannibal had made were still in place, and partly because the Gauls
were now allies of the Carthaginians. Hasdrubal was defeated in
northeastern Italy by four Roman legions and his army was wiped
out. Hannibal’s brother’s head was cut off and thrown into Hannibal’s
camp to reinforce the point that reinforcements were not, after all, on
the way.
In 203 BCE, Hannibal was recalled to Carthage and was finally
defeated by a Roman army, largely because the Numidians—allies of
Carthage and suppliers of the skilled cavalry contingents so essential
to Hannibal’s battle tactics—switched sides. The new Roman
superiority in cavalry, and the strategic lessons that they had learned
at Hannibal’s hands, won the day. The Roman cavalry
defeated the Carthaginian horse and swept onto the rear of the
Carthaginian army.
Hannibal survived the battle and became a successful politician,
reforming the corrupt Carthaginian oligarchy so successfully that it
was able to make the payments of further swingeing reparations to
Rome without increasing taxation. Rome was so alarmed by the
economic resurgence of Carthage that they demanded that Hannibal
be handed over; he went into voluntary exile. He helped Syria to land
a force in southern Italy, but was denied his request to command
troops; when it seemed that the Syrians would betray him to Rome he
moved to Crete and then to Asia Minor. When his latest hosts were, in
their turn, finally persuaded to hand him over to his lifelong enemy,
Hannibal took the poison that he had kept always with him, hidden
in a ring. He was 64 years old.
The military tactics of Hannibal’s great battles are still studied as
text-book examples. Germany’s plan for enveloping the French armies
at the outset of World War I—the Schlieffen Plan—was explicitly
based on the battle of Cannae. The broader lessons from Hannibal’s
leadership are the gains to be made from taking the offensive: had
Carthage had the sense to reinforce Hannibal, ascendancy in the
Mediterranean region might have belonged to Carthage and not
Rome. It was when Rome launched its own counter-attack and

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crossed the Mediterranean to invade Carthage that Hannibal was
recalled to defend the capital. Rome, narrowly, won the ensuing battle.
A leader who can stay on the offensive keeps the initiative and forces
the opposition onto the back foot (to mix a military with a sporting
metaphor). The other great lesson to be drawn from Hannibal is that
nothing is impossible, and that it is achieving the ‘impossible’ that
gives a leader the advantage.

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 saladin
(1138–1193)

In 1187, the army of Saladin stood outside the walls of Jerusalem. The
great city, sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike, had been
occupied by Christian Crusaders since 1099. When the Crusaders first
entered Jerusalem, they embarked on a terrible massacre of its
inhabitants. The mayhem lasted for three full days and shocked the
Islamic world, confirming their belief that the Crusaders—also known
as Franks, because of the predominance of French troops and
leadership—were mere barbarians.
Now, 88 years after the Christian occupation of Jerusalem and the
creation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Saladin was poised to recapture
the sacred city. He had won a significant victory only two weeks earlier
by taking the port of Ascalon, north of Gaza. Jerusalem’s defenders
could no longer be supplied by sea from Europe; the nearest Christian
army was at Tyre, 100 miles to the north. The beleaguered city found
that it could muster only two knights to lead its defence. Christian
knights were the generals and fighting machines of their day; it is not
too fanciful to say that the knights, with their mighty horses and heavy
armor, were not so much the cavalry as the tank corps of their day.
Knights were born and bred to fight in the medieval (and ancient)
tradition of lords whose main function in life was to offer protection
to their subjects in return for the latter’s rents and labor.
One of the knights about to defend Jerusalem was Balian of Ibelin.
Balian, after the earlier defeat of the Crusaders by Saladin at the battle
of Hattin, had retreated to the safe haven of Tyre, but his wife and
family were in Jerusalem. He petitioned Saladin to be allowed to travel
safely to Jerusalem in order to bring his family back to Tyre. Saladin
agreed, on the condition that Balian would return to Tyre with his
family after only one night at Jerusalem and that he would never take
up arms against Saladin again. Once Balian was in Jerusalem, he came
under impossible pressure to stay and help in the defence of the city.

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The Christian Patriarch of Jerusalem quickly absolved Balian from
the sin of breaking his oath, arguing that it would be a greater sin to
keep the oath (to an infidel) and to abandon the Christians of
Jerusalem. Balian, in a demonstration of the chivalric warrior code
that overrode the supposedly clear lines of religious conflict, wrote to
Saladin, saying that he had been forced to break his oath and begging
protection for his family. Saladin sent 50 soldiers to escort the Lady
Ibelin and their children to the safety of Tyre.82
Balian, freed (remarkably) from concerns about his own family’s
safety, set out to defend Jerusalem. Saladin attacked the walls of the
city with siege engines, hurling stones and fire canisters. Sappers,
protected by the shields of their comrades, began to undermine the
walls: the foundations were propped up with timbers that were then set
alight; the walls crumbled. The Crusaders prepared to die fighting,
certain of a place in heaven for such a martyr’s death. The ordinary
inhabitants of Jerusalem knew, however, that if the city resisted further,
then the attackers would sack the city—this being the long-established
fate of besieged cities that refused terms of surrender. The awful sack
of Jerusalem by Christian soldiers in 1099 was still recent history; the
inhabitants could expect no mercy from the besieging Muslims.
Saladin was loath to see such bloody mayhem in the streets of the
sacred city. He also wanted to preserve the city’s sacred sites and
artefacts: plundering soldiers make indiscriminate looters. On the
other hand, his coalition of emirs and their troops had to be
rewarded—the plunder of a rich city was the expected reward for
services given. Also, when ambassadors from Jerusalem had refused to
surrender the city after the fall of Ascalon, Saladin had sworn an oath
to take Jerusalem “by the sword.”
Balian led the negotiations for the defenders: if Saladin refused to
offer terms then the Crusaders, with nothing left but the opportunity
of a glorious death, would die fighting to the last man, having first
destroyed the sacred Islamic sites of the city and killed the 5,000
Muslims who were held captive within the city. It was almost certainly
a bluff—Balian was unlikely to be allowed enough time to carry out

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his threats—but it was a bluff that Saladin was happy to use as an
excuse to avoid the sack of the city.
Saladin took counsel from his advisors. If the city was formally
surrendered, then Saladin could be said to have fulfilled his oath. The
occupants of the town could be ransomed, thus allowing the emirs to
get their fair share of plunder though a reasonable ‘take’ on the official
ransom which, of course, was destined for various treasuries. The
administration of this surrender was not only as fair as Saladin could
contrive (some emirs managed their own private ransom schemes and
pocketed all of the proceeds) but was in some aspects extraordinarily
generous and humane. The remnant of a treasure donated to the
Knights Hospitallers in Jerusalem by King Henry II of England was
accepted as a ransom for 7,000 people too poor to raise the sum
through any other means. Saladin’s brother asked for 1,000 slaves as
his just reward for his services in battle, all of whom he promptly freed.
Saladin responded by releasing many thousand old and infirm
inhabitants in the same spirit. Great ladies, who had no problem in
raising their ransom money, were nevertheless now dispossessed by
Saladin of the lands that they had previously held and their husbands,
if not dead, were imprisoned. Saladin promised to trace the lords and
reunite them with their families. He made cash grants to the ladies,
depending on their status, as compensation for their losses.83
The legend of Saladin is all here. A great general, able to unite the
divided factions of the Islamic world and to drive the infidel out of
Jerusalem (if not yet out of the country); a man of great chivalry in his
treatment of the Christian warriors with whom he fought; a humane
and magnanimous victor. But, in many ways, Saladin’s claim to great
leadership lies not so much in the headline achievement of having
recovered Jerusalem for the Islamic word as in the remarkable
achievement of having achieved control over the various factions of
the twelfth-century Islamic world and in his ability to bring these
factions together to face a common enemy. For many local potentates,
the Crusader’s presence in the region was a less pressing concern than
their own local political issues. Saladin had a clear vision: the recovery

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of Jerusalem and the expulsion of the Christian infidels from the
Middle East. Saladin’s leadership set the directions that the Islamic
communities of the northern Middle East would need to follow in
order to achieve this vision. Having consolidated his control of Cairo,
he gradually forced the whole of Syria to acknowledge his leadership.
He unified the region under his control, primarily by means of
negotiation and political pressure, and gradually created the platform
from which to launch an attack on the Christians’ most symbolic
stronghold, Jerusalem.


Saladin was born to a Kurdish family. His father and his father’s
brother were both commanders for Nur ad-Din Zengi, the Turkish
ruler of Aleppo. The key cities of the middle-eastern region at that
time were Baghdad and Mosul, on the River Tigris in Mesopotamia,
and Damascus and Aleppo in Syria. The caliphs of Baghdad were the
nominal heads of the Sunni Islamic world, but the rulers of the various
city-states were in a state of constant minor warfare amongst
themselves. In Cairo, Shi’ite caliphs (considered as heretics by the
Sunni caliphs of Baghdad) ruled Egypt.
Nur ad-Din conquered the great fortified Christian city of Edessa,
the first major city that the first Crusaders had captured. Edessa was
strategically important, as it constantly threatened the cities of both
Aleppo and Mosul. In 1154 Nur ad-Din took over Damascus in a
bloodless coup to become the undisputed ruler of Syria—his brother
was the ruler of the other strategic city of Mosul. Nur ad-Din was the
first Muslim leader to position himself as leading a long-term Holy
War—a jihad—against the Christian enclave.
Nur ad-Din had taken Damascus with the help of Saladin’s father
and his uncle, Shirkuh—a formidable warrior (and a formidable
trencherman) who was later to kill Raymond of Antioch in single
combat. Saladin’s father was left to govern Damascus, while Nur
ad-Din and Shirkuh returned to Aleppo. Young Saladin grew up in

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Damascus, the richest city in Syria, in a privileged position. He was
educated in philosophy, science, religion, rhetoric, and poetry. Central
to a young gentleman’s education was the concept of zarf—elegance
and refinement. Saladin entered the army at the age of 14 and later
left Damascus to join his uncle Shirkuh at Aleppol, to complete his
military training. He was a fine horseman, a hunter, and a famous
polo player.
In 1167, Saladin joined Shirkuh on Nur ad-Din’s military expedition
against the Shi’ite Caliphs of Egypt. They were successful, and Shirkuh
was installed as military governor of Egypt. Saladin took over the role
on the death of Shirkuh (who finally ate and drank himself to death);
he quietly dismissed officials loyal to the Egyptian Caliph (still alive, but
now powerless) and installed his own. His father and brothers were
installed in key roles. In 1170, Saladin launched an attack on a fortress
at the southern edge of the Christian kingdom. The Templars held out
until the Christian army arrived, and Saladin’s Egyptian army slipped
away to sack the city of Gaza. Saladin then transported a fleet of
prefabricated ships by camel from Cairo to the Gulf of Suez and sailed
them round the Sinai Peninsula to the Gulf of Aqaba, launching a
simultaneous land and sea attack on Christian-held Aqaba—a major
port and a key staging-post on the pilgrimage to Mecca. Saladin’s
Egyptian army was now a fighting force to be reckoned with; the
re-taking of Aqaba was a major victory for Islam. Saladin was
becoming a force in the land; Nur ad-Din was not happy.
Saladin used Egypt’s agricultural riches to build up his treasury. He
pursued a policy of non-confrontation with Nur ad-Din, sending
regular tributes in cash and goods. Nur ad-Din considered a military
expedition against Saladin. When Nur ad-Din died in 1174, leaving his
11-year-old son as boy-king, Saladin took on the title of Sultan of
Egypt and began his campaign to take control of Syria.
He rode with only 700 troops to Damascus at the invitation of the city
and began to argue his case to be recognized as the ruler who could unite
the Islamic world against the Franks. To consolidate his power, in the
time-honoured way, he married Nur ad-Din’s widow. He petitioned

