Building Aerial Empires: technology and geopolitics in American and British juvenalia through the 1930s

Abstract

In the later 1800s a new form of popular literature, juvenalia, emerged to cater to children as programmes of universal literacy were put in place throughout the industrialised world. This had its greatest impact on the transatlantic English-speaking world. British writers such as G. A. Henty romanticised views of life on the imperial frontier and became massively popular in America. By 1900 American juvenalia was beginning to favour imperial world views, in particular in many of the several thousand titles published by the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Such juvenalia ‘educated’ teenagers, boys especially, in their responsibilities to their society and persuaded American boys to support imperialism, in particular by focusing on the exciting role of new technologies in militarism. Victorian and Edwardian juvenalia are filled with optimism and such new technologies as airplanes and submersibles were seen as the solution to many geopolitical problems. Such optimism faded with the appalling experiences of World War I. In the 1920s Hollywood movies such as Wings and Hells’s Angels began to romanticise such air combat. In Britain Captain W. E. Johns responded negatively. Johns’ view of the technologies, expressed through the experiences of his main character, Biggles, and based on his own air combat experience in the war, was realistic and well aware of their deadly nature. The Biggles novels also clearly encouraged air policing of the Empire. American pulp magazines and novels continued to romanticise air war but by the early 1930s they had exhausted wartime topics and began to focus on the building Japanese threat. As an American ‘Empire’ developed in the period between World Wars I and II it focused heavily on the Pacific and the growth of American geopolitical interests there. L. Ron Hubbard’s many novels of aerial warfare are about America’s need to support China against Japanese aggression. Both British and American juvenalia culturally conditioned their country’s young males to fight what both authors clearly saw would be the next aerial war.

Keywords:

• Juvenalia
• geopolitics
• technology
• air policing
• imperialism
• Johns
• Hubbard

Notes on contributor

Dr. Hugill was born in York, England, and holds degrees from British, Canadian, and American universities. He is currently Professor Emeritus of Geography at Texas A&M University, where he taught from 1978 through 2016, and a Fellow of the Scowcroft Institute in the Bush School of Government and Public Service. He has published five books. His major books are on the relationship between technology, geography, and the world-system. Two are published by Johns Hopkins University Press: World Trade since 1431 in 1993, and Global Communication since 1844 in 1999. His third major book, Transition in Power: Technological ‘Warfare’ and the Shift from British to American Hegemony since 1919, was published in 2018 by Lexington Books. His fourth, Cotton in the World Economy since 1771, is due to be published by the Center for American Places in 2020. His interests focus on the hegemonic struggle between Britain and America in the early twentieth century, an economic struggle between two trading states obscured by the period of multi-polarity and the larger, often military struggles that occupied much of the 1900s and that we call the two World Wars. He has also published numerous articles and book chapters and many book reviews. He has served as President both of the Texas Conference of the American Association of University Professors and of the Texas Association of College Teachers.

Notes

1. Donald W. Meinig, The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History, Volume 1: Atlantic America, 1492-1800 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986); Volume 2: Continental America, 1800-1867 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995); Volume 3: Transcontinental America, 1850-1915 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000); Volume 4: Global America, 1915-2000 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006). Frederick Jackson Turner, ‘The Significance of the Frontier in American History’, Annual Report of the American Historical Association 5 (1893): 199–227.

2. British National Archives/Foreign Office 58/259.4.c.

3. Peter J. Hugill, ‘Imperialism and Manliness in Edwardian Boys’ Novels,’ Ecumene 6, no. 3 (1999): 318–40.

4. J. Steele, Captain Mayne Reid (Boston: Twayne, 1978). See, for example, Captain Mayne Reid, Gaspar the Gaucho, or, Lost on the Pampas (New York: Beadle & Adams, 1883); The Headless Horseman: A Strange Tale of Texas (London: Bentley, 1866); and The Flag of Distress: A Tale of the South Seas (New York: Miller, 1882).

5. T. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography, Kindle edition (London: American Cowboy Books, 2016), location 262.

6. G. A. Henty, Maori and Settler: A Tale of the New Zealand War (New York: Scribner & Welford, 1891).

7. Henty focused on America’s wars: the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War, and the Civil War, and on its frontiers in such novels as Captain Bayley’s Heir: A Tale of the Gold Fields of California (1889); Redskin and Cowboy: A Tale of the Western Plains (1892); and In the Heart of the Rockies: A Story of Adventure in Colorado (1895).

