HISTORY IN THE HEADLINES

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HISTORY IN THE HEADLINES: A non-profit group is fighting to save Michigan's Willow Run factory from demolition, and preserve its historic legacy as the World War II-era workplace of Rose Will Monroe, one of the inspirations behind the iconic "Rosie the Riveter." http://histv.co/1aXbMQ9

Africans in India: From Slaves to Generals and Rulers (Exhibit by Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture)

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Click this link to view the FULL exhibit on the New York Public Library’s Website!!!

Nawabs of Janjira and Sachin were African slaves

By Sujeet Rajan January 29, 2013   First of its kind exhibition in New York explores the mark African slaves left in India’s history. NEW YORK: Till this day, the descendants of the Nawabs of Janjira, and the people of the town — once a principality near Mumbai — and in the neighboring state of Gujarat, in Sachin, another erstwhile principality, where the tradition of the Nawabs and their regal customs of old still thrive, revere the Sufi saint Bava Gor, who became the patron saint of the agate bead industry and is credited with increasing the trade of quartz stone between East Africa, the Persian Gulf, and India during the 14^th century. Ikhlas Khan and Sultan Muhammad Adil Shah, mid 17th century. (From the collection of Sir Howard Hodgkin, London.) Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. Photo: Courtesy of Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.     There is an integral connection between the Nawabs of the two states, their descendants and the Sufi saint, for over 600 years: they all have African roots in them. For the first time ever, to highlight the extraordinary achievement of African slaves in India who made their mark in history, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, in Manhattan, is presenting an exhibition, “Africans in India: From Slaves to Generals and Rulers,” starting from February 1, through July 6th of this year. The Schomburg Center is a research wing of The New York Public Library. Dr. Sylviane A. Diouf, historian and curator of Digital Collections at the Schomburg, and Dr. Kenneth X. Robbins, collector and co-editor of African Elites in India: Habshi Amarat, have co-curated Africans in India — a visually rich testament to the wide reaches of the African Diaspora.

Noble Ikhlas Khan

198_331View Printable ImageMuhammad Khan, The Noble Ikhlas Khan With a Petition. Muhammad Khan (17th century), India. Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, c. 1650. 4 23/32 in. x 4 1/4 in San Diego Museum of Art.

In 1490, an African guard, Sidi Badr, seized power in Bengal and ruled for three years before being murdered. Five thousand of the 30,000 men in his army were Ethiopians. After Sidi Badr’s assassination, high-level Africans were driven out and migrated to Gujarat and the Deccan. In the Deccan sultanate of Bijapur, Africans formerly enslaved—they were called the “Abyssinian party”—took control. The African regent Dilawar Khan exercised power from 1580 and was succeeded by Ikhlas Khan. The Abyssinian party dominated the Bijapur Sultanate and conquered new territories until the Mughal invasion in 1686.     The exhibition retraces the lives and achievements of a few of the many talented and prominent Africans in India. Since the 1400s, people from East Africa, from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, and adjoining areas, have greatly distinguished themselves in India. They have written a story unparalleled in the rest of the world – that of enslaved Africans attaining the pinnacle of military and political authority. From Bengal in the northeast to Gujarat in the west and to the Deccan in Central India, these men and women known as Sidis and Habshis vigorously asserted themselves in the country of their enslavement.

Portrait of a Young Man

12_36View Printable ImagePortrait of a Young Man, Indian, about 1620. Deccan, India. Opaque watercolor on paper 25.5 x 17.9 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Special Fund for the Purchase of Indian Art, 13.1397.

This portrait is believed to be the Afro-Indian Sultan Burhan Nizam Shah III (1605-1632), who ruled in the sultanate of Ahmednagar, in northwest Deccan.     “It is the only case in history, that slaves from East African went to another continent and reached a high position in society,” said Diouf, in an interview to The American Bazaar. “The success was theirs but it is also a strong testimony to the open-mindedness of a society in which they were a small religious and ethnic minority, originally of low status,” says Diouf. “As foreigners and Muslims, Africans ruled over indigenous Hindu, Muslim and Jewish populations.” The exhibition itself comprises of large panels; on each one of them are several images, comprising of contemporary photos, of monuments that the Africans built in India, and of Indian paintings of African rulers and officials, from private collections around the world, and from museums in India, England and the US. Diouf started compiling the objects and materials for the exhibition almost a year ago. Nawab Sidi Ahmad Khan of Janjira  (From the Kenneth and Joyce Robbins Collection); The African nawabs (princes) of Janjira also ruled over Jafarabad in Gujarat. Photo: Courtesy of Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.     Besides appearing in written documents, the Africans have been immortalized in the rich paintings of different eras, states, and styles that form an important component of Indian culture. Because of their high positions, they were captured in vivid and exquisite portraits as principal subjects or in the immediate vicinity of non-African rulers. Africans in India features dramatically stunning photographic reproductions of some of these paintings. As rulers, city planners, and architects the Sidis have left an impressive historical and architectural legacy that attest to their determination, skills, and intellectual, cultural, military and political savvy. The imposing forts, mosques, mausoleums, and other edifices they built – some more than 500 years ago – still grace the Indian landscape. From humble beginnings, some Africans carved out princely states complete with their own coats of arms, armies, mints, and stamps. They fiercely defended them from powerful enemies well into the 20th century when, with another 600 princely states, they were integrated into the Indian state.

Nawab Sidi Mohammed Haider Khan, 1930

12_34View Printable ImageCollection of Kenneth and Joyce Robbins.

