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![The ruin of the Kirk brought to the front the Cavaliers, who still
surrounded Charles and were resolute to continue the fight. Both
before and after Dunbar, Cromwell carried on a very curious series of
theological disputations with the leaders of the Kirk party. The letters
and addresses of the two sides remind one of the times when
Byzantine Emperors exchanged obscure theological taunts with the
factions of the Circus. Yet this correspondence reveals no little of the
secret of Cromwell’s power; of his intense religious enthusiasm—
which was both a strength and a weakness—his longing for orderly
liberty, and his half-stifled aspirations for religious freedom.
He was on sound ground in his controversy with the Scottish Kirk.
He put the argument for religious freedom well when he wrote to
the Governor of Edinburgh Castle, concerning his ecclesiastical
opponents:[1]
“They assume to be the infallible expositors of the
Covenant (and of the Scriptures), counting a different sense and
judgment from theirs Breach of Covenant and Heresy—no marvel
they judge of others so authoritatively and severely. But we have not
so learned Christ. We look at Ministers as helpers of, not Lords over,
God’s people. I appeal to their consciences whether any ‘man’ trying
their doctrines and dissenting shall not incur the censure of Sectary?
And what is this but to deny Christians their liberty and assume the
Infallible Chair? What doth (the Pope) do more than this?“
1. Slightly condensed.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/44426-250507203153-bc8a4f15/75/Routledge-Handbook-of-Media-Geographies-1st-Edition-Paul-C-Adams-53-2048.jpg)
Routledge Handbook of Media Geographies 1st Edition Paul C Adams
- 1. Routledge Handbook ofMedia Geographies 1st Edition Paul C Adams download https://ebookgate.com/product/routledge-handbook-of-media- geographies-1st-edition-paul-c-adams/ Get Instant Ebook Downloads – Browse at https://ebookgate.com
- 2. Get Your DigitalFiles Instantly: PDF, ePub, MOBI and More Quick Digital Downloads: PDF, ePub, MOBI and Other Formats The Routledge Handbook of Tourism Geographies 1st Edition Julie Wilson (Ed.) https://ebookgate.com/product/the-routledge-handbook-of-tourism- geographies-1st-edition-julie-wilson-ed/ The Routledge Handbook of Emotions and Mass Media 1st Edition Katrin Doveling https://ebookgate.com/product/the-routledge-handbook-of-emotions- and-mass-media-1st-edition-katrin-doveling/ Handbook of Decision Making 1st Edition Paul C. Nutt https://ebookgate.com/product/handbook-of-decision-making-1st- edition-paul-c-nutt/ Job Bank Ohio 11th Adams Media https://ebookgate.com/product/job-bank-ohio-11th-adams-media/
- 3. The Boundless SelfCommunication in Physical and Virtual Spaces 1st Edition Paul C. Adams https://ebookgate.com/product/the-boundless-self-communication- in-physical-and-virtual-spaces-1st-edition-paul-c-adams/ Geographies of Young People The Morally Contested Spaces of Identity Critical Geographies Stuart C Aitken https://ebookgate.com/product/geographies-of-young-people-the- morally-contested-spaces-of-identity-critical-geographies-stuart- c-aitken/ The Routledge Handbook of Attachment Implications and Interventions 1st Edition Paul Holmes https://ebookgate.com/product/the-routledge-handbook-of- attachment-implications-and-interventions-1st-edition-paul- holmes/ Routledge Handbook of Energy in Asia 1st Edition Subhes C. Bhattacharyya (Editor) https://ebookgate.com/product/routledge-handbook-of-energy-in- asia-1st-edition-subhes-c-bhattacharyya-editor/ Blackwell Handbook of Adolescence 1st Edition Gerald R. Adams https://ebookgate.com/product/blackwell-handbook-of- adolescence-1st-edition-gerald-r-adams/
- 5. ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OFMEDIA GEOGRAPHIES This Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of media geography, focusing on a range of different media viewed through the lenses of human geography and media theory. It addresses the spatial practices and processes associated with both old and new media, con- sidering “media” not just as technologies and infrastructures, but also as networks, systems and assemblages of things that come together to enable communication in the real world. With contributions from academics specializing in geography and media studies, the Routledge Handbook of Media Geographies summarizes the recent developments in the field and explores key questions and challenges affecting various groups, such as women, minorities and persons with visual impairment. It considers geographical aspects of disruptive media uses such as hacking, fake news and racism. Written in an approachable style, chapters consider geographies of users, norms, rules, laws, values, attitudes, routines, customs, markets and power relations. They shed light on how mobile media make users vulnerable to tracking and surveillance but also facilitate innovative forms of mobility, space perception and placemaking. Structured in four distinct sections centered around “control and access to digital media,” “mass media,” “mobile media and surveillance” and “media and the politics of knowledge,” the Handbook explores digital divides and other mani- festations of the uneven geographies of power. It also includes an overview of the alternative social media universe created by the Chinese government. Media geography is a burgeoning field of study that lies at the intersections of various social sciences, including human geography, political science, sociology, anthropology, communication/media studies, urban studies, and women and gender studies. Academics and students across these fields will greatly benefit from this Handbook. Paul C. Adams is Professor of Geography at the University of Texas at Austin. His research is situated at the intersection of media studies, communication theory and human geography. His work considers how socio-spatial perceptions, representations, actions and infrastructures are intertwined through mediated communications. Barney Warf is a Professor of Geography at the University of Kansas. His research and teaching interests lie within the broad domain of human geography. His research includes telecommunications and political geography viewed through the lens of political economy and social theory. He edits Geojournal and co-edits Growth and Change.
- 7. ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF MEDIAGEOGRAPHIES Edited by Paul C. Adams and Barney Warf
- 8. First published 2022 byRoutledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Paul C. Adams and Barney Warf; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Paul C. Adams and Barney Warf to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-367-48285-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-11916-8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-03906-8 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003039068 Typeset in Bembo by Taylor & Francis Books
- 9. CONTENTS List of illustrationsviii List of contributors x 1 Media geographies: An introduction 1 Paul C. Adams and Barney Warf PART I Control and access to digital media 17 2 Internet censorship: Shaping the world’s access to cyberspace 19 Barney Warf 3 Digital divides 29 James B. Pick and Avijit Sarkar 4 Hacking in digital environments 49 Mareile Kaufmann 5 The internet media in China 60 Xiang Zhang 6 Digital media and persons with visual impairment or blindness 74 Susanne Zimmerman-Janschitz PART II Mass media 93 7 Newspapers: Geographic research approaches and future prospects 95 Paul C. Adams v
- 10. 8 Fake news:Mapping the social relations of journalism’s legitimation crisis 106 James Compton 9 Film geography 118 Elisabeth Sommerlad 10 Approaches to the geographies of television 132 James Craine 11 Geographical analysis of streaming video’s power to unite and divide 145 Irina Kopteva PART III Mobile media and surveillance 159 12 Evolving geographies of mobile communication 161 Ragan Glover-Rijkse and Adriana de Souza e Silva 13 Moving: Mediated mobility and placemaking 172 Roger Norum and Erika Polson 14 Geographies of locative apps 183 Peta Mitchell, Marcus Foth and Irina Anastasiu 15 Digital surveillance and place 196 Ellen van Holstein PART IV Media and the politics of knowledge 207 16 Race, ethnicity and the media: Absence, presence and socio-spatial reverberations 209 Douglas L. Allen and Derek H. Alderman 17 Nationalism, popular culture and the media 220 Daniel Bos 18 Eurocentrism/Orientalism in news media 232 Virginie Mamadouh Contents vi
- 11. 19 Sex, genderand media 245 Marcia R. England 20 Media, biomes and environmental issues 256 Hunter Vaughan Index 268 Contents vii
- 12. ILLUSTRATIONS Figures 2.1 Map ofinternet censorship scores 23 3.1 Number of individuals using the internet by development status, 2005–2019 30 3.2 Worldwide subscriptions and use of technologies, 2005–2019 31 3.3 Networked readiness index framework 33 3.4 van Dijk model of divides of digital media use 34 3.5 SATUM model of correlates of level of technology 35 3.6 Mobile broadband subscriptions and penetration worldwide, 2008–2019 36 3.7 Internet use to watch videos online, United States, 2017 41 3.8 Internet use for social networking, United States, 2017 42 3.9 Internet use for social networking, United States counties, 2015 43 3.10 Facebook penetration, Latin America and the Caribbean, 2013–2015 44 5.1 Number of internet users in China, December 2013 – March 2020 61 5.2 Number of mobile internet users in China, December 2013 – March 2020 61 5.3 The hierarchical structure of state media in China 62 5.4 Governance structure of the CPC Publicity Department 64 5.5 A comparison across tradition media 65 6.1 Essential research topics in the context of orientation and navigation for persons with VIB 79 6.2 Detailed turn-by-turn directions in ways2see for people with VIB 84 9.1 Relational perspectives on film geography: Overview 120 9.2 Types of screen-tourism 123 9.3 An example of the integration of filmic practice into a university curriculum in the MA program “Human Geography: Globalisation, Media, and Culture” at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz 126 11.1 Countries with the top 26 independent YouTube influencers and their combined subscriber base 146 11.2 Top 10 countries with the most YouTube unique users and internet users, 2016 148 viii
- 13. Tables 2.1 Global populationand internet users by severity of internet censorship, 2020 22 5.1 Top news and information accounts on the WeChat platform (June 2020) 68 5.2 Top news and information accounts on the Weibo platform (June 2020) 69 List of illustrations ix
- 14. CONTRIBUTORS Paul C. Adamsis Professor of Geography at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Geographies of Media and Communication (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), co-author of Communications/Media/Geographies (Routledge, 2016), and co-editor of the Research Compa- nion to Media Geography (Ashgate, 2014). His research bridges media studies, communication theory and human geography. Derek H. Alderman is Professor of Geography at the University of Tennessee and Past President of the American Association of Geographers (2017–2018). He is the (co)author of over 140 articles, chapters and other essays, many focused on the intersection of race, memory and place in popular culture, tourism and place-naming. Douglas L. Allen is an Assistant Professor of Geography in the Department of Social Sci- ences at Emporia State University. His recent work on placemaking, music/festival perfor- mance and Black geographies has been published in Progress in Human Geography, Antipode, Cultural Geographies and Geoforum. Irina Anastasiu is conducting postdoctoral research at the QUT Design Lab at Queensland University of Technology, Australia, contributing to the ARC-funded study “Digital Media, Location Awareness, and the Politics of Geodata.” Her interests include (geo)privacy, and data and technological sovereignty in smart cities. Daniel Bos is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Chester, UK. Daniel’s research explores the relationship between visual culture, geopolitics and militariza- tion. He is the co-author of Popular Culture, Geopolitics, and Identity (2nd edn, Rowman & Littlefield, 2019). James Compton is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information & Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario. He is author of The Integrated News Spectacle: A Political Economy of Cultural Performance (Peter Lang, 2004), and co-editor of Converging Media, Diver- ging Politics (Lexington Books, 2005). x
- 15. James Craine isProfessor of Geography at California State University, Northridge. He is co-editor of the Research Guide to Media Geography (Ashgate, 2014), co-editor of The Fight to Stay Put (Franz Steiner, 2013), and has authored numerous articles on media geography. His research focuses on advanced cartographic design and visual methodologies. Adriana de Souza e Silva is Professor of Communication at North Carolina State Uni- versity (USA). She is the co-editor and co-author of several peer-reviewed articles and five books, including The Routledge Companion to Mobile Media Art (Routledge, 2020, with Larissa Hjorth and Klare Lanson) and Hybrid Play (Routledge, 2020, with Ragan Glover-Rijkse). Marcia R. England is Professor and Chair in the Department of Geography at Miami University. Her research focuses on geographies in pop culture, of mental health, and on representations and spaces of the body. Recent work includes a monograph entitled Public Privates: Feminist Geographies of Mediated Spaces (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). Marcus Foth is Professor of Urban Informatics in the QUT Design Lab at Queensland University of Technology, Australia. He is also an Honorary Professor in the School of Communication and Culture at Aarhus University, Denmark. He is a chief investigator of the ARC-funded study “Digital Media, Location Awareness, and the Politics of Geodata” and tweets @sunday9pm. Ragan Glover-Rijkse is a PhD candidate at NC State University. Her research examines the intersections between mobile media, infrastructures and space/place. She has a book, titled Hybrid Play (co-edited with Adriana de Souza e Silva, Routledge, 2020), and her work has appeared in Mobile Media & Communication and Communication Education. Mareile Kaufmann is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law, University of Oslo, and the Peace Research Institute Oslo. Mareile studies data governance and surveillance technologies, and how people engage with these from within. She heads the ERC-project “Digital DNA: The Changing Relationships between Digital Technologies, DNA and Evidence.” Irina Kopteva is an Assistant Professor—Research at the University of Colorado in Color- ado Springs. She has taught geography in the United States, Europe and Russia. Her research interests include geographical education, human geography and environmental sustainability. Her article on human geography online education received an award from the National Council for Geographic Education in 2019. Virginie Mamadouh is Associate Professor of Political and Cultural Geography at the Department of Geography, Planning and International Development Studies of the Uni- versity of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Her research interests pertain to (critical) geopolitics, political culture, media, European integration, (urban) social movements, transnationalism and multilingualism. She recently co-edited the Handbook of the Geographies of Globalization (Edward Elgar, 2018). Peta Mitchell is Associate Professor in the Digital Media Research Centre and School of Communication at Queensland University of Technology, Australia. Her research focuses on digital geographies, locative media and geoprivacy in everyday digital media use. She is a List of contributors xi
- 16. chief investigator ofthe ARC-funded study “Digital Media, Location Awareness, and the Politics of Geodata.” Roger Norum is a Social Anthropologist whose research focuses on linkages between environment, infrastructure and mobility, primarily among transient communities in the Arctic and Asia. He holds degrees from Cornell and Oxford, and is Founding Editor of Palgrave’s Arctic Encounters book series. James B. Pick is Professor of Business at University of Redlands. He has authored or co- authored 13 books on GIS, IS and environment including The Global Digital Divides (Springer, 2015) and Exploring the Urban Community: A GIS Approach (Pearson, 2011). His current research concerns the US digital divides, GIS strategies, the sharing economy and locational privacy. Erika Polson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Media, Film and Journalism Studies at the University of Denver, USA. Her research involves critical cultural studies of digital media and mobility in global contexts, and specifically on new ways that status is accrued or projected through mobilities. She is author of Privileged Mobilities: Professional Migration, Geo-social Media, and a New Global Middle Class (Peter Lang, 2016) and co-editor of the Routledge Companion to Media and Class (Routledge, 2020). Avijit Sarkar is Professor of Business Analytics at the University of Redlands, School of Business. His research interests include technology adoption and diffusion and pri- vate sector use of location-based technologies. He has co-authored the book Global Digital Divides: Explaining Change. His research has appeared in journals in IT and telecommunications. Elisabeth Sommerlad is a Postdoc at the Institute of Geography, JGU Mainz. She studied Geography, Communication and Sociology. Her dissertation on Intercultural Encounters in Feature Films (approved 2019) investigates the cinematic staging of interculturality in US movies. Her research focuses on interrelations between media, place, identity and belonging. She is Managing Editor of the book series Media Geography at Mainz. Ellen van Holstein is Research Fellow in Urban Geography at the University of Mel- bourne. Her research focuses on technologies, policies and everyday practices that shape opportunities for citizen participation and inclusion in cities. She is currently focusing on the accessibility of urban spaces for people with intellectual disability. Hunter Vaughan is the Environmental Media Scholar-in-Residence at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including Hollywood’s Dirtiest Secret: The Hidden Environmental Costs of the Movies (Columbia University Press, 2019), and is a Founding Editor of the Journal of Environmental Media. Barney Warf is a Professor of Geography at the University of Kansas. His research and teaching interests lie within the broad domain of human geography. His research includes telecommunications and political geography viewed through the lens of political economy and social theory. He edits Geojournal and co-edits Growth and Change. List of contributors xii
- 17. Xiang Zhang isa Lecturer in International Development at Nottingham Trent University, UK. His research focuses on the economic geography of the internet, social and power relations in cyberspace, and China’s role in globalization. He holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Kansas. Susanne Zimmermann-Janschitz is Associate Professor at the Department of Geography and Regional Science, University of Graz, Austria. She is past Chair of the Disability Speci- alty Group of the American Association of Geographers. Her current research is focused on GIS in the context of sustainability and persons with disabilities. List of contributors xiii
