John Tully
Список книг автора John TullyThe Devil’s Milk
Capital, as Marx once wrote, comes into the world “dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.” He might well have been describing the long, grim history of rubber. From the early stages of primitive accumulation to the heights of the industrial revolution and beyond, rubber is one of a handful of commodities that has played a crucial role in shaping the modern world, and yet, as John Tully shows in this remarkable book, laboring people around the globe have every reason to regard it as “the devil’s milk.” All the advancements made possible by rubber—industrial machinery, telegraph technology, medical equipment, countless consumer goods—have occurred against a backdrop of seemingly endless exploitation, conquest, slavery, and war. But Tully is quick to remind us that the vast terrain of rubber production has always been a site of struggle, and that the oppressed who toil closest to “the devil’s milk” in all its forms have never accepted their immiseration without a fight.This book, the product of exhaustive scholarship carried out in many countries and several continents, is destined to become a classic.Tully tells the story of humanity’s long encounter with rubber in a kaleidoscopic narrative that regards little as outside its rangewithout losing sight of the commodity in question. With the skill of a master historian and the elegance of a novelist, he presents what amounts to a history of the modern world told through the multiple lives of rubber.
Robbed of Every Blessing
Ireland, early 1800s. The Napoleonic Wars have ended, leaving an already disjointed country in peril. Maurice O'Dwyer, a young Irishman, considers the lifeless body of an English tithe-collector slain under a rain-filled sky. From that moment it seems his fate is sealed: he and his young simpleton brother, Padraig, are exiled to Australia, <i>An Astráil</i>, to the convict-filled island of Van Diemen's Land – leaving behind his love, his land, and his liberty. However, in the bush Maurice discovers that there are allies in the most unlikely of places.<br /> <br /><b>What the critics said</b><br />"With the passion of an activist and the ear of a poet, John Tully constructs his novel out of the differing perspectives of the colonial project, weaving Irish lives and English lives, black experiences and white experiences into a dense tapestry of oppression and the many little resistances it fostered. This is an account of settlement in all its complexity, a multilayered book written with a deep sympathy for ordinary people coping with the collision of very different worlds. It's a text built from parallels, echoes and resonances, a much-needed excavation of a past that still haunts us." – Jeff Sparrow, co-author of <i>Radical Melbourne: A Secret History</i>
Crooked Deals and Broken Treaties
Long before the smokestacks and factories of industrial Akron rose from Ohio’s Cuyahoga Valley, the region was a place of tense confrontation. Beginning in the early 19th-century, white settlers began pushing in from the east, lured by the promise of cheap (or free) land. They inevitably came into conflict with the current inhabitants, American Indians who had thrived in the valley for generations or had already been displaced by settlement along the eastern seaboard. Here, on what was once the western fringe of the United States, the story of the country’s founding and development played out in all its ignominy and drama, as American Indians lost their land, and often their lives, while white settlers expanded a nation.Historian and novelist John Tully draws on contemporary accounts and a wealth of studies to produce this elegiac history of the Cuyahoga Valley. He pays special attention to how settlers’ notions of private property—and the impulse to own and develop the land—clashed with more collective social organizations of American Indians. He also documents the ecological cost of settlement, long before heavy industry laid waste to the region. Crooked Deals and Broken Treatiesis an impassioned accounting of the cost of “progress,” and an insistent reminder of the barbarism and deceit that fueled the rise of the United States.
Silvertown
In 1889, Samuel Winkworth Silver’s rubber and electrical factorywas the site of a massive worker revolt that upended the Londonindustrial district which bore his name: Silvertown. Once referredto as the “Abyss” by Jack London, Silvertown was notorious foroppressive working conditions and the relentless grind of productionsuffered by its largely unorganized, unskilled workers. Theseworkers, fed-up with their lot and long ignored by traditional craftunions, aligned themselves with the socialist-led “New Unionism”movement. Their ensuing strike paralyzed Silvertown for threemonths. The strike leaders— including Tom Mann, Ben Tillett,Eleanor Marx, and Will Thorne—and many workers viewed thetrade union struggle as part of a bigger fight for a “co-operativecommonwealth.” With this goal in mind, they shut down Silvertownand, in the process, helped to launch a more radical, modernlabor movement. Historian and novelist John Tully, author of the monumental socialhistory of the rubber industry The Devil’s Milk, tells the storyof the Silvertown strike in vivid prose. He rescues the uprising—overshadowed by other strikes during this period—from relativeobscurity and argues for its significance to both the labor and socialistmovements. And, perhaps most importantly, Tully presentsthe Silvertown Strike as a source of inspiration for today’s workers,in London and around the world, who continue to struggle for betterworkplaces and the vision of a “co-operative commonwealth.”
On an Alien Shore
Tully's great-great uncle Michael was hanged for murder more than a century ago. According to family lore, he was attacked in a pub – accused by his attacker because as an Irish immigrant he was taking work from locals. At a time when anti-Irish prejudice was rampant during an economic depression, he never stood a chance of justice.<br /> <br />The bare bones of the story are more or less 'true' but have been fleshed out using the author's imagination. Michael's family emigrated from County Donegal in Ireland to Tyneside in northern England sometime in the 1890s. They had planned to go to America but their ship never turned up in Cork. The title, On an Alien Shore, is taken from James Horsley's poem 'An Emigrant's Sigh'.<br /> <br />Although these sad events took place long ago, the themes are very relevant today, with so many refugees, asylum seekers, 'economic migrants' and resurgent racism.<br /> <br /><i>"On an Alien Shore presents a vivid background of the poverty and squalor of late 19th century Tyneside with its slums, its appalling working conditions, its pubs and prisons. Against this background plays out a well-told story of romance, family love and pride. It is in marked contrast to most period melodramas because of its emphasis on the empowering role of the union movement. Most of all, On an Alien Shore stands as an indictment both of unthinking racial prejudice and of laissezfaire capitalism. In both these regards it is not only an insight into history, but a monitory tale for today."</i> – Tim Thorne
Dark Clouds on the Mountain
Set in wintry Tasmania in the early 1990s, with flashbacks to post-war Hobart and Europe during World War II, this story deals with dark secrets, crime and Nazi plots, interwoven with familiar domestic tensions of family life and marriage. Tully creates a fictional world strongly embedded in authentic details of real locations and well-conceived characters.<br /> <br />The earthy, passionate main protagonist, Jack Martin, is richly drawn: <i>'A typical copper – detective anyway – stressed out most of the time, running on adrenaline, nicotine and coffee. Booze too, but not as much as some of his mates. Running to flab from a diet of meat pipes and sauce, chips and the deep-fried dog's turds they called chicken rolls, gobbled down on the run between cases, ingesting cumulatively lethal doses of salt, sugar and saturated fats.'</i><br /> <br />In this elaborate web of intrigue the ground shifts, the past intrudes and time and place are vividly realised.<br /> <br />Brooding violence, tangled mysteries… a gripping read.