After renouncing his rights to the throne of Janjira, Sidi Mohammad Abdul Karim Khan established the Sachin State in 1791 in Gujarat. It survived until 1948, when it was incorporated into Bombay (Mumbai) before becoming part of Gujarat. The Siddi dynasty was Muslim and ruled over a population 85 percent Hindu and 13 percent Muslim. Nawab Sidi Mohammed Haider Khan was enthroned as the seventh ruler of Sachin in 1930. A well-read intellectual, he retired to Mumbai where he died in 1970.       Janjira is especially considered one of the best specimens of naval fort architecture. Well-conceived and well-defended, it was never conquered, though attacked dozens of times. The Sidi dynasty ruled over the island for 330 years. According to one account, the first conqueror of the island, in 1489, was an Ethiopian. Another Ethiopian, Sidi Yaqut Khan, is said to have been appointed officer in charge of the mainland in the late 1400s. The three-mile island of Janjira is entirely surrounded by a formidable fortress of 22 rounded bastions whose walls are 80-feet high Janjira and Sachin have a close connection in history: after renouncing his rights to the throne of Janjira, Sidi Mohammad Abdul Karim Khan established the Sachin State in Gujarat in 1791. He was given the title of nawab and founded a dynasty that ruled over a mostly Hindu population. Sachin had its own cavalry and state band that included Africans, its coats of arms, currency, and stamped paper. In 1948, when the princely states were incorporated into India and ceased to exist, Sachin had a population of 26,000, with 85 percent Hindus and 13 percent Muslims. The successive Nawabs of Janjira and Sachin were educated in the best schools reserved for royal and noble families. Some went on to finish their studies at Oxford, Cambridge, and Sandhurst Military Academy in Great Britain. Ibrahim Khan III, the sixth Nawab of Sachin from 1887 to 1930, illustrated himself during World War I. He was promoted to Major, received the British title “His Highness,” and the distinction of being saluted by 11 guns.

Siddi Family in India

13-34View Printable ImagePhotographer: © Henry Drewal

Africans and their descendants Africanized the Indian Ocean world, contributing their cultures, talents, skills and labor, and helping shape the societies they entered and made their own.       The first Africans who reached India in the modern era were not captives but merchants. Commerce between East Africa and India goes back more than 2,000 years. The kingdom of Axum in Ethiopia had established a very active commerce with India and Axumite gold coins minted between 320 and 333 found their way to Mangalore in South India where they were discovered in the 20th century. Ivory, silver, gold, wine, olive oil, incense, wheat, rice, cotton cloth, silk, iron, copper, skins, salt, and sesame oil were some of the main items traded on both sides of the Indian Ocean and on to China. Axum was also involved in the slave trade. Trade between East Africa and India was boosted with the spread of Islam. Indian Muslims from Gujarat migrated to African trading towns in Kenya, Zanzibar and the Comoros Islands where they worked with African and Arab merchants. While African traders traveled to and from India, some settled. In the 1300s, Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta met Ethiopian merchants in what are now India, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia. The most famous African trader was Bava Gor, who was also called Sidi Mubarak Nob, and made Ratanpur in Gujarat his home. Tomb of Malik Ambar in Khuldabad; photo by Klaus Rotzer     Amongst the most notable African rulers in India of the period were the Sharqi Sultans of Jaunpur (1394-1479 – the first or all the Sharqui sultans may have been Africans); Habshi Sultans of Bengal (1486-1493); Nawabs of Janjira (1618-1948); Sidi Masud of Adoni (17th century); and Nawabs of Sachin (1791-1948). According to Diouf, one of the reasons why the African slaves managed to etch their mark in India was because they were good soldiers, whom the Indian rulers trusted for their prowess and loyalty. “The Africans were renowned as good soldiers,” she said, “The rulers probably thought them to be trustworthy and to be used in frontier areas of battle, where they had no link to other clans and other families of the rulers. They were subsequently put in position of authority, and took power for themselves.” High-ranking Africans were prominent in Bahmani Sultanate (1347-1518); Ahmadnagar (1496-1636); Bijapur (1490-1686); Golconda (1512-1687); Khandesh (1382-1600); Gujarat (1407-1572); Kutch (1500-1948); Bhavnagar (1660-1948); and Hyderabad (1724-1948).

Malik Ambar

12_43View Printable ImageArtist: Unknown, c. 1620. Watercolor on paper. Victoria and Albert Museum.

Malik Ambar (1549-1626), born in Harar, Ethiopia, was sold as a child into slavery and became one of the most celebrated rulers in the Deccan region of India.       One of the most famous high-ranking officials was Ikhlas Khan, an Ethiopian slave, who from the 1580s onward, was in charge of administration, commander-in chief and minister of finances under Sultan Ibrahim Adil Shah II and his son and successor, Muhammad Adil Shah of Bijapur. He was the real master of Bijapur and appears in numerous paintings. Another notable personality was Sidi Masud, an African vizier of Bijapur. He served three sultans until 1683. He lived in the city of Adoni and was essentially an independent ruler. The most celebrated of the Ethiopianpowerful leaderswas Malik Ambar (1548-1626). Born Chapu in Kambata, in Ethiopia, he was enslaved as a young man and taken to Mocha in Yemen. He was later sent to Arabia where he was educated in finance before being brought to Baghdad, Iraq. Converted to Islam, Chapu was renamed Ambar. He was later sold to India where he arrived in the early 1570s. He became a slave of Chengiz Khan (believed to have been an Ethiopian and a former slave), the prime minister of the sultanate of Ahmadnagar.

Ethiopian in 1581

1638099View Printable ImageA Collection of the dresses of different nations, antient [sic] and modern (London: T. Jefferys, 1757). Art and Architecture Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, The New York Public Library.

Sailors and traders from the Upper Nile (Nubia) and Horn of Africa (Ethiopia and Somalia) traveled to India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka in the first century A.D.       Freed upon Chengiz Khan’s death in 1575, Ambar left Ahmadnagar to become a commander in Bijapur where he was granted the title Malik. In 1595, he went back to Ahmadnagar, putting himself and his army in the service of another Ethiopian, Abhang Khan. By the turn of the 17th century, Malik Ambar had an army of 10,000 African cavalry and infantrymen. In 1600, he married his daughter to a 20-year old prince, installed him as sultan, and ruled in his place as regent and prime minister. “It’s an incredible story, and a story that has not received enough attention. Slavery is never good, but this is a great story. A unique one,” said Diouf of the mark the African slaves left on Indian history.

Ethiopian Priest and Soldier

87126View Printable ImageJames A. St. Johns, Oriental Album. Characters, costumes, and modes of life, in the valley of the Nile (London: James Madden, 1851). Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library.

Fighting in 16th-century Ethiopia between Christians—supported by the Portuguese—and Muslims resulted in numerous prisoners of war, who were sold into the trans-Indian Ocean slave trade.  

The Nawab of Sachin, 1930

12_41View Printable ImageCollection of Kenneth and Joyce Robbins.

