Trafalgar Square: the home of Nelson’s column, Landseer’s lions, Lutyens’s fountains, and, when the British begin to feel that Really Things Have Gone a Bit Too Far, a stage for political demonstrations. The National Gallery provides the backdrop. There are also four plinths which formerly aroused little interest, indeed prior to the millennium one of them had stood empty since money for statues ran out in 1841. In 1999 the Royal Society of Artists inaugurated the Fourth Plinth Project and since then a new artwork has appeared on the plinth every two years.
Here are my three favourites:
In 2010 Yinka Shonibare presented us with his Ship in a Bottle, a replica of Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory, its sails decorated with African patterns.
Hans Haacke’s Gift Horse, a skeletal, riderless bronze horse, based on an etching by Stubbs found in the National Gallery, appeared in 2015. An electronic ribbon linked by tickertape machine to the London Stock Exchange was tied to its front leg.
The Invisible Enemy Should not Exist, created in 2018 by Michael Rakowitz, recalled 7,000 objects looted from the Iraq museum or destroyed at archaeological sites across the country by ISIS. It is dominated by the Lamassu, which stood at the Nergal gate entrance to Ninevah. The reconstruction was made from 10,500 recycled date syrup cans, mirroring the recycled cannon used for the reliefs at the base of Nelson’s column.
Last time I visited the Square, I inspected the other three plinths. They bear undistinguished statues of George IV, Major-General Henry Havelock and Charles James Napier respectively. But the latter reminded me of a more dramatic, albeit equally ugly, image of Napier which lies outside the garrison church in Portsmouth where he was buried.
As a young man Charles James Napier (1782-1853) took up a commission in the British army. He fought in the Peninsula War (1808-14) and the War of 1812 against the United States. From 1822-30 he was military resident in Cephalonia. Between 1839-41, as the chief of troops in the north of England, he was responsible for the violent suppression of the Chartist demonstrations.
When he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the army of the East India Company Napier seized the opportunity for self-aggrandisement and military glory. The East India Company already had direct or indirect control over much of the Indian subcontinent. In the Sindh province however the Amirs of the Talpur dynasty still held nominal control although the passage of “friendship” treaties had left them paying tribute to the British, providing a base for their troops and military hardware, and supplying them with auxiliary forces.
By 1842 the British were seeking to expand their influence in the area developing trade routes along the Indus river and securing their defences against Russian attack through Afghanistan. The Talpurs opposed this, and there was increasing hostility towards the East India Company, but the disaffected Amirs were divided and lacked a professional army.
Napier shifted British policy from a combination of diplomacy and bullying, to outright aggression. He pushed the Amirs into open conflict by imposing a new treaty forcing them to cede territory and by marching on and destroying the desert fortress of Imamgarh.
On the grounds their alleged disloyalty, Napier then received orders that the “rebel” forces of the Amirs should be put down. He had easy victories at the battles of Meanee and Hyderabad. But Napier went further, exceeding his mandate to suppress the rebels, and in a ruthless and unauthorised campaign he subjugated Sindh, conquering the whole province. He knew that his action was neither legal nor moral,
We have no right to seize Sindh. Yet we shall do it,
but used the habitual spurious and hypocritical justification for colonial expansion,
and a very advantageous, humane and useful piece of rascality it shall be.
Advantageous and useful it undoubtedly was for the East India Company and for Napier himself. The military conquest of Sindh paved the way for further annexations of the Punjab, and Napier became the first Governor-General of Sindh.
Even in Britain however Napier’s conduct was controversial: he faced criticism for his barbaric action, quest for personal glory and for exceeding his authority. Nonetheless he received a knighthood and later there was widespread public mourning and a military tribute at his funeral.
Moreover generations of Latin teachers in British schools delighted in elucidating Napier’s putative wit in a telegram which he allegedly sent home informing his superiors of his conquest. “Peccavi,” it read.
There was no telegraph in the Subcontinent until the 1850s.
But in Manchester in 1843 there was a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl called Catherine Winkworth. She coined the pun, substituting “I have sinned” for “I have Sindh” in the supposed dispatch to highlight the immorality of Napier’s assault on the territory. Amused, and in sympathy with her view, her teacher suggested that she forward her witticism to Punch magazine, where it was erroneously credited to Napier.
Catherine Winkworth (1827-1878) studied under the Unitarian William Gaskell. As a young woman she belonged to the circle of Manchester Liberals whose commitment to a more equal society led to their support for free trade, the repeal of the Corn Laws, pacifism, a free press, the separation of church and state, and opposition to slavery.
In adulthood she was known for her translations of German hymns and her support for higher education for women. After moving to Bristol, she became a founder and governor of girls’ schools including Cheltenham Ladies’ College, Red Maids’ School, and Clifton High School for Girls.
She died suddenly of heart disease while in Savoy, but there is a monument to her memory in Bristol Cathedral.
