A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME

Dated Snapshots

“We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.”

John F. Kennedy 

The act of writing the date on snapshots has the effect of preserving the image not just in its immediate surroundings but globally. Knowing what we do about the past we can wonder (pointlessly) how people can appear so blasé with what’s unfolding in other parts of the world. We don’t know the exact day this photo was taken but in Saskatchewan at the very beginning of June 1936 the snow had melted from the prairies, the sun was out and this young foal born weeks earlier was still finding its feet. The boy, not a great deal older than the foal, certainly with more time to learn life’s valuable lessons, had a long summer vacation to look forward to. In Iraq, Princess Azza, sister of the King, was not so relaxed. She had recently married a hotel porter from Rhodes so was stripped of her royal privileges. Meanwhile, the Chinese Government in Nanking was pushing for an immediate declaration of war against Japan. Rumours were circulating that a British officer had killed a Japanese soldier. The British delegation denied reports and ascribed them to Chinese paranoia. In eighteen months time an estimated 40 000 Chinese civilians would be killed in the Nanking Massacre.

 

 The earliest photo in this collection comes from Quebec and was taken on April 18, 1927. Over in Europe the weather was mostly fine with reports that air traffic over the English Channel was exceptionally busy. In Bath, Thomas Hampshire, a 48 year old chauffeur, was so terrified of an upcoming operation than he jumped out the hospital window, so saving the surgeon from another messy job but upsetting his wife greatly. In Antrim, Northern Ireland, Mr R. J. Anderson, president of the National Association of Headmasters let it be known what he thought of feminists and their male supporters. “No woman can train a boy in the habits of manliness. (Such a woman) might be an admirable proprietress of a Wild West saloon but we have no room for her in our boys’ schools.” 

 

 On April 27 1931 the prospect of war troubled Reverend James as he spoke at the Fellowship of Reconciliation at Bury St Edmunds. “If Christianity does not destroy war,” he warned, “then war will destroy Christianity”. Meanwhile in Belfast Edward Cullen’s murder trial opened. He had arrived in England four months earlier in the company of Ahmet Musa and Zara Agha, reputedly the World’s oldest man. A manhunt began when Musa’s naked body was discovered in a field outside of Carrickfergus. Across the water the World’s largest airship, the Akron, began her maiden voyage from Akron, Ohio.

 

 On October 5, 1935 the Dundee Courier was full of praise for Montreal, a city with an abundance of sunshine to appeal to sports lovers. In Blackburn Lancashire Robert Cotton took a slug of whisky to cure his cold. It helped so he took another, which also helped. An hour and two bottles later he was arrested after assaulting a fellow passenger on a bus.  In Tokyo Colonel Yamada went home and committed ritual suicide after he shot dead General Negata of the War Office. In Melbourne Mr W. Smith showed off his giant marrow measuring over three feet long and swore beer was the best fertilizer he knew of.

 

 On February 15, 1936 newspapers reported that across Turkey twelve people had frozen to death during blizzards that also killed thousands of cattle and destroyed hundreds of ships and boats. Meanwhile, in response to accusations its oil was fuelling the Italian war machine The U.S was considering an oil embargo. Spanish elections scheduled for the 16^th had the rest of Europe on edge. The contest was essentially between communist and fascist parties and whoever won the result was a warning of an insecure future for the continent. In South Africa a bill was before the Government that would effectively disenfranchise black voters.

 

 Members of the Twelfth Annual Congress for the International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship were welcomed by President Ataturk in Ankara today. In Glasgow meanwhile a group of men from Barra Island in the Outer Hebrides made their first ever visit to the mainland. They were reportedly terrified by the sight of a tram. Paul Wharton, dress designer to Hollywood stars, was shot dead while his bed-bound mother could do nothing. The killer also shot dead William Howard while law professor Henry Bolte remains in a critical condition.

 

 As war drags on the Allied press report that in the Jewish ghettoes across Axis controlled Europe starvation rations are in place. Other citizens have to accept 44 ounces or just over a kilo of bread a week while only children are given milk. At the Oswald Sat Zoo in Glasgow the performing lion walks a tightrope then plays a round of darts. Two million Japanese soldiers are reported to be occupying the islands just north of Australia. Chinese actor Kim Wong has been signed to play a Japanese soldier in a new MGM film.

