W.E.A. LECTURE

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIV, Issue 1039, 11 June 1924, Page 6

W.E.A. LECTURE

.HISTORY INTERPRETED. BEGINNING OF NEW AGE. At the Workers' Educational Association's meeting last night,.Mr.E. Mander continued his series of lectures under the heading: "The Interpretation of History. His subject last night dealt with the developments taking place about the year 1500, the year marking the birth o£ modern civilisation. One of the most important of such developments, said the lecturer, -was the introduction of the art of paper-making, together with the invention of printing. This had occurred some half century earlier, and by 1500 a steady stream of printed books was being poured out into Europe. "It. is," said the lecturer, "almost- impossible to over-estimate the importance of this development. • Our modern civilisation could not exist without books—without paper and printing. Without the exact information which is contained in books (and which could not otherwise be preserved at all) we should be unable to carry on any engineering, any manufacturing—unable to make aeroplanes or telegraphs or tramcars or railways or-motors; unable to build bridges, to carry put hydro-electric works, to keep up any part of our elaborate material civilisation. This is a matter worth thinking over, worth realising. Sometimes we come across ignorant and unintelligent people who are inclined to sneer at "book knowledge.' Yet all exact knowledge which is used in practical chemistry and engineering, for example, is essentially book-know-ledge. Without books all that exact knoweldge would be lost and our material civilisation would collapse." Another decisive event, with very important and far-reaching consequences was the capture of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Constantinople, the headquarters of the Eastern Church, had for centuries been the eastern bulwark of Christendom against the Mohammedans. From 1400 onwards the pressure of the Turks upon Constantinople had been steadily increasing; and, as a result of this, a stream of scholars had been leaving the threatened city, carrying their Greek learning and traditions with them into other parts of Europe, chiefly Italy. This ljad been going on for fifty years and more, while the, city was in danger, but before it was actually lost. Then in 1453 the Turk's finally captured Constantinople, which had, of course, remained a Mohammedan city ever since. But the most important result of the fall of the city in the 15th century was the hurried exodus Of the' rest of the Greek scholars there, and their diaper:al all over Europe. This was ene of the causes of the re-birth of learning and thinking in Europe in the century that followed. The outstanding names of the two men whose work marked the birth of modern science were Leonardo da Vinci and Copernicus, both of whom were Jiving in A.D. 1500. The lecturer then reverted to the matter he had been discussing at the end of his previous lecture —the position in England at the time of the Black Death of 1343. "Last week," he said, "we saw how, in England, during the century that preceded the Black Death, a gradual change was being made in the condition of the peasantry. Under th« old system, the peasants, the villagers, Held their land (about 30 acres apiece) in return for their part-time labour—so many days a week working for the squire. They were in a condition of serfdom. But gradually a new arrangement was becoming general—an arrangements whereby the villagers, instead of paying for their holdings in labour, began to pay a fixed money rent instead. This suited the peasants because it freed them from serfdom. It suited the squire, too, because he could use the rents he' received to hire wage-labour for his own purposes. Then, just as this change was practically complete in many parts of England, came the Black Death of 1348. This appalling disaster really came very near to entirely wiping out the human ■race. As it was, even in England nearly half the population was wiped out. One of the results of this Black Death was, of course, a great scarcity of labour, and wages rose accordingly—in fact, on the average, they doubled. So the squire found he had made a bad bargain after all. His rents were no longer sufficient to enable him to hire tho labour he needed now that wages had risen. Attempts were therefore made by Parliament to force wages back to their old pre-plague level. But these attempts failed, of course, and wages remained high as long as labour remained scarce.

•'Then the squires tried another plan. They tried to cancel the arrangement whereby the villagers paid rent, and to re-introduce the old conditions of serfdom, under which the squire obtained forced labour from the peasants. The upshot of all this was the Peasants' Revolt, headed in England by Wat Tyler—a movement in which all our sympathies must lie with the exasperated peasants. Of course, as always happens in such cases, the 'hooligan element' associated itself with the revolt, and also all sorts of people with all sorts of other grievances. But essentially it was a revolt of the villagers against the attempt of the squires to force them back into serfdom. The revolt was crushed. But, despite this, the peasants were not forced back into serfdom. A new development saved them. There was a great turn-over to sheep farming. This was the salvation of the country squires (lords of the manors), for much less labour was required, and also the returns were higher. By 1500 sheep farming had become an important fact in the economic life of England, and English wool had become a staple export." Having dealt at length with other aspects of his subject, including the growth of cities and conditions of life therein, the lecturer referred to the conditions under which an attempt was made —after the Ottoman Turks had blocked the old way to the East —to discover a new way of getting to India by sailing around the world in a westward direction. The Arabs ha<i known that the earth was spherical, not flat; and despite the opposition of the Church, many scholars still held that belief. Christopher Columbus, a Genoese sea captain, had picked up this idea, and he spent several years in trying to persuade various kings and merchant princes to finance an 'expedition. At length he obtained the backing of a wealthy Spanish family, and, with three small ships, set sail from Palos to cross the Atlantic. The lecturer described the difficulties and dnn gers of this voyage and the fears of the sailors. Then, on October 12, 1492, the West Indies were sighted. To tlie day of his death Columbus believed that he had reached the coast of Asia. The shape of the world was as he supposed; but the size of it had been badly under-estimated. About the same time a Portuguese sailor, Vasco de Gama, did discover a new way to India by sailing around the African Continent. During the following years many other adventurous men were groping their way about the unknown seas. This was a turning-point in history—the opening up tof a new world-—and Mr Mander closed by showing some of the ways in which this changed the whole course of developments in Europe, and altered the apparent destiny of the human race.