William Winwood Reade

William Winwood Reade (1838 - 1875) was a British historian, explorer, and philosopher.

Contents

Biography

He was born in Perthshire, Scotland. Reade took to writing at an early age, composing two novels by the age of 25. At this age he also decided to depart for Africa, arriving in Capetown by paddle-boat in 1862. After several months of observing gorillas and traveling down through Angola, Reade returned home and published his first travel account, Savage Africa. Despite what critics have called an often juvenile tone, the book is notable for its anthropological inquiries.

In 1868, Reade secured the patronage of London-based Gold Coast trader Andrew Swanzy to journey to West Africa. After failing to get permission to enter the Ashanti Confederacy, Reade set out north from Freetown to explore the areas past the Solimana capital of Falaba. He was detained in Falaba by the local King Seedwa, who imprisoned him for three months under conditions of extreme physical and very little mental hardship. Legend has it that King Seedwa set four gruelling tasks for Reade each day of his captivity, all of which Reade completed with aplomb. Consequently, Reade's indomitable spirit prevailed and he refused to wilt under the caprices of the King and the heat of the sun. Though Reade traveled over some unexplored territory, his findings excited little interest among geographers, due mostly to his failure to take accurate measurements of his journey: his sextant and other instruments had been left behind at Port Loko. On his return, Reade published his The African Sketch-Book (1873), an account of his travels that also called for far greater British involvement in West Africa.

Reade returned to Africa in 1873 to serve as a correspondent in the Ashanti War, but died not long after. He was buried in Ipsden churchyard, Oxfordshire, a stone's throw away from the family home, which is still to this day owned and inhabited by a member of the Reade family.

His books The Martyrdom of Man and The Outcast are included in the Thinker's Library.

The scholar, explorer and playwright Thomas Wilberforce Edwards is in the process of compiling, to date, the greatest collection of Reade's works for publication; this may help raise the profile of Reade who is often shunned as somewhat of an outcast from the illustrious breed of 19th Century Gentleman explorers.

The Martyrdom of Man

The Martyrdom of Man (1872), is a secular history of the Western world. According to one historian, the book became a kind of "substitute bible for secularists" [1] In it, Reade attempts to trace the development of Western civilization in terms analogous to those used in the natural sciences. He uses it to advance his philosophy, which was political liberalism. [2] The final section of the book provoked enormous controversy due to Reade's "outspoken attack on Christian dogma" and the book was condemned by several magazines. In 1872 the then Prime minister, William Gladstone denounced The Martyrdom of Man as one of several "irreligious works" (the others included work by Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer and David Friedrich Strauss). [2]

Reade was an atheist (although this has been disputed by a surviving family member) and a social Darwinist who believed in survival of the fittest and wanted to create a new civilization: "While war, slavery and religion had once been necessary,Reade argued, they would not always be so;in the future only science could guarantee human progress".[2] Cecil Rhodes, an English-born South Africa politician and businessman, said that the book "made me what I am". [2] Other admirers of The Martyrdom of Man included H.G. Wells, Winston Churchill,[3] Harry Johnston, George Orwell, Susan Isaacs [4], and Michael Foot.[3] The title of the book is well known to many who have not read it: in Arthur Conan Doyle's The Sign of the Four, Sherlock Holmes says to Dr. Watson: "Let me recommend this book, -- one of the most remarkable ever penned." V.S. Pritchett lauded The Martyrdom of Man as "the one, the outstanding, dramatic, imaginative historical picture of life, to be inspired by Victorian science". [2] Since The Martyrdom of Man had, (by Victorian standards) a relatively sympathetic account of African history, it was approvingly cited by W.E.B. Du Bois in his books The Negro (1915) and The World and Africa (1947). [5]

Reade's other secularist work, "The Outcast", is a short novel about a young man who must deal with being rejected by his religious father and the death of his wife. [2]

Trivia

Reade is quoted in one of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes' adventure, The Sign of the Four:

(...) "Winwood Reade is good upon the subject," said Holmes. "He remarks that, while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician" (...)[6]

This concept is elaborated somewhat in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, where "psycho-history" is used to predict and manipulate social and political developments.

Bibliography

References

  1. ^ The London Heretics, W.S. Smith. Constable, 1967, p.5 .
  2. ^ a b c d e f "Becoming an explorer:the Martyrdom of Winwood Reade" in Geography Militant: Cultures of exploration in the Age of Empire by Felix Driver, Blackwell, 1999, 90-116. ISBN 0631201122
  3. ^ a b Loyalists and Loners by Michael Foot, Collins, 1986, p. 305-8. ISBN 0002175835
  4. ^ Susan Isaacs: a life freeing the minds of children by Philip Graham Karnac Books, 2009, p. 28. ISBN 1855756919
  5. ^ "Du Bois as Pioneer of African History: A Reassement of the Negro (1915)" by Robin Law in Re-cognizing W.E.B. Du Bois in the twenty-first century: essays on W.E.B. Du Bois Edited by Mary Keller and Chester J. Fontenot. Mercer University Press, 2007 (p.24-28) ISBN 088146077X .
  6. ^ The Sign of the Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2097/2097-h/2097-h.htm

External links