 

 Twenty days after Germany signed the Instrument of Surrender, the Canadian Government has announced it will lift bans on Atlantic travel. In Birmingham meanwhile, Canadian soldier George C. Cummings had been caught breaking into a house and attempting to get away with over one thousand pounds worth of jewellery. Seventeen year old Robert Allsop has been charged with the attempted murder of an Italian prisoner of war. His boast that he killed Italians was not taken seriously by the magistrate, who did not think Allsop’s frustration that he had been too young to serve during the war was justification. 

 

 An American ship docked in Melbourne has a cargo of almost 500 000 bottles of beer. It had transported the bottles to the American base in Manila but arrived after peace had been signed and the Americans had moved out. No one knows what to do with the cargo. At Eaglesham in Scotland a fifteen year old boy has been charged with the murder of 29 year old Mrs Smith and her two children. Forty five women prisoners are on the third day of their strike at Portage la Prairie, west of Winnipeg. 

 

 On the first day of August 1948 China and Turkey play off against each other in football at the London Olympics. Meanwhile in Glasgow a golfer has been reported for playing a round with his shirt outside his trousers. In Australia the Country Party has submitted a plan to see Communism curbed, if not actually extinguished.

 

 No one is too sure how many were buried in the infirmary graveyard in Johnny Ball Lane in Bristol but there may be as many as two thousand in the relatively small plot of land. Demonstrations for independence by African nationalists have continued in Kampala. The International Committee will most likely decide that the time has come to readmit Japan to international sports federations.

 

 Turkey has welcomed the new Republic of Indonesia while in Malaya two British patrols opened fire on each other. In Greece Queen Frederika has made an international appeal for the 28 000 children taken during the recent civil war. Meanwhile, the coalition government in France looks set for defeat only two months since it was formed. Meanwhile, poison, fences and traps failed but the recent heatwave in Australia may have killed most of the rabbit population.

 

A recently published report indicates that the crime rate has dropped in Britain, which is news to chaplain G. H. Fawell, who says there is a noticeable lapse in morals and rejection of traditional religion. Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies has launched the Jindivik Mark 1 pilotless aircraft. The Australian cricket team has suffered another early collapse against an English team. Meanwhile President Eisenhower, or “Ike” to most Americans, is warning the USSR, or “the Reds” to most Americans, to leave Pakistan well alone, or else. 

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME

ON HINDSIGHT

Artistic cabinet card back stamps

“I'm afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning.”
Andy Warhol

 These days, when the word ‘art’ can mean pretty much what you want it to, some of us might feel nostalgic for the 19^th century, when the word had a very precise definition. Or so we like to think. It turns out our great, great or merely great grandparents were just as vague on the subject. To them, ‘art’ didn’t necessarily carry a value judgment; it could refer to pictures in general, which is to say any pictures regardless of their quality. An artist was someone who made pictures. Of course they had artists – people of questionable morals and hygiene who couldn’t keep a proper job – but if a sign painter called himself an artist no one was going to correct him. In Nashua, New Hampshire, Joseph Gauthier advertised himself as an art photographer and to emphasize his credentials had the landscape on the easel. The mountain could be Mt Adams or Washington in New Hampshire, but it could as easily be a generic mountain. You’ll notice the palette and the brush at the bottom of the canvas. The logic suggests the painting is being completed while we watch.

 

 Thomas Donovan of Brighton and Boak and Sons of Malton and Driffield are just two other English studios that used this same back stamp. A glance at the bottom left shows it was produced by the printing firm Marion of Paris. The woman is supposed to be a figure from the Italian Renaissance but, given the period this was produced, we could also think of her as pre-Raphaelite. Note the ivy, a plant that has had numerous symbolic meanings throughout English history, some erotic and others more cerebral. What of the snake unwinding upon the vase? The first thought is that it is a nod to Genesis, but why? 

 

 There is little immediate information on the Curtis Art Gallery, most likely located in upstate New York, but we can imagine the kind of art that hung on its walls. Apart from views of Niagara Falls, we could expect a few mildly pictorialist scenes among the Currier & Ives type prints and a few still lifes. The clue is in the Japanese fan sticking out of the vase in the bottom right. C1880s the inclusion of Japanese elements in any kind of pictorial design was a nod to art: not the high art the Renaissance as in the first backstamp but an indication that the producer had a rarified and sensitive outlook. This was an era when drinking Japanese tea out of small bowls was a mark of wealth and sophistication.