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Baghdad—religious capital of the Muslim world—for a diploma
recognizing his conquests. Saladin had brought Egypt back to the Sunni
fold; he had expanded his Egyptian territories into the Yemen, on the
southeastern coast of the Red Sea, south of Mecca; he had gained
territory in North Africa; his claim to Syria was necessary to enable him
to re-conquer Jerusalem; all of his future conquests would be in the name
of the caliph of Baghdad. Nur ad-Din Zengi had never offered so much
recognition to Baghdad; the prestige of the Caliph of Baghdad was
greatly enhanced. Saladin got his diploma, and was proclaimed as King
of Syria. The Zengid Turkish sultanate had been effectively by-passed.
In 1177, Saladin marched out of Cairo as champion of the Holy
War, intent on capturing Jerusalem. He marched up the coast of
Palestine; the Crusaders were just able to reinforce the port of Ascalon
with 500 knights under King Baldwin, who smuggled a message
through the besieging Muslims to the Knights Templar at Gaza.
Saladin had turned inland to attack Jerusalem. As the Templars
arrived, Baldwin was able to break out of Ascalon; the combined
forces surprised Saladin’s army in the ravines near Montgisard and
slaughtered them. Only one tenth of the army is said to have returned
to Egypt.
Baldwin was not strong enough to move on to Damascus, but he
built a new fortification on the upper Jordan at Jacob’s Ford, an
important crossing of the River Jordan on the main road from
Damascus to Acre. Baldwin hoped that the fortress would block
attacks on Jerusalem and put pressure on Damascus. Saladin was
unable to prevent the building of the great tower because he was busy
putting down rebellions by various of his Muslim subjects. He tried
to bribe Baldwin to stop the work, but Baldwin refused. In 1179
Saladin was able to attack the new tower; he had only a few days to
overwhelm its defences before Baldwin would arrive with
reinforcements from Tiberias, on the lake of Galilee. Saladin
succeeded, his sappers undermining the walls as they were later to do
at Jerusalem. The Christian garrison were killed. Saladin and Baldwin
signed a truce the following year.

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 Christian attacks continued, despite the truce. A Christian
hot-head, Raynald of Chatillon, raided rich caravans in the south from
his fortress of al-Karak: a stronghold that constantly threatened both
the caravan and pilgrim trails between the port of Aqaba on the Red
Sea and Jerusalem and Damascus to the north.
In early 1187 Saladin summoned all provinces to the holy war. The
Christians were comprehensively defeated at the battle of Hattim,
where they had gone into battle carrying what was believed to be the
True Cross (the actual cross on which Jesus had been crucified), and
had lost this mighty talisman to the Muslims. The defeated King Guy
of Jerusalem was led before Saladin with the hated Raynald, whom
Saladin had sworn to kill. Water was brought for the exhausted King
Guy, who then passed it on to Raynald. Saladin immediately insisted
that Guy tell Raynald that the water was given to Raynald without
Saladin’s permission: if Saladin had offered food or water to Raynald
then the latter would be able to claim the protection of his ‘host’. Later
that evening Raynald was killed; Saladin may have struck the first blow
himself. The King and even the Grand Master of the Templars were
spared and later released, but 100 Templar and Hospitaller Knights
were executed: these committed and fanatical shock troops of the
Crusades were too dangerous to spare. The chivalrous Saladin was
humane, but he was not above occasional ruthlessness.
The fall of the port of Ascalon brought Saladin to the walls of
Jerusalem; after the fall of Jerusalem, the Third Crusade was launched
to recapture it, bringing Saladin into battle against Richard I (“The
Lionheart”) of England. The two never met, but seemed to develop a
genuine admiration for each other. Saladin sent fruit, chilled with
snow, to Richard when he was ill and offered the services of his
personal physician; when Richard’s horse was killed in battle, Saladin
sent a gift of two horses. Richard proposed a dynastic marriage
between his sister and Saladin’s brother to create a united Palestine
with the two of them as joint rulers. The wedding never came about,
and it is unlikely that Saladin would have countenanced a marriage to
an infidel.

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 The Third Crusade never did regain Jerusalem. In 1192 a treaty was
signed that left Jerusalem in Muslim hands but granted rights of
Christian pilgrimage. The Kingdom of Jerusalem was reduced to a
few cities around Acre, the new capital. Saladin died of a fever in the
spring of the following year.
Saladin, above all, was a great unifier. He emerges as a humane and
generous man, and these civilized instincts allowed him to rise above
the politics of revenge: Saladin’s habit of treating a defeated enemy
with kindness and even with generosity won him many friends, while
his firm control from the center prevented this from being exploited
as weakness. It had practical benefits: cities were relatively happy to
surrender to Saladin, in expectation of decent treatment, while they
would have held out against an attacker likely to wreak destruction
on a vanquished city. In his struggle to assert his leadership over the
Zengid dynasty, Saladin managed on every occasion to strike a deal,
to negotiate a treaty, to use politics to gain the upper hand rather than
to engage in outright civil war. He set a clear direction: a program of
unification in order to drive out the Christian invaders. After his
death, his realm disintegrated.

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elizabeth garrett anderson
(1836–1917)
Elizabeth Garrett (Anderson was her married name) had no intention
of being a leader, but she did have to take the offensive. She wanted a
career, and she chose medicine, although even her dauntless spirit
might have faltered if she had known just how many obstacles, over
how long a period of time, would be strewn in her path by the male
medical establishment.
Garrett became the first woman to have her name entered on the
medical register and the first woman doctor to open a practice; the first
European woman to gain a doctorate in medicine (from Paris); the
first woman to become a member of the British Medical Association;
the first woman member of the London School Board; the first female
Dean of a medical school—and, later in life, almost as an afterthought,
Britain’s first woman mayor (of Aldeburgh, Suffolk). Along the way,
she founded the New Hospital for Women and Children.
What is concealed within this marvellous list of achievements is the
reality of how astonishingly difficult it was for her to achieve any of
these things. Women simply did not become doctors. All of the
medical schools and examining bodies had been founded in the clear
expectation that mediciine was, and would always be, a male preserve.
Sometimes their charters and constitutions spelled this out;
sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes they were vague. When Elizabeth
presented herself, to the astonishment of the various hospitals,
schools, universities, and licensing bodies, there was often a scramble
for ancient documents. If it was not possible to prove that the
founding charter or constitution prevented the admission of women,
another good reason would be found, or a vote would be taken, with
the inevitable result.
Garrett stands out as the leader that she never intended to be by virtue
of the sheer difficulty of the pioneering trail that she blazed. No sooner
would she manage to find one loophole in the system than it would be

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closed behind her to prevent other women from following suit. She faced
unremitting hostility from a formidable establishment —though in
person, of course, they found her impressive and persuasive.
It is worth trying to get some flavor of the depth of prejudice that
existed at the time against women entering the medical profession. It
had many facets, and was always accompanied by that air of amused
superiority that is the hallmark of the true bigot. In 1873 (by which
time Elizabeth Garrett was the only woman to have managed to get
her name onto the Medical Register), an editorial from The Lancet,
the magazine of the medical profession, had this to say:

“It is asserted by the advocates for female doctors that there is a

field for the usefulness of women in the medical treatment of
diseases of women and children, and that women themselves
would rather be attended in their labours and various ailments by
members of their own sex than by men. We must demur to this, for
from an extended experience we are convinced that the mothers
of England prefer to be attended in their labors by medical men,
and that, in fact, the idea of female medical attendants is positively
repulsive to the more thoughtful women of this country. Judging
from the mental, moral, and emotional characteristics of the female
organisation [by this the leader-writer means the female mind and
body] we should say that women are not well fitted to regard
calmly and philosophically the pains and agonies of their sisters,
nor are they constituted to battle seriously and determinedly with
many of the dangerous and alarming accidents of parturition,
which always require prompt and vigorous action.”84

There was a deeply held belief that men and women were different
not only physically but mentally. The leader writer from The Lancet
went on to say (with a nod towards evolutionary Darwinism), “It
cannot be doubted that it is possible to make women more man-like,
but it is not possible to produce in them the characteristics of man
without destroying many of their feminine attractions and possibly

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also their feminine functions.”85 Too much “unnatural” effort by a
woman (too much intellectual strain, for example) would affect not
only her health, but her fertility. The affect on her attractiveness was,
of course, unavoidable.
The medical profession shared (and promulgated) the notion that
women’s God-given nature was simply not up to a wide variety of
stern or demanding tasks; not only were women likely to have a
fainting fit at the sight of another woman in labor or pain (an
interesting notion, since women had been midwives and healers for
many millennia before the arrival of the Victorian male doctor), but
they were also incapable of the “prompt and vigorous action” that a
medical emergency might require.
Sexual politics played a largely unacknowledged role. Five years
later, the same editor of The Lancet, James G. Wakeley (son of the
founding editor, Thomas Wakely) had this to say:

“In the economy of nature […] the ministry of women is one of

help and sympathy. The essential principle, the key-note of her
work in the world, is aid; to sustain, succour, revive and even
sometimes shelter man in the struggle and duty of life, is her
peculiar function. The moment she affects the first or leading role
in any vocation she is out of place and the secondary, but essential,
part of helpmate cannot be filled.”86

Furthermore (and this was a problem that Elizabeth could not

possibly have foreseen), her fellow male students—hard-drinking,
rat-baiting, horse-betting, cadaver-slicing young medical
students—began to fret about the effect on their sensitivities of
observing dissections in the presence of a woman. They raised a
petition against her presence: “Young females as passive spectators in
the operating theatre is an outrage on our natural instincts and
feelings and calculated to destroy those sentiments of respect and
admiration with which the opposite sex is regarded by all right-
minded men.” Even worse, their lecturers were apparently likely, “to

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feel some restraint through the presence of females in giving that
explicit and forcible enunciation of some facts which is necessary for
their comprehension by the student.”87
Finally, apart from women losing their “femininity”, not being up to
the task, subverting their proper role as helpmate, and offending the
sensibilities of male medical students, there was the altogether
more delicate problem of bodily functions and, in surgery, of blood
and guts. The notion that a nice young lady would willingly choose
a career that would involve her on a daily basis with these
unmentionables was unthinkable, and a woman who did so choose
was, in many subtle ways, questionable.


