Yes, there are economics geeks. Mr. Hallock and I are two of them. As international affairs majors, we were required to study two years of economics: macro, micro, international trade, and international finance. And each of us took a few additional electives. So when we decided to go up Mount Washington on the cog railway this week, it seemed silly not to go to the Omni Mount Washington Resort for a tour. Why? You might know the Omni better as Bretton Woods.
Still nothing? Maybe you know it for its skiing, which I have heard is incredible. But to me Bretton Woods will always mean the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference of 1944, which set up the Bretton Woods Systemand created the International Monetary Fund and part of the World Bank at the end of World War II.
Forty-four Allied nations came to northern New Hampshire to discuss how to stabilize postwar monetary systems. (It seems a little cocky to plan for your victory a year early, but the D-Day landings had just been a surprising success.) From the hotel tour guide, we learned that the international delegates and their subordinates were instructed not to bring their families. The hotel had just been bought by the US government after being thoroughly run down and maltreated by the founder’s heir. The government had “fixed” everything by painting it all white, even the Tiffany stained glass, but they were not ready to put up thousands of guests.
Yes, the Commonwealth of the Philippines was there, represented by Colonel Andres Soriano, a Spanish-Filipino industrialist who expanded San Miguel beer, founded Philippine Airlines, and served on General MacArthur’s staff during World War II. An interesting bit of trivia: he had been a Spanish citizen until the 1930s, when he officially became Filipino. After the war, he was also granted American citizenship.
Guess what? The delegates brought their families, of course. Of course! So the hotel employees had to sleep in tents and other temporary quarters to make room. There were originally only 230+ rooms in the Mount Washington Hotel because they had all been designed as huge suites, since the wealthy families of the Gilded Age stayed here for the whole season, from Memorial Day to Labor Day. (These were the people who did not have their own “cottages” in Newport, of course.) Between 44 countries’ top delegates, their aides, and all their loved ones, the place was packed to the rafters.
Jen sitting at the table—and in one of the original chairs—of the Gold Room, where the Bretton Woods Agreement was signed.
But back to economics: the delegates agreed to peg the world’s currencies to the dollar, the only currency they considered a strong enough shore of value to hold true in the upcoming tough times. The US agreed to make the dollar convertible to gold at a standard rate of $35 an ounce. If you are looking for the moment when the United States became a global economic superpower, this would be it.
Check out this five dollar bill from 1950. Notice the promise to “pay to the bearer on demand”? Pull a five dollar bill out your pocket, if you have one. It doesn’t say that anymore. Also, the text in the top left corner promises that this bill is “redeemable in lawful money” at the Treasury or Federal Reserve. Um, yeah, not anymore.
Now, accounting for inflation, that peg price to gold is only about $485 an ounce in 2016 dollars, which is a third of today’s (8/25/17) spot price of $1300 an ounce. The US could not keep the dollar strong enough to hold its own against rising gold prices, especially during the economic crises of the late 60s and early 70s. In 1971 President Nixon announced that the US dollar would no longer be convertible to gold.
Republican William McKinley (left, from his own campaign poster) and Democrat William Jennings Bryan (right, in a critical Judge magazine cover). Both images found at Wikimedia Commons: McKinley’s poster and Judge‘s cover on “Cross of Gold.”.
This spelled the end of Bretton Woods and the gold standard. Whether or not you think this is a good thing, it is an interesting conclusion to the gold-bug-versus-silverite debate that dominated the election of 1896. If you were to travel back in time to the Gilded Age and announce this was where we would end up, they would laugh in your face and call you insane. US “greenbacks” are now fiat currency, backed only by the world’s faith in their value, nothing more. (And, well, petroleum, since members of the OPEC cartel agreed that oil would be bought and sold in dollars, starting in 1971. Convenient, eh?)
