Dan Snow's History Hit - Why the Statues Are Coming Down

Episode Date: July 16, 2021

Recent years have seen a spate of statue removals from the toppling of Confederate statues in the United States, the tearing down of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol and recently the removal of statues of Queen Victoria in Canada. Some have been taken down in an orderly manner and others torn down or defaced by activists. For some, the removal of statues is a powerful symbol of the desire for social justice and for remembering the wrongs of the past. For others, the removal of monuments is an attempt to erase history. It is certainly a subject that evokes very strong feelings.The historian Alex von Tunzelmann is today's guest on the podcast. She is the perfect person to help unpick this emotive topic having just written a book on the subject called Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues That Made History. Dan and Alex discuss how and why statues are erected in the first place; how this is far from a new phenomenon; how, perhaps, we should deal with controversial statues and whether statues have had their day?

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. The statues are still coming down.

There was a spate of it last year, and then we've seen some Queen Victorias get removed in Canada very recently. To be honest, the timing is suspicious, because the very brilliant historian Alex von Tunzelman has just written a book on statutes, why they go up, why they come down. And these recent statute demolitions feel like they are timed suspiciously well for someone who's releasing a book at the moment. So I want to get Alex on this podcast, talk about the issue, this important stuff, and to work out how we as a society navigate our way through these next few years when it's gonna be a lot of pressure to put it up take

them down all sorts of things now i'm obviously pretty cautious about just removing things you happen not to like them i think there should be a process for it however i would turn out tomorrow i would join the mob tomorrow to rip down the statue of george the fourth in trafalgar square there's no business being there. He's useless. Anyway, that's just a little personal bugbear I have. Poor old George IV. Alex von Tansman, very brilliant. Brilliant podcast lots. Brilliant historian. Enjoy what he has to say. If you want to watch history documentaries as well as listen to podcasts, you can do so at historyhits.tv. We have got some very, very brilliant documentaries on there. More going up all the time. We've got

a big new release this week. Great fun. Ray Mears joins the History Hit TV channel. It's great fun. It's a great pleasure, a great privilege to have him on. He brings a lot of knowledge, a lot of survival knowledge to that channel. So it's great to have him there. Head over to historyhit.tv. A month for free if you sign up today. History.tv. Check it out. Watch the Ray Mears premiere tomorrow. In the meantime, everyone, here is Alex von Tunzelman talking about statues. Enjoy. Alex, great to have you back on the podcast.

Thank you for having me. Great to be here. You've been on so many times, but I never thought your dexterity, your extreme opportunism of writing a book about pulling down statues at the moment is very impressive. What's it mean? Why are we pulling down all these statues? Well, that's a big old question. Is there one universal impulse, or is it quite particular in all these different places? I mean, it does vary, but there are kind of universals in it. Generally speaking, when you get these big waves of iconoclasm, so iconoclasm

literally does kind of mean pulling down statues. Ancient Greece, the word icon meant a figurative statue or portrait of a person that you put up. And iconoclasm was, of course, breaking that statue or image. So 2020, we saw this massive global wave of iconoclasm. And that was unusual. I mean, it does go in waves, but it hadn't really been global before in that way. It'd usually been, you'd seen the sort of fall of the Soviet Union or the French Revolution, and these waves of iconoclasm pretty localised. But what it tends to be, there are a few common factors, is that when it happens, it's usually in response to a regime or a movement that has put a lot of statues up. Now, that sounds obvious to say,

but actually, it's sort of worth considering. So for instance, the Soviet Union put up, as you know, thousands and thousands of statues. And that's why they were an image that people felt represented that regime. And I think why they then got attacked. They tend to be less contentious when they're not being put up to make a point that people then want to argue against. So I think that's sort of worth bearing in mind, this doesn't come out of nowhere. Obviously, at various points in history, there are religious impulses for iconoclasm in the English Reformation or Puritanism. More recently, Taliban and ISIS have been kind of religious movements against statues.