Click here to view video of Nawab of Sachin and religious ritual by Sidi Goma Group of Bharuch District, Gujarat.

From Africa to India: Sidi Music in the Indian Ocean Diaspora. © Amy Catlin-Jairazbhoy and Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy, 2003.  

This picture was taken during the installation of Haider Khan (on the throne with a footstool) as Nawab of Sachin..

Malik Ambar (? )

12_35View Printable ImagePortrait of Malik Ambar. Southern Indian, 1610-20, Ahmednagar, Deccan, India. Opaque watercolor on paper 36.7 x 23.9 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Ross-Coomaraswamy Collection, 17.3103.

This portrait, putatively of Malik Ambar, is believed to be of his son, Fateh Khan. Fateh Khan married the daughter of another Habshi (Ethiopian), one of the most powerful nobles in the kingdom. In 1631 vizier—top official—Fateh Khan deposed the sultan and installed Hussain Shah in his place. Khan held the real power until 1633, when both were exiled to Delhi and the kingdom was annexed by the Mughals.            
http://www.americanbazaaronline.com/2013/01/29/nawabs-of-janjira-and-sachin-were-african-slaves/
 

The Arab Muslim Slave Trade Of Africans, The Untold Story

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Over 28 Million Africans have been enslaved in the Muslim world during the past 14 centuries While much has been written concerning the Transatlantic slave trade, surprisingly little attention has been given to the Islamic slave trade across the Sahara, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.
While the European involvement in the Transatlantic slave trade to the Americas lasted for just over three centuries, the Arab involvement in the slave trade has lasted fourteen centuries, and in some parts of the Muslim world is still continuing to this day. A comparison of the Muslim slave trade to the American slave trade reveals some interesting contrasts.
While two out of every three slaves shipped across the Atlantic were men, the proportions were reversed in the Muslim slave trade. Two women for every man were enslaved by the Muslims.
While the mortality rate for slaves being transported across the Atlantic was as high as 10%, the percentage of slaves dying in transit in the Transsahara and East African slave trade was between 80 and 90%!
While almost all the slaves shipped across the Atlantic were for agricultural work, most of the slaves destined for the Muslim Middle East were for sexual exploitation as concubines, in harems, and for military service.

While many children were born to slaves in the Americas, and millions of their descendants are citizens in Brazil and the USA to this day, very few descendants of the slaves that ended up in the Middle East survive.
While most slaves who went to the Americas could marry and have families, most of the male slaves destined for the Middle East were castrated, and most of the children born to the women were killed at birth.
It is estimated that possibly as many as 11 million Africans were transported across the Atlantic (95% of which went to South and Central America, mainly to Portuguese, Spanish and French possessions. Only 5% of the slaves went to the United States).
A comparison of the Muslim slave trade to the American slave trade reveals some interesting contrasts. While two out of every three slaves shipped across the Atlantic were men, the proportions were reversed in the Muslim slave trade. Two women for every man were enslaved by the Muslims.
While the mortality rate for slaves being transported across the Atlantic was as high as 10%, the percentage of slaves dying in transit in the Transsahara and East African slave trade was between 80 and 90%!
While almost all the slaves shipped across the Atlantic were for agricultural work, most of the slaves destined for the Muslim Middle East were for sexual exploitation as concubines, in harems, and for military service.
While many children were born to slaves in the Americas, and millions of their descendants are citizens in Brazil and the USA to this day, very few descendants of the slaves that ended up in the Middle East survive.
While most slaves who went to the Americas could marry and have families, most of the male slaves destined for the Middle East were castrated, and most of the children born to the women were killed at birth. It is estimated that possibly as many as 11 million Africans were transported across the Atlantic (95% of which went to South and Central America, mainly to Portuguese, Spanish and French possessions. Only 5% of the slaves went to the United States).
While Christian Reformers spearheaded the antislavery abolitionist movements in Europe and North America, and Great Britain mobilized her Navy, throughout most of the 19th Century, to intercept slave ships and set the captives free, there was no comparable opposition to slavery within the Muslim world.
Even after Britain outlawed the slave trade in 1807 and Europe abolished the slave trade in 1815, Muslim slave traders enslaved a further 2 million Africans. This despite vigorous British Naval activity and military intervention to limit the Muslim slave trade.
By some calculations the number of victims of the 14 centuries of Muslim slave trade could exceed 180 million. Nearly 100 years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in America, and 130 years after all slaves within the British Empire were set free by parliamentary decree, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, in 1962, and Mauritania in 1980, begrudgingly removed legalized slavery from their statute books.
And this only after international pressure was brought to bear. Today numerous international organizations document that slavery still continues in some Muslim countries.
Reports on slavery in Sudan, Mauritania for instance needs looking into. Recently, a former slave from the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, Mende Nazer, had her autobiography: “Slave: My True Story” published. Mende Nazer was an alleged slave in Sudan. She was made famous by her transfer to England to serve a diplomatic family.
Mende Nazer reports that she was abducted and sold into slavery in Sudan when she was a child of twelve or thirteen (she doesn’t know when she was born). She lived in a village of the Karko Nuba in the Nuba mountains of Sudan with her family. The village was attacked one night. Mende fled with her family into the mountains.
She became separated from her family, and when a man caught her and told her he would protect her, she believed him. She had already seen people killed in front of her. The man told her to stay with a group of children.
Later, the raiders came and took all of the children to the town of Dilling, there the children were taken by families to serve as servants.
Mende also reports that she was taken by a woman from Khartoum whom she served for six or seven years. She had to do all the hard work of the household, and sleep on the floor of the garden shed.
She was never paid anything for her labor, and was frequently beaten. She wanted to leave, but had no money and nowhere to go, and was afraid to go to the police. The woman of the house said that she owned Mende, and called Mende her ‘Abda’, or slave.
Eventually Mende was sent to London to work as a domestic. After several months Mende escaped and claimed asylum. At first, the Home Office rejected her claim in October 2002. In November, the Home Office overturned its decision and granted Mende asylum.
www.africanecho.co.uk

http://www.aina.org/news/2006100394917.htm

The Gunpowder Plot Conspirators, 1605

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Treason, Plots and Murder

26 May 2013 - 16 February 2014
Room 16
Free



The Gunpowder Plot Conspirators, 1605
by Crispijn de Passe the Elder
circa 1605
NPG 334a

The seventeenth century was witness to frequent and often gruesome plots, scandals and murders. From the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 to the Rye House Plot of 1683 the motivation was often religious; although religion and political power were inextricably linked during the Stuart period. Not all seventeenth-century ‘plots’ were plots at all; the Popish Plot of 1678 was fabricated by Titus Oates with a consequence that dozens of innocent people were brutally executed. Sexual politics could be equally controversial and were central to the case of the Thomas Overbury murder in 1613. This display explores these unwholesome episodes through contemporary prints and raises questions about the role that print culture could play in promoting a highly biased version of events.