Elizabeth, the second of ten children, was born into a well-to-do
Victorian family; her father, Newson Garrett, was a self-made man.
He had started out as a pawnbroker in London’s East End before
moving his family to Aldeburgh in Suffolk, and setting himself up in
the brewing industry. The family was a perfect example of successful,
self-made, affluent, middle-class Victorian Britain. The expectations
for Elizabeth, as a young woman, were depressingly limited. While her
brothers went to public school, to university, and out into a world full
of excitement and potential, she was expected to become that most
recent of inventions: the middle-class lady of leisure. For the young
ladies of the late-nineteenth century, everything seemed possible, yet
nothing was expected of them.
On a visit to family friends in Gateshead, Elizabeth met Emily
Davies, six years older than herself, the wife of the Rector of Gateshead.
Emily Davies was to become a leading feminist and an early suffragist.
She helped to collect the names for the 1866 petition that John Stuart
Mill presented to Parliament—the first ever petition for women’s right
to vote. She was to edit the feminist Englishwoman’s Journal and to
campaign for the right of women to be admitted to London, Oxford,
and Cambridge Universities. With Barbara Bodichon (soon to be

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another acquaintance of Elizabeth), Emily later founded Girton
College, Cambridge, the first residential college for women. Emily, as
might be expected, made a profound impression on the young
Elizabeth, which grew over time as they kept up their friendship.
In 1859, visiting her sister in London, Elizabeth Garrett met
Dr Elizabeth Blackwell, thanks to an introduction via a business
connection of her father’s. Although English, Dr Blackwell grew up
in the United States and was the first woman to graduate from medical
school with an MD (Doctor of Medicine). She later returned to
England and established the Women’s Medical College. Blackwell
assumed that Elizabeth must have decided to follow in her footsteps
and spoke encouragingly to her. Elizabeth was rather daunted by the
notion, but her new friend, Emily Davies, was a firm believer in the
need for women physicians: Elizabeth must become a pioneer and
lead the way for other women. With considerable doubts as to her
abilities, Elizabeth warmed to the idea. Had she known of the
obstacles that the British male establishment would put in her way,
Elizabeth might have dropped the idea. Elizabeth’s father was won
over to the idea of her chosen career in time, but her mother struggled
with the idea of her daughter leaving home to go into any kind of
profession, let alone medicine. She shut herself in her room and cried.
Elizabeth Garrett, with her father’s support, set out to become a
doctor in 1860. Darwin’s Origin of the Species had recently been
published, as had Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities; Abraham Lincoln had
just been selected as presidential candidate for the new American
Republican party.
With no prospect of entering a medical school, Elizabeth took a job
as a nurse at the Middlesex Hospital in London. Hygiene at the
hospital was not so much rudimentary as non-existent. It was still
believed that illnesses were spread by miasma or ‘bad air’, which led to
an obsession with fresh air—explaining why hospitals of the time were
built with such high ceilings and tall windows. They were not, sadly,
obsessed (or even interested) in cleanliness. Surgeons wore the same
blood-spattered frock coats from one operation to the next, carrying

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their unwashed surgical implements with them. Doctors also went
straight from dissecting cadavers to inspect pregnant mothers,
without washing their hands. Gangrene was endemic in amputees;
puerperal fever was endemic in maternity wards.
Elizabeth found that she had a strong stomach and a cool head.
Surgeons noted that she was calm and efficient when minor surgery
was performed on the wards; they began to invite her to follow them
on their rounds. She attended her first operation with other (male)
students. She began to be treated as a real medical student. Concerned
that this might be seen as unfair, she offered to pay her student’s fees.
The hospital would not accept a fee, since that would recognize that
she was a student, but she was allowed to make a donation and to
continue to help the surgeons on their rounds as an ‘amateur’. Her
studies intensified; she asked to be allowed into the dissecting rooms;
the Dean and the lecturers became increasingly impressed, but her
fellow male students became increasingly concerned. Eventually, a
group of students raised a petition. Faced with a potential revolt of
fee-paying students, the hospital refused Elizabeth admission as a
full-time medical student. With a letter of regret that praised her
conduct at the hospital from the lecturers, she was forced to leave
the Middlesex.
She was already becoming the subject of controversy and debate.
The Lancet ran several supposedly humorous editorials with
introductions such as, “How Should the Fair Intruder be Received?”,
but concluded that the whole issue was irrelevant since no examining
body would issue the necessary diploma.88 There was the rub: several
other London schools voted not to allow Miss Garrett to study; since
no examining body would accept her in order for the qualifications
essential to be able to practice medicine, they would be educating
somebody who could only be able to practice illegally.
Elizabeth wrote to the examining bodies—Oxford, Cambridge,
Glasgow, Edinburgh—but was rejected. There was, however, one last
examining body that could offer the minimum qualification needed
to have one’s name entered on the Medical Register and to be able to

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practice as a doctor: the Society of Apothecaries, whose charter
referred to “all persons” desirous of practicing medicine, without
reference to their sex. Elizabeth’s father took legal advice. It was agreed
that “persons” did include “women.” The Apothecaries agreed to
accept Elizabeth to their examinations if she could find herself an
apprenticeship and attend a list of statutory courses—which, in the
normal course of things, would mean spending three years at medical
school, all of whom, to date, had refused to accept her. The apothecary
at Middlesex Hospital, with whom she had worked during her time
there, willingly agreed to take her on as his apprentice.
To continue her studies, Elizabeth tried the University of London.
The charter of the University said that it had been founded to provide
education “for all classes and denominations.” The Garretts again took
legal advice, but it was decided that women were neither a “class” nor
a “denomination”, so the university was not obliged to accept them.
The University was about to receive a new charter, so Newson Garrett
submitted a proposal to Senate that, under this new charter, the
University should open its examinations to women on the reasonable
grounds that, “it appears very desirable to raise the standard of female
education, especially in the more solid branches of learning.” Elizabeth
and her friend Emily Davis distributed 1,500 leaflets to various
notables. There was support from William Gladstone, the Chancellor
of the Exchequer. The Senate of the University was split down the
middle; the Chancellor cast his deciding vote…against.
A well-disposed Professor of Medicine at St Andrews University,
Professor Simpson, invited Elizabeth to attend his lectures. There was
another moment of hope: the Professor suggested that Elizabeth try
for matriculation to the University; there was no examination, only
payment of a fee of one pound. If allowed to matriculate, Elizabeth
would have been accepted into the University and would be eligible to
sit their examinations for a Doctorate of Medicine, whereas her
qualification from the Society of Apothecaries would only be
sufficient to get her on to the Medical Register and allow her to set up
as a General Practitioner. Elizabeth wanted the coveted letters

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“MD”after her name and feared she would get few patients without it.
Elizabeth approached the genial Secretary of the University, told him
that she was attending the professor’s lectures, and asked to
matriculate. She paid her one pound and was accepted. The next day
a crestfallen Secretary was forced to return Elizabeth’s pound: Senate
had decided that she could not be accepted. Elizabeth refused the
returned pound and took legal advice. Was the acceptance of the
money a form of contract? No, the University could not be bound by
the actions of its Secretary unless they had specifically authorized him
to take such action. Was there a case to be made in court? For
damages, possibly, but Senate could not be forced to do what their
Charter did not permit them to do.
Elizabeth’s friendly professor at St Andrews made light of her
distress: the supposedly magical letters “MD” meant little, he assured
her; a practitioner was judged more by his (or her) character than by
the letters after their name.
There was a minor, but essential, piece of good news. The Society of
Apothecaries confirmed that Elizabeth was able to cover the necessary
course-work for her qualification by private tuition from recognized
lecturers of acknowledged schools of medicine. Her certificates from
Middlesex Hospital and her other studies could also all count towards
her qualification. Professor Simpson referred her to an eminent
lecturer in Midwifery at Edinburgh. She studied and worked for a year
at the Edinburgh Maternity Hospital, gaining essential clinical
experience, but she still needed a course in practical anatomy. Finally,
a bright young orthopaedic surgeon agreed to take her on.
Bit by bit, Elizabeth gained the necessary experience and
qualifications. She got clinical practice at the London Dispensary,
which served the poor of London’s Spitalfields area. She attended the
London Hospital for more nursing experience and, now a minor
celebrity, put up with a great deal of hostility. She entered the fifth
and final year of her studies. She used her good relations with the
Middlesex to be allowed onto certain wards by permission of
individual physicians and surgeons.

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 The Society of Apothecaries suddenly realized that this young
woman really did intend to take their examinations, and that they
would be blamed throughout the medical profession for allowing a
woman to qualify as a medical practitioner. The Court of Examiners
wrote to say that, regretfully, they could not examine her after all.
Elizabeth’s doughty father threatened to sue. The Society took
Counsel’s opinion and was told, once more, that their charter did not
disbar women. They backed down, but immediately set about
changing their regulations so that no other woman might embarrass
them in this way. From now on a female applicant would be required
to graduate from an accredited medical school. Since none of the
medical schools would enrol women, this was an effective Catch-22.
It was another 12 years before another woman would get her name
onto the Medical Register.
Elizabeth passed the examinations. She set up in practice off
London’s Edgware Road and built up her list of patients. After six
months she set up an outpatient dispensary for poor women. An
outbreak of cholera meant that St Mary’s Dispensary for Women and
Children was embraced by the establishment more warmly than it
might normally have been, as it provided treatment in impecunious
Marylebone. By the end of the outbreak, the idea of an all-women
dispensary was established. After six years, the Dispensary became the
New Hospital for Women and Children.
In 1870, Elizabeth Garrett finally received her MD, from Paris
University. She had commuted from London to Paris during her
studies, faced a public viva examination (in front of a packed theatre
of male students and lecturers and conducted, of course, in French),
and submitted a thesis on migraine, which was well received.
As free education for working-class children in Britain became a
reality with the passing of the Elementary Education Act in 1870,
Garrett was urged by her local community to stand for the new
London School Board, which not only allowed women to stand as
potential candidates, but even to cast their own votes. Elizabeth spoke
at public meetings of up to 1,000 people—at a time when it was

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virtually unheard of for a woman to speak in public. She won by a
proverbial landslide.
A year later, Elizabeth married James Anderson. They were to have
three children (one of whom was to die in infancy of meningitis) and,
flying yet again in the face of accepted behavior, Elizabeth continued
with her career. In 1874 Elizabeth helped to found the London Medical
College for Women, where she taught for 23 years, including 20 years
as Dean. In 1876 an MP steered a bill through Parliament that would
oblige all medical corporations to allow women to enter for their
examinations, regardless of their charters. In 1877 the London Medical
School for Women was affiliated to the Royal Free Hospital in
Hampstead, which could then issue the degrees to female graduates of
the School, allowing them to enrol on the Medical Register.
There was one final clash with the medial profession. In 1874, her
brother-in-law proposed Elizabeth for membership to the
Metropolitan branch of the British Medical Association. The secretary
found that the only condition for membership was that candidates
should be registered medical practitioners—there was no mention of
gender. He signed the application. It took some years before the
Association woke up to the fact that a female member had been
elected. In 1878 a conference listened politely while Dr Garrett
Anderson pointed out that there were now eight women on the
Medical Register, that there would soon be more, and that they should
be eligible to become members of the BMA. She was listened to with
politeness—they even laughed at her witticisms—then they voted to
ban all future women members; though, in honour of Elizabeth, not
retrospectively. For 19 years she was the only female member of the
BMA. In 1902 the Andersons retired to Aldeburgh, and in 1908 she
was elected Mayor of the town—the first female mayor in Britain.

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 8
creating
opportunities
 reating opportunities is a bit like the elusive skill of making your
C own luck. No manager can achieve everything by themselves.
Creating opportunities is a different skill from that of successful
delegation or of genuinely empowering team members. Once the
team is empowered, they need chances that they can take,
opportunities that they can exploit. A really good manager helps to
create these opportunities—and a really well-run team eventually
begin to create their own opportunities, which is when the whole
thing really begins to take off.
We all recognize this in sport. When a team is playing at its best,
with every player making the best use of their individual skills and
playing at the top of their game, then opportunities start, as if by
magic, to appear. The individual skills of one player create the
opportunity for the next player. The cumulative effect of a number of
small opportunities suddenly becomes one big opportunity. A coach
can set out the general strategy for a team like this, and encourage
them to play a certain sort of game, but even the best coach cannot
plan for the precise opportunity that will win the game.
Opportunities can be created in many ways. Building the right team
is essential: highly talented individuals will bring opportunities to a
manager’s doorstep. Developing a really outstanding marketing idea
can do the same thing: suddenly a particular image or a slogan
incorporates the organization’s goals so well that other things start to fall
into place; apparently unrelated bits of activity suddenly make more
sense from this new perspective; different departments suddenly come
up with new ideas that fit neatly into the new perspective. Entering a
new market, or entering a market at a particularly well-judged time can
do the same thing: suddenly opportunities are falling at a team’s feet.
Some apparently mundane structural changes can be highly
effective—something as simple as the way in which information is
presented and handled, or the way in which individuals report to their
team managers. If information begins to flow more smoothly through
the organization, then people will more easily be able to pick up on the
bits that matter to them. Suddenly, people start to have ideas.

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 The leaders from history in this chapter illustrate very different
ways of creating opportunities. Firstly, the surprising ways in which
ideas can begin to flow around an organization that brings together
unexpected partners, and facilitates the exchange of information
without heavy-handed control from the top (illustrated, surprisingly
and strikingly, by Genghis Khan); the opportunities that can arise
from sheer persistence—from simply hanging in there and keeping
options alive (Chiang Kai Shek); the dramatic breakthroughs that can
be achieved by getting out into the world, talking to people, keeping
your eyes open, and bringing back an intelligent report (Marco Polo).