- 19. 1 MEDIA GEOGRAPHIES An introduction PaulC. Adams and Barney Warf Media geographies are all around us. Networks of world-spanning infrastructure keep us in touch with family, friends, business colleagues, customers and clients. News companies headquartered in major cities form our sense of historical and contemporary reality by pro- viding “the news,” a shared here and now that circulates through geographical and social space, on newspaper and magazine pages, large and small screens, radio and podcasts. These are media geographies, as are the maps and GPS that guide people’s movements through space, facilitating movements from shopping trips to vacations to intercontinental migration. Media geographies also include invented and fictionalized places created for the purposes of entertainment and escapism, including immersive games and virtual reality experiences. Media geographies surround us, guiding us, following us and taking us places. Our understanding of the term “media” involves more than mere technology. Technolo- gies alone do not communicate. Rather, communication depends on social processes of encoding and decoding (Hall 2001) that inevitably produce a shift in meaning, a kind of translation, between sender(s) and receiver(s), a process that reflects their positionality relative to social power and ideology. Producing and sharing meaning involves complex processes that conjoin the social, political, psychological, linguistic and geographical into a seamless whole. Media are sociotechnical processes (Marwick 2018) moving through all of the fol- lowing: technologies (communication infrastructures and devices), matter (book pages, ink, wires, satellites, fiber optics, screens), codes (ways of making sense of marks and tracings in matter), information (data, facts, rumors, stories, discourses, narratives), actors (people, bookworms, companies, governments, algorithms, switching devices), and systems (econo- mies, legislative apparatuses, bureaucratic organizations, libraries). The list could be expanded indefinitely, but the point is that a medium is not a technical object, a thing, but rather a network or assemblage, a hybrid mix of the tangible and intangible. Not all of the authors contributing to this volume would espouse actor network theory or assemblage theory, and our wish is not to promote a single approach to media geography; the issues our authors address treat media as neither wholly social nor wholly technical, but rather as sociotechnical phenomena and processes. When we were making our first forays into media geography, there were particular media that interested us. Adams was interested in television (1992) and Warf in telecommunication networks supporting financial transactions (1989). Geographers interested in media usually DOI: 10.4324/9781003039068-1 1
- 20. focused on particularmedia, such as paintings (Cosgrove 1985), newspapers (Goheen 1990), writing (Barnes & Duncan 1992) and films (Aitken & Zonn 1994). This interest in particular media did not deny that various media “texts” interrelated to each other intertextually (Kristeva 1980), but it was assumed that literature, news media, telephones, television, music recordings and film were all distinct and separate media that could be studied on their own. Of course, no one in the 1970s or 1980s picked up a telephone to watch a movie, read a newspaper, play games, or monitor their bank account. Now these things are all common- place, indicating a process of media convergence made possible by the digital revolution (Cupples 2015). One can still use a phone to call someone, but one can also check email, only to be interrupted by one’s calendar, or a reminder to order a prescription, or a ping indicating a friend has posted on social media. The phone is no longer just a phone, but also a mailbox, bank teller, pharmacist, calendar, movie theater, television, newspaper, toy, puzzle, game, notepad and tape recorder; we can also use a laptop or desktop computer for these very same things (Koeze & Popper 2020). When we speak in terms of “apps” rather than particular devices, we are speaking of families of software that can be hosted on various devices in a plethora of places. It becomes such a tangled mess that “media” has become a singular noun because it is hard to identify a particular medium. The media is a muddle of things from which most of us cannot escape. Media geographies are, nonetheless, accessed to different degrees and intensities depending on one’s social position and geographic location. There are high and low degrees of accessibility whether one compares countries, regions or parts of a city. The typical American household includes seven screens, and two-thirds of the world’s population now has access to at least one cell phone (ReportLinker 2017; Taylor & Silver 2019). There are still many places where digital media are scarce and where traditional face-to-face media hold their own. Roughly a third of the world’s population does not have access to the internet, and for many people cyberspace is some distant, foreign continent. The digital divide remains a serious issue. Within any of these more or less connected places, people build their own distinct media environments, personalized by their contacts in their physical or digital phone books, their friendship networks and their social media. Media geographies are not just “out there”; they are also in us, in the languages we know, our highly internalized systems of meaning, the nonverbal communications we understand, the way our fingers find the right keys on keyboards and keypads, the way our speech automatically adjusts to various apps and interfaces, the way we sense our phone’s vibration even when it is silenced. In addition, our lives are increasingly mediatized: daily routines, activities and social inter- actions evolve in response to configurations of media encountered, used and appropriated (Lundby 2009; Hjarvard 2013). Mediatization is the incorporation of media into our various projects, allowing things to be done across space rather than in place, letting people come together around shared interests, tasks and objectives without physically converging (Kwan 2000). Mediatization reflects, among other things, the increasingly information-intensive nature of capitalism, both in the domains of production and social reproduction, the pro- liferation of new technologies, and the growth of the demand for information of all kinds. It is the ongoing reworking of our “life paths” (Hägerstrand 1970) to incorporate media rou- tines, cycling over spans of days, months and years. The substitution of physical gathering by mediated forms of gathering creates a risk of context collapse; as “social media environments become a place where person-to-person conversations take place around user-generated content amidst potentially large audiences” (Marwick & Boyd 2011, 129–130) the situational integrity of life breaks down. The boundaries between situations (such as home, work, school, the bank and the doctor’s office) that help us maintain control over aspects of our self-iden- tity have become steadily eroded (Nissenbaum 2009). Adams & Warf 2
- 21. Geographers can contributeto understanding the challenges of mediatization, the risks of context collapse and the threats to situational integrity, by returning to fundamental geo- graphical concepts of space and place, and reconsidering them in light of sociotechnical transformations associated with new media. Geographers can “ground” media in the reality of lived experience and the highly variegated places in which people live. They can map, literally and figuratively, the flows of information that media create, linking the producers and consumers of information in complex webs of interaction. Unfortunately, the geography of communication is still plagued by “invisibility,” as Ken Hillis noted more than two decades ago (1998). The reason for this lack of visibility strikes us as a truncated understanding of “geography.” Outsiders still view geography as studying a “space of places” and are unaware that the discipline has grappled with the “space of flows” (Castells 1989) for decades. To be sure, how the media relates to places is still a topic of significant concern (Halegoua 2019). Media geography as a subdiscipline addresses both pat- terns and processes, stasis and flows, communication infrastructure and “traffic” on that infrastructure. Nonetheless, we are optimistic that media geography is on the verge of broader recognition, in part because of the longevity of relevant concerns within the dis- cipline, and in part because of the convergence of pertinent questions from all segments of society. History of media geography The earliest work in media geography can be traced to the 1970s. Geography’s “quantitative revolution” brought attention to human movement and information flows, which led in turn to the key observation that the speeding up of transportation and communication brings locations closer together in time-distance, progressively shortening the time required to move or communicate between points. Costs to move or communicate among places also tend to decrease over time, leading to cost-space convergence (Brunn & Leinbach 1991; Janelle & Hodge 2000). For this reason, media geographies are an integral part of the successive rounds of time-space compression that have swept the world repeatedly since the Industrial Revo- lution (Warf 2008). Viewed comprehensively, this process means that the spaces in which people live and act can be understood as shrinking, collapsing, compressing or converging. Media have long played a central role in the reconstruction of relational space. By bridging space effortlessly, by bringing ever larger audiences into reach, telecommunications changed the scale of the community in which people imagined themselves. The telegraph, whose invention is often credited to Samuel Morse in 1844, was the first form of telecommunica- tions and was essential to the expansion of the United States and the formation of a national economy (Pred 1977). Shortly thereafter telegraph lines crossed the Atlantic Ocean to link North America and Europe (Hugill 1999). The telephone, unveiled in 1876, was originally the preserve of the wealthy, only to become a household tool over time. Its use greatly expanded the spatial range of interpersonal networks, the opportunities for interaction, undermined longstanding boundaries between public and private spaces (de Sola Pool 1977) and helped in the formation of “communities without propinquity,” or people tied by common interests rather than physical proximity (Marvin 1988). The mass-produced camera, the creation of George Eastman in 1888, led to an explosion in photography and its accep- tance as an accurate, unbiased and objective mirror of the world (Sontag 1977). Few inno- vations had such a power to make distant places seem near. The evolution of photography into the cinema represents one of the most powerful extensions of visual experience in the history of modernity. Cinema allowed people to “get a sense of the world without moving Media geographies: An introduction 3
- 22. very far atall” (Allen & Hamnett 1995, 3). The radio, an outgrowth of wireless telegraphy, for the first time brought news and entertainment directly into the homes of the masses. Finally, of course, television stitched together the world as a collage of simultaneous sights and sounds divorced from their historical or geographical context. Television exceeds at entertaining (Postman 1985), and forces all other discourses to imitate it: education, religion and politics must be entertaining to be successful. In drawing the multitudes indoors, televi- sion helped to eclipse the public agora, deepening the bourgeois process of individualization and commodification. The world’s foremost source of entertainment and news, television has shortened attention spans, engendered immediate gratification, led to unrealistic stereotypes, desensitized viewers to violence and endlessly promoted commodities in a never-ending series of advertisements. In the late 20th century, two major technologies—satellites and fiber optics—became the backbones of the global communications and media network. From their Cold War origins, satellites were deployed by telecommunications companies to provide services for financial firms, the media and transnational corporations. Starting in the 1980s, a global skein of fiber optics cables became the most preferred mode of telecommunications in the world, greatly altering global flows of financial funds and information, and laying the basis for the internet (Warf 2006). Such systems well illustrate the notion of “power-geometries” (Massey 1993) that ground the space of flows within concrete material and spatial contexts. In providing a largely homogenous diet of Western television and video programs around the world, these technologies have had important repercussions for local and national forms of consciousness and subjectivity. Appadurai (1990) views such phenomena as part of a global “mediascape” that interacts with other “scapes” to redefine the cultural geographies of global postmodern- ism. Thus, from the most intimate spaces of the body to the rarified domain of the global economy, media geographies inform, teach, enlighten, entertain, amuse and at times mislead people, producing subjects and reproducing and changing social relations. Claims regarding the transformation of space, such as compression or convergence, depend on a particular view of geographic space as relational, rather than absolute (Murdoch 2006); space is relevant to human life because of how it shapes relations between things, and these rela- tions are stretched and compressed rather than absolute metrics like Euclidean space (Sack 1980). In the current global capitalist system, capitalism drives the compression of space according to its inherent logics; spatial compression is a temporary, provisional resolution of the contradictions inherent to capitalism (Harvey 1990), giving rise to a series of shifting “spatial fixes” over time. The transformation of space through mediated communication and transportation is a broad-brush interpretation and does not foreclose the possibility of local trends in the opposite direction, such as traffic jams and declines in communication con- nectivity in neglected and marginalized places (Janelle 1969; Massey 1993). Communications of various sorts move through various kinds of spaces, each with its own properties, many of which change dynamically over short and long timespans, including daily and weekly cycles of expansion and contraction (Gould 1991). The people living in any given place are always positioned unequally in their ability to benefit from time-space compression/convergence. Media and place are thus intimately intertwined (Halegoua 2019). This means that social power imbalances are expressed and perpetuated through mediated communications leading to “power geometries” wherein one’s race, ethnicity, national origins, class, sex, age, educa- tion and other social criteria affect the quality and quantity of one’s ability to access, and benefit from, distant places (Massey 1993). In general, the implications and conditions for the transformation of relational space occur within a general process of compression or con- vergence with regard to time and cost, but in a way that differently impacts differently Adams & Warf 4
- 23. situated actors, throughunevenness, asymmetry and bias in communication flows. Media geography therefore constitutes a particular lens on the issue of globalization. In addition to these transformations of space and time, media geography has also returned frequently to questions of place, as captured in mediated representations. This approach was developed in the 1980s with humanistic geographic studies of prose and poetry, by authors such as Silk (1984), Porteous (1985), and Pocock (1988). Around the same time, geographers examined visual media, including television, film and advertising (Gould et al. 1984; Burgess & Gold 1985; Adams 1992; Aitken & Zonn 1994). Research on verbal and visual repre- sentations of place demonstrated a sharpened recognition of the “cultural” in cultural geo- graphy, drawing on ideas of the Frankfurt School, British cultural studies and French social theory, all of which prompted a recognition of culture as a contested terrain. “High” and “low” culture are deeply implicated in material struggles (Bourdieu 1984), and one cannot speak of a place’s culture in monolithic terms but only as a particular place-based struggle over culture (Mitchell 1995) among participants who define culture differently. This idea breaks with earlier cultural geography dominated by ideas of areal differentiation (Hartshorne 1968) and the cultural landscape (Sauer 1969), by refusing to accept culture as a patchwork where similarity is a function of distance, and instead positing multiple layers and counter- currents of culture in any given place. In addition, communication is central to the process of knowing the world, and knowl- edge inevitably is sutured to power. As Foucault (1993) stressed, discourses—constellations of meanings, narratives and ideologies—do not simply mirror the world, but enter into its making. The implication for media geography is that a place represented in the media is not one thing but multiple perspectives aligned with axes of social power, offering an ideologi- cally vested way of knowing the world. Bringing related ideas “home” to geography’s own communications, authors such as Brian Harley (1988; 1989) and Denis Wood (1992) sub- jected cartography to new kinds of critical reflection, revealing maps not simply as technical objects but as social constructions imbued with power. On this account, cartography is cen- tral to geographic ways of knowing, rather than serving merely as a tool. It is a discourse that plays instrumental roles in social and political life, a tactic or strategy to promote various agendas, a projection of social as well as geodetic relations. In yet another shift, a more critical approach evolved with regard to “landscape,” ques- tioning landscape’s ontological status; no longer “out there,” landscape became seen as a way of representing, seeing and interacting with the world (Cosgrove & Daniels 1988; Duncan 1990; Barnes & Duncan 1992; Duncan & Ley 1993). This work highlighted ways in which power relations embodied in discourses and images of landscape worked to naturalize social inequality. Feminist geographers brought a more complicated and nuanced understanding of social inequality, reminding other geographers that this was not a matter of class but also a complex intersection of gender, race and ethnicity running through modes of representation, discourse and power (Rose 1993; Gibson-Graham 1994; Kobayashi & Peake 1994; Nash 1996). Critical studies of landscape and feminist geographic research both fostered geographic interest in discourse, and the latter situated discourses about space and place within an inter- sectional, multidimensional model of social power. Throughout this period, a particularly important figure was Yi-Fu Tuan, who employed a unique, humanistic approach to bear, exploring representations of space and place in media as varied as language, literature, mythology, photography, motion pictures and dance (Tuan 1978; 1991; 2004), while also disclosing how landscape could function as a medium to send disciplinary messages, maintaining social hierarchies and power relations (Tuan 1979; 1984). His work epitomized a humanistic, phenomenological approach, and while no one directly Media geographies: An introduction 5
