In Our Time - The Statue of Liberty

Episode Date: February 14, 2008

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Statue of Liberty."Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”. With these words, inscribed inside her pedestal, the Statue of Liberty has welcomed immigrants to America since 1903. But the Statue of Liberty is herself an immigrant, born in Paris she was shipped across the Atlantic in 214 separate crates, a present to the Americans from the French. She is a token of friendship forged in the fire of twin revolutions, finessed by thinkers like Alexis de Tocqueville and expressed in the shared language of liberty. But why was this colossal statue built, who built it and what did liberty mean to the Frenchmen who created her and the Americans who received her?With Robert Gildea, Professor of Modern History at Oxford University; Kathleen Burk, Professor of Modern Contemporary History at University College London; John Keane, Professor of Politics at the University of Westminster

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello. Quote, give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, unquote.

With these words inscribed inside the pedestal, the Statue of Liberty has welcomed immigrants to America since 1903. But the statue itself is older than that, and with another meaning, and is in itself an immigrant. Born and raised in Paris, it was shipped across the Atlantic in 214 separate crates, a present to the American people from the French. The monumental woman is a token of transatlantic friendship, forged in the fire of twin revolutions, finessed by thinkers like Alexis de Tocqueville,

and expressed in the shared language of liberty. But why was this colossal statue built, who built it, and what did liberty mean to the Frenchmen who? who created her and the Americans who received her. Goodmitty discussed the Statue of Liberty, Robert Gilday, Professor of Modern History at Oxford University, Kathleen Burke, Professor of Modern Contemporary History at University College London, and John Keene, Professor of Politics at the University of Westminster.

Robert Gilday, the Statue of Liberty, as I understand, it was conceived at a dinner in Paris in 1865 by a man called Eduardo Laboulet. Can you tell us what he wanted to do and why I wanted to build this enormous statue? Yes, well, Edward Laboulet was. professor of comparative law in Paris and he was one of an endangered species really, a French liberal in the 19th century. He was extremely frustrated

about the way in which French revolutions, whether the revolution of 1789 or 1848, had failed to found free institutions that they had kind of plunged either into sort of anarchy and terror or they had developed into the dictatorship of Napoleon. in the first and the poem the third, who was around at the time of this dinner.

And he said in 1866 that our political education, talking the French, our political education has to begin again. And he looked across the Atlantic and he saw what he called a wise and well-ordered republic, a republic that was based on hard work, on peace, a republic that the French had been brought into being and which now could help the French with their way forward. And the moment is important because in the 1860s and 70s when this plan was conceived, first of all, the Americans were emerging from the Civil War. And Laboulet had very much taken the side of the unionists in the civil war. He saw that this was a war for liberty and for union. He told the French, he said that the fight that's going on in America is for our cause, the cause of liberty.

He wanted the French to support the Union against secession and slavery. and it was also a moment of crisis for France because in 1870 France was defeated by Germany in the Franco-Prussian War it lost a large chunk of its territory, Al-Zas Lorraine, and it was plunged into revolution the Paris Commune. But the good thing was that this gave the French

the opportunity of recreating their political order because the Second Empire fell, a new republic was declared, and LeBoulet was instrumental in forging a new constitution, which was very much on the American model, with a president, a popular-elected, a popularly elected assembly, and a Senate holding the balance between the two and guarding liberty. And that was the background in which this statue was conceived.

It took 20 years from conceiving the statute to a thing actually appearing. And it is, in a sense, a tribute to the recovery of liberty and union, both in France and in America. Was it Nippentuck whether Labelais could get his ideas through? Was it still possible that France would revert to a Napoleonic monarchy? Well, after the defeat of the Second Empire in 1870, the Republic was founded. Against Prussia?

Well, I think the empire was finished. I mean, there were, after 1870, there was a bona fideast lobby, which wanted to bring back the empire in some form. The main threat actually in 1870, the early 1870s, was from the royalists. Because if you look at the French history, it tends to go Republic Empire monarchy. So after the end of the empire, the monarchy was very much on the cards. And there was an attempt at monarchy's restoration, which failed. So the Republic is there, but it took them about five years to get a constitution together.