8. For assessments of Henty see G. Arnold, Held Fast for England: G. A. Henty, Imperialist Boys’ Writer (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1980), and G. S. Clark, ‘Imperial Stereotypes: G. A. Henty and the Boys’ Own Empire,’ Journal of Popular Culture 18 (1985), 43–52.

9. Annoyingly, many such novels do not carry a publication date.

10. Humphrey Carpenter & Mari Prichard, The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 7. Typical titles include Frederick Sadleir Brereton, The Great Aeroplane (London: Blackie, 1911), The Great Airship (London: Blackie, 1914); Harry Collingwood, With Airship and Submarine: A Tale of Adventure (London: Blackie, 1908); and Percy F. Westerman, The Rival Submarines (London: Partridge, 1913), The Dreadnought of the Air (London: Partridge, n.d. – but post WWI – ‘Singapore in the Year 1919’ appears on p. 14), and The War of the Wireless Waves (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934).

11. Newark Evening News, 4 June 1927.

12. E. Stratemeyer, American Boy’s Life of Theodore Roosevelt (London: American Cowboy Books, 2016).

13. Stratemeyer’s Old Glory series comprised Under Dewey at Manila (Boston: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, 1898), A Young Volunteer in Cuba (1898), Fighting in Cuban Waters (1899), Under Otis in the Philippines (1899), The Campaign of the Jungle; or, Under Lawton Through Luzon (1900), and Under MacArthur in Luzon (1901).

14. Captain Ralph Bonehill’s Flags of Freedom series comprised When Santiago Fell (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1899), A Sailor Boy with Dewey (1899), and Off for Hawaii (1899). The series lost its foreign focus after the third volume, retreating to American history and ending With Custer in the Black Hills (1902).

15. Stratemeyer’s Soldiers of Fortune series comprised On to Pekin: Or, Old Glory in China (Boston: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, 1900), Under the Mikado’s Flag (1904), At the Fall of Port Arthur (1905), and Under Togo for Japan (1906).

16. Hal Harkaway, ‘Holland, the Destroyer; or, America Against the World,’ in Golden Hours 24 November 1900–12 January 1901.

17. Deidre Johnson, Edward Stratemeyer and the Stratemeyer Syndicate (New York: Twayne, 1993), 5–7, quote from 5.

18. The early volumes of both the Tom Swift and Motor Boys series were written under contract by Howard Garis, of Uncle Wiggily fame. The Uncle Wiggily stories began publication in the Newark Evening News starting in 1910 and were later collected in book form. The Uncle Wiggily books, not controlled by the Stratemeyer Syndicate, were aimed at pre-teens, not teens. See, for example, Howard R. Garis, Uncle Wiggily’s Automobile (New York: Platt & Munk, 1912). The early Tom Swift stories often track Uncle Wiggily stories, albeit rewritten for an older audience, and Tom himself was modelled on Glenn Curtiss. After a history of motorcycle and powerboat racing Curtiss first flew in 1908 and quickly became the foremost designer and manufacturer of airplanes in America: J. T. Dizer Jr., Tom Swift & Company: ‘Boys’ Books’ by Stratemeyer and Others (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1982), F. Erisman, ‘Tom Swift and His American Adventure’, Social Science Journal 20 (1983), 13–22.

19. Both series were written by the wife of Howard Garis, Lillian. Carol Billman, The Secret of the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, and the Million Dollar Fiction Factory (New York: Ungar, 1988), 58.

20. Johnson, Edward Stratemeyer, 7.

21. Many libraries regard such novels as ephemera and they can be hard to locate and research, despite being published in ‘hard cover’. For the most part they must be accumulated in dusty second hand stores or at flea markets.

22. Frank Gee Patchin, The Battleship Boys At Sea (Philadelphia, PA: Henry Altemus, 1910) and The Battleship Boys in Foreign Service (1910). Victor G. Durham, The Submarine Boys and the Spies; or Dodging the Sharks of the Deep (Philadelphia: Henry Altemus, 1910).

23. Frank Gee Patchin, The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies or the Secret of the Lost Claim (Philadelphia: Howard Altemus, 1909); http://www.online-literature.com/patchin/ (accessed 25 June 2018.

24. Laura Dent Crane, The Automobile Girls at Newport (Philadelphia: Henry Altemus, 1910);

The Automobile Girls at Palm Beach (1913). After Altemus went bankrupt much of its catalog was taken up by Saalfield out of Akron Ohio, though published on high acid paper that has deteriorated badly. I have seen Saalfield copies of the original pre-WWI titles with, by virtue of the battleships depicted, dust jackets printed in the 1930s.