- 24. addressing media geographycould replicate his style, he nonetheless contributed to the complex interplay between critical and interpretive approaches to media geography. In short, by the mid-1990s, geographers saw media of all sorts as means of projecting order onto the world through representations, shaping and organizing how people see the world and their place in it, solidifying perceptions and expectations while buttressing material rela- tions, actions and interactions. Few geographers self-identified as media geographers, but many studied discourses of one kind or another, which brought attention to an array of particular media. Most such work shared certain assumptions, foremost among them the idea that a way of showing is also a way of seeing (Berger 1972), and a description is also a script (Ó Tuathail 1992). Stated less obliquely: representations do not just re-present, they also present ways of perceiving, they guide action and they offer people positions and identities. In all of these ways, media and communications are deeply implicated in the dialectics between self and world, here and there, Us and Them. The historical foundations of media geography sketched here have been explored in greater depth elsewhere (e.g. Adams 2009; Adams & Jansson 2012; Adams et al. 2014; Mains et al. 2015; Adams et al. 2017). The core ideas to take away are that media geography is now more than 35 years old, it has engaged with diverse media as sources of place representations and spatial systems, and the area of inquiry has benefited from humanistic, critical and analytical approaches. Recent trends in media geography The emergence of “non-representational” geography (Lorimer 2005; Thrift 2008) empha- sized communications as perceptions and actions, many of which precede language, more than representation, directing attention to less easily translated communications such as dance, sports, and the everyday geographies of the body. Here people are communicating and their communications saturate spaces and places, but it makes little sense to describe such com- munications in terms of representation. Non-representational and more-than-representational approaches to media geography can deepen our understanding of images, rhythms, emotions, embodiment and multisensory experiences that contribute to a person’s sense of self and sense of place (Lorimer 2005; Latham & McCormack 2009). They can also shed light on how nonverbal communications flow between people in the form of affect and emotion (Pile 2010). Such work demonstrates a preference for writing about flows, fluidity, movement and mobility and avoids nitty gritty details about the infrastructure and images carrying such flows, but this is not universally the case (Carter & McCormack 2006). The intersection between media geography and the discussion of affect remains a promising and largely unexplored area. Another area of intense current interest in media geography has its roots in the 1990s. Initiated by Gearóid Ó Tuathail and John Agnew, critical geopolitics reconceptualizes geo- politics as a discursive practice (1992, 192), a move that led to fruitful investigations by Sharp (2000), Dodds and Atkinson (2002), Dittmer (2010), and many others. Such work owes a huge debt to Benedict Anderson’s (1983) famous and well received idea of imagined com- munity, the shared sense of national identity that characterizes everyday patriotism with its accompanying self-identities, media practices and worldviews. Anderson’s “print capitalism” is a social formation linking a particular form of state power to the practice of publicly defining historical time and geographical space through commercial journalism. Not just news media, strictly defined, but all media are in the business of condensing and “interpret- ing” the nation, including popular magazines and comics, and they help fuse personal iden- tities to particular ways of inhabiting and performing national(ist) identities (Dittmer 2012). Adams & Warf 6
- 25. In this reading,popular and formal politics intersect and are hopelessly intertwined. Critical geopolitics constitutes a significant influence on media geography, with somewhat different emphases but shared interests, objectives and assumptions. A wave of impressive recent work in geography has exposed the peculiarities of digital media, including the following: a compendium of efforts to map cyberspace (Dodge & Kitchin 2000), the geography of the internet industry (Zook 2005), the origins and growth of cyberspace, its uneven social and spatial diffusion, and its innumerable impacts (Malecki & Moriset 2008; Warf 2012; Kellerman 2016), digital code’s relation to places and spaces (Kitchin & Dodge 2011), the interface between the human and the machine (Ash 2015), how online interaction incorporates aspects of ritual and fetishism into contemporary life (Hillis 2009), and how uneven geographical coverage in map-based online services perpe- tuates biases (Zook & Graham 2007). “Old” media like television and film continue to attract attention (Lukinbeal & Zimmermann 2008; Christophers 2009) but the focus of the dis- cipline has shifted to issues relating to new media, and particularly digital communications. Never have so many people been able to contact one another so easily, obtain news, file complaints, pay bills, be entertained and save time than today. For large numbers of users, the real and virtual worlds have become inextricably intertwined; for them, the internet is a necessity, not a luxury. Seen this way, the dichotomy offline/online does not do justice to the diverse ways in which the “real” and virtual worlds are interpenetrating. However, for those without access to the information highway, the internet may represent a new source of inequality. We sympathize with the effort to promote the study of “digital geographies” (Zook et al. 2004; Ford & Graham 2016; Ash et al. 2018), and the effort to understand the interfaces between humans and technologies as objects in their own right (Ash 2015). However, it may be avoiding difficult questions that come up when speaking of digital media as media, that is to say, as sociotechnical communication systems. It is important to frame “the digital” as communication, even if that communication has unfamiliar powers. Alternatively, work in digital geographies is at times putting old wine in new bottles. While the novelty of digital media deserves attention, understanding many aspects of new media requires a return to fundamental questions about communication flows and processes in space and place and about space and place. Fundamental questions about relationships between representation, subjectivity and the world arise whether one is examining digital media or earlier media. Digital media like earlier media can be used to represent places, enhance the functioning of places and connect through physical and social spaces (Adams 2009). The study of digital media benefits from a historical geographic perspective that attends to longstanding questions about geographical ontology, epistemology and methodology. So, rather than encouraging digital geographies, per se, we would encourage geographical attention to digital media within media geography. Media geography and current issues The COVID-19 crisis has accelerated key facets of mediatization whereby elements of life, including face-to-face communications and embodied mobility, are hybridized with digital communications and virtual gathering. We cycle between our online workplaces, leisure places, places of learning, marketplaces and information places. “Going to work” increasingly means a particular way of logging onto a particular app or database, with entry to the workplace controlled by a username, a password, and site-specific ways of uploading, downloading, networking and collaborating. Going to school is often just a different way of Media geographies: An introduction 7
- 26. logging onto appsand databases, a different username and password, and different site-specific ways of uploading, downloading, networking and collaborating. Shopping and hanging out with friends also involve these elements, where each generally constitutes a bounded activity space defined by different ways of “entering” and interacting. One result of the COVID-based onlining of lives, particularly in the economically devel- oped world, is rapid transformation of social norms and expectations. A blurring of social boundaries follows from the blurring of spatial boundaries. Social media norms spill into business meetings, as kids, cats and dogs poke their noses in and disrupt consultations and boardrooms. The norms of social media also spill into classrooms as professors ask students for a thumbs-up if they understand a particular concept from the lecture. With so much of life migrating online, we are afforded daily demonstrations of how media geographies support construction of disembodied identities (e.g. faces on a screen), but also how media geo- graphies are embodied, emotional and material. In this light, the divisions between the public and private spheres become porous. Video links allow us to peek into one another’s homes; Facebook allows people to post the most intimate details of their lives. The boundaries between the public and private realms have become porous indeed. Despite this plunge into the latest bout of time-space compression, accompanied by context collapse and multiple risks to situational integrity, there are still quite a few of the “old” pre- digital communications around the corners of our worlds. Many people still read books printed on paper, and some read newspapers and magazines that way. We continue to have face-to-face conversations safely distanced from our neighbors as we pass on the street; hours are spent leafing through the encrusted pages of forgotten cookbooks for ways to spice up a homebound life; mail fresh from the mailbox waits on the corner of the table. These things remind us that our lives still depend on old media. Media geography is suited to reflection on the current situation since it considers old and new media, high-tech and the low-tech infrastructure, mobile and stationary uses of media, entertaining and utilitarian media, simple and complex media, and all in light of spatial activity routines and the evolving meaning of place. During the COVID-19 crisis, media-geography questions have become a general pre- occupation. Why is food ordered from a restaurant only half as good as the same food eaten in the restaurant? How do intimate social relations like dates and family get-togethers survive transplantation to the relatively (though not entirely) disembodied space of online together- ness? Why is seeing people in 2D inferior to talking with them in 3D? How can we teach students technical skills, sports, dance, art, social sciences or even social skills when each learning environment is a numbingly similar array of boxes on a Zoom screen? The mass interest and publicity in this moment around what we recognize as media geography will have major implications for the study of media geography, and perhaps by the time “COVID-19” has faded from the scene through widespread vaccinations, “media geo- graphy” will be more familiar. Outline of chapters The first section of the book engages with issues around the control of, and access to, digital media. These topics include state-backed censorship of media and digital divides, both of which create forms of exclusion from mediated communication flows. The next chapter in this section deals with efforts to overcome controls built into digital media; in a word, hacking. This is followed by chapters on the Chinese internet, which demonstrates a parti- cularly severe form of state control, and a chapter exploring how digital media both exclude and include people with visual impairment and blindness. Adams & Warf 8
- 27. Many governments aroundthe world fear the emancipatory power of the internet, which can undermine monopolies over the control of information. In Chapter 2, Barney Warf examines internet censorship, which varies widely across the globe. He summarizes the major forms and levels of severity that censorship assume, then displays their geographies using data from Reporters Without Borders. Next he focuses on the world’s most egregious practi- tioners of censorship, such as China, where the “Great Firewall” is notorious, as well as Vietnam, Iran, Russia, and Central Asian republics such as Turkmenistan. The chapter con- cludes with a warning that early utopian expectations of the internet have given way to more sobering but politically realistic assessments. Social and spatial inequalities in access to cyberspace, better known as the digital divide, have long been central to understanding who uses the internet and who does not. In Chapter 3, James B. Pick and Avijit Sarkar provide a comprehensive overview of digital divides among the world’s major regions. Although divides in most cases have narrowed, particularly with the growth of cell phones and the mobile internet, significant discrepancies remain among countries, and often within them as well. Pick and Sarkar point out the growing multidimensional complexity of divides, which now include technical literacy, affordability, technophobia, broadband access and social capital. The growth of information technologies the world over has led to new types of divides with varied geographies, which they illustrate with a wealth of examples. Mareile Kaufmann, in Chapter 4, offers a comprehensive overview of hackers and hacking that departs from conventional representations that portray hackers as criminals. Rather, she emphasizes, hackers are motivated by a range of economic, political, affective and philoso- phical inclinations. After summarizing discourses about hacking, she focuses on an empirical case study of hacking dataveillance—surveillance using digital data—in three European countries, which redefines the contours of data flows and governance. Her chapter fruitfully depicts hackers in terms that emphasize the multiplicity of views surrounding the practice, their embodiment and the techno-political dimensions of governmentality and resistance. China has by far the world’s largest single population of netizens, more than 850 million in 2020. Xiang Zhang, in Chapter 5, explores the rise of social media there and how it differs from conventional media platforms. Inspired by the theoretical perspectives of Michel Fou- cault, in which knowledge and power are seamlessly fused, he turns to the social impacts of internet media there, such as news apps on smartphones. In contrast to the rigidly hierarchical structure of state media, a plethora of new media companies such as Sina and Tencent have unleashed enormous changes in the Chinese media landscape. In response, the Communist Party, adamant to retain its authoritarian control over the country, has amplified its surveil- lance and censorship. How long this status is retained in light of growing internet penetration rates and citizen activism remains to be seen. Chinese usage of video sharing platforms, microblogs, and services similar to Twitter has markedly altered how they obtain and share information, with uncertain long-term consequences. For people with visual impairment or blindness (VIB), media offer particular challenges and opportunities. In Chapter 6, Susanne Zimmerman-Janschitz explores geographical aspects of VIB and how they intersect with media. Ranging from the large-scale geography of legal and tech- nological conditions structuring VIB experiences in different countries, to the question of how to facilitate access for VIB to the built environment, she shows multiple geographies of media that are encountered by those with visual impairment and blindness. The overwhelmingly visual quality of contemporary digital media effectively shuts out access to much information (including spatial information) when users are limited to aural-haptic interfaces. In contrast, automated aural and tactile navigation assistance is being developed to facilitate navigation by the VIB and help them avoid environmental obstacles and hazards. Media geographies: An introduction 9
- 28. The second sectionis dedicated to geographies of mass media. Chapters range from the newspaper and (fake) news content, to audiovisual media: film, television and video. Run- ning through these chapters are thematic interests in the evolution of the democratic polity, public discourse and the audience segments constituted as publics. An intersecting theme is the ontological status of representations of the world, in particular their ability to falsify or misrepresent, an ability that requires a renewed encounter in the wake of postmodern cri- tiques that destabilized notions of the true and the real. Chapter 7, by Paul C. Adams, considers the newspaper from various geographical view- points: as a venue for disseminating geographical findings, a source of geographical data, a means to identify and critique public discourse, and an institutional actor that plays an important role in social processes. Studies roughly aligned with these various approaches have established the newspaper as one of the most important media for geographers to understand, and have drawn attention to important issues such as the role of newspapers in defining national culture and worldviews, as well as contextualizing social contestation. The chapter closes with a cautionary section addressing the ways in which digital newspapers deviate from the longstanding assumptions about newspapers, requiring geographers to adopt new research approaches. One of the more distressing trends in global media today is the explosion of fake news, or false stories that masquerade as real. James Compton, in Chapter 8, points out that this phe- nomenon has created a legitimation crisis for journalism. He traces the origins of fake news, with its deep roots in yellow journalism, and its utilization by demagogues such as Donald Trump. As the variety of news outlets has proliferated with abandon, the opportunities to manufacture fake news have grown accordingly. Coupled with a growing crisis of traditional media, this trend has led to large numbers of misinformed people who are gullible enough to swallow conspiracy theories. He concludes by noting that the right-wing mediasphere—Fox News, Breitbart, Infowars, and the like—have seized on fake news with a vengeance, sowing enormous distrust of the media among large swaths of the public. Within media geography, a special position is held by studies of film and cinema. Many questions later directed toward other media were originally posed in relation to film. In Chapter 9, Elisabeth Sommerlad reviews the rich history of film geography, with particular attention to geographies in and of film, screen tourism, cinematic cartography, the didactic potential of film critique in geography education, and finally filmmaking as a research methodology and a venue for geographical findings. Sommerlad’s chapter concludes with a prospective glance at how these multifarious perspectives on film may become more integrated. In Chapter 10, James Craine turns to the geographies of television, still arguably the world’s most important media outlet. Revolutionary technological changes such as digitiza- tion, virtuality and streaming have unleashed new televisual landscapes. Craine analyzes these trends within the context of feminist thought, affect and the literature on spaces of difference. The multidimensional semiotics of televised spaces and places reveal how the virtual and the real have become interpenetrated in complex, often unpredictable ways. Among the most popular applications of digital media today is streaming video. Irina Kopteva, in Chapter 11, delivers an in-depth profile of the largest such service, YouTube, which has given millions of people a chance to express themselves visually to large audiences. The results include YouTube stars and influencers with millions of subscribers, videos of dangerous stunts, and a surge of material in vernacular languages. Even countries such as China, where YouTube is banned, have seen imitators emerge. As YouTube has grown, so too have debates about the legality of its content, marketing opportunities, advertising, Adams & Warf 10