But it's still not specifically clear how, how organising, having the idea for a monumental statue, was going to do anything for France at this time? Well, I suppose all regimes need legitimacy, and the legitimacy of the French Republic was that of the French Revolution. So, for example, in 1870, they begin the celebration of the 14th of July. But actually it's a celebration not of the 14th of July 1789, which is too violent. It's actually the celebration of the Fet,

La Federation, which happened a year later, which was a celebration of unity and liberty. So the statue fits into a kind of celebration of Republican liberty, but as we'll see later possibly, it's a kind of sanitised and classical and unthreatening view of liberty in the Republic. So he had this idea for a statue, and it was a great symbol for France and an aspiration for France, and adjoining up with America to whom in terms of political ideas, France felt close. But let's talk about practicalities for a short moment.

Kathleen Burke, I understand that Laboulogne's idea was for the French to pay for the statue and the Americans to pay for the pedestal. What was the reaction to that? How quick were the French to pay their portion and then the America? First of all the French. Well, the quickness of the French to pay, I think I will have to defer to Robert on that one. the American reaction was, shall we say, tepid. No one could really see why.

Congress didn't want to give any money. Rich men didn't want to give any money. The poor men didn't really know about it. Every place else in the country thought it was something for New York City, nothing to do with America. And so they found to their surprise, I think, because they were all keen on the French side, that most Americans didn't really care.

And it took an awful long time, actually, to get the pennies together to pay for the pedestal. They didn't see why they had to. essentially. And they were saved by a newspaper magnate. That's right. We know now about Pulitzer Prizes as rather a good thing. But in those days, Joseph Pulitzer was a man who had a newspaper that he wanted to have great sales from.

It wasn't so much influencing government as mobilizing opinion, one might say. And he saw this and he used it. He thought this would be a good way to increase the circulation of the newspaper. And he had the utterly brilliant idea. First of all, he castigated all the rich men, whom he said, could pull out a checkbook and pay for it individually themselves if they wished to, but they weren't going to. So he thought, okay, well, make this immobilization of the small man,

and he had the absolutely brilliant idea of for every donation, be it ever so little, the person's name was published. And so, schoolchildren would send in 50 cents and so forth, and they all got their names published. And this meant that a good deal of the money was actually mobilized from the citizenry, one might say, the working man rather than the rich man. And he did it with his newspaper in the south, as I understand it, as well in New York, which gave it some aspect of being more than a New York fest.

Indeed, he had the St. Louis Post Dispatch, which is a very good newspaper. But he's the one who, in a sense, took it out of just nothingness, and part of it was building up circulation through this. Clever man. Can you just briefly, as it interpolate here and say, how quickly did the French get the money, Robert, and then we'll go back to Kathleen? she deferred to you, said you would know. Well, there was a, Labelais was chair of a Franco-American committee that was set up in 1875.

And there were all sorts of fundraising experiments, including Guno wrote a special opera and so on and so forth. But, I mean, I think it was, I think the main thing, it was a very slow project. I mean, it took, it took, well, it took 10 years from the moment of conception until the thing was really, the idea was really launched in 1875. but then another 10 years for it to get built. So it was a slow process. And I think there was only limited enthusiasm. Well, nevertheless, there's limited enthusiasm. Can we put, Kathleen, can we put the United States a bit more context?

Was there a sense of a new beginning there when it really did get going? They just come out of a civil war, as Robert mentioned earlier. Well, yes, it had a surge of self-confidence and economic, shall we say. What the Civil War made clear was that it was indeed going to remain a united country, and they had a bit of a continent to finish colonizing, shall we say. But what it also had, after the end of the Civil War is what's known as the Second Industrial Revolution, and the sheer power of the American economy really took off. And this was not only did the railways, the newly unified railway,

mean that the nation was held together by these bands of steel in which cows could go to the left and money could go to the right, one might say. But also beginning a huge influx of immigrants, so you had labor. And the real feeling that this was the country of the future. I mean, they'd known this was the country of the future. But obviously the economy was going to make it the country of the future. And all around Europe, it was quite clear that this was a great, power in the making. And indeed, the European powers, including France, began to pay a great

deal more attention to the United States because of what it could do in the world. And the sheer self-confidence from the economy, from the knowledge of unity, from the clear, it was quite clear the United States was so powerful that God was on their side, that really this meant that the United States turned inwardly. You know, the attention was focused on what was happening on the continent. John Keane, what was so important about the idea of liberty in France and America? Can we just take that a bit further at that time? Well, I agree with Kathleen, that liberty and the statue has an industrial feel about it.