25. Captain Wilbur Lawton, The Boy Aviators in Nicaragua, or In League with the Insurgents (New York: Hurst, 1910); John Luther Langworthy, The Aeroplane Boys Aeroplane Wonder, or Young Aviators on a Cattle Ranch (Chicago: Donohue, 1914).

26. Ralph Victor, The Boy Scouts Air Craft (New York: Chatterton, 1912); G. Harvey Ralphson, Boy Scouts in an Airship, or The Warning from the Sky (Chicago: Donohue, 1915).

27. Captain Wilbur Lawton, The Boy Aviators on Secret Service, or Working with Wireless (New York: Hurst, 1910).

28. Allen Chapman, The Radio Boys at the Sending Station (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1922); Gerald Breckenridge, The Radio Boys Rescue the Lost Alaska Expedition (New York: A. L. Burt, 1922).

29. Clair W. Hayes, The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign, or the Struggle to Save a Nation (New York: A. L. Burt, 1916); Ensign Robert L. Drake, The Boy Allies with the Flying Squadron, or The Naval Raiders of the Great War (New York: A. L. Burt, 1915).

30. Larry Siegel, ‘The Boy Allies: A Satire’, Playboy Magazine, January, 1964.

31. Gordon Stuart, The Boy Scouts of the Air on the French Front (Chicago: Reilly & Lee, 1918).

32. George Tomkyns Chesney, The Battle of Dorking: Reminiscences of a Volunteer (London: Lippincott, 1871); William Le Queux, The Great War in England in 1897 (London: Tower, 1894).

33. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._Irving_Hancock (accessed 25 June 2018).

34. Halford J. Mackinder, ‘The Geographical Pivot of History’, Geographical Journal 23 (1904), 421–4, 436.

35. Alfred Gollin, No Longer an Island: Britain and the Wright Brothers, 1902-1909 (London: Heinemann, 1984).

36. Peter J. Hugill, World Trade Since 1431: Geography, Technology, and Capitalism (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 257–9.

37. Peter J. Hugill, ‘German Great-Power Relations in the Pages of Simplicissimus, 1896-1914’, Geographical Review 98, no. 1 (2008), 1–23.

38. Herbert George Wells, The War in the Air (London: George Bell & Sons, 1908), 173–86.

39. Brian W. Blouet, Halford Mackinder: A Biography (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1987).

40. Mackinder, ‘Pivot’ 436.

41. Herbert George Wells, Experiment in Autobiography: Discoveries and Conclusions of a Very Ordinary Brain (London: Gollancz, 1934).

42. Herbert George Wells, The Shape of Things to Come (New York, NY, MacMillan, 1933). This was filmed under the same title in 1936 with the airmen’s organization called ‘Wings over the World’.

43. J. M. Bruce, British Aeroplanes, 1914-1918 (New York, NY: Funk & Wagnalls, 1957).

44. Richard P. Hallion, The Rise of the Fighter Aircraft, 1914-1918 (Baltimore, MD: Nautical and Aviation, 1984).

45. https://carrieannebrownian.wordpress.com/tag/wings-1927-film/ (accessed 9 August 2018).

46. Hugill ‘Imperialism and Manliness’, 326

47. One American author of aerial juvenalia, Robert Bowen, served in both the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and the Royal Air Force (RAF) as a combat pilot and wrote successful and generally accurate short stories for such pulps as War Birds and Sky Riders. Another pulp magazine, G-8 and his Battle Aces, was, however, filled with ludicrous stories. One G-8 cover shows the American hero, a ‘flying spy,’ in the rear seat of a German plane machine-gunning a zombie riding in a coffin on the plane’s tail! The survival rate for pulp magazines and pulp novels is poor. Most librarians regarded such material as ephemera and refused to archive any of it, and some modern librarians have purged the novels, which can often be read as jingoistic, on the grounds of political correctness.

48. Peter Berresford Ellis and Jennifer Schofield, Biggles! The Life Story of Capt. W. E. Johns (Godmanstone, Dorset: Veloce, 1993) 119–31, quote from 131.

49. Richard Benson, The Printed Picture (New York, NY: Museum of Modern Art, 2008).

50. http://www.themodernboy.com/ (accessed 27 November 2017).

51. http://popularflying.com/ (accessed 27 November 2017).