But in the kind of secular world, it tends to be challenging a political system or idea that people feel has held too much sway and too much power. But you point out, it's actually very normal to smash up statues or commemoration of events that are no longer in favour. So the Romans did it all the time. The Americans during the American Revolution pulled down the big statue of George III in New York City. There was a statue in Grosvenor Square that was destroyed, as you point out. There's nothing particularly new about this impulse to pull down people whose views or achievements are no longer considered praiseworthy? No, I mean, actually, the history of pulling down statues is very, very nearly as old as the history of putting them up, obviously, putting them up

slightly older. But yeah, I mean, even in ancient Egypt, it was extremely common for pharaohs to pull down the statues of their predecessors. That was about creating their own legitimacy and possibly delegitimising other possible heirs to the throne. And yes, it's certainly something that has always happened and so has not just pulling them down, of course, but also altering statues or graffitiing them and all of this. This is all very, very old. I suppose the thing is, if you put up an object,

I mean, we understand the phrase to put on a pedestal. If you put something on a pedestal, somebody is going to challenge it. That is human nature to some extent. And as you say, I've crawled around ancient Egyptian sites looking for evidence of Tutankhamen because him and his father were erased. They were destroyed, but they were subject to iconoclasm by subsequent pharaohs. But I guess what's interesting at the moment, because everything's been globalized, we're seeing there was a kind of global impulse at present. And we've seen it most recently in Canada, but it spread across the world last year. And it's all focused at the moment on the history of the European trade in enslaved human beings and in colonialism.

Yeah. I mean, I think the crucial thing about the kind of big wave of iconoclasm in 2020, and as you say, still going on now, actually. I mean, we've just seen these pullings down of statues in Canada and also Latin America, a lot of Columbus statues have hit the dust recently as well. And so very much the subjects that have been current are imperialism, slavery, and in the US, the kind of Confederacy still is a huge bone of contention. So these are kind of quite linked ideas. And I think, in a sense, the way to understand that and why this is all happening now is to look at when all those statues were put up. And basically, I trace it back to a Victorian phenomenon called statue mania. So in the 19th century, not just the English Victorians, but sort of across the world, 19th century nations really went through this kind of mania for putting statues up. And they

increased in tremendous amounts. I mean, if you look in sort of London, Paris, Berlin in 1850, there were really small numbers of statues in each of those cities, sort of maybe a dozen or so. And by World War I, all of them had hundreds, really, really increased over that period. And I think that's quite linked to Thomas Carlyle's great man theory of history, the idea that history is all created by these great individuals who kind of perform these tasks. And that's why statues come up, you know, they represent this individual view of history. And they sort of spread everywhere. And they're very much all the ones that go up in that period are very much linked to imperialism, colonialism, and of course, in the US, the Confederacy, particularly. So I think the fact that we're

seeing a reckoning with those now, as I say, usually when loads of statues are pulled down, it's because a previous regime has put lots of them up. Well, once again, this pattern is what we're seeing, and that's coming up now for its kind of reckoning, I suppose. And I guess that's the point, really, which is, does it make people feel that there is a new regime? The reason this statue pulling is generating strong feelings on both sides is people who feel there hasn't been a radical discontinuity, they're perfectly happy living in the British state that is descended in a regular way from the British state that once conquered a quarter of the surface of the planet.

By pulling statues down, is it almost saying, ah, this is a moment of discontinuity, this is a moment of repudiating the past, which makes a lot of people feel kind of uncomfortable. They're not ready to do that yet. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you see that certainly there are big differences, big kind of culture war divide really between the sides on this one. And I think that is a case of, certainly looking at the UK, looking at this environment, and a very contentious one last year was the pulling down of Edward Colston's statue in Bristol. That was actually the only statue in Britain last year that was pulled down by, as it were, a mob or a group of protesters. There were quite a few others pulled down, but they were all pulled down by authorities, by due process, if you like, rather than by a crowd of