- 29. intellectual property rightsand repercussions for education and entertainment. YouTube thus unites and divides people in diverse geographic contexts around the globe. The third section of the book addresses a spectrum of issues ranging from mobile media to surveillance. The functioning of mobile media implies the collection of locational data from users, opening up the possibility of a sort of microscopic, multidimensional surveillance that is unprecedented in human history. While this potential is exposed in the final chapter of the section, prior chapters indicate the ways in which mobile media have facilitated various forms of mobility. A complicated nexus of issues bringing together mobility, digital media, media convergence, loss or erosion of privacy, surveillance, and the commodification of mobility data preoccupies the authors contributing to this section. Just as mobile communication technologies have been undergoing rapid evolution, so are the geographical insights that can be obtained from the study of these technologies, as revealed in Chapter 12, by Ragan Glover-Rijkse and Adriana de Souza e Silva. The chapter reviews the short but complicated history of mobile media, from the late 1990s to the present, with particular attention to the reworking of human mobility through incorporation of mobile media into everyday spaces and practices. The chapter introduces corresponding transformations of relations between public and private, near and far, present and absent, space and place. The use of mobile media permitted the development of hybrid spaces that are simultaneously digital and physical, but as the authors insist, this process was as much a social as a technological transformation. Roger Norum and Erika Polson offer a deeper dive into the co-construction of media and mobilities in Chapter 13. Applying the concept of “connective media” to the present period, they question how connective media support both digital placemaking as well as movements to, in and through these places. They delve into the complex intertwinement of mobility and mediation, showing that media are now deeply involved in spatial connections whether one looks at flows of goods, services or people. Moving beyond the more familiar elements of this story, they explore more theoretically challenging aspects of the media-mobility nexus, considering how media function as intermediaries, coming between yet connecting, making what is distant immediate, and thereby altering conceptions of reality. Chapter 14 continues this dive into theoretical complexity as Peta Mitchell, Marcus Foth and Irina Anastasiu examine geographies of locative apps. Here the focus narrows to the “location-aware” applications running on digital devices. The chapter traces the historical emergence of mobile geolocation and offers a way of theorizing the new, “hybrid” forms of spatiality being generated in its wake. The authors move on to discuss the spatial affordances associated with location-based apps and services. They next offer a sobering reflection on how mobile geolocation has contributed to an emerging economic sector driven by the collection, collation and processing of personal locational data from the users of these apps. Their review of the literature demonstrates that locative apps present simultaneously an unwanted intrusion into personal privacy, a means of enhancing safety and security, and a way of engaging with hybrid spatiality. In Chapter 15, Ellen van Holstein writes of digital surveillance and place, notably the “culture of watching and being watched.” This set of practices is increasingly central to questions of privacy, fear and risk. Moving beyond conventional understandings of the panopticon, she por- trays digital surveillance in terms of networks and assemblages, in which new geographies of power and resistance are continually produced and reproduced. She concludes by calling on geographers to come to terms with their own complicity in this phenomenon. The fourth and final section of the book deals with media and the politics of knowledge. Geographies of media involve intersectionality defined by race and ethnicity, sex and gender, nationality, regional identity and anthropocentric understandings of the natural. Media geographies: An introduction 11
- 30. In Chapter 16,Douglas L. Allen and Derek H. Alderman explore the politics of race and eth- nicity in the media, bringing to bear geographic theories regarding presence and absence, socio- spatial representations and racialized landscapes. They demonstrate ways that media portrayals of racial and ethnic minorities stereotype, essentialize and marginalize, but also show that media can be used to affirm presence in the face of these processes, contest dominant narratives and images, and subvert oppressive systems. Cell phone videos, for example, have brought racist police brutality to the public eye, while also precipitating an alternative, re-envisioned, aspirational sense of place. Recent years have brought right-wing movements fusing racist and nationalist ideologies, in the US and throughout the world. In Chapter 17, Daniel Bos explores how media weave nationalist ideas in popular culture. His chapter explores how nationalism is experienced, embodied and performed through everyday mediated encounters. The nation is not merely represented in the media; in many ways, mediated communication is a key process through which the nation is created in an ongoing fashion. This wide-ranging chapter considers old and new research that bears on this question of how the nation comes to be and the part media play in this process. It reflects on the audience and various modes of contributing to, and engaging with, the circulation of nationalist imagery. Nationalist media content depends in part on representing outside people and places as significantly different, in other words as inferior, alien, bizarre, primitive, threatening, failed and so on. This Othering process is examined in Chapter 18 by Virginie Mamadouh, focusing on how news media perpetuate Eurocentric and Orientalist worldviews. These mediated realities situate negative stereotypes of non-Western places and people within an ethnocentric worldview prejudiced toward Western people and places. Through globaliza- tion and digitalization, these Eurocentric and Orientalizing perspectives have diffused outside of their Western source regions. However the same processes of globalization and digitaliza- tion have supported alternative perspectives, for example Al Jazeera and the Chinese broad- caster CCTV, as well as local perspectives posted by amateurs on social media platforms. If nationalism is obviously a spatial expression of power relations in the media, more subtly spatialized aspects of power involve sex and gender. These aspects are treated by Marcia R. England in Chapter 19 through a feminist approach to media geography. She outlines how notions of masculinity and femininity have been naturalized by media, as women’s agency is pushed to the margins. She considers how media both affirm or challenge social norms and ste- reotypes governing men’s and women’s spatial behaviors. She also reveals how geographical concerns with embodiment inherently invoke dynamics of mediated sex and gender. In the final chapter, Hunter Vaughan troubles the idea of nature as something we come to know through media representations by showing that media impact the environment and extend associated social justice violations in ways that are often disregarded. No single volume can hope to address all of the issues that swirl around the theme of media geographies. Obviously there are omissions in this volume: there are no chapters on radio, or Facebook, or the dark web. But we hope that the work presented here is useful for those studying the complex intersections of media and place, the ways in which spatiality and information are wrapped up in one another, and how the continuous, ongoing transforma- tion of both shape our societies, politics, cultures and lives. References Adams, P. C. 1992. Television as gathering place. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 82 (1), 117–135. Adams, P. C. 2009. Geographies of media and communication. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Adams & Warf 12
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- 35. PART I Control andaccess to digital media
- 37. 2 INTERNET CENSORSHIP Shaping theworld’s access to cyberspace Barney Warf In mid-2021, more than 5.1 billion people used the internet, making it a tool of communica- tions, entertainment and other applications accessed by roughly 65 percent of the world’s population (www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm). For countless numbers of people, cyber- space has become indispensable for entertainment, communications, shopping, bill payments and other uses. Increasingly the boundaries between the real and virtual worlds are evaporating. Numerous geographers have written about the nature and growth of cyberspace, its uneven social and spatial diffusion, and its multiple impacts, ranging from cybercommunities to digital divides to electronic commerce (Warf 2012; Kellerman 2016). This literature offers a valuable means for spatializing the internet, rooting it in the concrete social and material circumstances that vary across the world, which serves to demolish utopian notions that it is somehow placeless or leads to a “flat earth.” One of the most insidious notions that swirls around cyberspace is that it is an inherently and inevitably emancipatory tool, and thus always serves to undermine authoritarian gov- ernments. Ronald Reagan once asserted that “The Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip” (quoted in Kalathil & Boas 2003, 1), and the chair of Citicorp, Walter Wriston (1997, 174), argued that “the virus of freedom… is spread by electronic networks to the four corners of the earth.” At times this notion is wedded to lib- ertarian interpretations in which the global community of netizens is seen as a self-governing community in which the state has become largely irrelevant (Goldsmith & Wu 2006). Such views conveniently overlook how the internet can be used against people as well as for them. In contrast, more realistic assessments take seriously the ability of governments to limit access to the internet, regulate what people can see, and how they wield power against cyberdissidents (Diebert et al. 2008; Diebert 2009; Morozov 2011). Most of the world’s governments regulate internet access and contents to one degree or another, although the nature and extent vary widely. Indeed, opposition to censorship and political activism is typically confined to small groups of educated individuals, often diasporas, and has relatively little impact among the masses of their respective states (Kalathil & Boas 2003). While the geographic literature has delved into issues of geosurveillance and govern- mentality, it has been largely silent about how governments erect obstacles to internet access as a form of political control (but see Warf 2010). Warf (2009a; 2009b) addressed the geo- graphies of internet censorship in Latin America and the states that comprised the former DOI: 10.4324/9781003039068-3 19
- 38. Soviet Union, andWarf and Vincent (2007) addressed the marked government restrictions found in the Arab world. This chapter explores internet censorship in several steps. It opens with an overview of the dimensions of censorship and the various forms that it can take. Second, it offers a broad overview of the geography of global internet censorship. The third part highlights some of the world’s most egregious offenders in this regard, while the conclusion summarizes major themes. Dimensions of internet censorship Internet accessibility reflects, among other things, incomes, the cost of access, the prevalence of computers (at home, work, and libraries), literacy rates, gender roles, and how willing governments are to allow their populations to utilize cyberspace. Repressive governments typically fear the potential of the internet to allow people to circumvent their monopoly over information. Several geographers have drawn upon Foucauldian conceptions of power to analyze geosurveillance, invasions of privacy and digital panopticons (Dobson & Fisher 2007). These works illustrate that clearly the internet can be made to work against people as well as for them. Rather than being inherently emancipatory in nature, the internet can sustain dominant authorities and be used to track and harass political opponents of the state. Governments have varying motivations for internet censorship, including: the political repression of dissidents, suppression of civil rights groups, and the prevention of exposure of corruption or publication of comments insulting to the state (e.g. in China, Iran, Myanmar); religious controls to silence ideas deemed heretical or sacrilegious (as found in many Muslim countries); or cultural restrictions that exist as part of the oppression of ethnic minorities (e.g. refusal to allow government websites in certain languages) or sexual minorities. Often inter- net censorship is done on the ostensible grounds of protecting public morality from porno- graphy or gambling. Preventing terrorism is another favorite rationale, often backed by vague notions of national security. Governments may limit the scope (or range of topics) permitted on the internet and engage in different degrees of intervention, ranging from permitting information to flow utterly unfettered (e.g. Scandinavian states) to essentially prohibiting access to the internet altogether (e.g. North Korea) (Warf 2015). States with highly centralized power structures tend to be the worst internet censors, particularly those run by a single political party (e.g. China, North Korea). Often their policies earn them great enmity not only domestically but internationally as well, and severe censorship can discourage tourism, foreign investment and innovation (Villeneuve 2006). Internet censorship centers on control over access, functionality and contents (Eriksson & Giacomello 2009). A broad range of methods may be deployed: discriminatory ISP licenses, content filtering based on keywords, redirection of users to proxy servers, rerouting packets destined for a specific IP address to a blacklist, website blocking of a list of IP addresses, tapping and surveillance, chat room monitoring, discriminatory or prohibitive pricing poli- cies, hardware and software manipulation, hacking into opposition websites and spreading viruses, denial-of-service (DOS) attacks that overload servers or network connections using “bot herders,” temporary just-in-time blocking at moments when political information is critical, such as elections, and harassment of bloggers (e.g. via libel laws or invoking national security). Content filtering often relies on algorithms that identify target words or phrases, and can adapt as a new lexicon emerges over time. Filtering may occur at the levels of the individual service provider, the domain name, a particular IP address or a specific URL. Most Warf 20
- 39. forms of censorshipare difficult to detect technically: users may not even know that censor- ship is in effect. Sometimes governments use foreign (usually American) software for this purpose. For example, the governments of Iran, Yemen, the UAE and Sudan use Secure Computing’s SmartFilter, a program produced in the US (Lee 2001; Villeneuve 2006). Once formal censorship begins, there is the inevitable temptation to expand the list of prohibited topics and websites, or what Villeneuve (2006) calls “mission creep.” By far the most common and insidious form of censorship is self-censorship. Users in countries with authoritarian regimes typically know the boundaries of politically acceptable use and rarely cross them. Most are understandably intimidated by the threat of arrest or harassment, or less commonly, fines, for visiting prohibited websites. From the perspective of government authorities, self-censorship is more efficient and effective than brute force. Since the vast majority of internet usage is not for political purposes, only a minority of users are affected in this way. The degree and type of internet censorship obviously varies widely and reflects how democratic and open to criticism different political systems are. In Scandinavia, censorship is non-existent. In North Korea, internet access is illegal except for a small cadre of Communist Party elites and hackers trained in cyberwarfare (Warf 2015). In between these extremes lies a vast array of states with modest to moderate forms of censorship. These variations reflect the complex geographies of democracy, civil society and governance systems, as well as resistance to authoritarianism in the defense of freedom of speech. Viewed this way, internet censorship is a contested terrain of social relations. Opposition to censorship often involves a diverse array of social movements, political parties, activists, hackers, bloggers, journalists, labor unions, human rights groups, religious figures, women’s rights campaigns and others. Resistance may be successful at times, such as when cyber- activists use anonymizing proxy servers in other countries that encrypt users’ data and cloak their identities. Because cyberspace and physical space have become inseparable, the internet simultaneously reflects and in turn shapes the contours of politics. Moreover, this arena is constantly changing in size and scope, reflecting, among other things, rising penetration rates and growing computer literacy, fluctuations in government policies, and variations in popular sentiment. Internet censors and their subjects play a cat-and-mouse game that results in path- dependent, contingent and unpredictable results. The empirics of global internet censorship Reporters Without Borders, an NGO headquartered in Paris and one of the world’s preeminent judges of censorship, ranks governments across the planet in terms of the severity of their internet censorship (Quirk 2006). Their index of internet censorship is generated from surveys of 50 questions sent to legal experts, reporters and scholars in each country. Thus, countries in north- ern Europe, the US and Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and Japan exhibit minimal or no censorship (scores less than 10). Conversely, a rogue’s list of the world’s worst offenders, including China, Vietnam, Myanmar, Iran and Turkmenistan, exhibit the planet’s most severe and extensive restrictions (scores greater than 80). Table 2.1 summarizes the distribution of the world’s population and internet users according to the level of severity of censorship. Thus, only 13% of the world’s people, but a third of internet users, live in countries with minimal censor- ship; conversely, roughly one-quarter of the world’s people and internet users live under gov- ernments that engage in very heavy censorship (the vast bulk of whom are located in China). Most of the world lives under governments that censor the internet. Using the Reporters Without Borders scores, only 2.9% of the planet, and only 4.7% of netizens, lives in countries Internet censorship 21
- 40. with zero orminimal government intervention. These include Scandinavian states, Canada and New Zealand. The majority of the world’s people and internet users (68%) live under regimes with moderate levels of censorship (RWB scores 20–50), including Russia, most of the Arab world and parts of Africa. About one-fifth of the world, notably including China, lives under governments that practice extreme censorship. These broad categories fail to reveal important geographical variations in censorship levels (Figure 2.1), which may be mapped using Reporters Without Borders scores. Most of the world’s worst internet censors are located in Asia, including China, Turkmenistan, Vietnam and Iran. The majority are run by Communist Parties, including Cuba, the worst offender in the Western Hemisphere. Censorship is a common tool of totalitarian governments, which tolerate little dissent and fear unfettered lines of communication. The Middle East and Arab world do not fare well, nor does most of Africa. Most Latin American countries are moderate internet censors as well. In contrast, prosperous, stable democracies, including northern Europe, the US, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, exhibit very low levels of cen- sorship, as does South Africa. Egregious examples of censorship While the types and severity of censorship vary widely across the globe, it is worth noting a few of the most extreme examples as a means of understanding the lengths to which gov- ernments can go to regulate internet access, the strategies they deploy, and their effects. Chinese internet users, who numbered roughly 989 million people in mid-2021, face some of the world’s greatest restrictions (Roberts 2018; Qiang 2019). The Chinese govern- ment has been blunt in its justification for censorship, asserting its necessity to maintain a “harmonious society.” It deploys a vast array of measures commonly known as the “Great Firewall,” which includes publicly employed internet monitors and citizen volunteers, and screens blogs and email messages for potential threats to the party’s hegemony. International internet connections to China operate solely through a selected group of state-controlled backbone fiber networks. Access to common Web services, such as Google and Yahoo!, is heavily restricted (Paltemaa & Vuori 2009). The national government hires commentators, Table 2.1 Global population and internet users by severity of internet censorship, 2020 Internet RWB score Population (millions) % Users (millions) % <10.0 26.8 0.3 25.9 0.6 10.0–19.9 204.2 2.6 186.8 4.1 20.0–29.9 1,270.6 16.3 1,008.5 22.2 30.0–39.9 1,350.6 17.4 759.7 16.7 40.0–49.9 2,691.3 34.6 1,298.6 28.5 50.0–59.9 410.1 5.3 221.2 4.9 60.0–69.9 139.1 1.8 108.8 2.4 70.0–79.9 1,555.2 20.0 930.7 20.5 >80.0 124.9 1.6 9.1 0.2 Total 7,772.7 100.0 4,549.2 100.0 Source: Calculated by author a Reporters Without Borders Warf 22
- 41.