Genghis Khan is an entirely counter-intuitive choice with which to
illustrate the concept of creating opportunities. In the West, we still
tend to see Genghis as one of the most destructive forces in history.
The Mongol hordes swept out of the Eurasian steppe in the thirteenth
century, overrunning the stable and sophisticated Islamic empires of
Central Asia and reaching as far as the Black Sea. The descendants of
Genghis would reach the Mediterranean and threaten Vienna in the
north. The terrifying Mongolian cavalry overwhelmed all opposition,
and utterly destroyed those who opposed them, razing entire cities to
the ground. It seemed that a new dark age would spread across Asia
and Europe. In fact, although they were ruthless in conquest, the
Mongols were surprisingly benign in peace. They had no interest in
imposing any particular ideology on the new empire; different regions
of their increasingly vast territories were allowed to develop in their
own way. The very existence of the empire—stretching eventually
from China to the Mediterranean—created a Pax Mongolica that has
been compared with the Pax Romana created by the Roman Empire
at its height, more than 1,000 years earlier. Goods, cultures, religions,
and ideas began to flow around the globe. Genghis Khan does not, in
himself, make a good role model for managers (though you may have
dealings with managers who exhibit some of his characteristics), but

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he was an exceptional leader—completely reorganizing Mongol
society from a set of feuding tribes into a unified force—and his legacy
shows how a large but focussed organization, governed with a very
light touch from the center, can create huge opportunities.
Chiang Kai Shek can take much of the credit for making the
emergence of modern China possible. After the final collapse of
China’s last imperial dynasty, represented by the poignant figure of
Puyi, “The Last Emperor,” there was an attempt to create a new,
democratic republic in China. The Nationalist Party—the
Kuomintang—was the new republic’s main political party. The
republic turned for its new President to an ex-imperial general with
the necessary military clout to ensure the stability of the new
government, but he attempted to turn himself into a new emperor;
the Provinces rebelled once more and the world’s oldest civilization
descended into a series of feudal states governed by modern-day
barons—”the warlords.” As leader of the Nationalist Party and of its
new army, Chiang Kai Shek defeated the most significant warlords
and created a national government once more, though he was plagued
by continued wars against the remaining warlords, and a full civil war
later broke out between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist
Party. Chiang was persuaded to join forces with the Communists to
fight the threat of invasion from Japan (Chiang was kidnapped by one
of his generals and given no option; he had been determined to
destroy the Communist Party before taking on Japan). He then
performed another of his miracles on behalf of China: his Nationalist
forces, aided by Communist guerrilla actions, managed to slow down
the Japanese invasion long enough to prevent a rapid conquest of
China, buying sufficient time to see America enter the war after
Japan’s bombing of the American Fleet at Pearl Harbor. The
Sino-Japanese war became part of the wider conflict of World War II
and Chiang became Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the
region. After the war, Chiang lost his battle against the Communist
Party; his Republic of China became a government in exile on the
island of Taiwan, while mainland China emerged as the People’s

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Republic of China. On Taiwan, Chiang helped to engineer Taiwan’s
economic revolution, turning the country into one of the ‘tiger
economies’ of the Far East and changing the economic status of the
region for ever. Chiang, often remembered as “the man who lost
China,” will go down in history as the man who did the most to keep
the Chinese nation intact in one of its darkest periods.
Marco Polo is famous as a traveller and a merchant, but he ought
to be famous as a merchant of ideas. With his father and his uncle, he
traveled from the Mediterranean to China, an almost unimaginable
journey made possible, perversely, by the success of the terrifying
Mongol invaders. The Mongol Empire’s control of vast regions made
travel across huge distances possible and—relatively speaking—safe.
The Polo family traveled to see the grandson of Genghis Khan: Kublai
Khan, ruler of Mongolia and the northern and western regions of
modern China. Marco Polo’s true skills lay both in his ability to get on
with people from very different cultural backgrounds, and in his
abilities as a reporter. Kublai Khan, like any great leader, was hungry
for information. Marco Polo became the Khan’s trusted ambassador:
he traveled around the Khan’s Empire and he brought back well-told
tales of the wonders of the Khan’s lands and of his people. These tales,
and Marco’s notebooks, formed the basis of Marco’s great book,
Il Milione—now known as The Travels of Marco Polo. This book not
only brought the discoveries of the advanced Chinese civilization to
the rest of the world—paper currencies; the use of coal; town-
planning; postal systems—it also opened up entirely new horizons.
Roughly 200 years after Marco Polo, Columbus sailed west from
Europe with a heavily annotated copy of the Travels, hoping to find a
new route to the fabled riches of the East, described so enticingly by
Marco. Marco’s dissemination of ideas changed the development of
Europe (and the New World) by presenting new ideas and
opportunities to the world—by bringing different cultures together.

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 genghis khan
(c.1162–1227)
The Mongols were nomadic steppe-dwellers from northeast Asia,
similar to (and possibly related to) the Native Americans and closely
related to the Huns or Xiongnu who had plagued China some 1,400
years before. They worshipped the Eternal Blue Sky and a pantheon of
lesser gods, and were entirely tolerant of, and even embraced, other
religions alongside their essentially shamanistic beliefs. They left no
architecture or manufactured goods; they painted no pictures and
carved no statues. At first glance, Genghis Khan’s armies seem to us
to have brought only death and destruction, and to have left
nothing behind.
There were occasions when the Mongol hordes would not simply
capture and sack a city, but would reportedly slaughter every living
creature inside, tear down the city walls, and remove all traces of the
city’s existence. Genghis Khan razed cities partly to deter future
resistance, and partly as a strategic move to destroy population centers
in relatively inaccessible areas of his expanding empire, in order to
funnel the movement of people and trade through the more accessible
routes, which he could then monitor and control. There can be no
doubt about the utter devastation visited on some regions by the
Mongol army, nor of the horrors experienced by many civilians—such
as being herded in front of the advancing Mongol army as living
shields, or being thrown into defensive ditches as living ballast.
Paradoxically, the impact of Genghis Khan and the Mongol hordes
on the history of civilization is perhaps greater than that of any other
world empire. The one thing that the Mongols did build—both
physically and metaphorically—was bridges. The conquests of
Genghis linked China with Central Asia, the Middle East, and Europe
for the first time in history; forging commercial and diplomatic links
between nations who were previously barely aware of each other’s
existence (Genghis invented the concept of diplomatic immunity for

231
ambassadors and envoys between nations). The Mongols facilitated
the flow of goods around the emerging new world, and with the goods
traveled technologies, ideas, and cultures. Mining and noodles, carrots
and carpets, science and tea, Christianity and gunpowder, paper
currencies and Buddhism began to move around the world in an
unprecedented way.89


The Mongol clans of the twelfth century lived in a small part of what
we now call Mongolia; north of the Gobi desert and south of the
mountain ranges that separate Mongolia from eastern Siberia. Arctic
winds release what little moisture they carry onto the northern
mountains. When the spring thaw comes, frozen lakes and snowdrifts
feed the streams and rivers that water the vast grasslands. In a good
summer, the steppe turns green and feeds the great herds of horses,
cows, sheep, and goats that sustain the people who live there. There are
far more animals than people; life is a battle for survival.
The Mongol tribes were surrounded by many others, including the
Tatar, Kerait, and Merkit. Tribes fought each other in a constant round
of raids and retaliations; within the tribes, family clans bickered and
feuded. In the winter, hunting parties searched for game in the forests
in the mountains. In hard times, hunting parties would raid groups of
humans instead. Women were kidnapped as wives; young boys as
labor. At the approach of a raiding party, adult males were the first to
escape on horseback—if the community was to survive the raid, then
the young men were the most valuable members and also the ones
most likely to be killed as rivals; this was not a land for heroics.
Genghis Khan’s own mother had been captured while returning
with her new husband to his home territory. The bride persuaded
her husband to flee, to save his life; she never saw him again. She
became the second wife of her captor, a Mongol chieftain, and bore
him a child called Temujin—the man who would become known as
Genghis Khan.

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 When Temujin was a young man, his father was killed by Tatars.
His family, without a man to hunt food for the two widows and seven
children, were abandoned and expected to die of starvation: there
were too many of them to support, and the rival families did not want
Temujin to succeed to his father’s eminent position. The family
survived by scavenging what food they could: roots; fruit; fish; small
game. They were at the very bottom of the social system of the steppes,
little better than animals. The experience forged what became
Temujin’s core beliefs: the need to break down the caste system and to
forge new alliances that went beyond family and tribe.
When still a young man, Temujin was captured and enslaved by
another tribe, but eventually escaped with help from a local family,
who risked everything by helping him. His fame began to grow.
Temujin had been betrothed to a young girl before the death of his
father; he now sought out her family, who agreed to the long-delayed
marriage. Soon afterwards, Merkit raiders attacked Temujin’s camp.
With the bitter but pragmatic logic of the steppes, he fled with his
companions, leaving his new wife behind. Temujin could choose the
traditional course of action—to find, or kidnap, a new wife—or he
could fight back. He chose to fight. He approached the leader of the
Kerait tribe, Ong Khan, whom his father had served, and offered his
wife’s dowry (a coat of black sable) as a gift. Ong Khan was happy for
the excuse to raid his local Merkit rivals with Temujin as his captain.
Temujin won back his wife in a raid and began to become a
successful warrior. The traditional approach on raiding a rival tribe
was to plunder its goods, killing or driving away the young men and
capturing young women and boys. Over time, as Temujin conquered
more minor tribes, the leaders were killed but the remainder of the
tribe was absorbed, not as slaves but on an equal footing, along with
all their goods and animals. Temujin’s mother adopted children from
conquered tribes, making them Temujin’s ‘brothers’. Temujin also
began to systematize looting. Warriors had been more concerned
about plundering goods than they had been in chasing down the
enemy: under Temujin, the enemy was hunted down and totally

233
defeated; only then could the looting begin. The proceeds were
distributed evenly, one share being set aside for the widows and
orphans of any soldiers killed in the raid. This broke with the old
aristocratic system where chieftains would distribute the plunder as
they saw fit, reinforcing their power and status. Temujin’s reforms
began to break down not only inter-tribal rivalries but also the
structure of society. After 20 years of inter-tribal warfare, including
the defeat of his previous mentor, Ong Khan, who had turned against
him, Temujin had united the various tribes under his rule and was
acknowledged as “Khan” (leader). He was given the name “Chinggis”
Khan, which later became more familiar in its Persian spelling
of “Genghis”.
The new leader now did away with all previous aristocratic titles
and privileges. All offices belonged to the state—to the Great Mongol
Nation that he had created from the warring tribes.
In a final, radical move, he organized the army into a system of
decimal units. The basic unit was the unit of ten: regardless of tribal
differences or social status, these men were now brothers; no unit
could leave behind a wounded member. The eldest member was the
leader, but the team could choose a different leader. Ten units of ten
formed a company, whose leader was elected. Ten companies formed
a battalion; ten battalions made an army of ten thousand, with a
leader chosen by Genghis. Old loyalties and ties were effectively
destroyed: ultimate loyalty was now to the Khan. The reorganization
was remarkably similar to the changes introduced to Athenian society
by Cleisthenes, nearly 2,000 years earlier, which were also designed to
break up old aristocratic and feuding clans—though Genghis
at the time would not have heard of the Mediterranean
Sea, let alone an ancient Athenian civilization. The unification
and democratization of both societies was similarly successful.
Genghis Khan was more than 40 years old before he finally succeeded
in uniting the tribes and reorganizing Mongolian society; it
would take him the remaining 20 years of his life to conquer
the world.