But what's interesting is the way in which the political language of liberty was, of course, much older, and it was the bridge that joined together the two countries. they were not the revolutions of 1776 and 1789 were not the first carried out in the name of liberty and in the language of Republican liberty the Dutch had done it before but these were the two great earthquakes of the 18th century and liberty meant I think to put it most simply it meant the opposite of monarchy Monarchy was despised, oppressive, greedy, despotic. It did not, liberty did not mean license.

It did not mean libertinism. It meant, and it did not mean wealth. There was a saying from this period that lean liberty was always desirable to fat slavery. Why? Because the Republican carriers of the language of liberty, Those who spoke this language thought that liberty was a god-given, sometimes they used the word nature, predisposition of individuals and groups, to live freely under the laws, under government, with a written constitution, with a separation of powers, with periodic elections of representatives to legislatures. and the whole idea was that liberty was only possible by living together with other men under the laws and governing themselves through those laws.

It meant in a word, citizenship. You raised your finger when you said men, your index finger. Well, I hope we'll get around to tampering with this strange thing that the statue, of course, she, has a crown with seven spikes, seven continents, seven seas, and she's striding over shackles. She's a woman. Liberty is a woman. And yet all of the bearers,

all of the carriers, all of the proponents of this Republican language of liberty, were men, and I think it was a language that systematically excluded women. Curiously, in the middle of this Franco-American celebration of liberty, there is an English man, Tom Paine, who, in common sense, in 1770s, says to the Americans, go for independence

and in the rights of man, in the early 1790s, says to the French, I'm with you for the revolution, and he is massively influential. Why was he so significant in both countries? What did Hebrew? What did his ideas? Start with this rough upstart from Thetford,

who famously said in a conversation with Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin said, where liberty is, there is my country. And Payne quipped, typically, where liberty is not there is my country. So this was a man who, from Thetford, who wrote the three biggest selling books of the 18th century, rights of man, common sense and the age of reason,

who lived through these two revolutions. Living through two revolutions, he boasted once, was living to some effect. And he was, of course, the one of the great voice, in defence of the Republican, the language of Republican liberty. As I've described it, I think that's exactly as Payne thought of liberty. It did not mean license, it was dead opposed to monarchy. And he, so to say, lit a match in January of 1776.

It was the beginning of his revolution campaign in defense of the idea that the Americans, it was a new sounding word, were caught up not in a family quarrel with the British, there was irretrievable breakdown, and there had to be a break, and a new polity founded on the principles of Republican liberty had to be established. That was written in common sense, price two shillings,

it sold as no other pamphlet sold. Robert Gilday, let's go back to Stature for a moment. The French sculptor Frederick Bartoldi, where did he get his inspiration from? I think he got his inspiration from two areas. The first thing, as a young man aged about 22, he went on a trip to Egypt, along with another classical artist called Jerome, who was a great painter of classical scenes

and Napoleon's trip to Egypt in 1798. And there he found at Thebes these enormous colossi, of which he actually photographed. And that sort of linked in with the colossus of Rhodes, which of course was no longer standing. but was this vast statue at the harbour of Rhodes built in the fourth century BC. And this gave him an idea. And the original prototype of the Statue of Liberty,

he actually conceived in 1867 when he went back to Egypt at the time when the Suez Canal was being finished. And he had this idea of creating a huge statue with a torch at the entrance to the Suez Canal, but that didn't actually materialise. So he was very interested in these colossal statues. There were also colossal statues going up. For example, the Germans were great builders of statues.

There's one of a man called Herman the Barbarian, a statue finished in 1875. This statue was a man who resisted the Romans. They built also a statue of Germania overlooking the Rhine. So that's one area, these colossal statues. And the other area? The other area is the goddess of liberty, the Republican goddess of liberty.

which goes back to the French Revolution. And the goddess of liberty was always to come back to what John said. She was a woman in classical pose in tunic and so on, sometimes in the revolutionary period with a Phrygian bonnet and a spear. But the model that Bartoldi conceived for the Statue of Liberty was a much more serene goddess of liberty. not in the sort of revolutionary or romantic style. Can we get, Kathleen, but can we take this back a century?