- 42. commonly referred toby the derogatory term the “five-mao party,” to monitor blogs and chat rooms, inserting comments that “spin” issues in a way favorable to the Chinese state. Internet service providers censor themselves (Zhang 2020) by monitoring monitor chat rooms, blogs, networking services, search engines and video sites for politically sensitive material in order to conform to government restrictions. Anonymizing websites that help users circumvent censorship are prohibited. Users who attempt to access blocked sites are confronted by Jingjing and Chacha, two cartoon police officers who inform them that they are being monitored. Instant messaging and mobile phone text messaging services are heavily filtered, including a program called QQ, which is automatically installed on users’ computers to monitor communications. Blogs critical of the government are typically dismantled within days. Notably, American firms have assisted the Chinese state in this regard (Simonite 2019). The Great Firewall system began in 2006 under an initiative known as “Golden Shield,” a national surveillance network that China developed with the aid of US firms Nortel and Cisco Systems (Lake 2009; Griffiths 2019). It rapidly extended beyond the internet to include digital identification cards with microchips containing personal data that allow the state to recognize the faces and voices of its 1.4 billion inhabitants. Golden Shield has been exported to Cuba, Iran and Belarus. In many respects, China’s state-led program of internet develop- ment serves as a model for authoritarian governments around the globe. The Chinese government has periodically initiated shutdowns of data centers housing servers for websites and online bulletin boards, disrupting use for millions. Email services like Gmail and Hotmail are frequently jammed; before the 2008 Olympics, Facebook sites of critics were blocked. In 2007, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television mandated that all video sharing sites must be state-owned. Police frequently patrol internet cafes, where users must supply personal information in order to log on, while website administrators are legally required to hire censors popularly known as “cleaning ladies” or “big mamas.” China has clashed with foreign parties over its censorship. The government long blocked access to the New York Times (Hachigian 2002). Google, the world’s largest provider of free internet services, famously established a politically correct website, Google.cn, which censors itself to comply with restrictions demanded by the Chinese state, arguing that the provision of incomplete, censored information was better than none at all (Dann & Haddow 2008). In 2010, Google announced it would no longer cooperate with Chinese internet authorities and withdrew from China altogether. The Chinese government responded by promoting its home-grown search engines such as Baidu, Sohu and Sina.com, which present few such difficulties. The Chinese state has also arrested and detained internet users and activists who ventured into politically sensitive websites. The state pursues the intimidation strategy popularly known as “killing the chicken to scare the monkeys” (Harwit & Clark 2001). China has incarcerated cyberdissidents and bloggers, and waged intensive campaigns against activists for democracy in Hong Kong, Tibetan independence, Taiwanese separatism, those who inves- tigate the Tiananmen Square massacre, and the religious-political group Falun Gong. How- ever, given the polymorphous nature of the web, such restrictions are inevitably met with resistance. By accessing foreign proxy servers, a few intrepid Chinese netizens engage in fan- qiang, or “scaling the wall” (Stone & Barboza 2010). Using programmers in the US, Falun Gong has developed censorship-circumventing software called Freegate, which it has offered to dissidents elsewhere, particularly in Iran (Lake 2009). The Chinese state and its opponents are thus engaged in a cat-and-mouse game common across the globe. As one Chinese blogger put it, “It is like a water flow—if you block one direction, it flows to other direc- tions, or overflows” (quoted in James 2009). Warf 24
- 43. Vietnam is anotherserious internet censor. Only one service provider, Vietnam Data Communications, is licensed for international connections, and it is a subsidiary of the gov- ernment telecommunications monopoly. Domestic content providers must obtain special licenses from the Ministry of the Interior and lease connections from the state-owned Viet- nam Post and Telecommunications Corporation. Like China, the Vietnamese government uses firewalls and encourages self-censorship. Government censors routinely search email for keywords. The government has also imprisoned advocates for internet freedom (International Censorship Explorer 2006). Owners of cybercafés who permit searches of internet sites con- sidered to be “offensive to Vietnamese culture” face stiff fines. Vietnamese bloggers have been routinely harassed and imprisoned. However, recently, in an attempt to curry favor with foreign investors, Vietnam has begun to ease its censorship (Sicurelli 2017). Likewise, Myanmar operates a highly restrictive censorship regime (Ochwat 2020; Sinpeng 2020). The government uses software purchased from the US company Fortinet to block access to selected websites. At times it has shut down the internet altogether to silence pro- testors. The state has also tolerated, if not promoted, incendiary attacks on Facebook against the Muslim Rohingya minority (Caryl 2015). Iran runs a brutal regime that closely monitors internet traffic through its Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (Michaelsen 2018; Yalcintas & Alizadeh 2020). The state uses software purchased from Nokia and Siemens to engage in deep packet inspection of web traffic. The state has blocked access to millions of websites, ostensibly on the grounds of combatting pornography and limiting immoral behavior or that deemed insulting to Islam, reasons that are commonly found throughout the Muslim world. It has arrested numerous bloggers. However, using software developed by Falun Gong, dissidents have found ways to circumvent state controls. In the Arab world, where censorship of different types has long been practiced, the fascistic regime of Saudi Arabia stands as a particularly offensive case (Pan & Siegel 2020). It has cre- ated formidable firewalls to regulate flows of information and banned access to millions of webpages. All internet service providers with international connections must go through the government-owned King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology, which uses Smart- Filter software developed by the US company Secure Computing. The government has imprisoned and tortured activists and blocked sites associated with Shia rights and the Muslim Brotherhood (Pan & Siegel 2020). Vladmir Putin’s Russia is another heavy-handed censor of the internet (Ognyanova 2015; Maréchal 2017; Soldatov 2017). Putin long regarded the internet as an avenue for the pro- motion of American interests inside his country, and upheld censorship as a path toward “information sovereignty” (Nocetti 2015). The state’s internet surveillance law, the System for Operational-Investigative Activities, allows security services unfettered physical access to ISPs. The government also promotes websites that offer views supportive of its policies and fosters networks of nationalist bloggers. Belarus, whose government Reporters Without Borders called one of the world’s “bitter- est enemies of the Internet,” likewise rules the net with an iron fist (European Federation of Journalists 2018). In 2010, President Alexander Lukashenka officially imposed censorship to combat “anarchy on the internet,” a move the European Union called, in a classic bit of understatement, a “step in the wrong direction.” All service providers are required to connect through Belpak, a subsidiary of the state-controlled ISP Beltelecom. The government occa- sionally stations troops at cybercafés, where users must register their names, and launches denial-of-service attacks against opposition party websites. Newspapers critical of the state have had their websites blocked by the Ministry of Information. Internet censorship 25
- 44. Another former Sovietrepublic, Turkmenistan, is also a severe internet censor; Reporters Without Borders lists it as an “internet enemy.” For years private internet cafes were illegal, although the government monopoly Turkmen Telecom operated a handful of them, with troops stationed at the front (Eurasianet 2007; Reporters Without Borders 2009). The state- owned monopoly, Turkmentelecom, keeps a list of blacklisted internet undesirables, and reg- ularly blocks their IP addresses. The state’s use of deep packet inspection goes without saying. In the Americas, Cuba stands out as the worst internet censor. For years, individual access to the internet was essentially prohibited (Kalathil & Boas 2003), and the state only grud- gingly began to allow access starting in 2006. A limited infrastructure and high prices remain a serious access problem for many. The state has used Avila Link software to monitor users, which it may have obtained from China. It has also harassed dissidents, such as the famous blogger Yoani Sánchez. Concluding thoughts Early accounts of the internet celebrated its emancipatory potential, particularly the ways in which it allowed billions of people unfettered access to information and permitted them to bypass government monopolies. The reality has been much more sobering. Many govern- ments have become adept at monitoring and controlling digital data flows (Mozorov 2011). Relatively few countries, and only a small minority of the world’s netizens, permit unfettered access to the web. Most states control their residents’ access to the internet and its contents. Restrictions can vary from invisible filters to the imprisonment of dissidents and bloggers. American and European companies have played tragic but important roles in this process: there is profit to be made in selling software to unsavory regimes (China plays this game too). And of course, self-censorship is likely the most pervasive form of internet regulation of all. The notion of the “dictator’s dilemma,” which posits that totalitarian states must choose between censorship and economic stagnation, is thus false; many authoritarian regimes can have it both ways. These comments serve as a sobering reminder that new technologies rarely, if ever, live up to early utopian expectations. The class mistake is to herald such events as uniformly positive. Yet the reality of internet censorship testifies that it is a serious error to underestimate the flexibility of governments in regulating cyberspace. Many repressive regimes, such as China’s, are impervious to international criticism on this account. Hopes for overcoming and reducing censorship, therefore, often lie in the networks of rhizomic resistance that invariably form when the state curtails freedoms of online expression. Dissident groups, Falun Gong, human rights activists, religious parties, expatriate communities and others have long played major roles in combating censorship. References Caryl, C. 2015. Burma gives a big thumbs-up to Facebook. Foreign Policy Online (November 13). https:// foreignpolicy.com/2015/11/13/burma-gives-a-big-thumbs-up-tofacebook/. Dann, D., and Haddow, N. 2008. Just doing business or doing just business? Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and the business of censoring China’s internet. Journal of Business Ethics, 79 (3), 219–234. Deibert, R. 2009. The geopolitics of internet control: Censorship, sovereignty, and cyberspace. In H. Andrew and P. Chadwick (eds.) The Routledge handbook of internet politics. pp. 212–226. London: Routledge. Deibert, R., Palfrey, J., Rohozinski, R., and Zittrain, J. (eds.) 2008. Access denied: The practice and policy of global internet filtering. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Warf 26
- 45. Dobson, J., andFisher, P. 2007. The panopticon’s changing geography. Geographical Review, 97 (3), 307– 323. Eriksson, J., and Giacomello, G. 2009. Who controls what, and under what conditions? International Studies Review, 11, 206–210. Eurasianet.org. 2007. In Turkmenistan, internet access comes with soldiers. www.eurasianet.org/departments/ insight/articles/eav030807.shtml. European Federation of Journalists. 2018. Belarus: More media censorship and control with new amendments of the Media Law. https://europeanjournalists.org/blog/2018/06/24/belarus-more-media-censorship-and-con trol-with-new-amendments-of-the-media-law/. Goldsmith, J., and Wu, T. 2006. Who controls the internet? Illusion of a borderless world. New York: Oxford University Press. Griffiths, J. 2019. The Great Firewall of China. London: ZED. Hachigian, N. 2001. China’s cyber-strategy. Foreign Affairs, 80 (2), 118–133. Harwit, E., and Clark, D. 2001. Shaping the internet in China: Evolution of political control over net- work infrastructure and political content. Asian Survey, 41 (3), 377–408. James, R. 2009. A brief history of Chinese internet censorship. Time (March 18). www.time.com/time/ world/article/0,8599,1885961,00.html. Kalathil, S., and Boas, T. 2003. Open networks, closed regimes: The impact of the internet on authoritarian rule. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Kellerman, A. 2016. Geographic interpretations of the internet. Dordrecht: Springer. Lake, E. 2009. Hacking the regime. The New Republic (September 3), www.tnr.com/article/politics/ha cking-the-regime. Lee, J. 2001. Companies compete to provide Saudi internet veil. New York Times (November 19), p. A1. Maréchal, N. 2017. Networked authoritarianism and the geopolitics of information: Understanding Rus- sian internet policy. Media and Communication, 5 (1), 29–41. Michaelsen, M. 2018. Transforming threats to power: The international politics of authoritarian internet control in Iran. International Journal of Communication, 12, 3856–3876. Morozov, E. 2011. The net delusion: The dark side of internet freedom. New York: PublicAffairs. Nocetti, J. 2015. Russia’s’ “dictatorship-of-the-law” approach to internet policy. Internet Policy Review, 4 (4), 1–19. Ochwat, M. 2020. Myanmar media: Legacy and challenges. The Age of Human Rights Journal, 14, 245–271. Ognyanova, K. 2015. In Putin’s Russia, information has you: Media control and internet censorship in the Russian Federation. In M. M. Merviö (ed.) Management and participation in the public sphere (pp. 62–79). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. Paltemaa, V., and Vuori, J. 2009. Regime transition and the Chinese politics of technology: From mass science to the controlled internet. Asian Journal of Political Science, 17 (1), 1–23. Pan, J., and A. Siegel. 2020. How Saudi crackdowns fail to silence online dissent. American Political Science Review, 114 (1), 109–125. Qiang, X. 2019. The road to digital unfreedom: President Xi’s surveillance state. Journal of Democracy, 30 (1), 53–67. Reporters Without Borders. 2009. Internet enemies. www.rsf.org/en-ennemi26106-Turkmenistan.html. Roberts, M. 2018. Censored: Distraction and diversion inside China’s Great Firewall. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Sicurelli, D. 2017. The conditions for effectiveness of EU human rights promotion in non-democratic states: A case study of Vietnam. Journal of European Integration, 39 (6), 739–753. Simonite, T. 2019. US companies help censor the internet in China, too. www.wired.com/story/us-companie s-help-censor-internet-china/. Sinpeng, A. 2020. Digital media, political authoritarianism, and internet controls in Southeast Asia. Media, Culture & Society, 42 (1), 25–39. Soldatov, A. 2017. The taming of the internet. Russian Social Science Review, 58 (1), 39–59. Stone, B., and Barboza, D. 2010. Scaling the digital wall in China. New York Times (January 16), p. B1. Villeneuve, N. 2006. The filtering matrix: Integrated mechanisms of information control and the demar- cation of borders in cyberspace. First Monday, 11 (1–2). https://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/a rticle/download/1307/1227. Warf, B. 2009a. Diverse spatialities of the Latin American and Caribbean internet. Journal of Latin American Geography, 8 (2), 125–146. Warf, B. 2009b. The rapidly evolving geographies of the Eurasian internet. Eurasian Geography and Eco- nomics, 50 (5), 564–580. Internet censorship 27