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 To prepare for war, Genghis Kahn called a council. The issue was
known beforehand, not turning up at the council was an effective vote
of no confidence. Genghis Kahn got his quorum. The main purpose
of the council was to ensure that everyone, down to the lowliest
warrior, understood the purpose of the war and agreed with its
principles—such as to avenge past wrongs and to acquire wealth from
the cities of China. On the battlefield, soldiers had to obey orders
unquestioningly. Before the Mongols rode off to war, however, there
was debate and involvement.
Genghis Khan’s first attack on China showed his grasp of strategy
and of politics; his territory was bordered to the west by the Tangut
and to the east and south by the far more powerful Jurchens, a tribe
from Manchuria who had founded the Jin dynasty in northern China,
and who demanded tribute and obeisance from the Mongolians. He
decided that, if he attacked the Tangut, the Jin would not come to their
aid. He was right. In order to capture Tangut cities, the Mongols
learned to cut them off from their surrounding food supplies. They
tried to divert the Yellow River to flood the Tangut capital, but flooded
their own camp instead. They defeated the city anyway and learned
from their mistakes. The Tangut were subdued; it was time to move on
the Jin—in an unprecedented move, the Mongols crossed the huge
and forbidding Gobi desert.
Every soldier carried everything that he needed, including dried
milk and meat. They could go many days without the need for fresh
supplies; their high-protein diet made them able to go hungry for
longer than people living on high-carbohydrate diets, like most of
their agricultural opponents. Scouts went ahead of the army to check
the terrain, water supplies, and resting places. As they emerged from
the desert through a pass they destroyed the waiting Jin army.
The Mongols knew only steppe warfare, on horseback. The whole
army consisted of cavalry; the bow was the key weapon. Since every
Mongolian made a living by herding animals and hunting, these skills
were second nature—the whole nation could be mobilized. The
Mongols did not seek out a battlefield on which to conduct a set-piece

235
battle, they attacked across a huge front, many miles wide. They
treated the people in their path much as they treated the vast herds
that they were used to managing on the steppe: it was a Mongol tactic
to stampede animals towards their enemies; now they also started to
herd huge numbers of refugees in front of them, clogging roads,
overwhelming cities, consuming supplies. At times they would use
this mass of humanity as living shields, or even as living ballast to fill
moats or other obstacles.90 They were indifferent to loss of human life
if it preserved Mongol life. The Mongols laid siege to the Jin capital,
Yanjing (modern Beijing) and sacked it; the Jin Emperor was forced
to move south.
Captured riches flooded into Mongolia; unheard of luxuries
became necessities and Genghis Khan was driven to conquer further
territories. His conquests took the Mongol horde into modern-day
Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. He conquered the city of Kashgar in the
modern Chinese province of Xinjiang, having been asked for support
by the local Muslim population against a repressive king. The Mongols
liberated the city without damage and proclaimed freedom of worship
to every community. The Mongols single-mindedly pursued a simple
and effective policy: those who welcomed or supported them were
rewarded; those who opposed them died.
Genghis began to make great use of military intelligence, using a
network of scouts and a sophisticated system of communication via
way-stations situated one day’s ride apart. This system also supported
his armies’ chain of supplies: a system to rival that of Alexander the
Great and one that Genghis, without access to the relevant written
histories, had to reinvent. The Mongol army had no concern for
individual honor: if a battle was lost, no soldier could claim that he had
won some special honor from it. The means to victory were also
unimportant; the Mongols were delighted to win by trickery, as when
a Mongol soldier dressed himself in the clothes of a captured envoy and
entered a besieged city. As he did so, the Mongols withdrew, and the
pretend envoy persuaded the city that they were victorious. He
organized the dismantling of the cities defences, and the horde returned.

236
 With the entire Silk Road from China to the eastern borders of the
Middle East under his control, Genghis Khan now wanted to trade
with the rich and technologically advanced territories of the Islamic
world, stretching beyond the mountains of Afghanistan to the Black
Sea. Genghis Khan sent an envoy to the ruling Turkish Sultan of the
Khwarezmid Empire, saying that he had no need of conquering any
further territories and had a sincere interest in fostering trade between
their two empires. The Sultan expressed cautious interest, but the first
caravan of goods sent from the east was captured; its merchants and
drivers were killed. Genghis Kahn sent a mission asking for the arrest
and punishment of the local governors who had captured the caravan.
The envoys were killed or returned to Mongolia with their heads
and faces shaved. The consequence of this violent and short-sighted
episode was about to change the world. The Mongols crossed more
than 2,000 miles of desert, steppe, and mountain to attack Bukhara;
with the help of local nomadic tribes, they crossed the feared Red
Desert, the Kyzyl Kum, to appear deep behind enemy lines. The city
surrendered, but the Turkish soldiers barricaded themselves in the
inner citadel, confident that no marauding band of steppe warriors
could defeat its massive defences, and with water and enough food to
sit out a protracted siege. But by now the Mongol army had learned
much. Engineers constructed siege engines that they had copied from
the Chinese; devices entirely unknown to them a few decades before.
The astonished defendants of the inner fortress of Bukhara found
themselves attacked by catapults, mangonels, and trebuchets, hurling
not only stones and great arrows but also exploding devices and
incendiaries. Great towers allowed the attackers to rain arrows and
missiles on the defenders of the battlements; sappers undermined the
foundations. Prisoners were herded into the moats to form living
bridges for the great siege machines to cross. The defenders were
wiped out.91
Such was the shock of the defeat of Bukhara that the capital of the
Sultan’s empire, Samarkand, surrendered. The Mongols moved on:
south across the mountains of Afghanistan to the Indus River (in the

237
footsteps of Alexander the Great) and west to the plains of Russia
and to the shores of the Mediterranean. Baghdad fell in 1258.
The descendants of Genghis Khan were to rule in Bukhara for
700 years, until the city was overrun by the Soviet Empire of the
twentieth century.
Genghis Khan conquered the largest contiguous land empire in
history, stretching from China, through central Asia, into the
Caucasus, and the Russian Principalities. Once the empire was
conquered, however, the Mongols were surprisingly benign rulers.
They had no interest in cities, or in accumulating great wealth. They
liked manufactured goods, and encouraged trade. The huge Mongol
Empire became a vast free-trade zone. Taxation was relatively light,
with exemptions for doctors and teachers. Wars died out as the
overwhelming force of the Mongols overrode all other power
struggles—just as the overwhelming might of the Roman Empire of
Augustus had begun a long period of peace one thousand years earlier.
Trade between East and West became far safer and far easier. Ideas
and goods began to flow around the world. What Genghis Khan’s
empire had created was opportunity.

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 chiang kai shek
(1887–1975)
Chiang Kai Shek is often described as “the man who lost China.” It is
also true to say that, without Chiang, there would not have been a
China to lose. After the collapse of China’s last Imperial Dynasty, a
brief period of republican government was hijacked by its new
President—a previous commander of the Imperial army. He declared
himself to be the new Emperor. Chinese provinces rebelled once more,
but with the collapse of any form of central government, the country
fragmented into a collection of territories governed by various
strongmen who had sufficient troops and resources to control a
territory. The age of the warlords had arrived; China, the birthplace of
civilization, had been knocked back into a kind of feudalism.
The Republic of China, which seemed to have been strangled at
birth, had envisaged the emergence of a democratic, representational
government. A new national party, the Kuomintang—also known as
the Chinese Nationalist Party—was formed to embody these aims.
Chiang Kai Shek became the leader of this party and the supreme
commander of Nationalist forces. He succeeded in defeating the most
significant warlords in China’s northern and central territories, and
reunified China.
It was Chiang’s misfortune that events, both internal and external,
never allowed him to consolidate this success. Continued wars with
remaining warlords sapped resources, while the Communist Party of
China—which Chiang became increasingly determined to
destroy—proved to be a resilient force. Chiang’s greatest misfortune
was the invasion of China by Japan: his attempts to build up the
armed forces in order to repel the expected invasion were constantly
distracted by his efforts against the warlords and the Communists. In
the end he was persuaded—literally at gunpoint—to join forces with
the Communist Party in a united front against the Japanese. This may
have been in the interests of the country’s defence (though this can be

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debated), but it was certainly in the interest of the Communist Party,
who used the years of war to rebuild their army and to increase their
power base in the countryside, fighting a guerrilla war while the
Nationalist Armies bore the brunt of the conventional warfare,
suffering heavy losses.
Chiang’s greatest success, after the reunification of China, was to
prevent its rapid conquest by Japan, something that Japan itself
considered to be entirely feasible. By holding off the Japanese
invasion—trading space for time—Chiang was able to keep the
country intact for long enough to see America enter the war and for
the Sino-Japanese war to be subsumed into World War II. After the
war, the Communist Party defeated the Nationalist forces and
Chiang’s Republic of China withdrew to the island of Taiwan,
while the People’s Republic of China was established on the
Chinese mainland.
Chiang, as a leader, managed to create a number of opportunities
that have changed the world: by recreating a nation from an
incoherent collection of warlord territories, he allowed China to
re-emerge; by holding out against a Japanese invasion for long enough
to gain international support, he kept the reborn nation alive; and
after his defeat and exile in Taiwan, he helped to create the conditions
from which one of Asia’s earliest ‘tiger economies’ could emerge,
helping to transform the economic conditions of the Far East.


The Qing dynasty—the last imperial dynasty of China—ended in
1912 when the Empress Dowager abdicated on behalf of the
six-year-old Emperor Puyi, “The Last Emperor.” A series of mutinies
and uprisings against the succeeding weak central government led to
a number of southern provinces declaring themselves to be
independent. They formed a National Assembly and elected a
provisional President of the Republic of China: Sun Yat-sen, a quiet
and moderate revolutionary who had been trying for many years to

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replace the ailing imperial government with a democratically-based
republic. The new National Assembly represented only the breakaway
southern provinces, while the Imperial Qing government retained
control of the north. The new republic also had no significant military
power: the man in control of the Imperial army, Yuan Shikai, was now
wooed by both the new Republican government and the old regime.
In return for the Presidency of the new republic, Yuan sided with the
revolutionaries.
Sun Yat-sen and others formed a new political party that was to
become the Kuomintang (KMT), or Chinese Nationalist Party. Sun was
elected as leader, and the new party campaigned for the first elections
to the National Assembly on a platform promoting constitutional,
parliamentary-style democracy. The Kuomintang won a majority in
the new Assembly. Unsurprisingly, the new President, ex-Army
Commander Yuan Shikei, began to behave in an increasingly autocratic
manner and to ignore the National Assembly. The parliamentary leader
of the KMT spoke out against Yuan and was assassinated at Shanghai
railway station. Sun Yat-sen led a badly-organized and unsuccessful
revolt against Yuan and fled once more into exile in Japan. Yuan, true to
type, proclaimed himself Emperor in December 1915, but several
provinces immediately rebelled and foreign powers, especially Japan,
withdrew their support. Yuan delayed his coronation ceremony, but
failed to appease his growing number of opponents. He died in June
1916, leaving a power vacuum that was filled by local warlords who
were able to retain control of elements of the fragmenting army. Their
main powerbase was in the north. Yuan is remembered, not fondly, as
the “Father of the Warlords” who were to plague China for the next
two decades.
In 1920, Sun Yat-sen and the Kuomintang managed to form a
government of sorts—in effect a limited military government—in
Guanzhou (Canton), on the coast of southern China. Sun proclaimed
his intention to govern under the Three Principles of the People:
a personal vision of a representational government, with proper
separations of power between the legislative and administrative