Because the idea was to get the statue ready for 1876, the centenary of the American Declaration of Independence, it drifted to 1786. But to get it ready for the centenary was to mark the American independence, in which the French thought that they had played a significant role in the American Revolutionary War or War of Independence. Would you agree with that? I agree entirely.

it seems quite clear to me that without French help, there wouldn't be a United States. Of course, the French didn't do it because they loved America. They did it because they hated Britain. And this was rather a good way during other wars to not only make sure Britain didn't have its, it's what was then the jewel in the crown, but also would give the French the opportunity

to get back on the continent and perhaps re-grab Quebec. But it's quite clear that French aid, both financial aid and the French aid, the aid of the French Navy was crucial, in fact. And so the French quite rightly saw themselves as one of the midwives, one might say, of American independence. And they rather hoped the Americans would remember this. So, John Keene, it's a success that the French did help American independence,

but they also felt that their own revolution had gone wrong, didn't I, 1790, 1790, in War, 92. Yes, and the interesting thing about this originally Republican language of liberty that fuels the revolution in France, as it had done in America, is that it contained within it the possibility, so it was seen in retrospect, the possibility of tyranny, of a new despotism. How was that possible? Because this Republican language of liberty always referred to the people. as the source of sovereign authority, who were the people, was very unclear. Initially, a small minority of male property-owning citizens.

And the experience of the French Revolution, the rise, for example, of Robespierre and subsequently Napoleon, taught some French that it was possible using this Republican language of liberty in the name of the people to produce something new in the modern world, a dictatorship that drew its legitimacy from the people. And interestingly, I think, it begins,

most strongly, I think, at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, there is a rethinking of what liberty means, and what is born, I think here the figures of Madame de Steyel, the lover of Benjamin Constant, is very important. And Madame de Steyle writes and Benjamin Constant in 1819 develops this idea that modern liberty should be different than that of the ancients, that modern liberty should mean civil liberties, freedom from government, that there should be spaces for the ownership of property, for civil liberties,

that can prevent the kind of tyranny that France has experienced. To carry that idea through Robert Gilday, and continuing this connection, almost ownership in certain extent that France felt it had over the American Revolution, when Alex de Tuckville went to America and wrote on democracy in America in 1835, sort of halfway between along the path between 76 and 1886,

was he developing this idea that John's been pushing forward, modern liberty? He was indeed, I mean, I think... And how influential he was, was he? Well, he's extremely influential. I mean, I think one of the one of the, de Tocqueville went to America because

he saw that America represented what was going to happen next. The arrival of democracy and the arrival of what he called the equality of condition. So this was a society where most people were vaguely middle class, most people were vaguely educated.

It was very unlike the hierarchical organization of Europe. And what fascinated him about America, was that they had managed to combine equality and liberty. There was always this danger that he saw about France as La Boulet saw about France, is that if you have equality, and if you concentrate on equality,

you either end up with the tyranny of the people or you end up with the tyranny of Napoleon. And the Americans seemed to be able to reconcile equality and liberty because they had free institutions, they had a free press, they had popular education, they had a separation of church, state, they had free association, and so on. They also had democratic

mores. They had this idea that people should participate in political activity through township meetings, through jury trials and so on and so forth. So, Tockville said, this democratic process is going to come to Europe. We must be ready for it. We must be able, we must try to create free institutions. Otherwise, once again, we will fall under the blows of either popular revolution or dictatorship. So in a sense he could be seen as a... Do you want it to come in, Kathleen?