 

 The acknowledgement to Japan is more explicit here in the umbrella. Again it is also a design by Marion, now of London as well as Paris. You’ll notice that, like Spence Lees and Curtis, J Maclardy offers services as a portrait painter. On the backs of CDVs sighted on Ebay, MacLardy says he or she also paints on ivory. That would be miniature ivory portraits. Although at this time (1880s) the idea of the artist as a member of the avant garde was being recognized, it would be churlish to argue that Maclardy was not an artist.

 

 P. Drew is Alfred Palmer Drew. The Cabinet Card Gallery has some information on him, including the tragic destruction of his studio in 1896. For now we are only interested in the rather excellent back stamp. Although it doesn’t carry a printer’s name it is hard to believe that Drew would go to the expense of producing this on his own. An earlier post discussed the putti (as the cherubs are properly called) and their unclear symbolism. Here as usual there’s a suggestion they are up to mischief. Note how the one at the top is about to pull the sheet from the easel, so revealing the painting underneath, but the camera nearby indicates it will actually be a photograph. You’ll also notice that the little thug at the bottom has upset a frame and allowed a photo to fall out, so presumably advertising the fact that customers can have their portraits framed as well.

 

 Two more putti, common enough on back stamps so we need not pay too much attention except that the one at the top wears an apron with the sun as a crest, telling us he or she an emissary from the sun or is the agent ultimately creating the photograph. The photo is from Bulgaria but the stamp was produced by Bernhard Vachs (?) of Vienna. There’s an evocation of Greek mythology here; of the putti caught up in a shroud discarded by Demeter, goddess of fertility, or even her daughter Persephone, associated with Spring.

 

This elegant design also has allusions to Greece and also the Orient, but it is the two ships that catch our eye. Smith’s Falls is on the Rideau River but these ships are on a somewhat larger body of water, the closest to the town being Lake Ontario, which is some distance away.  It’s proof if we want it that the back stamp need not bear any relation to the photographer’s business or philosophy. John Moore either consulted a catalogue or he found an ad in a photographic magazine, but when he saw this design he liked it at once.

 

Finally, we come to Paul Darby, whose claim to fame, such as it is, was that he photographed James Joyce at his graduation in 1902. We don’t know whether Darby was Irish, French or British but we can see that by century’s turn he has embraced the design and typography of Art Nouveau; well who wouldn’t. to be an artistic photographer was as much about being wise to contemporary fashion as it was about being up with ideas in painting and sculpture. The idea of purity, of suffering for art had caught on around Montmartre but over on the Boulevard de Strasbourg hunger and struggle were the last things anyone would admit to.

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ON HINDSIGHT

THE WAR TO END ALL WARS

Some portraits from World War 1, most with a sense of tragic irony

“One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans.”

Otto von Bismarck (1888).

There’s a painting by John Singer Sargent at the National Gallery in London called General Officers of the Great War. Twenty two of the British and Allied commanders are standing together; William Birdwood, Douglas Haig, Edmund Allenby, George Milne and so on, and unless you still get teary at the idea of the British Empire, you have to ask; did any of them feel just a twinge of shame at being asked to pose? Too bad Winston Churchill wasn’t asked to join in. Then Sargent could have titled his painting 23 men whose ignorance and incompetence led to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands, but that’s perhaps a bit unwieldy. 

Here’s one of the French culprits; well he looks like he had a walk-on part in Kubrick’s Paths of Glory, which was incidentally based on a novel, itself drawn from actual events when four soldiers were executed for mutiny. For the record, Australia was the only country in the First World War that did not have an official policy of executing deserters or soldiers accused of cowardice. The British executed 306 soldiers, including 25 Canadians, 22 Irish and 5 from New Zealand. The Americans executed very few (so too the Germans) but US High Command wasn’t averse to punishments of public humiliation, including sentencing deserters to wear placards. The French outdid everyone. Over 600 soldiers were shot. Worse, there was a policy of decimation in place, which meant that when a unit rebelled and refused to follow a reckless order, one of every ten men could be shot as punishment for all. The most infamous case was on December 15, 1914 in Flanders when several French-African soldiers were executed. To make things even worse, in the French and American armies the soldiers called on to carry out executions were most likely to come from the soldier’s own regiment. They were his brothers in arms.