people. And the Colston statue has actually been contentious for 100 years. I mean, it's really long history of dispute about it. And in some ways, it's been contentious since it went up, which actually was only 1895. It was 170 something years after Colston himself died. And really, I think the sort of difficulty with that is you've got so many layers of history going on there. There's a lot of people who, of course, have therefore lived with that statue their entire life, don't see any problem with it, and don't especially want to suddenly hear that this man whose name is all over Bristol as a great philanthropist is actually a slaveholder. They're quite resistant to that idea because they feel like that's rewriting history. That's a

new version of history that they haven't heard. But then, of course, in a sense, when that statue went up in 1895, it was actually a very deliberate attempt to rewrite history. Because by 1895, the British Empire was very anti-slavery, as you know, you know, the Royal Navy had been sent around the world actually to try and attack the slave trade and so on. So actually, when they put the statue up, they had to really pretend that Edward Colston hadn't been involved in the slave trade at all, because by 1895, that would have been terribly politically incorrect. So there was no mention of slavery when that statue was put up. In fact, all that was said at the unveiling ceremony was the mayor of Bristol made one tiny reference to his trade being somewhat with the West Indies. That was the only reference. There was no reference to it at all. only reference, there's no reference to it at all. Colston was a figure who was absolutely central to the slave trade. He was deputy governor of the Royal African Company, which was the British royal company that had a monopoly on the slave trade and deputy governor, I mean, governor was the king. So deputy governor was basically CEO of that company. He was absolutely instrumental.

So in a sense, the statue actually rather deliberately erased that history. And then a later generation, as I say, starting in the 1920s, began to rediscover that and challenge it. And it really took another hundred years from then, of course, for it to be pulled down. So there are quite long, slow movements of history here. You know, and all of us can be guilty of this. What you learn when you grow up, you sort of assume is true. And challenges to that sometimes can be quite hard to accept. It's so interesting, like you erase history by putting up a statue. And I always think that statue of George IV in Trafalgar Square,

when he looks like a kind of svelte, fairly athletic, kind of rather impressive monarch. I mean, that's a grotesque distortion of history because George IV was a morbidly obese, opium-riddled, you know, whatever. And I think there's something so extraordinary about creating a statue in the first place you're making a giant statement you're almost well you're casting something in steel or on concrete you're making a very conscious attempt to try and put a full stop on the history that you're going this is the answer they are now hewn out of granite and like

nelson in trafalgar square there is no further debate that needs to take place we have hewn them from granite and place them meters above the center of this city. It's as ahistorical as tearing them down in some ways, isn't it? From a historian's point of view, all of us would think it was really a lot more complicated than somebody being a hero or villain. But of course, statues do reduce it to that. I mean, Simon Sharma's written about this, you know, his line is, history is debate and statues brook none. You can't debate with this big lump of stone. I mean, it is literally an attempt to set history in stone. And of course, we know that history isn't like that. It's actually a sort of evolving, changing, complicated debate. There's a kind of reductionist thing about this, which is quite ahistorical from

any side. And of course, you know, as you say, like, it's a very, very strong statement about history. And that's why I think statues have been very, very popular in the 20th century with a lot of dictators of all different stripes is that Stalin, for instance, putting up gigantic bronzes of himself is also quite a deliberate attempt to intimidate a population. It really is literally as Orwell put it, sort of big brother is watching you put himself in the city. So he's constantly got his eyes on you. So, you know, the motives for putting them up can be very varied and quite interesting themselves. It's so interesting. Again, those statues came tumbling down, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the IRA blew up the Nelson's Column in Dublin. It's kind of unsurprising that

statues come and go. And yet, I've had people come up to me on the streets a lot recently and say they're very unhappy about these statues going. What you think is going on there what's it mean why is it generating such powerful emotions well I think there are kind of a number of reasons for that first of all I do think actually that when you see a statue getting smashed up it's quite a difficult image because again this might seem obvious but it's quite an important point statues look like people so while pulling down a statue it could be described as a non-violent protest in that no person is harmed, it does look like one, which of course does have an emotional impact of some sort on people. They do connect to it. People often feel very different when some obelisk is knocked over. That doesn't have the same punch, really.