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- 47. 3 DIGITAL DIVIDES James B.Pick and Avijit Sarkar Digital divides constitute a foundational element of media geographies. Social media, radio, TV, streaming video and the spatial web depend on communications and increasingly on the broadband internet. These media services are provided over varied platforms ranging from wearables, to cell phones, tablets, laptops and servers. Messaging is sent by radio signals, fiber optic and other cables, and satellite transmission. Against this backdrop, media content is generated and digitized. This chapter focuses pri- marily on digital divides as they relate to digital media. In various manifestations, digital media may include digital images, digital video, digital audio, digital audiovisual media, computer games, video games, digital books, digital text and the like. In 2020, digital media users spanning video games, electronic publishing, video-on-demand and digital music numbered 6.42 billion globally. This number is forecasted to balloon to almost 8 billion by 2025 (Statista 2020a). Global digital media revenue is estimated to be almost USD 200 billion in 2020, and projected to grow to USD 255 billion by 2025. While this projected growth has been somewhat stymied by the COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic has nonetheless catalyzed the overall growth in digital media content and use in 2020. The crucial metric of success for media is whether or not the media users can read, understand and benefit from the content, and the extent to which they apply the content for entertainment, knowledge acquisition, business operations, management decision-making or leadership purposes. Users vary in their benefits from media, for instance a corporate leader might benefit by weighing a decision based on a news media, while a student might benefit by learning from it, or a retiree might be kept up-to-date about investments and retirement portfolios. Although media have undergone exponential growth, based on rapid technological advances, persistent issues continue to be the inequalities in availability, access, use, and the educational differ- ences that imply varying levels of understanding and application of the content. The digital divide is defined as the gap between individuals, households, businesses and geographic areas at different socio-economic levels with regard both to their opportunities to access information technology and media and to their use of the internet for a wide variety of activities (modified from OECD 2011). The concept of the digital divide (NTIA 1999) has become widely studied and applied, with thousands of studies of it and hundreds of national and regional governments applying it in practice. It does not imply a dichotomy of the technology rich and poor, but is viewed rather as a continuum of levels of digital access, use DOI: 10.4324/9781003039068-4 29
- 48. and outcomes (vanDijk 2005; 2020). The digital divide is a complex phenomenon, not only involving technology infrastructure, but also people’s motivation, skills, goals and outcomes, as well as the content of information, the cultural setting, and social and economic forces. Has the digital divide narrowed so it is no longer relevant? This question is often asked; while some indicators of technology access and use are leveling off at high levels in advanced economies, such as internet access and access to broadband, these indicators have a long way to grow in developing countries. As seen in Figure 3.1, for 2005–2019, the number of individuals using the internet per 100 persons is considerably higher in developed countries than for intermediate (developing) or least developed countries (LDCs). Although there is a huge and growing disparity in fixed broadband subscriptions between developed and developing countries/LDCs, which is ascribed to the expense in developing countries of installing optical fiber landlines (ITU 2019), the developing nations make up for this by adopting and using smartphones and other mobile devices. This is can be seen in Figure 3.2. By far the greatest increase in information technologies during this period was in mobile broadband, which allows developing nations to “leapfrog,” skipping the older tech- nology of fixed broadband and speeding up the attainment of full broadband capability. Another trend that is narrowing the digital divide is that 96 percent of the world population 0 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 Developed Developing World LDCs 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019* 10 20 30 40 50 Per 100 inhabitants 60 70 80 90 100 Figure 3.1 Number of individuals using the internet by development status, 2005–2019 Pick & Sarkar 30
- 49. Discovering Diverse ContentThrough Random Scribd Documents
- 50. Cromwell marched northto the walls of Edinburgh, where David Leslie lay with the Covenanting army of the Kirk. Leslie had fought under Gustavus Adolphus, and beside Cromwell at Marston Moor, where the Scotch insisted that they had saved the Cromwellians from defeat. Now the two sides were decisively to test the question of supremacy. But the contest was really utterly unequal. Cromwell had a veteran army, one which had been kept under arms for years. Leslie had an army which had been brought together for this particular war. He was, therefore, under the terrible disadvantage which rests on any man who, with raw volunteers, confronts well- trained, well-led veterans. There were under him plenty of officers and men with previous military experience—though, as the Royalist above quoted remarked, too many of the officers were “sanctified creatures who hardly ever saw or heard of any sword but that of the Spirit”—yet the regiments were all new, and the men had no regimental pride or confidence, no knowledge of how to act together, no trust in one another or in their commanders; while Cromwell’s regiments were old, and the recruits in each at once took their tone from the veterans around them. Although Leslie’s force was twice that of Cromwell’s, he knew his trade too well to risk a stricken field on equal terms, when the soldiers were of such unequal quality. He accordingly intrenched in a strong position covering Edinburgh, and there awaited the English attack. Cromwell was a born fighter, always anxious for the trial of the sword; a man who habitually took castles and walled towns by storm, himself at need heading the stormers, and who won his pitched battles by the shock of his terrible cavalry, which he often led in person, and which invariably ruined any foe whom he had overthrown. He now advanced with too much confidence and found himself in a very ugly situation; his men sickening rapidly, while Leslie’s army increased in numbers and discipline. Like every great commander, Cromwell realized that the end of all manœuvring is to fight—that the end of strategy should be the crushing overthrow in battle of the enemy’s forces. On this occasion his eagerness made him forget his caution; and all his masterly skill was needed to
- 51. extricate him fromthe position into which he had been plunged by his own overbearing courage and the wariness of his opponent. For some time he lay before Edinburgh, unable to get Leslie to fight, and of course unwilling to attack him in his intrenchments. Sickness and lack of provisions finally forced him to retreat. He believed that this would draw Leslie out of his works, and his belief was justified by the event. The English now mustered some 11,000 men; the Scotch, 22,000. Leslie was still cautious about fighting, but the ministers of the Kirk, who were with him in great numbers, hurried him on. He followed Cromwell to Dunbar, where he cut off the English retreat to England. But his army was on the hills and was suffering from the weather. He thought that the discouraged English were about to embark on their ships. The ministers fiercely urged him to destroy the “sectaries” whom they so hated, and in the afternoon of December 2d he crowded down toward the lower ground, near the sea. Cromwell saw with stern joy that at last the Scotch had given him the longed-for chance, and true to his instincts he at once decided to attack, instead of waiting to be attacked. Leslie’s troops had come down the steep slopes, and at their foot were crowded together so that their freedom of movement was much impaired. Cromwell believed that if their right wing were smashed, the left could not come in time to its support. He pointed this out to Lambert, who commanded his horse, and to Monk, the saturnine tobacco-chewing colonel, now a devoted and trusted Cromwellian. Both agreed with Cromwell, and before dawn the English army was formed for the onslaught, the officers and troopers praying and exhorting loudly. Their cry was: “The Lord of Hosts!” that of their Presbyterian foes: “The Covenant!” It was a strange fight, this between the Puritan and the Covenanter, whose likeness in the intensity of their religious zeal and in the great features of their creeds but embittered their antagonism over the smaller points upon which they differed. Day dawned, while driving gusts of rain swept across the field, and the soldiers on both sides stood motionless. Then the trumpets sounded the charge, and the English horse, followed by the English
- 52. foot, spurred againstthe stubborn Scottish infantry of Leslie’s right wing. The masses of Scotch cavalry, with their lancers at the head, fell on the English horse—disordered by the contest with the infantry —and pushed them back into the brook; but they rallied in a moment, as the reserves came up, and horse and foot again rushed forward to the attack. At this moment the sun flamed red over the North Sea, and Cromwell shouted aloud, with stern exultation: “Let God arise and let His enemies be scattered,” and a few moments later—“They run! I profess they run!” for now the Scottish army broke in wild confusion, though one brigade of foot held their ground, fighting the English infantry at push of pike and butt-end of musket, until a troop of the victorious horse charged from one end to the other, through and through them. Cromwell was as terrible in pursuit as in battle. He never left a victory half-won, and always followed the fleeing foe, as Sheridan followed the Confederates before Appomattox. The English horse pressed the fleeing Scotch, and their defeat became the wildest rout, their cavalry riding through their infantry. Cromwell himself rallied and reformed his troopers, who sang as a song of praise the hundred and seventeenth Psalm; and then he again loosed his squadrons on the foe. The fight had not lasted an hour, and Cromwell’s victory cost him very little; but of the Scotch, 3,000 were put to the sword, chiefly in the pursuit, and 10,000 were captured, with 30 guns and 200 colors. Leslie escaped by the speed of his horse. Never had Cromwell won a greater triumph. Like Jackson in his Valley Campaigns, though he was greatly outnumbered, he struck the foe at the decisive point with the numbers all in his own favor, and by taking advantage of their error he ruined them at a blow. Like most great generals, Cromwell’s strategy was simple, and in the last resort consisted in forcing the enemy to fight on terms that rendered it possible thoroughly to defeat him; and like all great generals, he had an eye which enabled him to take advantage of the fleeting opportunities which occur in almost every battle, but which if not instantly grasped vanish forever.
- 53. The ruin ofthe Kirk brought to the front the Cavaliers, who still surrounded Charles and were resolute to continue the fight. Both before and after Dunbar, Cromwell carried on a very curious series of theological disputations with the leaders of the Kirk party. The letters and addresses of the two sides remind one of the times when Byzantine Emperors exchanged obscure theological taunts with the factions of the Circus. Yet this correspondence reveals no little of the secret of Cromwell’s power; of his intense religious enthusiasm— which was both a strength and a weakness—his longing for orderly liberty, and his half-stifled aspirations for religious freedom. He was on sound ground in his controversy with the Scottish Kirk. He put the argument for religious freedom well when he wrote to the Governor of Edinburgh Castle, concerning his ecclesiastical opponents:[1] “They assume to be the infallible expositors of the Covenant (and of the Scriptures), counting a different sense and judgment from theirs Breach of Covenant and Heresy—no marvel they judge of others so authoritatively and severely. But we have not so learned Christ. We look at Ministers as helpers of, not Lords over, God’s people. I appeal to their consciences whether any ‘man’ trying their doctrines and dissenting shall not incur the censure of Sectary? And what is this but to deny Christians their liberty and assume the Infallible Chair? What doth (the Pope) do more than this?“ 1. Slightly condensed.
- 54. The Battle- field of Dunbar. The viewis taken from the point occupied by Cromwell’s troops, looking up the glen which separated the two armies. Beyond are the fields which the Scots occupied, and on the left in the distance is Doon Hill, on which the Scots first took their stand. There is profitable study for many people of to-day in the following: “Your pretended fear lest error should step in is like the man who would keep all the wine out of the country, lest men should be drunk. It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon a supposition he may abuse it. When he doth abuse it, judge. If a man speak foolishly, ye suffer him gladly, because ye are wise. Stop such a man’s mouth by sound words which cannot be gainsayed. If he speak to the disturbance of the public peace, let the civil magistrate punish him.” After Dunbar, Cromwell could afford to indulge in such disputations, for, as he said: “The Kirk had done their do.” All that
- 55. remained was todeal with the Cavaliers. There is, by the way, a delightful touch of the “Trust in the Lord, and keep your powder dry!” type in one of his letters of this time, when he desired the Commander at Newcastle to ship him three or four score masons, “for we expect that God will suddenly put some places into our hands which we shall have occasion to fortify.” The fate of the prisoners taken at Dunbar was dreadful. War had not learned any of its modern mercifulness. Cromwell was in this, as in other respects, ahead, and not behind, the times. He released half of the prisoners—for the most part half-starved, sick, and wounded —and sent the rest under convoy southward, praying that humanity might be exercised toward them; but no care was taken of them, and four-fifths died from starvation and pestilence. Meanwhile, a new Scotch army was assembling at Stirling, consisting for the most part of the Lowland Cavaliers, with their retainers, and the Royalist chiefs from the Highlands, with their clansmen. Before acting against them, Cromwell broke up the remaining Kirk forces, put down the moss-troopers and plunderers, and secured the surrender of Edinburgh. Winter came on, and operations ceased during the severe weather. In the spring of 1651, he resumed his work, and by the end of summer he had the Royalists in such plight that it was evident that their only chance was to abide the hazard of a great effort. Early in August Charles led his army across the border into England, to see if he could not retrieve his cause there, while Cromwell was in Scotland; but Cromwell himself promptly followed him, while Cromwell’s lieutenants in England opposed and hampered the march of the Royalists. There was need of resolute action, for Charles had the best Scotch army that had yet been gathered together. There was no general rising of the English to join him, but, when he reached Worcester, the town received him with open arms. This was the end of his successes. Cromwell came up, and after careful preparation, delivered his attack, on September 3d. Charles had only some 15,000 men; Cromwell, nearly 30,000, half of whom, however, were the militia of the neighboring counties, who were not to be
- 56. compared either withCromwell’s own veterans, or with their Royalist opponents. The fight was fierce, Cromwell’s left wing gradually driving back the enemy, in spite of stubborn resistance; while, on his right, the Cavaliers and Highlanders themselves vigorously attacked the troops to which they were opposed. It was “as stiff a contest for four or five hours as ever I have seen,” wrote Cromwell that evening; but at last he overthrew his foes, and, following them with his usual vigor, frightful carnage ensued. The victory was overwhelming. Charles himself escaped after various remarkable adventures, but all the nobles and generals of note were killed or taken. Nearly 11,000 men were captured, and practically all the remainder were slain. This was, as Cromwell said, “the crowning mercy.” It was the last fight of the Civil War; the last time that Cromwell had to lead an army in the field. From now till his death there never appeared in England a foe it was necessary for him to meet in person. The Sword used by Cromwell in his Irish Campaign.