The mythology that England, France, Germany, Turkey and Australia have developed around the First World War reduces the enemy to simple terms. If you were Australian he spoke German or Turkish. The fact he may have been Bulgarian gets lost in the lack of detail. Bulgaria’s part in the war has been discussed in earlier posts but it is worth reiterating. After all, in the First Balkan War of 1912 Bulgaria was allied to Serbia and Greece against the Ottomans, went into the second Balkan War against its earlier allies and by 1915 had joined the First World War on the side of the Ottomans. There’s a tendency to describe Balkan politics as complex, as though too much thought went into them, but there’s another possibility; they were as thoughtless as they were self-serving, visceral and absolutely lacking in foresight. These men, photographed in 1916, are cannon fodder.

The Americans came in late, or as they would put it, to clean up the mess. They weren’t there at Gallipoli, Ypres or the Somme, which explains why there is no great American novel about the war. This may not be a bad thing. There’s been a proliferation from Britain in recent years and the plots quite frankly have become predictable: Irish boy goes off to fight for England and returns to the troubles at home - The Soldier's Song, A Long Long Way – episodic narrative of young soldier’s road to awakening and disillusion – Birdsong, Regeneration, etc. Worse, they appear to have identical covers of soldiers silhouetted on a ridge. Nothing so odd as this photo then. Not that there was anything at all strange about a soldier having his portrait taken before he shipped out, but it is somewhat to pose in front of a painted backdrop of a military barracks, and he has the expression of the rabbit in the headlights.

Something similar is going on in this portrait of a nurse. Was she put in front of the backdrop of the military tents because it needed to be reinforced that she was going off to the front? For a long time, at least up to the mid-1980s, the idea that nurses also served in battle wasn’t taken too seriously, as though having to tend to soldiers who’d been shot, gassed, had bits blown off or were suffering shell-shock was all in a day’s work. Read some of the nurse’s accounts from Gallipoli: working for days without rest while a stream of the wounded poured in and knowing there wasn’t much they could do for a lot of them. All that while an officer was screaming that they weren’t doing a good job. Something like 400 American nurses died at the front, though only very few from weaponry. Disease killed most of them. 

Fraulein Feldweber: Miss Sergeant. She’s not one of course. She represents the cause the Germans were fighting for, or so they were told. There are a few postcards floating around with this same portrait although the backgrounds are different. She was probably one of the faces of the home front, mailed out to the troops to remind them what they stood to lose if the enemy succeeded in its aims.

On the back of this postcard the author has written: “A ma chere Marraine Alda Drouin Souvenir de guerre de votre petit ami Belge”, which translates as “To my dear godmother Alda Drouin, a souvenir of the war from your little Belgian friend.” Presumably it was taken in Belgium but the soldier, whose signature in indecipherable, is Canadian. The card is undated but join the dots between Canada, Belgium and World War 1 and the conclusion is almost certainly Ypres. In the first battle between October 19 and November 22 1914, over 170 000 were killed on both sides. During the second battle, April 22 to May 25 1915 the Canadians took the brunt of the first poison gas used in war. It was a Canadian, John McCrea, who wrote In Flanders Field, probably the most famous poem to have been written in World War 1. He wrote it for a friend who was killed at Ypres but in that perverse way things work it was used in Britain to recruit soldiers. 

“Men, I am not ordering you to fight, I am ordering you to die.” This was Mustafa Kemal’s command to his soldiers on the morning of April 25 1915, and that is pretty much what his soldiers did. Turkish casualties were higher during the Gallipoli campaign than the Allied losses (approximately 250 000 opposed to 208 000), but who was counting? Victory or defeat has never depended on the body count. There’s something in this photo that tells you what was at stake for the Ottoman Empire - dignity if nothing else. Of the options open to the Ottomans at the start of the war, neutrality or alliance with either the Allies or the Central Powers, it chose what now looks like the worst but in the end the other two would have only changed the timing of its inevitable collapse. When this photo was taken these two must have known the writing was on the wall for empire. Would that have influenced their willingness to die for it? 