So I think there is a sort of emotional connection. But also, I do think this is tapping into kind of wider discussions at the moment about how we approach our history, who gets to decide what is remembered and what is forgotten, who gets to decide whose stories are told and whose stories aren't told, and how they're told, and all of these questions, which actually are very contentious and do link with national identity or community identity or things that are quite fundamental and rather beyond actually the scope of history. They're questions about now, not really about then. It does lean into some quite big fundamental discussions about who we are, but it is fascinating to me, and this is absolutely why I was interested in it, is why statues have so much come to

symbolise that more than other forms of art or culture. If you listen to Downsdale's history, I've got Alex von Tunzelmann talking about statues. More after this. This is history's heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you.

Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Who's putting up statues? We had the Mary Wollstonecraft statue in the UK recently. Is there a roaring trade in putting up statues? Yeah, well, it does seem to still be quite popular. I mean, as you say, Mary Wollstonecraft went up and obviously there was a lot of debate about that statue. A lot of people really didn't like that from a lot of different perspectives it was quite a controversial piece of art although I didn't personally especially care for it as a piece of art I was quite impressed that they were trying that statue committee to think laterally

they were trying to have something that wasn't literally just a sort of effigy of a person they were trying to do something a bit more artistic and creative. It's by the artist Maggie Hambling, who is a very distinguished artist, but she is Marmite. I mean, people love her or hate her. And a lot of people didn't like the final result. And fair enough, you're allowed to have an opinion on art. We've also, of course, seen Princess Diana's statue has just gone up, Margaret Thatcher's statue, which has already had to be defended. They do definitely still go up. I mean, something that I am i am keen on actually is that i feel a little bit like every time they put another one up i think oh my goodness is this the only thing you can think of to do because i think statues inherently really do relate in the modern world in the way we see them now to this victorian great men idea

of history i think in a way they're quite a sort of old-fashioned form, these very straightforward figurative representations of figures. We had Nancy Astor, the first British female MP to take her seat, and that was very controversial as well. It was very controversial as well. I mean, I do think memorialisation is important. I think we do need to try and remember and understand our history, and it's important to bring communities and identities together and so on. But there are lots and lots of ways you can do it

that aren't just propping up some effigy of a person. There's lots of other forms of memorials that are more creative. There's also, of course, museum exhibitions and festivals and events and all sorts of ways that you can memorialise and commemorate history, not just a model of a person. Coming back to the American statues, the Confederate statues are slightly different, aren't they? I was so surprised to learn during the recent space of tearing down they weren't erected during civil war years or perhaps just

after when the actual memory of robert e lee or nathan bedford forest was real they were actually largely put up in response to the civil rights struggles in the 1920s, 1960s, generations later. And that really is a profound political statement. It is. And I think that's a really important thing to understand about them. You know, we talked about how Edward Colston's statue was put up long after his death in a very different context. Well, a similar sort of effect happened with Confederate statues. The actual Civil War, mid-19th century, very few statues went up after that. A few did. I look at the big Robert E. Lee statue in New Orleans that went up quite soon after his death. But the vast majority of Confederate statues went up between

1900 and 1920. That was really the big boom period for Confederate statues. So of course, by that point, those who did still remember the Civil War were getting on in years by that point. Of course, a lot of them had passed away. So it was really more the next generation. And it was very, very linked to Jim Crow laws and the re-imposition of segregation across the South. And that's really explicit, actually, if you look at them and look at the history of putting them up. I mean, for instance, in New Orleans, one monument that went up was the Battle of Liberty Place, which was to commemorate a white insurgency against the government in New Orleans. And in the early 20th century, they decided this