The monetary conference was not the only interesting part of the Bretton Woods tour. The Cave Grill in the basement used to be a speakeasy! They paid fourteen-year-old boys to keep a look out for cops. Supposedly, if the authorities arrived, you were supposed to throw your whiskey in the barrel, and it would be hidden in the floor. That never happened, apparently, because the cops never came.
Above all, Bretton Woods is a lovely place to lunch, which is exactly what Mr. Hallock and I did on this porch. What a view!
I’ve talked a lot on social media about my romance novel influences (e.g. Laura Kinsale, Joanna Bourne, and others), but I’ve not mentioned authors and books that have meant just as much to me as a writer, especially pre-romance days. So I’m starting an occasional series on all the works of fiction, science fiction, children’s fiction, and adult nonfiction that have permanently taken up real estate in my brain.
My literature exposure in public high school was hit or miss, depending on the teacher I had. I tried to make up for this in college, even though I had passed out of my English requirements and took only international relations and history courses. My first year I took a required class called “Empire and Independence in the Modern World,” with a specific focus on Africa, where I was assigned Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. That was a revelation. I also studied a lot of Southeast Asian history and politics, and that professor must have had me read The Quiet American by Graham Greene three times in three separate classes. It was not a hardship. I loved it from the start. I think I also picked up Burmese Days by George Orwell on this professor’s recommendation. Finally, my then-boyfriend, now-husband, suggested James Clavell’s Tai-Pan as “fun” and “light”—which, in comparison to most of the heavy nonfiction we had to read, it was. Now, as I look back upon this college reading, I realize two things:
First, far too many of these books were written by white men, even when the subject was the injustice of colonialism. I did not question this fact too much as a student, but then again most of my professors were white men. I have read more widely since, but this post is really about the books from my youth.
Second, flawed or not, these novels left a big impression. They shaped how I approach a fictional treatment of the American colonial Philippines.
Things Fall Apart is a story of a Nigerian village before and after the arrival of British missionaries. The first half of the book gives no hint of what is coming: it is the story of an ambitious man in the village and his downfall. It is a story that could be told anywhere, and yet it is distinctly Nigerian. This is Achebe’s point. He portrays Igbo society as complex and flawed at times—like every other society on the globe. But, with the arrival of Protestant missionaries and British officials, everything falls apart. The beliefs, laws, and customs of the village are turned on their head, and this is not good. Interestingly, not all of Achebe’s missionaries are bad people. The first white man to arrive in the village thinks he is doing good work. He listens to the Igbo people’s problems and welcomes all who seek his help. Ironically, it is his compassion that accelerates the rate of conversion and hastens the collapse of the traditional village structure. This is a beautiful, nuanced story of the consequences—some unintended—of European rule in Africa. It explains why many parts of Africa have had such a hard time recovering.
A photo of Achebe around the time of the publication of Things Fall Apart.
Achebe grew up with a foot in both worlds: he was the child of converted Protestants, born in the city and educated in British-style schools; but his parents always kept ties with their traditional religion, and they moved their children back to their ancestral village at a young age.
Achebe was well-versed in the canon of British literature, but he was not afraid to criticize it. He especially criticized Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness for celebrating the dehumanization of the African people:
It is clearly not part of Conrad’s purpose to confer language on the “rudimentary souls” of Africa. In place of speech they made “a violent babble of uncouth sounds.” They “exchanged short grunting phrases” even among themselves. But most of the time they were too busy with their frenzy.
I am not saying that Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart in contrast to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. He wrote his novel based on his own experiences, twenty years before he gave that speech on Conrad. But the two books are a remarkable pairing. I prefer Achebe’s discerning view that portrays all characters—Nigerian or British—with very human strengths and weaknesses.
Takeaways: complex social networks, multiple perspectives, ambiguous characters, unintended consequences.