- 57. A V THE COMMONWEALTH ANDPROTECTORATE fter the battle of Worcester, the authority of the Commonwealth was supreme throughout the British Islands. This authority as yet reposed, wholly in form, largely in substance, with the remnant of the Long Parliament. This remnant, derisively called the “rump,” differed as widely in power and capacity from the Parliament led by Pym and Hampden, as the Continental Congress that saw the outgoing of the Revolutionary War differed from that which saw its incoming. Defections and purgings, exclusions first of whole-hearted Episcopalian Royalists and then of half-hearted Presbyterian Royalists, had reduced it to being but the representative of a faction. It had submitted to the supremacy of the army by submitting to the exclusion of those members to whom the army objected. Then it had worked for some time hand in hand with the army; but, now that war was over, the Parliamentary representatives or the Independents feared more and more the supremacy of the military, or Cromwellian, wing of their party. It was the army, and not the Parliament, that had won the fight; that had killed one king, and driven another, his son, into exile; that had subdued Scotland and Ireland, and stamped out the last vestige of Royalist resistance in England. Yet it was the Parliament, and not the army, which in theory was to fall heir to the royal power. Moreover, Parliament, thanks to its past history, had become as little as the army the legal embodiment of the power of England; and what was more important, there was even less general acceptance of it as the proper representative of power, than there was general acceptance of the army. The army, even where hated,
- 58. was feared andrespected; the Parliament was beginning to excite no emotion save an angry contempt. There were men of honor, of note, and of ability still left in the Parliament; but its vital force was dying. Conscious of its own weakness before the people, the Parliament was most reluctant to face a dissolution; most eager to devise means by which its rule could be perpetuated. The army, no less conscious of the hostility felt for it by the Parliament, was just as determined that there should be a dissolution and an election of a new Parliament. In the approaching conflict the army had an immense advantage, for, while the Parliament was losing its grip upon the Independents, without in any way attracting strength from the Royalists, the great mass of the Independents still firmly regarded Cromwell as their especial champion. Obverse—arms of Cromwell. Reverse— representation of Oliver Cromwell on horseback. Seal of the Protectorate. From an impression in wax in the British Museum. This was the case, not only in England, but elsewhere. One of Cromwell’s letters of about this time is to the New England clergyman, John Cotton, in answer to one which showed the keen interest taken in Cromwell’s triumph by his fellow-Puritans, who,
- 59. across the Atlantic,had begun the upbuilding of what is now the giant republic of the New World. The letter is marked by the continuous use of scriptural phrases and protestations of humility, so ostentatious and overstrained as to convey an uncomfortable feeling of hypocrisy; yet, without doubt, there was a base of genuineness for these expressions. Beyond question, Cromwell felt that he was doing the Lord’s work; and was sustained through the tremendous hours of labor and peril by the sense of battling for justice on this earth, and in accordance with the Eternal Will of Heaven. In dealing with Cromwell and the Puritan Revolution it must ever be kept in mind, before judging too harshly the actors, that the era saw the overlapping of two systems, both in religion and in politics; and many incongruities resulted. It was the first great stride toward the practical achievement of civil rights and individual liberty as we now understand them. It was also the era in which the old theological theory of the all-importance of dogma came into sharp conflict with the now healthily general religious belief in the superior importance of conduct. Of course, as is invariably the case in real life, the issues were not sharply drawn at all points, and at some they were wholly obscured by the strong passions and ambitions which belong, not to any particular age, but to all time. After Worcester, when Cromwell had returned to London, he one day summoned a conference, at Speaker Lenthall’s house, of the leaders of the Parliamentary army to decide how the national destiny was to be settled. He hoped that they would be able to form a policy among themselves; but the hope proved fruitless. Some of the members wished an absolute republic; some wished a setting-up of what we would now call a limited monarchy, with one of the late king’s sons recalled and put at the head. Nothing came of the conference, and Parliament went its way. It had at last waked to the fact that it must do something positive in the way of reform, or else that its days were numbered. It began with great reluctance to make a pretence of preparing for its own dissolution, and strove to accomplish some kind of reform in the laws. At that time the law of England had been for generations little
- 60. more than amass of ingenious technicalities, and the Court of Chancery had become the synonym for a system of interminable delay, which worked as much injustice as outright spoliation. Even now there is a tendency in the law toward the deification of technicalities, the substitution of the letter for the spirit; a tendency which can only be offset by a Bench, and, indeed, a Bar, possessing both courage and common-sense. At that time, the condition of affairs was much worse, and the best men in England shared the popular feeling of extreme dislike for lawyers, as men whose trade was not to secure justice, but to weave a great web of technicalities which completely defeated justice. However, reform in the methods of legal procedure proved as difficult then as it ever has proved, and all that even Cromwell could do was to make a beginning in the right direction. The Rump was quite unable so much as to make this beginning. The Parliament obtained a momentary respite by creating a diversion in foreign affairs, and bringing on a war with the Dutch. Throughout the first half of the seventeenth century, the Dutch were the leading mercantile and naval power of Europe, surpassing the English in trade and in colonial possessions. Unfortunately for them, their home authorities did not believe in preparedness for war; and the crushing defeats which the boldness and skill of their sailors had enabled them to inflict on the Spaniards, lulled them into the unwholesome faith—shared at times by great modern mercantile communities—that, by simple desire for peace, they could avert war; and that if war came, they could trust to their riches and reserve strength to win. Accordingly, in time of peace they laid up their warships and never built a fighting navy in advance, trusting to the use of armed merchant-vessels and improvised war-craft to meet the need of the hour. England, on the contrary, had a large regular navy, the ships being superior in size and armament to the Dutch, and the personnel of the navy being better disciplined, although none of the English Admirals, save Blake, ranked with Tromp and De Ruyter. The cause of the quarrel was the Navigation Act, passed by England for the express purpose of building up the English
- 61. commercial marine atthe expense of the Dutch. The latter were then the world’s carriers on the ocean. They derived an immense profit from carrying the goods of other countries, in their own bottoms, from these other countries to England. The Navigation Act forbade this, allowing only English bottoms to be used to carry goods to England, unless the goods were carried in the ships of the country from which they came. This is the kind of measure especially condemned by the laissez-faire school of economists, and its good results in this case have always puzzled them; while, on the other hand, its success under one set of conditions has been often ignorantly held to justify its application under entirely different conditions. In other words, like the system of protective tariffs, it is one of those economic measures which may or may not be useful to a country, according to changes in time and circumstances. In the Cromwellian period it benefited the English as much as it hurt the Dutch, and laid the foundation of English commercial supremacy. Another cause of war was the insistance by the English upon their right to have their flag saluted by the Dutch as well as by other foreign powers. There followed a bloody and obstinate struggle for the mastery of the seas. Battle after battle was fought between the Dutch and English fleets. The latter were commanded by Blake, Monk, Dean, and other officers, who had won distinction ashore—for the process of differentiation between military service on land and on the sea was far from complete. The fighting was most determined, and the Dutch won two or three victories; but they were defeated again and again, until finally beaten into submission. The war was one undertaken purely from motives of commercial greed, against the nation which, among all the nations of continental Europe, stood closest to England in religious belief, in form of government, in social ideas, and in its system of political liberty. Cromwell hated the thought of the two free Protestant powers battling one another to exhaustion, while every ecclesiastical and political tyranny looked on with a grin of approbation. He wished the alliance, not the enmity, of Holland; and though, when the war was once on, he and those he
- 62. represented refused inany way to embarrass their own government, yet they were anxious for peace. The Parliament, on the other hand, hailed the rise of the Navy under Blake as a counterpoise to the power of the army under Cromwell. One effect of this Dutch War was to postpone the question of the dissolution of Parliament; another, to cause increased taxation, which was met by levying on the estates of the Royalist Delinquents, so-called. Admiral Robert Blake. From the portrait at Wadham College, Oxford. By permission of the Master of Wadham. By March, 1653, the Dutch were evidently beaten, and peace was in sight; but before peace came, there was an end of the Rump Parliament. The discontent in the army had steadily increased. They wished a thorough reform in governmental methods; and with the characteristic Puritan habit of thought, wished especially to guarantee the safety of the “Godly interests” by a complete new
- 63. election. On theother hand, the Parliament was scheming how to yield in name only, and not in fact, and had hit on the device of passing a bill which should continue all the members of the existing Parliament without reëlection; and, moreover, should constitute them a general committee, with full power to pass upon the qualifications of any new members elected. This, of course, amounted to nothing, and the army would not accept it. Many conferences of the leaders of the two sides were held at Cromwell’s house, the last on the evening of April 19, 1653, young Sir Harry Vane, formerly one of Cromwell’s close friends, being among the number of the Parliamentary leaders. Cromwell, on behalf of his party, warned them that their bill could not be accepted or submitted to, and the Parliamentary leaders finally agreed that it should not be brought up again in the House, until after further conference. But they either did not or could not keep their agreement. The members of the House were obstinately resolved to keep their places—many of them from corrupt motives, for they had undoubtedly made much money out of their positions, through the taxing of delinquents and otherwise. In short, they wished to perpetuate their government, to have England ruled by a little self- perpetuating oligarchy. Next morning, April 20th, Parliament met and the leaders began to hurry the Bill through the House.
- 64. Cromwell Dissolving the LongParliament. Having commanded the soldiers to clear the hall, he himself went out last, and ordering the doors to be locked, he departed to his lodgings. —Hume and Smollett’s “History.” They reckoned without their host. Cromwell, sitting in his reception-room, and waiting the return of the conferees of last evening, learned what was going on, and just as he was clad, “in plain black clothes and gray worsted stockings,” followed by a few officers and twenty or thirty stark musketeers, he walked down to the House. There he sat and listened for some time to the debate on the Bill, once beckoning over Harrison, the Republican general, his devoted follower. When the question was put as to whether the Bill should pass, he rose and broke in with one of his characteristic speeches. First, he enumerated the good that had been done by Parliament, and then began to tell them of their injustice, their heed
- 65. to their ownself-interests, their delay to do right. One among his eager listeners called him to order, but no appeal to Parliamentary forms could save the doomed House. “Come, come!” answered Oliver, “we have had enough of this; I will put an end to your prating!” With that he clapped on his hat, stamped on the floor with his feet, and began to rate the Commons as if they were disobedient school-boys. “It is not fit that you should sit here any longer; you have sat too long for any good that you have been doing lately; you shall now give place to better men!” And Harrison called in the musketeers. Oliver then continued, enumerating the sins of the members, some of whom were drunkards, some lewd livers, some corrupt and unjust. The house was on its feet as he lifted the mace, saying: “What shall we do with this bauble? Take it away!” and gave it to a musketeer; and then, turning toward the Speaker: “Fetch him down!” and fetched down he was. Gloomily the members went out, while Cromwell taunted Sir Harry Vane with breaking his promise, ending with: “The Lord deliver me from thee, Sir Harry Vane!” So ended the Long Parliament and, asserted Oliver, “We did not hear a dog bark at their going.” Tomes have been written to prove whether Oliver was right or wrong in what he did at this time; but the Rump Parliament had no claim to be, either in law or fact, the representative of the English people, or of any part of them that really counted. There was no justification for its continuance, and no good whatever could come from permitting it to exist longer. Its actions, and especially its obstinate determination to perpetuate its own rule, without warrant in law, without the even higher and more perilous warrant of justice and national need, rendered it necessary that it should be dissolved. At the time Cromwell, without doubt, intended that it should be replaced by a genuinely representative body; and if he had possessed the temper, the self-control, the far-sighted patriotism, and the personal disinterestedness which would have enabled him to carry out his intentions in good faith, without thinking of his own interests, he would have rendered an inestimable public service and
- 66. might have advancedby generations the movement for English liberty. In other words, if Cromwell had been a Washington, the Puritan Revolution might have been made permanent. His early acts, after the dissolution of the Long Parliament, showed a sincere desire on his part, and on the part of those whose leader he was, to provide some form of government which should secure justice and order, without leaving everything to the will of one man. His first effort was to summon an assembly of the Puritan notables. In the interim he appointed a new Council of State, with himself, as Captain-General, at its head. The fleet, the army, and the Independents generally, all hastened to pledge him their support, and England undoubtedly acquiesced in his action, being chiefly anxious to see whether or not the new Assembly could formulate a permanent scheme of government. If the Assembly and Cromwell together could have done this—that is, could have done work like that of the great Convention which promulgated the Constitution of the United States —all would have gone well. In criticising Cromwell, however, we must remember that generally in such cases an even greater share of blame must attach to the nation than to the man. Free government is only for nations that deserve it; and they lose all right to it by licentiousness, no less than by servility. If a nation cannot govern itself, it makes comparatively little difference whether its inability springs from a slavish and craven distrust of its own powers, or from sheer incapacity on the part of its citizens to exercise self-control and to act together. Self-governing freemen must have the power to accept necessary compromises, to make necessary concessions, each sacrificing somewhat of prejudice, and even of principle, and every group must show the necessary subordination of its particular interests to the interests of the community as a whole. When the people will not or cannot work together; when they permit groups of extremists to decline to accept anything that does not coincide with their own extreme views; or when they let power slip from their hands through sheer supine indifference; then they have themselves chiefly to blame if the
- 67. power is graspedby stronger hands. Yet, while keeping all this in mind, it must not be forgotten that a great and patriotic leader may, if the people have any capacity for self-government whatever, help them upwards along their hard path by his wise leadership, his wise yielding to even what he does not like, and his wise refusal to consider his own selfish interests. A people thoroughly unfit for self- government, as were the French at the end of the eighteenth century, are the natural prey of a conscienceless tyrant like Napoleon. A people like the Americans of the same generation can be led along the path of liberty and order by a Washington. The English people, in the middle of the seventeenth century, might have been helped to entire self-government by Cromwell, but were not sufficiently advanced politically to keep him from making himself their absolute master if he proved morally unequal to rising to the Washington level; though doubtless they would not have tolerated a man of the Napoleonic type. Oliver Cromwell. From the painting at Althorp by Robert Walker. By permission of Earl Spencer, K.G.
- 68. The Assembly gatheredin July, 1653. It was called the “Barebones” Parliament in derision, because one of its members—a Puritan leather-merchant—was named “Praise-God Barbon.” The members were men of high character, of intense religious fervor, and, for the most part, of good social standing. They were actuated by sincere conviction, but they had no political training whatever. They were not accustomed to make government move; they were theorists, rather than doers. Religious fervor, or mere fervor for excellence in the abstract, is a great mainspring for good work in politics as in war, but it is no substitute for training, in either civil or military life; and if not accompanied by sound common-sense and a spirit of broad tolerance, it may do as much damage as any other mighty force which is unregulated. On July 4th, Cromwell opened the Assembly with a long speech, which, toward the end, became a true Puritan sermon; a speech which had in it a very high note of religion and morality, but which showed a growing tendency in Oliver’s mind to appeal from the judgment of men to what he esteemed the judgment of Heaven, whenever he thought men were wrong. Now, it is very essential that a man should have in him the capacity to defy his fellows if he thinks that they are doing the work of the Devil, and not the work of the Lord; but it is even more essential for him to remember that he must be most cautious about mistaking his own views for those of the Lord; and also to remember that as the Lord’s work is accomplished through human instruments, and as these can only be used to advantage by remembering that they are human, and, therefore, imperfect, in the long run a man can do nothing of permanence, save by joining his zeal to sound judgment, moderation, and the desire to accomplish practical results. The Assembly of Puritan notables was no more competent to initiate successful self-government in England than a Congress of Abolitionists, in 1860, would have been competent to govern the United States. They did not lack in lofty devotion to their ideals, but their methods were impractical. Cromwell professed to have resigned his power into their hands, and they went at their work in a spirit of
- 69. high religious enthusiasm.The “instrument,” under which they were summoned, had provided that their authority should be transferred to another assembly elected under their directions; in other words, they were to form a constitutional Convention. They undertook a host of reforms, largely in the right direction. Among other things, they proposed the abolition of the Court of Chancery, the establishment of civil marriage, the abolition of tithes, and of lay patronage. The clergy and the lawyers were cast into a frenzy of alarm over these proposals, and the landed proprietors became very uneasy lest some of their own unjust vested interests should suffer. Now, all this was most excellent in point of moral purpose, just as it would have been absolutely right, from the abstract ethical stand- point, if the Constitution of 1789, or the Republican Convention of 1860, had declared for the abolition of slavery in all the States. Of course, if the Constitution had made such a declaration, it would never have been adopted, and the English-speaking people of North America would have plunged into a condition of anarchy like that of the after-time South American Republics; while, if the Republican platform of 1860 had taken such a position, Lincoln would not have been elected, no war for the Union would have been waged, and instead of slavery being abolished, it would have been perpetuated in at least one of the confederacies into which the country would have been split. The Barebones Parliament was too far ahead of the times, too indifferent to results, and too impatient of the limitations and prejudices of its neighbors. Its members were reformers, who lost sight of the fact that a reform must be practicable in order to make it of value. They excited the utmost suspicion in the community at large, and Cromwell, whose mind was in many respects very conservative, and who was an administrator rather than a constructive statesman, shared the general uneasiness. He shrank from the acts of the Barebones Parliament just as he had shrunk from the levelling tendencies of the Republicans. The leaders of both had gone too far in the direction of speculative reform. Cromwell erred on the other side, and did not go far enough. It is just as necessary for the practical man to remember that his
- 70. practical qualities areuseless, or worse than useless, unless he joins with them that spirit of striving after better things which marks the reformer, as it is for this same reformer to remember that he cannot give effective expression to his desire for a higher life save by following rigidly practical ways. Cromwell, in his opening address to the Convention, had been carried away by his religious enthusiasm, and in a burst of strange, rugged eloquence had bid his hearers remember that they must “hold themselves accountable to God only;” must own their call to be from Him, and must strive to bring about God’s rule upon earth. When they took his words literally he became heartily uneasy, as did the great bulk of Englishmen; for, of course, there were limitless interpretations to be put as to the proper way of being “owned” by God, and Oliver was not in the least inclined to accept the interpretation adopted by the Barebones Parliament. He wished administrative reform in Church and State, but he had little sympathy with what he deemed revolutionary theories, whether good or bad. The Convention gradually grew conscious that it had no support in popular sympathy, and dissolved of its own motion, after having named a Council of State, which drew up a remarkable Constitution under the name of the “Instrument of Government.” This Instrument was adopted by Cromwell and the Council of Officers, and under it a new Parliament was convened. Even yet, Cromwell, and at least the majority of the army, shrank from abandoning every effort at constitutional rule in favor of the naked power of the sword. Nevertheless, Cromwell had even less fondness for the rule of a Parliament elected under any conditions he was able to devise. He realized that the majority of the nation was against him, and dreaded lest it might take steps toward the rehabilitation of the monarchy. In his address to the Barebones Convention he had dwelt with special emphasis upon the fact that a Parliament elected merely by the majority might not be nearly so suitable for doing the Lord’s work as such an assembly as that he had convened.