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branches of government, and a program of social welfare. Sun founded
the Whampoa Military Academy near Guanzhou to develop an army
in order to take on the warlords in the north, and accepted Soviet aid.
The developing Communist Party of China (CPC) was instructed by
Soviet advisors to collaborate with the Kuomintang, forming the First
National Front—in this case, against the warlords, and in an attempt
to establish a national Republic of China. The Academy was to have a
profound influence on the development of China. Communist and
nationalist cadets trained side-by-side: the Director of the Academy
was Chiang Kai-Shek, the future leader of the Republic of China; the
Director of the political department was Zhou Enlai, the man who
would become Premier of the People’s Republic of China under
Chairman Mao Zedong. At Whampoa, Chiang Kai Shek trained a
generation of future army offices who would remain loyal to him and
to the Kuomintang, but he found it difficult to work alongside
Communist party officers (including Zhou Enlai) as part of the United
Front. Before taking up his appointment at Whampoa, Chiang had
been sent to Russia for three months to study the new revolutionary
government’s political and military models. He had decided that the
Russian revolutionary model was not for China.
In 1925, Sun Yat-sen died. He was replaced as Chairman of the
National Government by Wang Jingwei, a left-wing politician who
supported continued collaboration with the Communist Party. In
1926, Chiang exploited an incident in which it was alleged that the
Communist Party and Wang Jingwei had attempted to have him
kidnapped. Chiang used the opportunity to rid the Kuomintang of
communist members and Russian supporters, jailing many, and
forcing communists out of some senior party positions—the acting
head of the propaganda department, Mao Zedong, lost his job.
As supreme commander of the Kuomintang’s army, Chiang
launched the Northern Expeditionary Force to win northern and
northeastern China back from the warlords and, within a year, had
brought much of China under Nationalist control, defeating the less
well-trained warlord armies and finding popular support in the

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regions under the warlords’ control. At this point the Kuomintang
forces still contained both nationalist and communist troops. Chiang’s
left-wing opponent, Wang Jingwei, had led KMT forces to take
Wuhan, in eastern-central China; Wang, with support from the
Communist Party, now declared that Wuhan was the center of the
National Government. Zhou Enlai had organized a worker’s rebellion
and general strike in Shanghai, putting the communists in effective
control of the city. Chiang decided to move against the communists
and Wang. His forces attacked Shanghai and began a brutal
suppression of communists that soon spread through the provinces,
starting a civil war between the nationalists and the communists.
Chiang declared a national government at Nanjing, near China’s
east coast, further down the Yangtze River from Wang’s power-base
in Wuhan; two months later he was able to overthrow the rival
government. The Nationalist army went on to take Beijing from its
warlord ruler and, finally, the huge area of Manchuria in northeastern
China also pledged allegiance to Chiang’s Kuomintang.
China had been reunified—a remarkable achievement—and it had
a national government. Chiang married a younger sister of the widow
of the revered Sun Yat-sen and established himself as the rightful heir
to the founding principles of the Kuomintang party. For the next
decade, Chiang Kai Shek and the Nationalist Party began to move
towards the modern, progressive China envisaged by Sun Yat-sen. The
legal and financial systems were modernized, foreign concessions were
abolished, a program of road and railway construction improved
communications within the country, an early aviation service began.
There was progress in health care provision and in promoting
industrial and agricultural production, but the government was beset
by both internal and external problems. In 1930, Chiang fought a
civil war against remaining warlords in China’s central territories
that involved some 300,000 casualties, and nearly bankrupted the
Nationalist government.
In 1931 Japan invaded Manchuria. The Nationalists were forced to
sign a humiliating Accord acknowledging Japan’s presence on Chinese

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territory. Chiang resigned as Chairman of the National government,
but soon returned to power. His slogan became: “First internal
pacification, then external resistance.” He needed time to build up
China’s armed forces and its defences, and he wanted to defeat the
Communist Party in China before he faced Japan. Chiang faced
increasing levels of Japanese “incidents”—serious attacks on Chinese
territory that managed, nevertheless, to fall short of all-out war. In
1932, the Japanese bombed Shanghai on the pretext of defending their
“concession” against anti-Japanese protests (several foreign powers
owned territories or “concessions” in Shanghai, which were technically
foreign soil).
The war against the Communists continued. In 1934, the
Nationalists succeeded in encircling Communist forces in Jiangxi
province in southeastern China, having painstakingly built up a ring
of fortified blockades around Communist-held territory; parts of the
Communist army and its civilian and administrative support systems
broke out and began what was to become the epic Long March to a
safe haven in the central northern province of Shaanxi. In the course
of the Long March, Mao Zedong emerged as the leader of the
Communist Party.
Chiang expected the warlords to destroy the retreating Communist
army as they retreated through their territories; he can be forgiven for
believing that the Communist Party had been destroyed as a fighting
force. In fact, the survival of the Communist army—despite the fact
that only some 8,000 out of the 100,000 who originally broke out of
the encirclement in Jiangxi were to complete the march—enabled the
communists to regroup and to create a new political base. The fact
that an opposing army must be completely destroyed is a recurring
lesson from history. This is not to say that they must be killed to the
last man (this is a very rare occurrence—Hannibal’s slaughter of the
Roman army at Cannae being a notable exception), but that they must
cease to exist as an organized fighting unit. George Washington’s
greatest military achievement was to keep the American revolutionary
army (also numbered in tens of thousands) intact and viable. It went

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on to defeat the British Army. Napoleon was, unwisely, allowed to keep
some of his elite Imperial Guard in exile on the island of Elba. Despite
their tiny numbers, they formed the seed of a new army once he had
escaped from Elba and landed on the coast of Provence.
Chiang continued to work to build up an army that could hope to
defend the country against a full Japanese invasion. He hired a veteran
of the US Army Air Corps—an early advocate of air power—and
struck a deal with Germany for $100m of weapons in exchange for
supply of minerals. He also continued his attempts to destroy the
tenacious Communist Party. Many felt that Chiang was more obsessed
with the destruction of the Communists than he was with driving the
Japanese out of China. He argued that, “The Japanese are a disease of
the skin; communism is a disease of the heart.”
In late 1936, Chiang flew to the city of Xi’an, capital of the Shaanxi
Province where the Communist Party had made its new base. Zhang
Xueliang, the son of the previous warlord of the Manchurian region,
had joined forces with Chiang—an event that had helped to precipitate
the Japanese invasion of Manchuria: the Japanese had assassinated
Zhang’s father by blowing up the train that he was on, hoping that the
son would prove to be an amenable ally. Zhang’s decision to form an
alliance with the Kuomintang caused the Japanese to invade.
Chiang Kai Shek was now using Zhang to attack Communist
positions, but did little to support his efforts: Zhang had good reason to
fear that, as inheritor of his father’s warlord forces, Chiang Kai Shek
would not lose too much sleep if Zhang’s troops were weakened or
destroyed in the attack on the Communists. Zhang negotiated a
ceasefire with the Communists and may even have swapped
camps. Zhang himself says that he applied for membership of the
Chinese Communist Party but was refused ex-warlords not being
welcome, in general, as new members of the Communist Party. There
are suggestions that he did in fact become a CPC member but that
this was concealed from everyone except a select few, such as Zhou
Enlai. Zhang, in any case, was about to play a momentous part in
Chinese history.

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 Zhang and his colleagues tried to persuade Chiang to join forces
with the Communists in order to resist the Japanese invasion; when
he refused, Chiang was taken hostage. It was generally assumed that
Zhang had staged a coup; in fact he invited a communist delegation,
led by Zhou Enlai, to join them. The CPC pledged to support the war
effort against Japan under a Second United Front, in return for an end
to Chiang’s suppressions. Chiang would gain valuable military
support and manpower, he would emerge as the leader who had
unified the nation in a time of great crisis, and he wouldn’t be taken
out and shot. Chiang accepted.
Chiang did indeed return to Nanking as a national hero. He later took
his revenge on Zhang, who was court-martialled and spent most of the
rest of his life in custody. Zhang has been seen as a patriot who did what
he felt was in the best interests of the country by bringing Nationalists
and Communists together. If, on the other hand, it is discovered that
Zhang had indeed joined the CPC before the “Xi’an Incident,” as it is
generally known, then the event could be seen as a sophisticated CPC
plot to prevent Chiang’s continued suppression of the movement and
to allow the communists to regroup during the ensuing war. Whatever
the motivation of the various players involved, there can be no doubt
that the eventual winners were the Communist Party.
War between China and Japan was finally declared in 1937. To
defend Shanghai, 600,000 of Chiang’s best-trained troops were
mobilized: one third of them were killed—most of Chiang’s political
base, his Whampoa Military Academy graduates. Nevertheless, the
dogged Chinese resistance proved that Japan could not quickly
overrun the country. The Japanese had claimed that they would defeat
Shanghai in three days and China within three months; it took them
three months to subdue Shanghai. Chiang began to play a clever game
of trading space for time: fighting rearguard actions that eventually
ceded territory to the Japanese, but at the expense of drawing in
Japanese troops that were needed in the other Asian and Pacific
theatres of war. Most importantly, it allowed Chiang to show the
Western powers that the new Chinese government was deserving of

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foreign aid. When Japan invaded the United States of America by
bombing the American naval base of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, the war
between China and Japan was subsumed into World War II, and
China became one of the Allied powers. Chiang Kai Shek became
Supreme Commander of Allied forces in the China theater, which
included India and Southeast Asia.
During the war, Chiang’s Nationalist forces took the brunt of the
conventional set-piece battles, while the Communists fought guerrilla
actions in the countryside: the Japanese were only ever effectively able
to control cities and railroads. Though the Communists’ guerrilla
efforts were significant, their forces suffered far lower casualties than
the Nationalist front-line troops. The Communists also began a policy
of recruiting all-Chinese guerrilla forces to the CPC, regardless of their
political allegiance, sometimes by force. The Kuomintang lost perhaps
three million troops during the war, while the CPC, who started the
war with negligible forces, increased their forces to around 1.7 million.
On August 6th 1945, America dropped the first atomic bomb on the
Japanese city of Hiroshima; three days later, Russia invaded Japanese-
held Manchuria as part of its pledge to the Allies at the end of the war in
Europe, and destroyed the depleted Japanese army there. On the same
day as the Russian invasion of Manchuria, the second atomic bomb was
dropped on Nagasaki. On August 15th, Japan surrendered.
Toward the end of the war, Chiang’s Nationalist government had
lost much of its support. Inflation had turned into hyperinflation; a
wartime measure confiscating precious metals and foreign exchange,
in return for government scripts that became worthless within a year,
left many Chinese convinced that the Nationalist government was
inept at best and corrupt at worst. In the meantime, the Communists
had consolidated their political base in a countryside devastated by
the effects of war, exacerbated by the scorched earth measures that
had been used to frustrate Japanese advances into China’s heartland,
including the deliberate flooding of huge areas.
Full-scale civil war broke out again between the CPC and the
Nationalists. The Communists’ popular support was increasing; they

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received financial support from Russia and had been allowed to enter
Manchuria, after Russia’s victory against the Japanese, to acquire the
weapons left behind by the Japanese army. (The Soviets also
dismantled and removed huge amounts of industrial equipment from
Manchuria, further weakening the Nationalist government’s already-
devastated economy.)
In 1947 the Kuomintang declared a new constitution as part of the
move towards representational democracy; a new National Assembly
elected Chiang Kai Shek as President. But, in the meantime,
Communist forces were winning the Civil War.
Chiang finally left mainland China for the island of Taiwan and
carried on his duties as President of the Republic of China, continuing
to claim sovereignty over China as a whole. He was re-elected by the
National Assembly on four occasions, dying in office in 1975. Chiang
himself laid the blame for the defeat of the Nationalists more on
internal corruption and foreign intrigue than on the successes of the
Communists. In Taiwan, Chiang maintained a state of martial law on
the basis of the ongoing state of war between the KMT and the
People’s Republic of China. Many Chinese intellectuals and
businessmen had fled to Taiwan with the KMT; Chiang’s government,
though authoritarian, encouraged the economic developments that
would turn Taiwan into one of the Asian ‘tiger economies’.
Chiang’s career was plagued by circumstances that prevented him
from making the most of the opportunities that he had created—and
some of his disasters were of his own making. His Northern
Expedition against the warlords was a hugely significant campaign
that enabled the reestablishment of a national government. His failure
to destroy the Communist army before the Long March may or may
not have been a critical failure: a new Communist force may have been
able to re-emerge even after the total destruction of the army of Mao
Zedong, Zhou Enlai and others, since there were other Communist
forces at large. The kidnapping that forced him to fight alongside the
Communists in the war against Japan was a golden opportunity for
the Chinese Communist Party but not for Chiang. The Communists

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fought bravely in the countryside, winning hearts and minds, while
suffering relatively light losses. The Nationalist army bore the brunt of
the Japanese onslaught. Finally, while Chiang’s Nationalist Party was
in government during the war—in admittedly disastrous financial
conditions—Chiang nevertheless failed to deliver an impressive party
performance: the Nationalists became tainted with perceptions of
poor and even corrupt government. But the reunification of China
and the defence of China against the Japanese created the opportunity
for the re-emergence of China as potentially the greatest nation on
earth—a destiny that the People’s Republic of China seems about to
fulfil—while Taiwan, which did not wholeheartedly welcome or enjoy
the arrival of Chiang’s Republic of China on its doorstep, has emerged
as one of the world’s leading economies. Without Chiang Kai Shek,
none of these opportunities might have existed.