This snapshot was taken at Camp Cody, Deming, New Mexico in 1918, then the training headquarters for the 34^th Division. The Division arrived in Europe in October 1918 and wasn’t involved in fighting. That would have to wait until the Second World War when its soldiers made up the bulk of William Darby’s Rangers. Was this boy, clearly enjoying his role as camp mascot, among them? He looks to be about seven or eight and that would put him in the age bracket. 

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THE WAR TO END ALL WARS

ANGLO-SAXON ATTITUDES

Studio portraits from around the world

“If you understood everything I said, you’d be me.”

Miles Davis

Reading American histories of photography can give the impression that not much happened beyond the borders of the US. In particular there is a persistent line that vernacular photography is somehow indigenous to the U.S. Luc Sante says as much in Folk Photography, it is an underlying argument in The Art of the American Snapshot and these are good books by respectable scholars. If you accept the argument that it is indigenous then everything is framed within an American consciousness (whatever that is) but if you say it isn’t, it is global, things become much more interesting. Why, for one, did everyone behave the same way in front of and behind the camera? And despite all the work scholars put into identifying national characters (especially in countries like Australia where the notion is extremely fluid or possibly never existed) do photographic portraits expose the futility of the project? The above portrait comes from Cuba, but you wouldn’t know that unless you read the inscription on the back. It was bought in Turkey. The family could easily be Turkish.

Here’s one from China. Obviously the man is Asian and there’s a banner with Chinese script around the tree but if you consider just his posture and the other details in the backdrop, you couldn’t say for sure this wasn’t taken in San Francisco or London or some other western city with a high Chinese population. The painting might look Oriental though I’m not sure we would think that if the subject was European and the script on the banner was Cyrillic. Then you have to ask what difference that would make.

A case in point: The backdrop in this Bulgarian portrait is just as elaborate and what might first appear to be a mountain in the background is a village. There’s one in the Chinese postcard as well. Both men have a poise that suggests they want to appear relaxed but can’t quite get there. Perhaps the backdrop affects them; it does give an air of artificiality to the scene that they might have found absurd. 

There has been a bit of work in recent years analysing posture and gaze in studio portraiture. A lot of it is unconvincing. Americans might assume the real photo postcard is indigenous but they don’t get into the same difficulties as people trying to find cultural or ethnic distinctions in portraits. They make the same mistake; excluding examples that sully their case, but also they are frequently reduced to taking into account other details such as dress to make their point. Gesture and gaze are too ambivalent. This one is from Australia. Because of that, I’m inclined to think her muff is made from kangaroo pelt. It helps identify where she comes from, because nothing else in the photo does.

Position in photographs is important. In April 2012 the Turkish newspaper Aydinlik  ran two portraits side by side under the headline “Bize Hangisi Yakışır”, or ‘which suits us best?” One showed President Kemal Ataturk and Prime Minister Fethi Okyar standing stiffly behind their wives, who were seated. Next to that was a studio photo of President Gül and Prime Minister Erdoǧan sitting, tieless and relaxed while their wives stood behind them. The article was obscure in its intention. The newspaper is associated with left wing trade unions and critical of the present Government. It is also worth recalling that Ataturk extended many rights to women, including the vote, while under the AKP, the status of Turkish women according to international indexes has noticeably diminished, yet the comparison appeared to suggest that Gül and Erdoǧan were comfortable giving power to their wives. The suspicion is that the newspaper tried to take a swing at the Government and missed; nevertheless the example shows how important position and posture can be in formal portraits.

According to these codes, the person in the highest position, the woman in this American portrait, has some dominance over her husband, but from the looks of things he’d disagree. There’s a sense, and you get this from his posture, that he knows where the power ultimately rests.

And what about this one from Canada? Does it actually say something about marital relations in Canada in the 1920s, or is it only about the marriage between these two? It was bought in Montreal and might have come from Quebec but in that case bear in mind that while in most Canadian provinces women got the vote around 1918, in Quebec they didn’t until 1940, well after Turkey. If we want to take the point of view that position and posture in photographs reflect social standing across the whole society, this image messes things up. If we consider it instead as reflecting the situation of two individuals, we have to wonder how much we can attribute to position and posture. (You’ll notice, by the way, how most of the men have similar moustaches despite coming from different countries. What could that mean?)  

