The True Story of the Man Who Would Be King

For years I have joked that it was old British movies that made me love imperialism. When I watched films like the Four Feathers and Gunga Din on our black and white TV, I knew there was a historical background but I was in it for the action and adventure. Two of my favorite films growing up were Zulu and The Man Who Would Be King, both starring Michael Caine. My brother and I would "play Zulu" with our neighbors on a regular basis. Two of us would play the British, crouching at the bottom of a small hill with wooden rifles. The other two would play the Zulus, hurling a stream of sticks at the (very) thin red line. To represent their enormous army and British firepower, the Zulus would get gunned down over and over again until was time for hand to hand combat. Then we'd switch sides and do it all over again. Considering the number of sticks we threw at each other, I'm surprised none of us lost an eye.

It is thus no surprise that when I was in NYC a couple of months back and browsing the temple of knowledge that is The Strand, I was drawn to a book called Josiah the Great: The True Story of the Man Who Would Be King. A quick skim convinced me to pick it up and I'm glad I did. Ben Macintyre has written a cracking good biography of a little known American named Josiah Harlan, who was likely the inspiration for Kipling's tale. Harlan was a Pennsylvania Quaker who swore he would never return to America when his lover jilted him. He traveled to India in 1820 and on the strength of having read his brother's textbooks got a job as a surgeon in the army of the British East India Company.

This proved just the start of an amazing series of adventures inspired by his idol, Alexander the Great. He met the ousted ruler of Afghanistan and offered to put the man back on the throne in exchange the viziership. He then recruited a small mercenary army under American colors and marched into Afghanistan. Harlan should have died 20 times over but somehow he did not. He ended up working for Dost Mohammed Khan, the very man he had sought to depose. He became a governor for many years and eventually led the Khan's army. He led an expedition into the Hindu Kush, and while there won a princedom of his own. He never had a chance to rule, however, as the British were marching on Kabul by the time he returned. He was forced to leave Afghanistan and eventually returned to America. He attempted several schemes to get himself back to Central Asia, including one to import camels for use by the US army, but never returned to claim his princedom. Still, this unlikely character managed to raise an American flag in the Hindu Kush in 1839 and become Prince of Ghor, even if briefly.

Ben Macintyre has done some excellent historical detective work and manages to skillfully evoke both the period and Harlan's eccentric personality. If you like true tales of adventure, I heartily recommend Josiah the Great.

Not Much Fun In Leningrad

I read Leningrad: State of Siege by Michael Jones recently. This is the tale of the city's epic resistance to the Germans during WWII in a siege that lasted almost 900 days. The author skillfully weaves a gripping historical narrative and punctuates it with diary excerpts and interviews with survivors. I have read accounts of this before but always as part of larger works. It takes a full book to really portray the horror of the siege and to tell some uncomfortably truths that Stalin and his successors suppressed for decades.

The Germans were frighteningly clinical about the whole thing. They decided they were going to starve the population into submission and then wipe the city from the face of the earth (as it was the "birthplace of Bolshevism"). Scientists advised the army on nutrition and calculated how long the mass starvation would take.

Stalinism made everything worse. Stalin, much like the Bush administration of today, rewarded loyalty over competence. So it was that one of his old cronies from the Russian Civil War, Marshal Kliment Voroshilov, was in charge of Leningrad's defenses. As the Germans raced across the Soviet Union, Voroshilov failed to disperse Leningrad's food supply. He left it all in a group of old wooden warehouses that were packed closely together. The Germans knew exactly where they were and firebombed them, destroying vast quantities of food before the siege even began. Heckuva job, Klimie. Later the Soviet trade minister rerouted a train full of food to Leningrad. The area it was originally sent to had already been overrun by the Germans and he rightly thought Leningrad could use the supplies. Voroshilov intervened and turned the train around. He would not accept the food because he did not want Stalin thinking he needed the help. Better that thousands starve to death (and they did) than Stalin get the idea that he was incompetent (which he was).

Oh, and did I mention the gangs of cannibals? Yep, at a certain point in the siege it became dangerous to leave your house alone because desperate people were killing and eating stragglers. When winter ended many corpses with breasts and buttocks hacked off were found in the melting snow. Not much fun in Leningrad.

Leningrad: State of Siege is not a cheery book, but it's compelling history and I recommend it.