George V

June 22, 1913

Two years before today, King George V was crowned King of Great Britain in West Minster Abbey.  His path to the throne was less than likely, but that is how it worked out.

He was the second son ("the spare", not the heir) of Edward VII, the oldest son of Queen Victoria.  Edward VII had waited impatiently for the throne until he was sixty years old and reigned for only ten. His oldest son, George's older brother, and the heir apparent had died suddenly of pneumonia as an adult and suddenly presented George with the prospect of a very responsible life as the next English sovereign. He had married Mary of Teck, his second cousin, who while being a German princess, had been raised in Britain  A very famous ship, that is now permanently docked at Long Beach California, will be later named for her.

His diary entry on the death of his father speaks volumes across more  than 100 years.  "I am heart-broken and overwhelmed with grief but God will help me in my responsibilities and darling May will be my comfort as she has always been. May God give me strength and guidance in the heavy task which has fallen on me

If you saw the movie "The Kings Speech" you were watching a fictionalized account of part of his life..

Coronation of George V by John Henry Frederick Bacon

Trouble in the Balkans

June-July, 1913

The history of  the Balkan peninsula had been dominated since the 14th century by the Ottoman Empire which held the territory.  As a result of the 19th century decline in Ottoman power, the inhabitants became restless.  The First Balkan War from October 1912 to May 1913 had soundly beaten the armies of the Sultan and driven the Turks out of vast stretches of Balkan territory.

In June, Bulgaria a steadily growing (via military conquest) principality, angry over the creation of the state of Albania and dissatisfied with recent territorial gains, declared war on Greece and Serbia in a Second Balkan War.  Her goal was to act quickly to aquire territory by force before the diplomats, especially Russian, could intervene to deny her claims again.

The contestant armies, which soon included Romania against Bulgaria fought themselves to exhaustion and, after a devastating battle at the Bregalnica River in Macedonia, Bulgaria capitulated in July.  As a result of her defeat, Bulgaria lost the territory she had recently gained in the First Balkan War and by her rash behavior, had destroyed her special relationship to Russia, sworn protector of the Slavs.  Now the only Russian ally in the Balkans was the rather weaker and backward Serbia itself.  That country and her conflict with the Germanic Austrian Empire would soon become the proximate cause of the next global conflagration.

Art of 1913

As usual, before the political powers could perceive that a new world was bearing down on them, the artists of the time prefigured it.  Cubism and Abstract Impressionism are being invented a century ago, showing the way to a new exciting, disturbing and liberating modernism.   Of course, the world would have to pass through a conflagration of war to get there.  One day, perhaps, we will be wise enough to see that change and progress are inevitable and unavoidable and that the best way forward is to look ahead and not only behind.

MOMA Art Culture Shock of 1913.

The Sun Never Sets

Geography is history, and it is geography that made one of the most powerful and enduring empires the world has ever seen.  The British Empire is now largely dissolved as a result of the convulsions of the Great War.

British mastery of  the seas goes back to the time of Henry VIII (who ruled between 1509 and 1547) and even before.  The island nation understood perfectly well that the most efficient way to protect itself from foreign domination, especially from France, was to maintain control of the waters that separated her  from the  continent of Europe.  The powerful sea presence she built had been the pre-eminent factor in her world dominance, over North America, over India, in southern Africa.

The Boer war, in a sense, prefigured WWI.  Rising power in Germany, the result of a smashing victory in the Franco-Prussian War, had resulted in her demanding her rights to hold sway over foreign colonies, like that other great empire.  Germany, engaged in expansion into African territory herself, looked on as the British Army subdued a native force of white Germanic settlers, the Boers, in South Africa.  This brought home to the Germans the importance of a strong navy to the maintenance of a global empire