- 71. In short, allhis qualities, both good and bad, tended to render the forms and the narrowly limited powers of constitutional government irksome to him. His strength, his intensity of conviction, his delight in exercising powers for what he conceived to be good ends; his dislike of speculative reforms and his inability to appreciate the necessity of theories to a practical man who wishes to do good work; his hatred of both King and oligarchy, while he utterly distrusted a popular majority; his tendency to insist upon the superiority of the moral law, as he saw it, to the laws of mankind round about him—all these tendencies worked together to unfit him for the task of helping a liberty-loving people on the road toward freedom. The Instrument of Government was a very remarkable document. It was a written constitution. Cromwell and his soldiers desired, like Washington and his fellow-members of the Constitutional Convention which framed the government of the United States, to have the fundamental law of the land put in shape where it would be accessible to all men, and where its terms would not be open to doubt. Such a course was absolutely necessary if a free government, in the modern sense, was to be established on radically new lines. It has not been rendered necessary in the free England of to-day, because, very fortunately, England has been able to reach her freedom by evolution, not revolution. The Instrument of Government confided the executive power to a Lord Protector and Council; Cromwell was named as the first Protector. The legislative power was assigned without restriction to a Parliament elected by constituencies formed on a new and equitable franchise, there being a sweeping redistribution of seats. Parliament could pass a Bill over the Protector’s veto, and was to meet once in three years, for at least five months; but it had little control over the executive, save that with it rested the initiative in filling vacancies in the Council. The Protector was allotted a certain fixed sum, which made him largely independent of the Parliament’s action. Nevertheless, the Protector was under real constitutional control. Religious liberty was secured for all congregations which did not admit “papacy or prelacy,” the Episcopalians and Roman Catholics
- 72. being excluded fromthis right just as they were excluded from the right of voting, rather as enemies to the Commonwealth than because of their mere religious beliefs. They were regarded as what would now be called, in the political terminology of continental Europe, “irreconcilables”; and the mass and the Prayer-Book were both prohibited. Until the first Parliament met, which was to be on the anniversary of the Battle of Dunbar, on September 3, 1654, the Protector and Council were to issue ordinances with the force of law. The Constitution thus had very many points of difference from that under which the United States grew into a great nation. Yet it ranks with it, rather than with the system of Parliamentary supremacy which was ultimately adopted in England. It was, of course, less popular, in the true sense, than the government of either the United States or Great Britain at the present moment. Oliver, later on, insisted on what he called the “Four Fundamentals,” which answered to what we now style Constitutional Rights. His position was strictly in accord with the American, as opposed to the English, theory of embodying, by preference in some written document, propositions which neither the law-making body nor the executive could modify. It was not to be expected that he should hit on the device of a Supreme Court to keep guard over these propositions. On December 16, 1653, Oliver was installed at Westminster, as Lord Protector. The judges, the army, the fleet, the mass of Independents, and the bulk of well-to-do citizens, concurred in the new departure; for the Protectorship gave stability, and the election of the new Parliament the assurance of liberty. There were plenty of opponents, however. The Royalists were implacable. The exiled House of Stuart, with a baseness of which their great opponent was entirely incapable, sought to compass his assassination. They could in no other way hope to reach the man whom they dared not look in the face on the field of battle. Plot after plot was formed to kill the Protector, but the plotters were invariably discovered and brought to justice; while every attempt at open insurrection was stamped out with the utmost ease. To the Royalist malcontents were added the
- 73. extreme fanatics, theultra-reformers of every type—religious, political, and social. These were, at the time, more dangerous than the Royalists, for they numbered supporters in the army, including some who had been prominent friends of Cromwell up to this time, like General Harrison. It was necessary, therefore, to arrest some of the most turbulent agitators, including preachers, and to deprive certain officers of their commissions. The Protector and his Council acted wisely in their ordinances, redressing in practical shape many grievances. The Barebones Parliament had striven to abolish the Court of Chancery outright, and to hand its power over to the judges of the Common Law, which would merely have aggravated the existing hardships by checking the growth of the principle of equity. Oliver acted more conservatively: in fact, altogether too conservatively; but still he did something. In the Church government, also, a good deal was accomplished by the appointment of commissioners of good character to supervise the ministers, while allowing each to organize his congregation on any lines he chose—Presbyterian, Congregationalist, or Baptist. Dissenters were permitted to form separate congregations—“gathered churches” in the phrase of the day—if they so desired. Of course, this was not by any means complete religious toleration, but it was a nearer approach to it than any government in Europe, with the possible exception of the Dutch, had yet sanctioned, and it was so far in advance of the general spirit of the time that the new Parliament—a really representative body— took sharp exception to it. In point of religious toleration Oliver went just as far as the people of his day would let him—farther than any other ruler of the century was willing to go, save only Henry IV. of France—and Henry IV. really believed in nothing, and so could easily be tolerant, while Cromwell’s zealous faith was part of the very marrow of his being.
- 74. The Clock Tower, HamptonCourt. Cromwell also concluded peace with the Dutch. Before the Long Parliament was dissolved it had become evident that the navy would ultimately conquer this peace for England; but the stubborn Dutch had to undergo several additional defeats before they would come to terms. Blake, the great admiral, had no particular admiration for Cromwell, but finally threw in his lot with him on the ground that the fleet had no concern with politics, and should limit itself strictly to the effort “to keep foreigners from fooling us.” Monk was the admiral most in view in the later stages of the Dutch War. When it was over, he was sent back to keep the Highlands in order, which he and his fellow-Cromwellians did, with a thoroughness not afterward approached for a century. Scotland was now definitely united to England. The new Parliament consisted of 400 members from England, 30 from Scotland, and 30 from Ireland. They were elected by a general suffrage, based on the possession of property to the value £200. The Parliament thus gathered was representative in a very wide sense. Nearly two hundred years were to elapse before any other as truly representative was to sit in England. The classes whose inclusion
- 75. would certainly havemade trouble were excluded; and, while the suffrage had been extended, and gross inequalities of representation abolished, there had been no such revolutionary action as suddenly to introduce masses of men unaccustomed to the exercise of self- government. Indeed, the house had arbitrarily erased from its roll of membership the names of a few ultra-Republicans. It was chiefly Cromwell’s own fault that he failed to get along with this Parliament, and, therefore, failed to put the government on a permanent basis of orderly liberty. At the beginning, everything seemed to go well. He opened the Parliament with one of those noteworthy speeches of which some seventeen have been preserved; speeches in the proper sense, unquestionably better when spoken to listeners than when read by critics, but instinct with the rough power of the speaker, permeated with religious fervor and sincere striving after the right; and even where the reasoning is most wrong-headed, containing phrases and sentiments which show the keenest insight into the needs of the moment, and the needs of eternity as well. The sentences are often very involved, it being quite evident that the speeches were not written out, not even deliberately thought out, in advance; for Oliver, even as he spoke, kept dropping and rejecting such of his half- finished utterances as did not give sufficiently accurate or vehement expression to his thought. Yet they contain abundance of the loftiest thought, expressed in language which merely gains strength from its rude, vigorous homeliness. For generations after Cromwell’s death, the polished cynics and dull pedants, who abhorred and misunderstood him, spoke of his utterances with mixed ridicule and wrath: Hume hazarding the opinion that if his speeches, letters, and writings, were gathered together they would form “one of the most nonsensical collections the world had ever seen.” We could far better afford to lose every line Hume ever wrote than the speeches of Cromwell. In his opening address he pointed out that what the nation most needed was healing and settling; and in a spirit of thoroughly English conservatism, denounced any merely revolutionary doctrines
- 76. which would doaway with the security of property, or would give the tenant “as liberal a fortune” as the landlord. In religious matters also, he condemned those who could do nothing but cry: “Overturn! Overturn!! Overturn!!!” and together with his praise of what had been done, and of the body to which he spoke, he mingled much advice, remarking: “I hope you will not be unwilling to hear a little again of the sharp as well as of the sweet.” He exhorted them to go to work in sober earnest; to remedy in practical shape any wrongs, and to join with him in working for good government. Unfortunately, he made the mental reservation that he should be himself the ultimate judge of what good government was. Equally unfortunately, there was in the House a body of vehement Republicans who at once denied the legal existence of either Council or Protector, on the ground that the Long Parliament had never been dissolved. Of course such an argument was self-destructive, as it told equally against the legality of the new Parliament in which they sat. Parliament contented itself with recognizing the Instrument of Government as only of provisional validity, and proceeded to discuss it, clause by clause, as the groundwork of a new Constitution. It was unanimously agreed that Cromwell should retain his power for five years, but Parliament showed by its actions that it did not intend to leave him in a position of absolute supremacy. Instantly Oliver interfered, as arbitrarily as any hereditary King might have done. He first appeared before the Parliament, and in an exceedingly able speech announced his willingness to accept a Parliamentary constitution, provided that it contained four fundamentals not to be overturned by law. The fundamentals were, first, that the country was to be governed by a single person, by a single executive, and a Parliament; second, that Parliaments were not to make themselves perpetual; third, that liberty of conscience should be respected; fourth, that the Protector and Parliament should have joint power over the militia. All four propositions were sound. The first two were agreed to at once, and the third also, though with some reluctance, the
- 77. Parliament being lessliberal than the Protector in religious matters. Over the control of the soldiers there was irreconcilable difference. Cromwell was not content with arguments. He would not permit any member to enter the House without signing an engagement not to alter the government as it had been settled; that is, every member had to subscribe to the joint government of the Protector and the Parliament. A hundred members refused to sign. Three- fourths of the House did sign, and went on with their work. Until the assembling of this Parliament, every step that Oliver had taken could be thoroughly justified. He had not played the part of a usurper. He had been a zealous patriot, working in the interests of the people; and he had only broken up the Long Parliament when the Long Parliament had itself become an utterly unrepresentative body. He had then shown his good faith by promptly summoning a genuinely representative body. It is possible to defend him even for excluding the hundred members who declined to subscribe to his theory of the fundamentals of government. But it is not possible to excuse him for what he now did. Parliament, as it was left after the Extremists had been expelled, stood as the only elective body which it was possible to gather in England that could in any sense be called representative, and yet agree to work with Cromwell. Had Cromwell not become cursed with the love of power; had he not acquired a dictatorial habit of mind, and the fatal incapacity to acknowledge that there might be righteousness in other methods than his own, he could certainly have avoided a break with this Parliament. His splitting with it was absolutely needless. It agreed to confirm his powers for five years, and, as it happened, at the end of that time he was dead. Even had he lived there could be no possible excuse for refusing such a lease of power, on the ground that it was too short; for it was amply long enough to allow him to settle whatever was necessary to settle.
- 78. The Great Hall, HamptonCourt. In this room the state dinners were given under the Protectorate. Cromwell, and later his apologists, insisted that, by delay and by refusing to grant supplies until their grievances were considered, the Parliament was encouraging the spirit of revolt. In reality the spirit of revolt was tenfold increased, not by the Parliament’s action, but by Cromwell’s, in seizing arbitrary power. If he had shown a tenth of the forbearance that Washington showed in dealing with the various Continental Congresses, he would have been readily granted far more power than ever Washington was given. He could easily have settled affairs on a constitutional basis, which would have given him all the power he had any right to ask; for his difficulties in this particular crisis were nothing like so great as those which Washington surmounted. The plea that the safety of the people and of the cause of righteousness depended upon his unchecked control, is a plea always made in such cases, and generally, as in this particular case, without any basis in fact. The need was just the other way.
- 79. Contrast Cromwell’s conductwith that of Lincoln, just before his second election as President. There was a time in the summer of 1864 when it looked as if the Democrats would win, and elect McClellan. At that time it was infinitely more essential to the salvation of the Union that Lincoln should be continued in power, than it was to the salvation of the Commonwealth, in 1654, that Cromwell should be continued in power. Lincoln would have been far more excusable than Cromwell if he had insisted upon keeping control. Yet such a thought never entered Lincoln’s head. He prepared to abide in good faith the decision of the people, and one of the most touching incidents of his life is the quiet and noble sincerity with which he made preparations, if McClellan was elected, to advise with him and help him in every way, and to use his own power, during the interval between McClellan’s election and inauguration, in such a manner as would redound most to the advantage of the latter, and would increase, as far as possible, the chance for the preservation of the Union. It was at this time of Cromwell’s life that, at the parting of the ways, he chose the wrong way. Great man though he was, and far though the good that he did out-balanced the evil, yet he lost the right to stand with men like Washington and Lincoln of modern times, and with the very, very few who, like Timoleon, in some measure approached their standard in ancient times. As the Parliament continued in session, the attitude of the Protector changed from sullen to fierce hostility. It was entitled to sit five months. By a quibble he construed this to mean five lunar months. On January 22, 1655, he dissolved it, after rating it in a long and angry speech. With its dissolution it became evident to the great mass of true liberty-lovers that all hope of real freedom was at an end, and the forces that told for the restoration of the King were increased tenfold in strength. Nevertheless, some of the purest and most ardent lovers of liberty, like Milton, still clung despairingly to the Protector. They recognized that, with all his faults, and in spite of his determination to rule in arbitrary fashion, he yet intended to secure peace, justice, and good government, and, alike in power and
- 80. in moral grandeur,towered above his only possible alternative, Charles II., as a giant towers above a pigmy.
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