Yes, I’ve taken the title for this blog from JMS’s Babylon 5. Delenn and G’Kar spoke about moments of transition, both personal and political, both profound and powerful. Above all, they are scary moments, particularly for the people who have to live through them. How’s it going to come out? Will we survive?
We’re living through a protracted period of transition. Is it an end or a beginning? In reality, it’s both, but nobody’s quite sure what’s being born or what’s dying. Both cases could be good, bad, or just upside down. We won’t know until we’re well on the other side of what now looks like an endless abyss or the widest chasm. How we deal with our fears, our responses, and our choices will determine the outcome.
Stay tuned, Batfans--same bat time, same bat channel. Or will it be? The law of unexpected consequences is omnipresent and probably omnipotent.
The end of the 18th century was no different for the British. From the beginning of the French and Indian War in 1754 to the passage of the Great Reform Act in 1832--Britain lived through one of her more politically contentious periods. (Nothing, however, compared to the Reformation, which culminated in the Civil Wars, and a bit later, the Glorious Revolution. Not so Glorious with over 10, 000 people dead, but a drop in the bucket of blood of the Civil Wars--upwards to 700,000 if you count everybody in the three kingdoms who died of war-related causes.) There was no political stability except for certain periods dominated by experienced political jugglers--Sir Robert Walpole, Henry Pelham, Lord North, and William Pitt the Younger. (No, Lord North wasn’t the idiot that Americans or Rockingham Whigs made him out to be.)
Between 1775 and 1783, the British fought the American War, what Americans call the War of Independence. By the end, it was a general European war, part of the second 100 Years's War between Britain and France. Defeated by the Americans in 1781, Britain continued to fight France and Spain till 1783. The Peace of Paris in September 1783 settled the conflict--at least till the next round.
From 1782 to 1784, Britain went through a period of intense factionalism. Rockingham replaced a politically paralytic North then died in office. He was replaced by Shelburne, whom nobody liked, and he was pulled down in 1783 by Charles James Fox and North, who themselves got booted by Pitt the Younger. He played a dreadfully weak hand and turned it into a strength. The Rockingham/Fox Whigs suffered terribly in 1784 general election.
Even when Pitt the Younger won his landslide, his mandate so to speak, it wasn’t all a bed of roses. The noise level dropped, but opposition existed, some of it quite vociferous. The French Revolution began in 1789, but it was 1792 when things really turned ugly. Pitt increasingly became a tyrant--reaction to things in France, like oh, the Terror that generated a fear few of us today really understand. Even so, many people contended with him, especially Fox.
There was lots of shifting around, lots of soul-searching. Who are we? Where do we belong? What happened to the old certainties? Anxiety and unease ruled the day.
Predictably, there was much anger and many accusations of betrayal. It was the age of recrimination and factionalization. Small wonder my protagonist, the Earl of Armitage, feels bereft. There’s no more political certainty; a bedrock doesn’t exist anymore. Everything becomes ephemeral--except his family, and even that becomes unstable.
Everything changes. Everything every day. It was true in 1783, and it is true in 2011.
I deliberately chose to set the Earl’s stories during and after the American War. I did it for several reasons, not least of which was that it was a convenient, well-known event that most people have heard about. It’s also a moment of transition where everything is up in the air. That instability makes for built-in drama and conflict.
Armitage is an exact contemporary of Shelburne and slightly younger than Rockingham. Rockingham’s dead and Shelburne’s kicked upstairs. Armitage’s day is done. It now belongs to Pitt and Fox. Where does he belong? Armitage has lost his career as a secondary, but reasonably successful politician. Where does he go from here? That’s why he’s a series character. He’s still Lord Lieutenant, and he focuses on that, on pursuing justice.
I didn’t realize when I took up this period how much it resembles our own. It’s also a moment of transition where we have to confront the limits of government even when nobody much believes in governance, the public good, or even in community. We have to face spending issues, public debt, and budget deficits. Worst of all is a distorted, if not dishonest, discussion of slavery and Jim Crow and their pernicious aftereffects.
In the 18th century, people and politicians believed in the public good. The point of contention was this--Who constitutes the public? What is good for it? 18th century politicians discussed and haggled over debts and spending. It consumed much of their time, but they generally raised taxes on the rich during wartime--i.e. the landowners at four shillings per GBP’s worth of land (20% of the value of the land) and lowered those taxes during peacetime. They also cut down their military-industrial complex--i.e. the Navy and the Army. Given the current rhetoric about the “good” of slavery, the abolitionists of the 18th century might wonder what they fought for. Maybe more people ought to know “Amazing Grace” is an abolitionist hymn.
A great friend pointed out me that ALL writing is a voyage of discovery. I had little idea that my political and social voyage would run so parallel to Armitage’s. I can touch all of my fears and rages to find his. Perhaps I can take some assurance for my own existence from Armitage and his ilk. For all their anxieties, they didn’t doubt the sun would come up tomorrow. They were far more troubled about how ugly the day would be.