wasn't explicit enough. So the city actually carved on it that the Battle of Liberty Place had saved our state for white supremacy. I mean, their words, this isn't some woke interpretation, they deliberately used the words white supremacy as exactly what they were intending to establish and put that plaque on that monument to emphasise it. So you can see very clearly in the context what these monuments were supposed to do. They were supposed to create community among white people and they were supposed to intimidate black people. And that was clearly understood by the fact that later you saw a lot of them become rallying points for the Ku Klux Klan and for such groups as that. At the end of writing this book what do you think the future of statues, do you think they're all just eventually going to come down or do you think we're just going to go through this like our ancestors we'll just put

them up and people turn them down we'll put up new ones and turn them down again? Yeah I mean I'm quite relaxed about that now having looked at this history a lot I think a lot of people have and I understand it I'm listening to it there's, having looked at this history a lot. I think a lot of people have, and I understand it, I'm listening to it, there's a lot of anxiety about pulling statues down, losing heritage, losing all of this. But now that I've really looked into so many cases, I'm pretty relaxed about going up and coming down because it really does happen all the time. And also some of them, of course, go up, come down and go up again, and sometimes come down again, go up again.

Some of them really do sort of bounce up and down almost repeatedly over the course of many, many years. There's one case in the book, of course, King Leopold II of the Belgians, a highly contentious historical figure in his own time. His successors put up a statue of him in what is now Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to try and reclaim his memory. Now, that was taken down after Congolese independence in the 1960s, but in 2005, they put it back up again, because the culture minister in Congo decided that he thought statues were part of Congo's heritage and should go back up. So he put it back up again. And actually only the same day, just a couple of hours later, it was taken down again, because it turned out nobody agreed with him. But the point was, and actually, then it went up again in the grounds of

the National Museum in Kinshasa. So these things do go up and come down quite frequently. So I'm quite relaxed about this because I think people don't need to worry too much. It's quite common for them to go up and come down, go up, come down. And every generation will change its mind. I think what is important and what's interesting is actually to have a debate about it and to open up these stories historically. I think very few people in this country, outside Bristol at least, would be talking about Edward Colston or even know who Edward Colston was if it wasn't for his statue being pulled down last year. And that doesn't mean we always need to pull down a statue to have a discussion about history. But when it happens, it's a great opportunity for historians to say, okay, well, let's look,

who was this guy? What did he do? Let's try and understand him in his context. What happened? And I think that's great if it brings people into a discussion. They're going to keep going up and coming down. And I don't think we can bind our successors. I think ultimately every generation will make a different choice. And if this generation takes down some statues, it's quite possible the next one will put them back up again. And that's up to them. I guess the argument is about direct action, which unsettles people. You have to quote, unquote, the mob. So actually, should there just be a committee that I certainly don't want to be part of, but should there be just a streamlined mechanism for going, right, come on then.

If anyone's got a problem, let's just duke it out. Let's talk about it. Take them down, put take them down put them back put them in storage like the indians famously lots of those are technically mothballed some of those statues didn't smash them up or melt them down throw them away they're all sitting in a sort of park outside delhi do we just need a kind of mechanism to take some of the scary violence effectively out of it i think it would be best if we did, in all honesty, yes. What I would say, because I mean, this is sort of something the British government has said, is that it's got

to go through committees and all of this now. I think that's fair enough. But I think that process then has to work and function and be responsive to people. It can't just be another way of delaying any kind of decision indefinitely. Because this was indeed one of the problems in Bristol. As I say, this statue has been contentious for decades and decades and decades. And there have been serious attempts to discuss it and do something about it really since the 1980s, 1990s. You know, there were lots of peaceful protests against it for many years. There were actually some rather wonderful artistic interventions. There was one very clever one called yarn bombing, where somebody knitted a ball and chain bright red wool and put them around his feet called yarn bombing, where somebody knitted a

ball and chain bright red wool and put them around his feet, you know, so that's quite a clever way of altering a statue without damaging it. There were lots and lots of these sort of protests against it. And there were long campaign to put a plaque on it to contextualise it, nobody could agree on the wording. So I think there were loads of opportunities in Bristol to do something about that statue before it got to the stage it got where people pulled it down and ideally I think that is how you should probably be doing it is with a community discussion and so on that's not to say that's easy because yes people have very very different opinions but ultimately if you can't address it what we see historically is that ultimately it will create great bad feeling and it will get to the stage where people just pull the thing down themselves.