Well, it's just that, I mean, I agree with everything that Robert said, except that there are great chunks of on democracy where he warns against the tyranny of the majority. I mean, he makes it quite clear that there's all this clash of ideas and then somehow when they come together, you really can't... Outside the box is something that's almost illegitimate. And indeed, he actually does say

that there is a real problem with freedom of speech in the United States and freedom of the press because of this... He actually does use... the tyranny of the majority. So I think we have to put a small sort of shade on some of this that it's, that yes, liberty, but

liberty to speak and to write within certain constraints. John, I know you want to come in, but can I, I was going to ask you a question so maybe you can incorporate this, just to go back to the statue to keep it inside the program. Bartoldy hired Gustav Eiffel to the Eiffel Tower to engineer the statue's

innards, as it were. So you had a classical sculptures who are outside and inside very modern structure. Do you see that as significant and signifying liberty ancient and modern? I suppose combined with Kathleen's

point about this being a period of great industrial growth is important and I think it's certainly the first time I visited it I was sort of struck by this classical and very 19th century modern feel. And I think

Yes, I think the signifier, the term liberty by this point is a contested one. It has these Republican originally Roman connotations of active citizenship, of men living and working together in small political communities, and it has this much more expansive, modern understanding of liberty, of the kind that Tokviel is hugely impressed by, although worried about some of its maladies. I would say, though, to make sense of what we've just been discussing, we need to discuss the elephant of democracy in the room because one of the questions begged by the language of the two revolutions, liberty, is what is its relationship with equality. And this is not very well known, but there is another French gift to the United States, which Tocphiel well.

understood, namely that according to the evidence in the spring of 1793, Citizen Genet, the new French ambassador, comes to the United States to take up his post, and he convinces, especially in Philadelphia, a number of Republican societies, principally one comprising Germans, to rename themselves democratic societies. and I think it's the first moment in the American Republic that the French language of born of the revolution is inserted in the American polity. And thereafter, liberty and democracy,

if you like, play out in an extended 19th century drama. And Tocqueville, I think, is important because, as Robert says, he was persuaded from his visit to the United States that not only was America the future, but that it was possible to combine democracy and liberty, equality and liberty, without sacrificing civil liberties

that would come with having a thriving, vibrant civil society. Robert, Guildover do you like to come in that. That's a very good point, and the point is that liberty and democracy, they overlap, but they also put in different directions. And I think this is one of the problems that the French had. When they talked about democracy, it was very much the sovereignty of the people,

and the sovereignty of the people, as Kathy said, could very easily tip into the tyranny of the majority. So these liberals are actually putting against democracy to a great extent. And for a long time in the 19th century, French liberalism was based on a limited suffrage, suffrage confined to the property and the educated. And men, of course, yes, in this period. I mean, there are female feminists, for example, in 1848.

they say, well, you've got universal suffrage for men. Why don't we have universal suffrage for women? But I'm afraid they weren't listened to at the time later. So the liberals, for a long time, go along with limited suffrage. Once they get to the Second Empire, it's Louis Napoleon who restores universal suffrage that started with it in 1848. But French liberals have a problem with universal suffrage, and that's why people like Lab Boulet,

They concentrate on the need, as John said, to try and limit the power of government, to create spaces where people can think what they want to think, write what they want to write, do what they want to do independent of government. And they also invent institutions like Second Chambers, like Senates, to limit the power of popular assemblies. Kathleen, can we spend a few moments talking about the statue, the woman, a woman, as John has pointed out, it is a woman. And Robert said we had this classical goddess. but nevertheless we're talking at a time when women were denied the vote and so on. Was it a specific? Can you talk about the womanness of the statue? Was it a specific but holy model in honor?

And how did the woman, as it were, play in the context of being a statue in Manhattan? Well, if you look at these sorts of representative statues, Britannia, Germania, Merrienne, I suppose, they're all women. Now, why this might be, one doesn't ever see, as far as I know, the statue of man of liberty. Perhaps, I haven't actually thought about this, but perhaps men were seeing as constraining liberty, certainly as constraining the liberty of women. But I shouldn't have thought that's actually what they were thinking about. Perhaps having a man would limit it to a certain type of man.

But it's an interesting idea. John. I think the secret is that the chain, the link, woman, liberty, is held together by nature. I mean, liberty is natural, and woman is of the earth, of nature. She gives birth to something. John, I must go across to the raised eyebrows on my left. Kathleen. Well, Earth mother, I suppose.

I mean, Wagner certainly thought so. I think, I mean, at this particular time, there is a rising idea in certain areas, especially in the United States, I think, that women should have more freedom, shall we say. But curiously, one conservative element of the United States is that it was more difficult there in some other areas actually to get this freedom.