Ancient Explorers

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Upon first glance, you may think that this doesn't equate to anything more than some interesting magic squares or number patterns that are irrelevant to real world applications or the nature of reality.

But, with detailed examination, this couldn't be further from the truth.
Mathematics is the basis of much of our scientific language - geometry, physics, chemistry, biology, all life and time-space fabric itself. Many of the ancient structures indicate that the builders had some sense of advanced mathematics.

As physicist Nassim Harramein points out, [when studying the energy that composes our universe] it's not the particles that matter but rather the patterns and the harmonics!

In pictures: Writing a Torah scroll

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

The ancient art of writing a Torah Scroll sacred art form......

Milton Friedman

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The key insight of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is misleadingly simple: if an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.”

- Milton Friedman, born 31 July 1912.

American economist, statistician, and writer who taught at the University of Chicago for more than three decades. He was a recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Economics, and as a leader of the Chicago school of economics, he profoundly influenced the research agenda of the economics profession. A survey of economists ranked him as the second most popular economist of the twentieth century after John Maynard Keynes, and The Economist described him as "the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th century...possibly of all of it."

Primo Levi

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception 

“It is therefore necessary to be suspicious of those who seek to convince us with means other than reason, and of charismatic leaders: we must be cautious about delegating to others our judgement and our will. Since it is difficult to distinguish true prophets from false, it is as well to regard all prophets with suspicion. It is better to renounce revealed truths, even if they exalt us by their splendour or if we find them convenient because we can acquire them gratis. It is better to content oneself with other more modest and less exciting truths, those one acquires painfully, little by little and without shortcuts, with study, discussion, and reasoning, those that can be verified and demonstrated.”

- Primo Levi, born 31 July 1919.

Italian Jewish chemist and writer whose best-known works include If This Is a Man (1947) (U.S.: Survival in Auschwitz), his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in Auschwitz; and his unique memoir, The Periodic Table (1975), linked to qualities of the elements, which the Royal Institution of Great Britain named the best science book ever written.

Sligoville: St Catherine-the first Free Village in Jamaica

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

In 1835 Rev. James Mursell Phillippo, a Baptist Minister and abolitionist, in anticipation of the abolition of the apprenticeship system, purchased land in the hills of St. Catherine. This land was then divided into lots for the former enslaved persons.

It is recorded that Henry Lunan, a former enslaved headman on the adjoining Hampstead Estate, purchased the first lot of land. The settlement was named Sligoville in honour of Howe Peter Browne, 2nd Marquis of Sligo, then Governor of Jamaica.

It was under Lord Sligo's tenure as Governor that the proposed process of Emancipation of the enslaved persons was carried out. Sligoville, located about 10 miles north of Spanish Town, was the first Free Village in Jamaica

Ancient Explorers

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

King Henry's Niece

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Lady Margaret Douglas, a favourite of Henry VIII, negotiated the shady politics and shifting alliances of the courts of four Tudor monarchs. Leanda de Lisle tells the story of the ‘progenitor of princes’, whose grandson, James VI of Scotland, became the first Stuart king of England.

Painting of Lady Margaret Douglas from 1560-1565. Unknown author.Henry VIII ordered a dress from his Great Wardrobe for ‘our niece’, Lady Margaret Douglas, to welcome her arrival at court in April 1530. The 14-year-old princess was destined to be a player in key events over four Tudor reigns. Her youthful romances would see her caught up in the fall of two of Henry’s queens, she would be arrested at least four times, imprisoned in the Tower twice and plot – ultimately successfully – for her heirs to inherit Elizabeth I’s throne. In Margaret’s will of 1578 she still remembered her uncle fondly, listing a picture of Henry among her treasured possessions. Yet her dramatic life story and dynastic significance has been obscured by the story of a quarrel between them that never was.
Margaret Douglas was the child of Henry’s elder sister, Margaret Tudor (1489-1541), Queen of Scots by her second husband Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus. As such she was third in line to the English throne in 1530, following her elder half-brother, the 16-year-old James V of Scots, and Henry’s daughter, Mary Tudor, who was four months her junior. Her parents’ unhappy marriage had been annulled in 1527. The following year her father sought to flee his step-son, who hated him. Archibald had kidnapped Margaret and sent her to Henry as a goodwill gesture, hoping to gain free passage to England in return.
Henry ignored her mother’s pleas for Margaret to be returned home. She was too valuable a commodity on the international marriage market to let go. Nevertheless, for 18 months Margaret was left in the north of England, while Henry focused on his pursuit of a papal annulment of his own marriage to Katherine of Aragon. His hopes of being freed to marry his mistress, Anne Boleyn, had all but drained away when he, at last, sent for his niece. She found Henry living alongside a ‘somewhat stout’ Katherine, as well as the hot-tempered Anne, in what David Starkey has characterised as a virtual ménage à trois.
Henry left Katherine for good in the summer of 1531, while Margaret was sent to join her cousin Mary’s household as her principle lady-in-waiting. She was to stay at Mary’s side during one of the most traumatic periods of the princess’s life: the break with Rome, Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn, the birth of Anne’s daughter, Elizabeth, and Henry’s decision to have Mary declared a bastard. With Mary’s household dispersed in 1534, Margaret was then transferred to Anne Boleyn’s privy chamber.
The now 18-year-old Margaret, described by foreign ambassadors as beautiful, was highly esteemed. Despite her closeness to Mary she made friends with a group of talented young courtiers related to Anne and who together contributed to the collection of poetry known as the Devonshire Manuscript. Among these friends was the 23-year-old Lord Thomas Howard, a younger brother of Anne’s uncle, the Duke of Norfolk. He and Margaret fell in love and, at first, Henry seemed to encourage the couple, but they kept secret their betrothal at Easter 1536.
The atmosphere at court was tense. Henry had married Anne in the expectation of her delivering male heirs, but the birth of Elizabeth in 1533 was followed by a number of miscarriages, the most recent that January. He had begun flirting with one of Anne’s ladies in waiting, Jane Seymour, and Anne was quarrelling with the king’s chief minister and vicar-general, Thomas Cromwell. On May Day 1536 Anne was suddenly arrested, accused of adultery with several men, including her own brother, and of plotting the king’s death. By the end of the month she was dead, beheaded for treason.