Orwell was born in Bengal and worked as a policeman in what is now Burma—both parts of the British crown colony of India at the time. According to the original dust jacket of Burmese Days, he resigned “because he disliked putting people in prison for the same things which he should have done in their circumstances.” Six years after he quit, he published a scathing indictment of colonial superciliousness in novel form. This is Burmese Days. Orwell’s treatment was so controversial at the time (1934) that one of his former colleagues claimed he had “rather let the side down” and his former principal threatened to horsewhip Orwell if he ever saw him again. Orwell claimed that most of the book was “simply reporting what I have seen.” (Source)
This book could never be romance. It’s about racism, poverty, prostitution, spurned love, and suicide. No HEA at all. Not even close. And while there is sort of a hero, Flory, he’s pretty wishy-washy. And there is no true heroine—Flory’s love interest is the most infuriating, horrible snob. You want to throw her—and her friends and family—off the roof of the British club, where most of the novel takes place.
The characters are not subtle, and the Burmese in the story are superficially drawn. (For all-around depth, read Achebe.) Orwell did not understand the Burmese as well as he understood—and was disgusted by—his fellow countrymen. His novel exposes the small-mindedness of white imperialists, and it does so in a visceral, immediate way. You will not like most of the characters in the book, but that is the point. Orwell didn’t, either. Clearly, he felt a lot of ambivalence while working in India: he wanted a paycheck, but hated the way he was getting it. He proved luckier than his “hero,” though, and quit instead of doing himself harm—which is good since Orwell had still to write 1984. (That will be covered in a later post, of course.) It is unbelievable to me that out of the original 2000 print copies of Burmese Days, over 900 had to be remaindered because the book was so badly panned by the critics. (Maybe that’s encouragement to us all.)
Takeaways: critical portrayal of the “white club” phenomenon in colonial societies, complex political points made through conversation.
The special literary edition cover of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, as painted by Peter Edwards, illustrator of Thomas the Tank Engine.
Moving into neo-colonial fiction, the Quiet American is loosely based on a real spy: an American CIA officer named Edward Lansdale. Lansdale was the “advisor” who helped elect Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay in 1953, and together they pulled the teeth out of a communist insurrection in Luzon. After that success, Lansdale was sent to Indochina, just as the French empire was dying, with instructions to shore up South Vietnam’s President Ngo Dinh Diem against the growing communist movement. He was not as successful the second time around.
A quote from The Quiet American that shows the layered, yet simple style of Graham Greene.
Greene’s version of this tale reimagines Lansdale as a seemingly naive foreign aid bureaucrat named Pyle. The story is told from the perspective of a jaded British reporter, Fowler, who notices that wherever our quiet American goes, trouble follows. And, of course, there is a woman, Phuong, that they compete over. But this is not a romance, either. It is a beautiful, profound, and yet hardboiled story. There’s action, too, with battle scenes based on real events. Most importantly, the book explains the American entrance into this war in the 1950s—and it predicts its disastrous end—but you hardly notice these lessons because you are too wrapped up in the humanity of the story. The Quiet American was made into a gorgeous movie, for which Michael Caine received an Academy Award Nomination.
Takeaways: using real people and events as inspiration for fiction, masterful weaving of political points into human drama, setting as character.
This story is about the creation of Hong Kong in the nineteenth century. It features British, American, and Chinese traders and blockade-runners who build a free market playground to make themselves rich. Clavell himself was a fan of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, which will come as no surprise when you read the book. And this is not the only thing that makes Clavell’s fiction problematic. Tai-Pan actually romanticizes colonial acquisition at the same time that it claims to honor Asian culture. Nor am I sure that he had a lot of respect for women. Honestly, I cannot think of much that he and I would have agreed on. And this book isn’t literary, like the three works above. It’s not even my favorite of the author’s novels. (That’s King Rat, based upon Clavell’s own experiences as a Japanese prisoner of war in World War II.)