It's actually out in states, you know, out in the West. Wyoming. Well, indeed, where women were actually part of the frontier, they couldn't be staying in the country, parlor and not doing anything. They had to go out and work in the fields as well. So nature possibly, but a different sort of nature. Can I bring in Robert here? Can you know, was it, did Badaldi modelled on any specific woman? Well, before I say that, can I mean, first of all, the French Revolution, the French Republic did try to have a man as a symbol of liberty,

Hercules, and he was banded about in 1793, the sort of high point of radicalism and terror, but he didn't cash on. So they did try a man, but they went back to the female allegory. In terms of the model for the Statue of Liberty, it is said that Baltoldi used his wife to model the body and his mother as a model for the face. And interestingly enough, Baltaldi came from Alsace. Alsace was gobbled up by the German Empire in 1870. His mother remained in Alsace part of Germany. And she was apparently this rather severe woman. and allegedly that's his mother's face on the statue.

How, John Keene, how was the statue when it first got to America? I'm the first year. How has it received? What was its status? I have no idea. Do either of the other two? Kathleen. Well, it was received with some, well, interest, but also with some surprise,

because the Americans couldn't quite see why this was. I mean, one thing if we could bring in, if it's... that's all right, is that John's mention of citizen Genet, it had certain, certainly value in terms of symbols and the question of democracy and so forth. But it was also the turning point of Franco-American, the beginning of the split between the two countries, because Jeunet tried to appeal to the people over the heads of Congress and the president. And he was actually forced to withdraw and, in fact, the recognition of, of his position was withdrawn from him by the government.

And the interesting thing to me about the statue and so forth is that Franco-American relations were very bad. Yes, the French had helped with the revolution, but between that, there was a quasi-war in 1798, 1800, because the French kept attacking American ships. And in the civil war is very important because the French not only nearly recognized a confederacy, but whilst American attention was turned elsewhere,

they tried to annex Mexico. This was not acceptable to the Americans. So the whole idea of France in the minds of anyone who had the least bit of interest was that France was an enemy, not a friend. And so all of a sudden, you not only get this statute proposed, but it's also proposed the Americans pay for the pedestal on which is going to stand.

So this is another reason why they couldn't see. Why should they pay for it? What did it have to do with them? And he took the newspaper, magnet to sort it on. That's right. Robert, can you tell us about this, maybe our last visit to the statue, and then we go back to ideas?

How does Bartol de design compare with other French depictions of liberty? It's very calm, isn't it? It's stacked with symbolism, which I think I'll ask John to unpack in a moment or two. Yes, it's very calm and it's very severe, and it's very

grand and grave. I mean, I suppose that the one, The one model that you'd really compare it with is Dulaquois, Liberty leading the people, which shows this woman leading people onto the barricades in 1848. She has a frigid bonnet. She has a tricula in one hand. She has a rifle in the other.

And she has bare breasts pointing at the viewer. This is precisely not the kind of picture that Bartoldi wanted, not just because it was a bit too sexy for him. but because they wanted a much more serene classical pose that was a non-threatening view of the Republic because I think the Republic could very easily be appropriated by much more revolutionary people who believed powerfully in the sovereignty of the people and equality and were always up for revolutionary barricades.

John Gein, the Finnish statue is, as I'm indicated, imbued with symbolism. And can you talk us through some of that? Well, Robert has already covered some of it. I think it's worth adding that she is in motion. I agree with you about its severity and its tameness, certainly compared with de la Croix's image, by the way she was a prostitute.

I mean, that's the outrageous thing that Liberty is on the barricades. And this, by contrast, is, a much more Presbyterian image as Grover Cleveland the president who opened the statue, thought of liberty. But there she is.

She is in motion stepping across shackles. It's true, it has a I think a strongly grand industrial feel about it pretty tall and the first time one sees it

it's, I think, it's breathtaking. I think it's important in the context of its opening in the United States that it is Grover Cleveland who opens it. He was an unusual character. Can we get back to symbolism? Sorry to ask you, John, but there's spikes around the head and their seven this and the kind of, you take us through it because it's very interesting. Can you rattle through that?