But there are plenty of examples of when a system works that doesn't happen. I mean, Cape Town University in South Africa, when the roads must fall movement began there, the university actually responded very, very fast. They had a consultation. They put it through the governing body. And within a month, that statue was removed in an orderly fashion. So this can be done, but the process has to function. Near me, there was a rumour on Facebook that they were coming. The mob, Antifa, someone was coming for the Baden-Powell statue in Bourne, I think it was, or Poole. And people stood and defended it.

So trying to understand the other side, what do you think that means to them? Why are they out there? There's a very obvious climate crisis about to engulf us at the moment. Bournemouth is a seaside town in which the sea is being slowly boiled and acidified. We are in a huge discussion around government overreach and civil rights and vaccination and COVID. Why was it the statue that brought these people out, this big group of people to stand there, locking arms, ready for the fight that never came? Look, Dan, if we went around the world working out why people were more interested in trivial things than serious things for a very long time, I mean, unfortunately, this is just often the case, isn't it? You know, on the other hand, I suppose what those people would probably

say, and I can't speak for them, I'm sure they're perfectly capable of speaking for themselves, but obviously they did worry that there was a genuine attack coming on something that they valued and their values and the history and heritage of their town. And I don't want to totally dismiss those anxieties. I think people do have them and actually you do see them everywhere in the world. I mean, quite recently, actually, a Lenin statue was blown up in St. Petersburg. And the local mayor of St. Petersburg was saying, this is part of our history, whatever you think of Lenin, you shouldn't just blow up statues. Exactly the same discussion was being had there. So this does exist all over the world that people do have anxieties about this. And I don't blame people for having opinions on it. I think

it's perfectly reasonable to and that's why really, I think, in a sense, it's trying to move the discussion away from just this sort of culture war, polarised discussion, and to perhaps a bit more of a broad, open discussion about how we memorialise history, how we deal with history that's problematic. I mean, you did mention,

and I think this is a fantastic solution where possible, Coronation Park in Delhi. This is a park where they've put lots of old British colonial statues that they really couldn't figure out what else to do with. I mean, these things are generally far too massive to go in any museum. I mean, they're absolutely enormous. You've got to really put them outside. And they're all crumbling and it's terribly sort of romantic and evocative, really.

But then equally, if you go to Budapest, they've also got an incredible statue park, lots of communist statues and that's very beautifully tended very neat everything is architecturally designed and really well laid out and thought about and I think in a sense both of those sculpture parks or statue graveyards that's something's called tell us quite amazing stories about history they're both very evocative actually for how a country views its history and how they think about it and also a fantastic day out for the family quite honestly you know you can go there and have a look they're really interesting so in a sense I think in Britain and the US we could be thinking about

doing this I've got to say I think the vast majority of statues people walk past every day and totally ignore some of them would probably get looked at an awful lot more if they were relocated in a sculpture garden where people went there to look at them and think about them in their context. God, that's such a good point. I haven't thought about that. Thank you so much, Alex von Tunzelman, you hero, for coming back on the podcast.

What's the book called? It's called Fallen Idols, 12 Statues That Made History, and it is out now. Thank you, Dan. Go and get it, everybody. Thank you. I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders.

All this tradition of ours, hand of history upon our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. Thanks, folks. You've been doing the right episode. Congratulations. Well done, you. I hope you're not fast asleep.

If you did fancy supporting everything we do at History Hit, we'd love it if you would go and wherever you get these pods, give a little rating, five stars or its equivalent. A review would be great. Thank you very much indeed. That really does make a huge difference. It's one of the funny things the algorithm loves to take into account. So please, however they do that, it can seem like a small thing, but actually it's kind of a big deal for us. So I really appreciate it. See you next time. See you next time. say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes.

Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.