Sent to the Tower

Henry promptly married Jane Seymour, with Margaret obliged to attend on the bride at the wedding. But these shocking events had a still more personal impact. Anne’s daughter Elizabeth was bastardised, leaving Margaret and her brother James V as Henry’s senior heirs in blood. As Henry had no legitimate heirs they were also a potential alternative focus of loyalty. To counter this a new Act of Succession was drawn up, giving Henry the right to appoint his heirs, even, if he wished, his illegitimate children over his legitimate nephew and niece. Henry’s bastard son Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, stood to be the principle beneficiary, since of the king’s children he, at least, was male.
At the same time as it emerged that Fitzroy was terminally ill with ‘a rapid consumption’, Henry learned of Margaret Douglas’s betrothal to Thomas Howard. His bastardised daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, made far weaker claimants than Margaret, who was legitimate and now connected to the powerful Howard family. Henry had the couple sent to the Tower.
On July 18th a Bill of Attainder proclaimed that Thomas Howard, having been ‘led and seduced by the devil’, had ‘traitorously contracted himself by crafty, fair and flattering words to the Lady Margaret Douglas’. His object was to to usurp the throne, believing that people would prefer the English-born Margaret to the foreign King of Scots, ‘to whom this Realm has, nor ever had, any affection’.
On July 23rd it was reported that Thomas Howard had been condemned to death for treason and that Margaret was spared only because the marriage had not been consummated. There was, in fact, a further reason. The annulment of the marriage of Margaret’s parents’ had left her legitimacy intact. The attainder nevertheless referred on several occasions to Margaret Douglas as being her mother’s ‘natural [i.e. illegitimate] daughter’. This was a clear attempt to demote her in the succession and ensure Henry’s children had the superior claim.
Margaret believed that Thomas Cromwell had also helped to save her life and she took his advice in pretending she had no further interest in Howard. The king’s anxieties were further reduced after Jane Seymour bore a son, Edward, on October 12th, 1537. Margaret (by then imprisoned at Syon Abbey in Middlesex) was released early in November, only to learn that Thomas Howard had died in the Tower of ‘an ague’. She took the news ‘very heavily’ and it would be four years before Margaret risked her heart again.
Henry was married to his fifth wife, Katherine Howard in 1540, when Margaret formed an attachment to the new queen’s brother, Charles. Unfortunately for Margaret – and still more so for the doomed Katherine – it emerged in November 1541 that the queen had been unchaste before her marriage and was conducting a relationship with a gentleman of the privy chamber, Thomas Culpepper. As the investigations uncovered Margaret’s latest romance she was delivered a chilling warning. She had ‘demeaned herself towards His Majesty, first with Lord Thomas Howard and second with Charles Howard’, to whom she had shown ‘overmuch lightness’. She was advised: ‘beware the third time’.
Following Katherine Howard’s beheading Margaret was careful not to risk any further unauthorised love affairs and when she did marry it was at Henry’s arrangement. In 1543 he was hoping to build up a body of support in Scotland for a marriage between James V’s infant daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Edward, his son. Margaret was a pawn in these plans, with Henry offering her as a bride to Matthew Stewart, Earl of Lennox, who led a pro-English Scots party. Happily, Margaret was delighted with Lennox, ‘a strong man of personage well shaped’, who ‘was most pleasant for a lady’. Lennox was equally enamoured of Margaret and their marriage of 1544 proved a happy one.
Margaret was not mentioned in the Third Act of Succession, which had been given the royal assent that spring. Having named Mary and Elizabeth as Edward’s heirs, the Act merely promised that Elizabeth’s heirs would be named later in letters patent. The king remained anxious to protect his children from rival claimants, but on a personal level Henry was fond of Margaret. He wrote to her from Calais that September, sending the new bride his special ‘recommendations’.
Margaret’s biographers tell us that, nevertheless, in 1546 she quarrelled with Henry so bitterly over religion, that, when the dying king named the long stop heirs to Elizabeth that winter, she was denied her rightful place in the line of succession, along with James V’s daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots. This supposed quarrel has helped diminish Margaret’s significance in Tudor and Stuart hist-ory, with the impression given that she was a woman of poor judgement and one who lacked political importance thereafter. This is far from the truth. 