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 marco polo
(1254–1324)
In the middle of the thirteenth century, Europe was still reeling under
the terrifying attacks of the Mongol hordes that had appeared so
suddenly from the East. The Mongol cavalry crossed the mountains
and deserts that had always been the natural barriers between east and
West, destroying mighty cities in Central Asia previously thought to be
invulnerable to mere tribesmen. They smashed down city walls with
siege engines they had adopted following their conquest of northern
China, massacred the occupants, and devastated the surrounding
countryside, sweeping all before them. Led at first by the mighty
Genghis Khan and then by his descendants, the Mongols destroyed a
Persian dynasty that had ruled Greater Iran and much of Central Asia
for the previous century. Within seven years of their first emergence
from the east, the Mongols had reached the Caspian Sea. They invaded
Poland and Hungary, defeating the mighty Teutonic, Templar, and
Hospitaller knights of medieval Europe, and pushed into Syria, Iraq,
Palestine, and parts of Turkey. Baghdad—at that time the center of
the Islamic world—fell in 1258. Vienna was threatened. The
barbarians were at the gates.
Strangely, however, a perverse benefit was beginning to emerge from
the terror. The Mongols—at a huge cost in human life—had
established an empire that stretched from the Sea of Japan to the
Mediterranean and, despite their ferocity and destructiveness in war,
the effects of the Mongol peace were surprisingly positive. Historians
now talk of the Pax Mongolica, a thirteenth-century equivalent of the
Pax Romana. The Mongolian Empire, rather like the Roman Empire,
had joined previously warring or hostile nations together and imposed
central control by means of overpowering physical force; it was
suddenly possible to travel around the huge new empire in relative
safety. Trade routes became more active; goods and ideas were
exchanged at greatly accelerated rates. The ancient Silk Road between

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East and West (though it was only given this name in the nineteenth
century, and silk was only one of the many goods traded along the
route) became far safer to travel—though still arduous and dangerous.
Niccolò Polo and his brother Maffeo were established and
successful merchants from Venice. The great city had been a center
for international commerce for centuries; as a result, it had the most
advanced banking system in Western Europe, and operated relatively
sophisticated forms of commercial contracts, business loans, and even
insurance.92 For the Polo family, trade was second nature and the
whole world was an opportunity. At a time when the West was
terrified at the prospect of further Mongolian incursions into Europe
and the Middle East, the Polos calmly traveled into the heart of the
beast, doing business at every opportunity.
They were to meet Kublai Khan, to return to the west, and then to
return once more to the courts of the Mongolian Emperor, this time
with Niccolò’s son, Marco, who was to become the Great Kahn’s most
trusted ambassador. Marco Polo’s great skills as an observer and as a
writer proved that the most valuable commodities—the things that can
most transform and enhance human societies—are not goods, but ideas.


Niccolò and Maffeo left their native Venice in 1252 for Constantinople
(modern-day Istanbul). Constantinople had been sacked in 1204 by
the Christians of the Fourth Crusade. The Christian Church had
previously split between the Church in Rome and the Eastern or
“Greek” Church in Constantinople. The Crusaders aimed to make the
Eastern Church subservient to Rome. Venice had helped the Crusaders
in the sack of Constantinople, and benefited greatly from the plunder
of the city’s wealth: the four bronze horses that grace the roof of the
Basilica di San Marco on St Mark’s Square in Venice were looted from
Constantinople.
As Venetians, Niccolò and Maffeo would have received special status
and tax reliefs in the newly conquered, and now Roman Catholic, city.

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By 1259, the two merchants sensed that the political wind was
changing. They were right. In 1261 a descendant of the old Greek
emperors retook Constantinople and burned the Venetian quarter in
revenge. The two brothers moved on to the Crimea, in the Black Sea,
by then a part of the Mongolian Empire, but an area long-connected
with Venetian trade. They moved on further east to Sarai, on the lower
Volga, now the capital of the Golden Horde, which was ruled by a
grandson of Genghis Kahn. The Golden Horde was the Western
region of the Mongolian Empire, covering what we now know as
Eastern Europe. (The name derives from the Mongolian “Altan Orda”
or “Golden Camp,” gold being the imperial color; the Mongolian/
Turkish word “orda” providing the root for the Polish “horda” and the
English “horde”.)
Local Mongolian wars made it unsafe for the brothers to return to
the west; they traveled on to Bukhara, in modern-day Uzbekistan,
where they stayed for three years, happily doing business. They
became fluent in the Mongolian language and even in some dialects.
At this point they were invited to join an embassy to the Great Khan
(King of all the Khans): Kublai Khan. Their safety in the passage to the
Far East was ensured by the presence of the Mongolian ambassador,
but it was an astounding journey to undertake; a journey to the edge
of the world to meet the most hated man in Christendom. But, then
again—there was good business to be done.
The Polo brothers met the great Kublai Khan. Kublai was a clever
man. The Mongols were few, the Empire was vast: he needed outsiders
to help administer the Empire and he needed commerce and new
technologies to make it prosper. In particular, he wanted knowledge.
He asked the brothers about the rulers of the West, about their relative
importance, about their systems of justice. He was especially interested
in Christianity: the Mongolians were essentially shamanists—they
believed in one great deity, the Eternal Blue Sky, and a pantheon of
lesser gods who governed the affairs of mankind. They had no
problem with the worship of other gods or prophets and allowed
complete freedom of religious worship throughout the Mongolian

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Empire: some Mongolians were Nestorian Christians; others were
Buddhist or Islamic. Kublai engaged the brothers on a mission: they
were to return to Europe with a message for the pope, asking him to
send 100 Christian scholars to educate Kublai’s court in Christian
beliefs; if they were persuaded, Kublai and his court would convert to
Christianity (though almost certainly on a non-exclusive basis). It was
an intriguing offer from a leader that the pope considered to be the
devil incarnate. Kublai also wanted some oil from the lamp of the
Holy Sepulchre: the fame of the miraculous healing powers that the
oil was believed to possess had obviously spread. This, the Polo
brothers knew, they could deliver; like almost everything else in
Christendom, it was available—at a price.
The Polos returned to the Mediterranean, carrying a remarkable
symbol of the power of the Great Khan: a tablet or rod of gold, called
a paiza, which confirmed that the travellers were emissaries of the
Great Khan himself, and that other rulers throughout the Empire must
provide them with food, lodging, and horses, “on pain of their
disgrace” if they should fail to do so. They retraced their steps across
Central Asia, reaching the Mediterranean and setting sail for Acre,
capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, where they told their story to the
papal legate. Pope Clement IV had recently died and a new pope was
yet to be elected. There would be an exceptional delay of almost three
years before the election of a new pope—the longest papal election in
the history of the Roman Catholic Church. The legate expressed
wonder at the Great Khan’s request, and advised them to go home to
Venice while the election dragged on. They had been away from home
for 16 years; Niccolò found that his wife had died. He also found, to his
surprise, that she had left him a 15-year-old son, Marco.
As chance would have it, the papal legate who had shown interest
in their mission from the Great Khan was elected as Pope Gregory X.
The Polo brothers, with Marco, presented themselves to the new pope,
who greeted them warmly and welcomed the opportunity to spread
Christianity throughout China and perhaps throughout the whole
Mongolian Empire. He gave them the services, not of the requested

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100 wise men (the Great Khan obviously over-estimated the worldly
powers of the Pope) but of two learned friars, who were also given
extraordinary ecclesiastical powers to appoint bishops and priests on
behalf of the pope himself.
The Polos now equipped themselves for a major expedition. They
were no longer mere traders stumbling into the east, but ambassadors
both of the Great Khan (under whose protection they still traveled,
thanks to their golden paiza), and of the pope himself. Because of the
impossibility of carrying large amounts of currency, the family carried
precious stones and pearls, often sewn into the lining of their clothes
for safe-keeping. This was their big opportunity; they expected to
return as rich men.
The Polo entourage were only in Armenia, still at the very start of
their great journey, when the two friars refused to continue. There
was some local difficulty with a Sultan, whom the Polo’s almost
certainly bribed, but the preceding unpleasantness and the threat of
imprisonment was enough for the friars. The Polo family, undaunted
by the distinct lack of even two of the one hundred wise men they
had promised to bring to Kublai Khan, pressed on to Mosul on the
Tigris, and then to Tabriz, in northern Iran, an important pearl
market supplied from the Persian Gulf. They traveled through the
Persian mountains, where they were troubled by bandits. They fled to
Hormuz, on the Persian Gulf, thinking to take a ship to India, but were
so horrified by the apparent un-seaworthiness of the ships, made
without nails and tied together with coconut fiber, that they returned
to Kerman, an important trading depot surrounded by mountains,
on the edge of the Lut Desert. Here they took to the Silk Road, and
crossed the desert by camel into Afghanistan, to the city of Balkh
(ancient Bactria). They had been traveling for two years, and the worst
obstacles were yet to come.
They crossed the Pamir Mountains, the traditional border between
east and west. Radiating out from the Pamir are the mountain ranges
of the Hindu Kush to the northwest, the Celestial Mountains to the
northeast, and the Karakorum and the Himalayas to the southeast.