Yes, it's an attempt to codify, to memorialise a particular understanding of liberty. at the point, I think, in time where liberty has become actually much more fluid, much harder to codify. I think that's the strange thing. I think it was Abraham Lincoln, who in several great speeches before his assassination complained,

that the modern world no longer had an agreed understanding of liberty. So here is one particular version of it. female bearing a torch with a document under her arm no weaponry although Republican language

had always been associated with the musket and the army think of Jefferson that the Tree of Liberty needs watering periodically by the blood of tyrants that's missing it's a rather anodyne memorial I would say

Kathleen wants to come in Well, it also fits in a whole American context. I mean, I think of liberty as looking like a Roman matron. And indeed, that fits in because from the very beginnings of the United States, they had looked back to the classical forms of liberty. There is the capital, of course. All the early statues of the founding fathers are in Togas. And so therefore, the way liberty was conceived and this statue was conceived

fits very well into the whole cultural context of the United States in terms of liberty. I don't think New York would have accepted a bare-breasted liberty. Also, it's by representing the seven continents, the seven seas and representing, it represented the 25 minerals. I mean, all sorts of things are represented in this statue, aren't they? It very easily slipped over into being a global icon and lost the French connotation. Well, of course, the real title is liberty enlightening the people. they lost that. It became a symbol of America,

not a symbol of liberty as such. Well, it was a symbol of liberty, but in the sense it wasn't a symbol of liberty across the Atlantic. It became a symbol of receiving people to what the Americans saw as the whole center of liberty in the United

States. Would you say that a few years afterwards went with the setting up of Alice Island as the Immigration Center, which you mentioned Barry Allen in the program Kathleen, it switched its meaning, Robert Miller. Well, I think it probably did become very much an icon of America and this notion of liberty lighting up the world and providing a message of democracy

then becomes something that pulls vast masses of immigrant populations into the world because at the end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th century, you have waves of Scandinavians and Germans followed by waves of Italians and waves of Jews from Eastern Europe and Russia. And so it becomes very much more of an inward-looking, signal to the rest of the world. And that sonnet of Emma Lazarus, which is a few years after it's been put there,

is put inside the statue becomes the defining thing because what the statue stands for to most people. Would you agree with that, John King? Yes, I think so. Bring me your huddled masses, bring me your poor. America will take the world that the rest of the world doesn't want.

Yes, I think that the whole ideal of liberty becomes, undergoes a nationalization in this period. And I think it has remained until today one of the difficulties of this statue that it, it, it, that liberty has cosmopolitan intent. And yet it has become, as Kathleen says, identified strongly with America and an empire.

And that, I think, produces permanent turbulence. Also, we should remember the end of the poem, which I live my, I lift my, my torch beside the golden door, the door for people to come into America, not for liberty to go out quite so much. Do you think its significance resonates still in any way, Irwin, God, I? Well, if we go back to Franco-American relations, I mean, I think for a time it did. I mean, the liberty came back to France in American form

when the Americans intervened in 1917 and again in 1944. So in that sense, American liberty freed the French people from German invasion and occupation on two occasions. But I think it also cuts two ways. And if you go back to people like Tockville, they were already worried about what they called American individualism, materialism, capitalism, slavery, which we haven't talked about later on racial segregation. And there is a kind of school of thought, particularly in France, that America represents all these things and also globalization. So, for example, just after 1940,

there was a fear of what it was called cocoa colonization, that American Coca-Cola would swamp France and destroy the wine industry. At the same time, there was a fear that Hollywood films would swamp France and destroy French culture. Ditto, American hamburgers would destroy French cuisine. So I think there's a love-hate relationship there.

John Keane. I think you could say that liberty has gone into exile, emigrated. Think of the Tiananmen, goddess of democracy. I mean, it's a carrier of the same idea, and I think that you could say that,

alas, this very large industrial statue has been bypassed by the 737 and the 747. and today liberty is in China among the dissidents. It's Aung San Suu Kyi, it's Martin Luther King. I mean, the symbol has gone from this statue, I would say. Thank you all very much. Thank you, Robert Gilday, Kathy Burke and John Key.

Next week we'll be talking about the multiverse, the possibility of an infinite number of universes. I'll be joined by some experts. Thank goodness. Thank you for listening. Good morning.