A tangled web

The Lennox payments that year to chantry priests, who prayed for souls in purgatory, does indicate religious conservatism, but Henry’s will also asked for masses to be said for his soul. The only evidence for Margaret’s quarrel lies in a source that postdates Henry’s death in 1547 by 15 years, but it remains important because, 450 years later, the mud thrown at Margaret still sticks.
By this time, early in the reign of Elizabeth I, Margaret was 46 and the birth of eight children had taken its toll. But she had done well in negotiating the lethal riptides of the contrasting courts of Edward VI and Mary I, as well as being deeply involved in Scottish affairs, promoting her claims as her father’s heir. Indeed Margaret had matured into a political operator to match her great-grandmother, Margaret Beaufort (1443-1509), who had helped plot her son Henry VII’s rise to the throne.
In 1561 Elizabeth invited Margaret to court to celebrate the Christmas season and in order to keep an eye on her cousin. The queen had discovered Margaret was plotting to marry off her eldest son, Henry, Lord Darnley, to Mary, Queen of Scots. Under the terms of Henry VIII’s will Elizabeth’s heir was her Protestant cousin, Lady Katherine Grey, granddaughter of Henry’s younger sister, Mary, the French Queen. But some considered this unsigned document invalid, even forged, making Mary, Queen of Scots Elizabeth’s heir, as the senior in blood. If she were to be married to Darnley his English birth, combined with his Tudor blood, would greatly strengthen her claim.
A nervous Margaret insisted to the Spanish ambassador, Alavarez de Quadra, that securing the succession for Mary, Queen of Scots was her duty, for it would protect England from a civil war on Elizabeth’s death. But as the ambassador noted, Elizabeth based ‘her security on there being no certain successor should the people tire of her rule’. Margaret was in danger of being returned to the Tower and her fears of this grew when she spotted an agent of a sacked Lennox servant called Thomas Bishop skulking at court.
Margaret and Lennox suspected Bishop was feeding information against them to Elizabeth’s secretary of state, William Cecil. In response they launched a pre-emptive attack on Bishop’s reputation. They described how he had come to work for Lennox while their marriage was being arranged in 1543. Henry VIII had rewarded Bishop for his good service to Lennox, but, they claimed, the king later regretted this, ‘understanding that [Bishop] went about to set dissension between the said Earl and his lady’ and that Bishop had proved a coward, a sexual reprobate and a thief.
It is Bishop’s reply to the Lennox attack that is quoted by historians as evidence of Margaret’s fatal quarrel with Henry. In a long memorandum Bishop focuses his attention on her, describing his work for Elizabeth’s predecessors in the face of Margaret’s enmity, and his rewards. In particular he refers to the land grants Henry gave him in October 1546, ‘a little afore his death and after the breach with my lady Lennox’. Bishop does not say what her argument with Henry was about, but in the previously overlooked manuscript, Cotton Caligula B VIII (folios 165-168), Bishop clarifies matters.
He claims that Margaret had wanted him sacked in the 1540s, ‘seeking the rule of her husband’, and that Henry VIII was so angry about her false accusations against Bishop that ‘she ever after lost a part of [the King’s] heart, as appeared at his death’. In other words, Henry VIII demoted Margaret in line of succession because she was rude about Thomas Bishop.
Henry VIII evidently did value Bishop’s services, but the king had named the Grey sisters as Elizabeth’s heirs because, as unmarried females and minors with only a distant claim under common law, they had posed far less of a threat to his children than either Mary, Queen of Scots, or Margaret, who, alone among his sisters’ children, had a growing son.
Nowhere else is it suggested that Margaret quarrelled with Henry over religion and Bishop’s claim that there was a quarrel does not appear to have been taken seriously. But he had other accusations to make and by April 2nd, 1561 Margaret was imprisoned at the former Carthusian Abbey of Sheen, while Lennox was in the Tower.
In May Margaret’s interrogators complained that she was being extremely obstinate in her replies to charges that included treason in the recent war in Scotland and secret communications with a foreign monarch (Mary, Queen of Scots), as well as the French and Spanish ambassadors. There were also said to be ‘proofs’ that Margaret did ‘not love the Queen’. Bishop claimed Margaret had persuaded Mary Tudor to imprison Elizabeth in the Tower in 1554 – which was believable, as Mary Tudor had wanted to leave Margaret the throne, which proved impossible. Other servants confessed that Margaret often referred to Elizabeth as a bastard. They further described how her fool would roundly mock Elizabeth and her favourite, Robert Dudley, whose wife, Amy Robsart, had been found at the bottom of a flight of stairs in 1560 with a broken neck. Their servants said Margaret called Dudley ‘a pox-ridden wife-murderer’.
There was even an attempt to accuse Margaret of planning to kill the queen with witchcraft, a smear Cecil had used successfully against several Catholics the previous year. Margaret often heard Mass said ‘by one little Sir William’ and it was being alleged that she was in contact with ‘witches and soothsayers’, even that she had conjured the lightning that had burned down the steeple of St Paul’s in 1561 on the feast of Corpus Christi.

Tamed ambition

It was to be Cecil’s life’s work to prevent any Catholic inheriting Elizabeth’s throne and it is this Elizabethan antagonism to Margaret’s post-Marian Catholicism that has been read into her relationship with Henry VIII. It is the kind of anachronism we see time and again in Tudor history, with later anti-Catholic attitudes projected into the past.
Meanwhile, with fear of witchcraft being stoked in Parliament, where MPs were making it an offence in common law, Cecil had been busy seeking information in Scotland to ‘prove’ Margaret illegitimate. This concerned Margaret still more than the wild claims of treason and occult practices, which Lennox characterised as the lies of ‘exploiters, hired men and other fantastical persons’. When Margaret learned that Bishop had described her ‘a mere bastard’, she fired off a furious missive, reminding Cecil: ‘Even as God hath made me, I am lawful daughter to the Queen of Scots [Margaret Tudor] and the Earl of Angus which none alive is able to make me other.’
In the end Elizabeth chose to leave Margaret’s life unharmed and her legitimacy intact. Margaret’s royal claims remained a useful counterbalance to those of the Protestant Katherine Grey. In February 1563, with Elizabeth believing Margaret’s ambitions had been tamed by her imprisonment, Margaret and Lennox were freed. Margaret even became godmother to Cecil’s baby daughter, Elizabeth, in 1564. But behind the scenes she continued to seek support for her son’s marriage.
Eventually Margaret’s allies helped convince the queen to grant Darnley a passport to Scotland and in April 1565 a horrified Elizabeth realised his marriage to the Queen of Scots might actually go ahead. It was in a failed effort to prevent it that Margaret was, at last, returned to the Tower. For nearly two years following Darnley’s proclamation as King of Scots Margaret remained imprisoned, with disastrous consequences for mother and son.
The new Spanish ambassador, Diego Guzman de Silva, believed that if Margaret had been in Scotland her good counsel would have prevented the breakdown of Darnley’s marriage and his involvement in the killing of his wife’s principle servant, David Riccio, in 1566. As it was, Darnley’s misjudgements paved the way for his murder in Edinburgh in 1567.
When Margaret was given news of Darnley’s death, she collapsed in ‘such passion of mind’ it was feared she might die of grief. To ease her suffering Elizabeth had her moved out of the Tower and by the time Mary, Queen of Scots was overthrown in Scotland and fled to England in 1568, Margaret was free again. It was the safety of her infant grandson, James VI, that now most concerned her.
Although James is known as a ‘Stuart’, using the French spelling of ‘Stewart’ favoured by his mother, the dynasty takes its name from the paternal line represented by Margaret’s son, Darnley; it was a line she was determined to protect. In 1570 Margaret persuaded Elizabeth to accept Lennox as James’ regent in Scotland while she remained in England as his ambassador at court. The couple kept in close touch, with Lennox relying on his ‘Good Meg’ for her advice until he was shot in 1571, during a raid on Stirling made by supporters of the imprisoned Mary, Queen of Scots. His last act was to send his love to his wife.