52. Ellis & Schofield, Biggles!

53. W. E. Johns, ‘The White Fokker’, Popular Flying 1, no. 1 (1932), 19, 60–2.

54. One problem with Johns’ work is that his books have been republished by many publishers, sometimes with title changes, and often repaginated. In the WWI books the stories have sometimes been rearranged in different volumes. For example, ‘The White Fokker’ is the lead story in The Camels are Coming yet missing from the version of Camels republished as Biggles, Pioneer Air Fighter. Some books have been republished with incorrect initial publication dates. Texts have also been altered to ‘update’ them. In the version of Biggles Flies Again published with no date attribution by Thames books, but published initially in 1934, one character, encountered in Karachi, is introduced as Pat O’Neilson ‘whose eyes had once probed the skies of France from the cockpit of an R.A.F. Spitfire,’ a plane that would not fly until 1936, 153. Original editions are scarce, but books 7 through 28 were published by Oxford University Press. I have worked from the editions I have access to but have retained the original publication dates. There is a useful website that helps clarify some of these confusions, http://biggles.com/ (accessed 27 November 2017).

55. John Pearson, Biggles: The Authorized Biography (London: Bloomsbury, 2013).

56. W. E. Johns, Biggles Learns to Fly (London: Red Fox, 1992 [1935]). 32–3, 43.

57. Ibid., 173, 191.

58. W. E. Johns, Biggles Flies East (London: Red Fox, 2003 [1935]).

59. W. E. Johns, Biggles and the Cruise of the Condor (London: Red Fox, 2004 [1933]), 8.

60. W. E. Johns, Biggles, Pioneer Air Fighter (London: Thams, n.d.). [First published as The Camels Are Coming, 1932].

61. W. E. Johns, Fighting Planes and Aces (Delhi 2015 [1935]).

62. Ibid., 64–5, 69–70.

63. In Biggles and the Black Peril (London: Red Fox, 2004 [1935]), set in 1934, Biggles acquires a protégé, the young Ginger Hebblethwaite, ‘A Lad of Fifteen or Sixteen Years of Age’ 36. More such comrades were added during the stories set in WWII and later. Biggles even acquired a female counterpart in 12 books set from 1942 to 1950, Flight Officer Joan Worralson, known as Worrals: http://worrals.com/ (accessed 27 November 2017). Although Worrals was initially depicted as a ferry pilot for the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force she also flew and fought in Spitfires, shooting down her share of Britain’s enemies.

64. W. E. Johns, Biggles Flies West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937).

65. R. M. Ballantyne, The Coral Island (London: Nelson, 1858); Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island (London: Cassell, 1883); Hugill ‘Imperialism and Manliness’.

66. Anthony Hope, The Prisoner of Zenda (London: Arrowsmith, 1894); Erskine Childers, The Riddle of the Sands (London: Smith, Elder, 1903).

67. Ellis & Schofield Biggles!, 177–8.

68. Gordon Pirie, Air Empire: British Imperial Civil Aviation, 1919-39 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009).

69. Viscount Templewood, Empire of the Air: The Advent of the Air Age, 1922-1929 (London: Collins, 1957).

70. Hugill World Trade, 262.

71. David E. Omissi, Air Power and Colonial Control. The Royal Air Force 1919–1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990).

72. Johns, Cruise.

73. Johns, Biggles Flies Again.

74. Ibid. In the story, ‘The Oriental Touch’, Biggles and his crew rescue an Oxford educated Chinese castaway who is revealed at the story’s end as a drug smuggler. He has been cast away by a competing drug smuggler who has stolen his ship, but by employing Biggles to fly him and what turns out to be a chest full of opium to intercept his opponent is able to turn the tables on him and regain his ship.

75. Ibid., 154.

76. Ibid., 166.

77. In the timeline of the stories Biggles meets Raymond earlier, when he is with 169 Squadron flying F.E.2bs, and Raymond asks him to take a spy over into German territory: Johns, Biggles Learns to Fly, 102–6.

78. In ‘Affaire’ Biggles becomes accidentally entangled with a beautiful young woman, Marie Janis, who, unbeknownst to Biggles, is a German spy, a fact of which Raymond is well aware. Raymond uses Biggles’ entanglement to attempt to kill Marie by substituting a German bombing raid on her house for one on the officers’ mess at Biggles’ squadron that Marie has set up. As Raymond’s colleague, Major Charles says, ‘“the lady was well connected. There may have been unexpected difficulties connected with an arrest, yet her activities had to be checked. She had powerful friends in high places”, Johns, Pioneer Air Fighter, 183–200, quote from 197. ‘The Last Show’ ends with Biggles shot down at 11.30 am on 11 November 1918, half an hour after the Armistice has been signed and before a bombing raid scheduled for that afternoon on German Intelligence Headquarters, where Biggles knows Marie to be, ibid., 214–6. This was the only time in which Johns caused Biggles to be romantically attached.