254
This is the roof of the world. After the mountains was the oasis town
of Khotan, on the edge of the dreaded Taklamakan desert. Travellers
could go round the northern or southern rims of the desert stopping
at the life-saving oasis towns. Trying to cross the desert was certain
death. At the easternmost tip of Taklamakan is the city of Lop, at the
edge of yet another desert, the Desert of Lop. At the end of this desert
was the marshy sea, Lop Nur (now dried up). The travelers emerged
into regions that owed allegiance to Kublai Khan, and traveled ever
eastward until they came to the Great Khan’s summer residence:
Shangdu—the fabled “Xanadu”.
Marco described the huge marble palace, its walls marvelously
gilded and painted, and the incredible ‘summer palace’—an elaborate
structure with bamboo pillars and a bamboo-tiled roof, that could be
dismantled in its entirety and moved from place to place (“In Xanadu
did Kublai Khan / a stately pleasure dome decree”93). After a great
feast, the summer palace was indeed dismantled and the court retired
to the winter palace of Khanbaliq (“the Khan’s city”) on the site of
modern-day Beijing. The family were at last presented to the Great
Khan and prostrated themselves on the floor before him. After a
presumably tense moment, the Khan raised them up and greeted
them warmly. The two brothers talked of their exploits and trials on
the journey with great eloquence and, quickly glossing over the
absence of the Christian scholars, they presented the papal documents
that they had been given and, of course, the healing oil from the Holy
Sepulchre, which was received with great excitement. (The oil had not
been so very difficult to obtain, as it was sold from a side window of
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for pilgrims to use in lighting lamps
around the Sepulchre)94. Finally, Niccolò presented his son, Marco,
saying that Marco was now the servant of the Great Khan. The Khan
was pleased.
Marco’s fluency in Mongolian—and, soon, in several other
languages and scripts—was a great asset. But as his relationship with
the all-powerful Khan developed into a real bond, he began to
demonstrate his true talent. Despatched as an emissary on important

255
imperial business, he returned and delivered, not just an account of
the business for which he had been despatched, but details of his
journey, and the people and many interesting things that he had seen
along the way. He brought back what the Khan wanted most of all:
knowledge of his empire. Marco became the Khan’s indispensable
diplomat and tax collector, but also his eyes and ears. The notes that
Marco took on his travels through Kublai’s empire formed the basis
for his Travels. The wonders that Marco saw were at first dismissed by
Europeans as inventions of his imagination. As the ideas and
technologies described by Marco began to reach the West in concrete
form, they helped to drive the European Renaissance and bring an
end to the Medieval period.
It was the city of Khanbaliq itself that first caught Marco’s attention
and his awe. Unlike the narrow, twisting streets of Europe’s medieval
cities, Khanbaliq was laid out on a grid structure, with broad, straight
avenues. A system of gates could isolate any section of the city in case
of trouble; guards patrolled at night. Inside the walls of the huge city
were lawns, gardens, orchards, meadows, and great lakes full of fish.
City roads were raised so that rainwater ran off them; there was a
sophisticated drainage system that collected rainwater for irrigation.
The great city was free of the mud and filth of European cities: clean,
healthy, secure, and more or less crime-free.
The countryside was dotted with staging posts, both on the main
roads to the provinces and on lesser highways, each stabling some
400 fresh horses; the Khan’s messengers would change to a fresh horse
every 25 miles as they brought news from the outlying provinces.
Foot-runners, covering stages of three miles each, delivered messages
over shorter distances and brought the couriers’ messages to their final
destination. The postal system had arrived.
Marco saw “stones that burn like logs”—coal had been used in China
for a thousand years, but was little-used in Europe; it heated the water
that allowed people to bathe, “at least three times a week, and in the
winter every day if they can do so.” Marco mentions printed books and
pamphlets, but the potential significance of printing with movable type

256
seems to have escaped him. He comments on the government practice
of buying forward stocks of corn and releasing them at low prices in
times of famine, and of donations of corn and bread to destitute
families. He was especially astounded by the paper currency. The
Chinese had used a form of paper currency for some 400 years, but
Kublai replaced all currency with Mongol notes and confiscated all
forms of coinage. The Mongol currency was backed by reserves of silk
and silver; it worked. Marco could hardly believe it—though he was
very impressed by how light it was to carry. He noted that the Khan
“made so great a quantity of them (banknotes) that he could pay for all
the treasure in the world, though it costs him nothing.”95 Well, not quite.
Overprinting of money soon led to inflation, and by 1272 a new
currency had to be issued at a ratio of five to one. By 1309—some 50
years after Kublai introduced the Mongolian paper currency in
1260—the currency had depreciated by 1000 percent.96
The Polo family were to spend 17 years with Kublai in China; Marco
was finally released from his service. The Polos sailed from southern
China via Sri Lanka and southern India to Hormuz on the Persian
Gulf—but in far better ships than the local ships that they had dared
not charter from Hormuz itself nearly 20 years before. The Polos
arrived back in Venice in 1295, and had to make an ostentatious
display of their wealth to prove to the cynical Venetians that there was
substance to their exotic tales. The Polos had by now become
accustomed to their Mongolian clothes; the wife of Maffeo disliked
them so much that she gave her husband’s clothes to a beggar.
Unfortunately, Maffeo had sewn the jewels that represented most of
the accumulated wealth of 20 years of traveling and trading into the
lining of his clothes. He took to sitting in St Mark’s Square, working
a spinning wheel without any wool. Venice being a small place, even
the beggar eventually came to see the madman in St Mark’s Square,
and Maffeo retrieved his coat and his jewels.97
The older Marco Polo was to dictate the story of his travels when in
prison in Genoa after his capture during a war between the city-states
of Venice and Genoa. His amanuensis was a writer from Pisa, who

257
had himself been captured in another little war between Genoa and
his own home town. The book became known as The Travels of Marco
Polo. It became an instant international best seller, translated into
many languages, some 200 years before the printing press was to make
an appearance in Europe—every copy was transcribed by hand.
Christopher Columbus made copious notes in his copy as he set off
hoping to find a westward passage to this land of riches.
Unfortunately, Marco’s writings led him to believe that this land could
not be far from the Caribbean, since nobody knew that a continent
called America and an ocean called the Pacific lay between Portugal
and China, traveling westward.
The Travels began, literally, to open up a new world. The
exploration of this world would be driven by trade—as much for
Columbus (dreaming of Marco’s descriptions of great plantations of
pepper, cinnamon, and cloves) as it was for the Polo family.

258
 NOTES
1
Nigel Hamilton, Monty: The Making of a General (1981), p627.
2
Ibid. pp622–625.
3
Ibid. pp628–629.
4
Ibid. p655.
5
Ibid. p668.
6
<http://www.anc.org/ancdocs/history/mandela/1960s/ rivonia.html>.
7
Anthony Sampson, Mandela (1999) p72.
8
<http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/mandela/1960s/rivonia.html>.
9
Sampson, pp521–523.
10
Winston Churchill, first speech as Prime Minister, House of Commons, 13 May 1940.
11
Winston Churchill, speech in House of Commons, 18 June 1940.
12
Abraham Lincoln, address at Baltimore, 18 April 1864.
13
Abraham Lincoln, speech at Peoria, 16 October 1854.
14
Abraham Lincoln, second inaugural address, 4 March 1865.
15
‘Thucydides, Pericles Funeral Oration’ <http://www.fordham.edu/
halsall/ancient/pericles-funeralspeech.html>.
16
Stephen J. Lee, Aspects of British Political History 1914–1995 (1996) p91.
17
Winston Churchill, Great Contemporaries (1937) p225.
18
Winston Churchill, House of Commons, 13 May 1940.
19
Winston Churchill, House of Commons, 18 June 1940.
20
Claude Manceron, Austerlitz (1966) pp76–78.
21
David G. Chandler, The Campaigns of Napoleon (1966) ppxxxv–xxxvi.
22
Ibid. p386.
23
Ibid. p410.
24
Ibid. p412.
25
Ibid. p422.
26
T.J.S. George, Lee Kwan Yew’s Singapore (1973) p22.
27
Ibid. p50.
28
‘List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita’, Wikipedia,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ GDP_(nominal)_per_capita>.
29
<http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html>.
30
Andrew Lambert, Nelson: Brittania’s God of War (2004) pxxx.
31
Robert Southey, The Life of Nelson (2005) p127.

259
32
Terry Coleman, Nelson: The Man and the Legend (2001) p259.
33
Patrick Kinross, Ataturk: The Rebirth of a Nation (2003) p189.
34
Ibid. p78.
35
Ibid. p93.
36
Ibid. p154.
37
Ibid. p175.
38
Ibid. p204.
39
Ibid. p278.
40
Mike Marqusee, Redemption Song: Muhammad Ali and the Spirit of the Sixties (2005) p44.
41
Ibid. p20.
42
Ibid. p43.
43
Ibid. p44.
44
Ibid. p8.
45
Ibid. pp82–83.
46
E.L. Woodward, War and Peace in Europe 1815–1870 (1960) p274.
47
Ibid. p199.
48
Claude Manceron, Austerlitz (1966) p92.
49
Duff Cooper, Talleyrand (1932) p352.
50
‘Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord’, Wikipedia,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talleyrand>.
51
‘The Papers of George Washington’, <http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/
documents/revolution/letters/bfairfax2.html>.
52
Joseph J. Ellis, His Excellency George Washington (2005) p100.
53
Ibid. p143.
54
Antonia Fraser, Cromwell, Our Chief of Men (1977) p24.
55
Ibid. pp97–98.
56
Ibid. p158.
57
Ibid. p142.
58
Ibid. p268.
59
Ibid. pp419–420.
60
‘The Famous Patton Speech’,
<http://www.pattonhq.com/speech.html>.
61
Ibid.
62
Carlo D’Este, A Genius for War: a Life of General George S. Patton (1995) p464.
63
‘Patton in North Africa’,
<http://worldwar2history.info/north Africa/Patton.html>.
64
Ibid. p634.

260
65
Ibid. p573.
66
Ibid. p602.
67
Ibid. p635.
68
Ibid. p660.
69
Ibid. p680.
70
Ibid. p689.
71
Ibid. p712.
72
Ibid. p639.
73
Han Suyin, Eldest Son (1993) p214.
74
Ibid. pp250–251.
75
‘Mao Zedong’, Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao>.
76
Suyin, p268.
77
‘Famine’, Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine>.
78
Suyin, p313.
79
Ibid. p323.
80
Ibid. p344.
81
Theodore A Dodge, The Great Captains (2002) pp39–40.
82
Geoffrey Hindley, Saladin (1976) p4.
83
Ibid. pp6–9.
84
Deborah Brunton, ed., Health, Disease and Society in Europe 1800–1930 (2004) pp124–125.
85
Ibid. p126.
86
Ibid. p117.
87
Ibid. p351.
88
Jo Manton, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1995) p114.
89
Jack Weatherford, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (2004) pxxii.
90
Ibid. p93.
91
Ibid. pp6–9.
92
Laurence Bergreen, Marco Polo: from Venice to Xanadu (2007) pp15–16.
93
Coleridge’s poem ‘Kubla Khan’ was inspired by Marco Polo’s Travels.
94
Bergreen, p39.
95
Ibid. p128.
96
‘Paper Money’, <http://www.silk-road.com/artl/papermoney.shtml>.
97
Bergreen, p318.

261
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AND FURTHER READING

Bergreen, Laurence, Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu (London, 2008)

http
Bowra, C.M., Periclean Athens (London, 1971)
Branch, Taylor, Parting the Waters: Martin Luther King and the Civil
Rights Movement (London, 1988)
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Chandler, David G., The Campaigns of Napoleon (New York, 1966)
/ww
Coleman, Terry, Nelson: The Man and the Legend (London, 2001)
D’Este, Carlo, Genius for War: A Life of General George S. Patton (London, 1995)
Dodge, Theodore A., The Great Captains (Stevenage, 2002) [Hannibal Barca]
Ellis, Joseph J., His Excellency George Washington (London, 2005)
w.n
Fenby, Jonathan, Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek and the China He Lost (London, 2005)
Fraser, Antonia, Cromwell, Our Chief of Men (London, 1977)
George, T.J.S., Lee Kwan Yew’s Singapore (London, 1973)
d-w
Hamilton, Nigel, Monty: The Making of a General (London, 1981)
Harris, Robin, Talleyrand, Betrayer and Saviour of France (London, 2008)
Harris, Tim, Revolution: The Crisis of the British Monarchy 1685–1720 (London, 2006)
arez
[John Churchill]
Hindley, Geoffrey, Saladin (London, 1976)
Keegan, John, Churchill (London, 2003)
Kinross, Patrick, Atatürk: The Rebirth of a Nation (London, 1995) [Mustafa Kemal]
.info
Lambert, Andrew D., Nelson: Britannia’s God of War (London, 2004)
Lawday, David, Napoleon’s Master: A Life of Prince Talleyrand (London, 2006)
McPherson, James M., Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution (New York, 1992)
Manceron, Claude, Austerlitz (London, 1966) [Napoleon Bonaparte]
/

Manton, Jo, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (London, 1965)

Marqusee, Mike, Redemption Song: Muhammad Ali and the Spirit of the Sixties (London, 2005)
Oates, Stephen B., With Malice Toward None (London, 1978) [Abraham Lincoln]
Sampson, Anthony, Mandela (London, 1999)
Suyin, Han, Zhou Enlai and the Making of Modern China 1898-1976 (London, 1993)
Weatherford, Jack, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (New York, 2004)
Weir, Alison, Elizabeth the Queen (London, 1998)

262