Turning enemies into allies

Of her eight children Margaret was now left with one surviving son, Charles. Despite Elizabeth’s virulent opposition to his marrying anyone, Margaret arranged a match to a daughter of the courtier Bess of Hardwick in 1574. Since this non-royal, non-noble marriage did not pose a threat to the queen, Margaret was punished only with a spell of house arrest. Charles died of an unknown illness in 1576 but he left a young daughter, Arbella, to comfort Margaret in her last years.
A portrait Margaret had commissioned of Arbella, aged 23 months, depicts a hazel-eyed infant clutching a doll. Around her neck, on a triple chain of gold, hangs a shield with the countess’ coronet embellished with the Lennox motto in French: ‘To achieve, I endure.’ Margaret did endure. Her old enemy Thomas Bishop had proved a rather less reliable Tudor servant than he had claimed to be. In 1569 he was found to be in contact with adherents of Mary, Queen of Scots and ended up in the Tower from where he was released only in 1576.
Eventually Bishop returned to his Scottish homeland, where Margaret remained in contact with her grandson, sending James works of history and, on one occasion, a pair of embroidered hawking gloves. In 1578, aged 62, Margaret also continued to entertain Elizabeth’s most powerful courtiers. At a dinner in February she entertained Robert Dudley, now Earl of Leicester, as her guest. Margaret was adept at turning enemies into allies and, despite her earlier accusation that he was a pox-ridden wife murderer, they had once even worked together towards the Darnley marriage.
By the end of the month, though, Margaret was seriously ill and on February 26th she wrote her will. The sum of £12,000 was put aside for her funeral and burial expenses at Westminster Abbey. Among her many bequests was her ‘tablet picture of Henry VIII’, which she left to Dudley.
‘Tablets’ often referred to pendant jewels containing pictures or even miniature prayer books. Margaret’s could be the famous gold enamelled Tudor girdle prayer book known as Stowe Manuscript 956. It came to the British Library from a collection that belonged to the heirs of William Seymour, Duke of Somerset, the widower of Margaret’s granddaughter Arbella. She had, as a child, been betrothed to Robert Dudley’s short-lived legitimate son and it may have passed to her then, if it had not remained in her care. It contains an illuminated miniature bust of Henry VIII, dating from around 1540.
Margaret Douglas died on March 10th. Her funeral, which took place on April 3rd, was befitting a royal princess. She was buried in what is now called the Henry VII Chapel at Westminster, close to her ancestor and namesake, Margaret Beaufort, whose role in ushering in a dynasty she had emulated in her own life. Few tombs in the abbey match the royal ancestors listed on Margaret’s, but she was prouder still to be ‘a progenitor of princes’ in her son Darnley and her grandson James VI and I.
When Darnley was a baby Margaret had heard a prophecy that he would unite the crowns of England and Scotland. Although he was dead, Darnley’s English birth, as well as his Tudor blood, greatly enhanced James’ claim to Elizabeth’s throne. One day, Margaret believed, James would lie in Westminster Abbey, as a King of England, as he does today.

Leanda de Lisle is author of Tudor: The Family Story (Chatto & Windus, 2013).

Virginia Johnson

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

RIP discoverer of the multiple orgasm. http://thebea.st/13skCjF

Virginia Johnson pioneered sex research as part of the famed Masters and Johnson duo who discovered, among other splendors, the elusive multiple orgasm

Are You Smarter Than a 1912-Era 8th Grader?

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

In the early years of the 20th century, the students in Bullitt County, Kentucky, were asked to clear a test that many full-fledged adults would likely be hard-pressed to pass today. The Bullitt County Geneaological Society has a copy of this exam, reproduced below—a mix of math and science and reading and writing and questions on oddly specific factoids–preserved in their museum in the county courthouse.
But just think for a moment: Did you know where Montenegro was when you were 12? Do you know now? (Hint: it’s just across the Adriatic Sea from Italy. You know where the Adriatic Sea is, right?)
Or what about this question, which the examiners of Bullitt County deemed necessary knowledge: “Through what waters would a vessel pass in going from England through the Suez Canal to Manila?” The Bullitt geneaological society has an answer sheet if you want to try the test, but really, this question is just a doozie:

A ship going from England to Manilla by way of the Suez Canal would pass through (perhaps) the English Channel, the North Atlantic Ocean, Bay of Biscay (possibly), Strait of Gibraltar, Mediterranean Sea, Suez Canal, Red Sea, Gulf of Aden/Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean, Gulf of Thailand (may have been called Gulf of Siam at that time), South China Sea.

Eighth graders needed to know about patent rights, the relative size of the liver and mountain range geography. They had to be able to put together an argument for studying physiology. Though some of it is useful, much of the test amounts of little more than an assessment of random factoids.
So, if you’re anything like us, no, you’re probably not much smarter than an 1912 Bullitt County eighth grader. But that’s okay.
Tests like this are still done today, of course, often in the form of “scientific literacy” tests. The tests are meant to give an idea of how well people understand the world around them. But, in reality, what the these tests share in common with the Bullitt County test is that they quiz facts in place of knowledge or understanding. Designing a standardized test to quiz true understanding is of course very difficult, which is one of the reasons why these sorts of tests persist.
Writing for The Conversation, Will Grant and Merryn McKinnon argue that using these types of tests to say that “people are getting dumber” or “people are getting smarter” is kind of dumb itself. “Surveys of this type are, to put it bluntly, blatant concern trolling,” they say.

We pretend that factoids are a useful proxy for scientific literacy, and in turn that scientific literacy is a useful proxy for good citizenship. But there’s simply no evidence this is true.