79. Johns, Biggles Flies East.

80. Johns, Biggles.

81. Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World (New York: Penguin, 2009).

82. Johns, Biggles, 49.

83. Ibid., 186–7.

84. Johns, Biggles Flies East.

85. Ibid., 16–20, quote from 17.

86. Ibid., 94.

87. Ibid., 96.

88. Ellis & Schofield, Biggles!, 149–50.

89. Hermann Goering, ‘My Most Thrilling Combat’, Popular Flying, 2, no. 4 (1933), 190.

90. W. E. Johns, ‘Where Stands Germany’, Popular Flying, 2, no. 10 (1934), 526.

91. Ellis & Schofield, Biggles!, 150.

92. W. E. Johns, ‘The Editor’s Cockpit’, Popular Flying, 3, no. 10 (1935), 503.

93. Johns, Biggles Flies East, 189–91.

94. W. E. Johns, Biggles, Air Commodore (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937), 20.

95. Ibid., 152.

96. Ibid., 234.

97. L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (New York: Hermitage House, 1950).

98. https://galaxypress.com/l-ron-hubbard/ (accessed 7 January 2018).

99. Turner ‘Frontier’, 201.

100. William Adam Russ, The Hawaiian Republic (1894-98) and Its Struggle to Win Annexation (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 1992).

101. Peter J. Hugill, ‘Closing the Atlantic Gap: The Symbiotic Development of Civil and Military Aviation Technology Through the 1930s’, The Journal of Transatlantic Studies 13, no. 3 (2015), 235–50.

102. Gordon Swanborough and Peter M. Bowers, United States Navy Aircraft Since 1911, 2nd ed. revised (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1976).

103. Hugill ‘Closing the Gap’, 242.

104. Hector Bywater, The Great Pacific War: A History of the American-Japanese Campaign of 1931-33 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1925).

105. Lothrop Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920).

106. Eustace L. Adams, The Flying Windmill (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1930), 213.

107. Edwin Green, Air Monster (Chicago: Goldsmith, 1932).

108. Douglas Botting, The Giant Airships (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life, 1981), 133, 139–42.

109. Owen Lattimore, Inner Asian Frontiers of China (New York: American Geographical Society, 1940).

110. Owen Lattimore, ‘American Responsibilities in the Far East’, Virginia Quarterly Review 16, no. 2 (1940), 161–74, quote from 162, 168.

111. Presumably the modern editor of Hubbard’s recently republished books was not aware that males were still on the British throne in the late 1930s. L. Ron Hubbard, Wind-Gone-Mad (Hollywood, CA: Galaxy, 2008), 115–6.

112. Ibid., 125–9.

113. The recent republication of Hubbard’s novels by Galaxy Press – owned by the Church of Scientology – makes them readily available but the novels are, unfortunately, without proper attribution as to the original place and date of their publication.

114. Hubbard, Wind-Gone-Mad, 5.

115. Ibid., 4.

116. Ibid., 21.

117. Ibid., 56.

118. L. Ron Hubbard, Red Death Over China (Hollywood, CA: Galaxy, 2012), 16.

119. Loc. cit..

120. Ibid., 25.

121. Stephen Uhalley, Mao Tse-Tung, A Critical Biography (New Viewpoints, 1975), 38.

122. Hubbard, Red Death, 52–3.

123. L. Ron Hubbard, The Falcon Killer (Hollywood, CA: Galaxy, 2008), 3.

124. Ibid., 37.

125. Ibid., 27.

126. Anthony Hope’s Zenda of 1894 was a massive success as an ‘imperial romance’ with both teenagers and adults and was turned into a play in 1896. The silent film version was issued in 1922 to very favorable reviews, the first sound version in 1937, and a second in 1952. Douglas Fairbanks Jr., who played Rupert of Hentzau in 1937, initially wanted to play the hero, Rudolf Rassendyll, a role that went to Ronald Colman, but his father told him ‘not only is The Prisoner of Zenda one of the best romances written in a hundred years and always a success, but Rupert of Hentzau is probably one of the best villains ever written’. Douglas Fairbanks, Salad Days (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 275.

127. Ibid., 78.

128. L. Ron Hubbard, The Devil-With Wings (Hollywood, CA: Galaxy, 2013), 3.

129. Ibid., 61–2.

130. Ibid., 94–5.

131. L. Ron Hubbard, Trouble on His Wings (Hollywood, CA: Galaxy, 2012), 59.