So what makes it special? Clavell is a heck of a storyteller. An epic storyteller, really, creating dynasties that span hundreds of years. This is solid genre fiction—and yet Clavell does not sacrifice content to bring you a pulpy, fast-paced novel. He especially does not back away from economic history. Yes, it’s a little laissez-faire for my tastes, but it’s still well-told. I loved the subtleties of his negotiation scenes, including a nuanced use of chopsticks that still makes me self-conscious about my lack of finesse. Finally, Clavell gives voice to mixed race characters, who are often the most sympathetic of the lot.
Takeaways: economic and historical content that is highly readable, excellent pacing, subtleties of interactions between characters, cross-cultural relationships and mixed race characters.
From the 60th Anniversary production of the operaNoli Me Tangere at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Yeah, Jose Rizal (on screen) was a historical hottie. I’ve got a thing. Not gonna lie.
I did not include Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangereto this list only because I plan to do more with it and the role it played in fomenting the Philippine Revolution when I get closer to publishing Padre Andrés’s book, Sugar Communion. Until that time comes, let me say that the Noli is another seminal work of colonial literature. It was written by an author of color, but (like the others) penned in the language of the imperialists, in this case Spanish. Rizal deserves a post of his own because I cannot explain all the ways he fascinates me here.
Noli Me Tangere is about the unchecked power of the Spanish in a system based on race and class, and how this leads to a pretty depressing end for most of the Filipinos in the story. What I especially liked about this book was the voice given to otherwise minor characters, like the devoted mother of two young sacristans in the church. I also loved the social commentary delivered in ornate dinner and banquet scenes. Throughout, Rizal was making a political point about the cruelty and hypocrisy of Spanish friars. He did not seem to be espousing violent revolution, though, at least not in this book. But he did want equal treatment under the law. It shouldn’t have been a big ask.
Takeaways: depth of secondary characters, nuanced political discussions, setting as character.
Do you remember the days of card catalogs? Or the days when, if your library did not have the book you wanted, you had to wait weeks—maybe months—for interlibrary loan? (And that was if your library was lucky enough to be a part of a consortium. Many were not.) Even during my college years, I made regular trips to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., because that was the only place I knew I could find what I needed. Since I could not check out the books, I spent a small fortune (and many, many hours) photocopying. I still have their distinctive blue copy card in my wallet.
The point is that “kids these days” are lucky. Do I sound old now? Sorry, not sorry—look at the wealth of sources on the internet! With the hard work of university librarians around the world, plus the search engine know-how of Google and others, you can find rare, out-of-print, and out-of-copyright books in their full-text glory.
Today, I (virtually) paged through an original 1900 copy of Harper’s History of the War in the Philippines to bring you some of the original images that you cannot find anywhere else. For example, you may know that almost every village in the Philippines—no matter how remote or small—had a band of some sort, whether woodwind, brass, or bamboo. In fact, these musicians learned American ragtime songs so quickly and so enthusiastically that many Filipinos thought “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” was the American national anthem. You may know this, but can you visualize it? You don’t have to anymore. Here is an image in color:
Smaller bands than the one pictured above played at some of the hottest restaurants in Manila, like the Paris on the famous Escolta thoroughfare. I have seen the Paris’s advertisements in commercial directories, but I had never seen a photo of the interior of it (or really many buildings at all) since flash photography was brand new. Harper’s had a budget, though, so they spared no expense to bring you this image of American expatriate chic:
Not every soldier or sailor ate as well as the officers at the Paris. The soldiers on “the Rock” of Corregidor Island, which guards the mouth of Manila Bay, had a more natural setting for their hotel and restaurant:
Another interesting image is of a “flying mess” (or meal in the field). Notice the Chinese laborers in the bottom right hand corner. Despite banning any further Chinese immigration to the Philippines with the renewal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1902, the US government and military regularly employed Chinese laborers who were already in the islands.
Want to learn how to find such cool sources yourself? Next weekend, on April 22nd at 1pm, I will give my research workshop, The History Games: Using Real Events to Write the Best Fiction in Any Genre, at the Hingham Public Library, in Hingham, Massachusetts. The hour-long workshop is free, but the library asks that you register because space is limited. Follow the previous library link, if interested. Hope to see you there!