So, a Romanian boy …

Is not that much different to a Turkish boy …

Whose mother could be French …

Or German …

Or Filipino...
Whatever the case, American claims that there is something indigenous about vernacular photography are false but so are notions we can divine any implicit cultural meaning from gesture, position or posture. If these portraits reveal anything it is not what we are looking for.

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ANGLO SAXON ATTITUDES

A LA TURCA

Oriental fashions

 “Just as I was about to speak, Atatürk clapped his hands and, as he had orchestrated it, the dancing girls appeared, their multicoloured veils floating suggestively in the coolness of the room. As they danced their slow, sensuous dance, wordlessly Atatürk motioned that I sit on the red velvet and copper-collared cushions next to him. Mesmerized, I complied.”

Zsa Zsa Gabor, One Lifetime Is Not Enough, 1991

When this photo was taken in about 1905, modern A La Turca had been a fashion statement in Paris for just a few years. It didn’t have that much to do with Turkey, or more precisely, if the clothes conjured up images of the Orient they were A La Turca, and the Orient in a lot of peoples’ imagination was anywhere east of Italy. As fashion trends went it was a hard one to kill. Just when it should have faded, something would come along – Mata Hari, a new Rudolph Valentino film, the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb and Oriental fever flared up again. Women put on turbans, scarves and long strings of beads and let it be known they were more exotic than their day job suggested they were. Zsa Zsa Gabor wrote two autobiographies, the original, tamer version when her first husband, the Turkish politician Burhan Belge was still alive, and the less discreet account where the quote above was drawn from. Did Ataturk really clap his hands and a troupe of dancing girls appear? It’s possible, although the scene as Ms Gabor tells it reads like she was confusing a memory with a Bob Hope film. 

There’s a common misconception that Ataturk outlawed the headscarf when it was the veil, the niqab, or to be specific, clothing associated with religion that was proscribed. Perhaps he would have liked to get rid of the headscarf but not for any particularly religious reasons, rather because of its associations with peasantry and all that it didn’t represent; education, sophistication, modernity. His vision for the Turkish Republic was that it would be run by self-possessed professionals who could distinguish between science and superstition, but then he hit the nationalist’s dilemma. How far can you go when the elements you want to transform are essential to the culture’s identity? Take the woman above: on the one hand everything she represents is the antithesis of the ideal woman in the new republic, on the other the image she projects is so quintessentially Turkish that to discourage its depiction was to challenge the national character. 

One way around the problem was to think counter-intuitively and instead of suppressing the folklore promote it, being careful to make it obvious that the imagery wasn’t portraits but typologies. No one looking at this photograph would think the woman was an authentic villager; the studio well gave the game away. It belongs to a genre (is that the word?) that began in the 1860s, when European studios producing CDVs found there was extra money to be made out of the local folklore. Some of the very best studios weren’t too proud to play this game, especially when all they needed was a costume and a model and both could be procured cheaply. By the time this photo was taken the idea had pretty much run its course, or more accurately, the traditions had faded from view. Turkey was one of the few countries where most of the population was still rural based and folk traditions survived.

And then there was the new republic’s wealthy, urban and secular elites, which clearly is where this woman came from. There are several possibilities to explain this photo, but whether she dressed for something like a small scale fashion shoot or if the headscarf was part of her daily wear, was she aware that she was drawing on a Western European fashion which originally had found inspiration in Turkey? It’s a great image though irony doesn’t seem the point here. 

But it is here. On the back of this 1930s snapshot is an inscription written in Spanish. “A mia Turca (the mid section is mostly indecipherable) Mil abrazos (a thousand hugs)”. Spanish tourists? Probably. Most of the fun in visiting a foreign country is imagining you have some connection to it, so why not dress as you imagine Turks do, or ought to? 

As discussed in a previous post, in Bulgaria the independence movement was driven by people who wanted to kick free of all Ottoman influences including dress sense. At the turn of the century anything that looked like a celebration of the Ottoman era was a tribute to its worst elements and an image like this was only a reminder of them. A few years on however and folk traditions were considered intrinsic to national identity. Identifying what was indigenous and what was borrowed was a part of the process but after 500 years of occupation there was a lot that no one could be sure of.

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A LA TURCA