Like asking a 12-year old Kentuckian about international shipping routes, “[t]he questions these [science literacy] tests ask have absolutely no bearing on the kinds of scientific literacy needed today. The kind of understanding needed about alternative energy sources, food security or water management; things that actually relate to global challenges.”
So, really, don’t feel too bad if you can’t finish your grandparent’s school exam—the fault lies more in outdated ideas of education than in your own knowledge base.
But, with all that aside, taking the Bullitt County quiz is still kind of fun:

The Bullitt County quiz for 8th graders. Photo: Bullitt County Geneaological Society

31st July 1544 – Elizabeth I’s Earliest Surviving Letter

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception


The earliest surviving letter we have written by Elizabeth I was written on this day in 1544 when Elizabeth was aged ten. It was written in Italian and in an italic hand, and the recipient was Elizabeth’s stepmother, Queen Catherine Parr, who was acting as Regent while Henry VIII was in France.
Here is a translation of that letter:
“Inimical fortune, envious of all good and ever revolving human affairs, has deprived me for a whole year of your most illustrious presence, and, not thus content, has yet again robbed me of the same good; which thing would be intolerable to me, did I not hope to enjoy it very soon. And in this my exile I well know that the clemency of your highness has had as much care and solicitude for my health as the king’s majesty himself. By which thing I am not only bound to serve you, but also to revere you with filial love, since I understand that your most illustrious highness has not forgotten me every time you requested from you. For heretofore I have not dared to write to him. Wherefore I now humbly pray your most excellent highness, that, when you write to his majesty, you will condescend to recommend me to him, praying ever for his sweet benediction, and similarly entreating our Lord God to send him best success, and the obtaining of victory over his enemies, so that your highness and I may, as soon as possible, rejoice together with him on his happy return. No less pray I God, that He would preserve your most illustrious highness; to Whose grace, humbly kissing your hands, I offer and recommend myself.
From St. James’s this 31st July.
Your most obedient daughter, and most faith servant, Elizabeth”

You can see a photo of the original letter at http://elizregina.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/exile-letter-001.jpg

Source

• ed. Everett Green, Mary Anne (1846) Letters of royal and illustrious ladies of Great Britain:
  from the commencement of the twelfth century to the close of the reign of Queen Mary, Volume 3, p176-177

When Marilyn Monroe wooed the troops

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception 

Never-seen-before photos and film footage of forces sweetheart Marilyn Monroe wooing soldiers in the aftermath of the Korean War have emerged for sale.
Monroe interrupted her honeymoon in Japan with baseball star Joe DiMaggio in 1954 to visit troops who had been fighting on the front line.
The whirlwind tour saw the her perform 10 shows over four days to more than 100,000 soldiers and marines who were celebrating the end of three years of combat.

Never-seen-before seen: These fascinating pictures of the charming Marilyn Monroe, visiting U.S. troops in Korea, are to go under the hammer at a Texas auction next month

Behind the scenes: This series of behind the scenes photographs of the world famous star are believed to have been taken by an Army photographer, since she is smiling and posing for the camera back stage

The visit was the only time the blonde bombshell entertained troops in her career as a singer and movie star.
A set of 13 black and white photographs, taken by an official army photographer, capture touching behind the scenes moments from the tour.

 

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Monroe, who was aged 28 at the time, is seen in combat boots and black trousers and a flight jacket chatting to soldiers and signing autographs in the 8ins by 10ins prints.
Several images show her on stage wowing crowds in a sparkling cocktail dress while in others she is wearing her famed houndstooth dress from her film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
A set of four colour slides depict Monroe mingling and laughing with troops and signing autographs.

The charming collection of pictures show Marilyn laughing and having fun with the troops at the base in Korea, before going on stage to perform

The rare images were bought by a collector in the 1990s direct from the military photographer and have never been published

 

Marilyn Monroe visits, performs for troops in Korea - 1954

A 90-second clip of unseen footage from the visit shot by a young soldier shows her arriving in an army helicopter, meeting troops then leaving in the helicopter.
The images were bought by a collector in the 1990s direct from the photographer and have never been published.
Experts are anticipating international interest in the rare memorabilia when they go under the hammer.

Performer: Several images show her on stage wowing crowds in a sparkling cocktail dress while in others she is wearing her famed houndstooth dress from her film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

The blonde bombshell performed to thousands of troops on her one and only visit to U.S. servicemen during her career

The trip, for which she interrupted her honeymoon, was said to set the tone for her marriage to Joe DiMaggio; the couple divorced eight months later

Margaret Barrett, director of entertainment at Heritage Auctions, said: 'These photos came from a collector who bought them about 18 years ago for very little money.
'It isn't known who shot the photos but we think it would have been an official Army photographer because they are professional images.
'There were thousands of soldiers there all with their cameras but these photos show Marilyn behind the scenes posing for the camera and signing things for VIPs.
'Marilyn Monroe flew into Korea to sing for the troops while on her honeymoon with Joe DiMaggio.

There were thousands of soldiers with their cameras but these photos show Marilyn behind the scenes posing for the camera and signing things for VIPs

'There are not too many quality photos of this trip, especially ones such as these which capture the behind the scenes moments,' Mrs Barrett said

'It was the only trip she did to see troops and in fact she only ever visited England after that trip - she wasn't a world traveller.
'These photos are really nice and have never been seen before. The photographer was with Marilyn at all the events she went to while in Korea.'
Mrs Barrett said Marilyn's trip to Korea 'really set the tone' for her relationship with DiMaggio. She interrupted their honeymoon to fly to Korea to sing for thousands of troops and, just eight months later, the couple were divorced.
'At the time Marilyn was the biggest star in the world and it was a huge event for the troops,' she said.
'There are not too many quality photos of this trip, especially ones such as these which capture the behind the scenes moments.
'There is an enormous market for Marilyn memorabilia - people are not getting sick of her at all.

The whirlwind tour saw the star perform 10 shows over four days to more than 100,000 soldiers and marines who were celebrating the end of three years of combat in 1954

A set of four colour slides show Monroe mingling and laughing with troops and signing autographs, looking completely comfortable with the attention

The monochrone, set of four colour slides and short reel of footage will all go under the hammer at a Texas auction next month

'She has been gone 50 years and she is still arguably the biggest star in the world.
'Bidding will start low but we expect there to be fierce competition for the items.'
The auction will be held at Heritage Auctions in Dallas, Texas, on August 10