(Featured banner image of card catalog from the 2011 Library of Congress Open House was taken by Ted Eytan and is used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.)
I just wrote a hot sex scene for Sugar Moon that prominently features a wooden Ah Tay bed. It definitely makes an impression:
Ben’s hips flattened against hers, pinning her shoulder against the bed post. He nudged Allie harder and harder against the wood until she felt the carved floral pattern tattoo her skin.
I bet you’re wondering what that would look like—the carved bed post, not the sex. You can use your imagination with the sex.
An antique Ah Tay bed on auction. Leon Gallery opened the bidding at 160,000 pesos, or just over $3200. Salcedo Auctions hoped to get 350,000 pesos, or $7000, for theirs.
The elaborate four-poster Narra frame, with its intricately carved Art Nouveau posts, was the creation of Eduardo Ah Tay, an ethnic Chinese furniture maker in Binondo. The kalabasa, or squash-shaped, dome design became “a status symbol for the nineteenth century mestizo elite” in their bahay na bato houses.
Cheaper beds—versions not made by Ah Tay—had spiral posts. They were not as desirable as an Ah Tay but were still better than sleeping on the floor. However, if you were expecting a mattress on any of these platforms, think again.
“Look here, North,” the congressman said. “You gave us unmade rooms!”
Moss had checked the rooms himself. “What are you missing, sir?”
“Most of my bed!” Holt huffed. “Why, there isn’t a stitch of bedclothes on the blooming thing. Not even a mattress! I raised the mosquito-netting and found nothing but a bamboo mat.”
— Hotel Oriente, prequel novella to the Sugar Sun series.
Holt’s confusion was based on a real story of an irate newcomer to the Hotel de Oriente. The rattan platform, mattress-less bed was known among Americans for being “springless, unyielding, and anything but comfortable,” or “an instrument of torture, a rack, an inspirer of insomnia.” Even Philippine Commissioner Dean Worcester called the Philippine bed “that serious problem.”
The real genius of the bed though was air flow. Woven rattan was both perforated and strong, which made it the go-to technique for a lot of local furniture, including the sillon chair. This ingenuous use of local materialskept you cool before the advent of air conditioning.
Eventually, Commissioner Worcester came to like the bed—he even regarded it a luxury of the tropics. Traveler Burton Holmes agreed the bed had been “unjustly ridiculed and maligned.” He said, “It is…perfectly adapted to local conditions, a bed evolved by centuries of experience in a moist, hot, insect-ridden tropic land, and from the artistic point of view is not unattractive.”
Left: A modern-sized reproduction of an Ah Tay bed in the Museo sa Parian (1730 Jesuit House) in Cebu. Photo by Looney Planet. Right: A large Ah Tay at Casa Consuelo Museum at Villa Escudero Plantations in San Pablo, Laguna, as photographed by the Philippine Inquirer.
But don’t try to sleep on an original Ah Tay: not only might it be in delicate condition, but most are far too small. (Humans have gotten bigger—both taller and rounder—in the last 120 years.) There is a decent sized one at the Casa Consuelo Museum in Tiaong, Quezon, and its owners even claim that it—and everything in the house—is authentic. Or you can build yourself a modern-sized reproduction, complete with solid mattress frame, like at the Museo sa Parian in Cebu.
Either way, this is the type of bed where Allegra Potter will bring her handsome, six-foot-plus suitor, Ben Potter. This is where she will debauch him in Sugar Moon. Look for it in late 2017.
This book could never be romance. It’s about racism, poverty, prostitution, spurned love, and suicide. No HEA at all. Not even close. And while there is sort of a hero, Flory, he’s pretty wishy-washy. And there is no true heroine—Flory’s love interest is the most infuriating, horrible snob. You want to throw her—and her friends and family—off the roof of the British club, where most of the novel takes place.
