Equity
For the reader who wishes to engage fully with the Raffles text in its unfiltered form:
A real joy of historical fiction is that it takes place in a completely different era to our own, with many interesting details included in the stories that bring back into our collective memory what it was like to live in the past. However, the past was not necessarily a fun time to live in, unless you, like Raffles or Bunny, were a white, middle or upper-class man. And while fictional characters cannot harm anyone, the negative attitudes of their author to real-life minority groups reflected contemporary prejudices against real people that caused immeasurable suffering. There’s no getting away from it: E. W. Hornung was ignorant and bigoted, like many of his class in this time period, and his anti-Semitism, racism, classism and other prejudices are present in his writing.
There is no such thing as a perfect media, so it is simply our responsibility to enjoy media with a critical eye and be mindful of prejudice within it. Enjoying media that has bigoted mindsets present doesn't make you a bad person. What can make you a good person is delving into these difficult topics to learn more about them and their impacts, both in the past and in the present day.
Racism in the Edwardian Era
English colonization occurred during the Age of Discovery and Conquest, which began in the late 15th century. England and other European powers, including Spain, Portugal, France, and the Netherlands established colonial settlements outside the Old World. Their motivations ranged from missionary work and the acquisition of resources to control of land and maritime trade routes and scientific inquiry. When British groups arrived on foreign shores, they frequently took over the land and resources by violent force. In North America and India, a militarized effort populated and suppressed the indigenous people, killing many and forcing the rest to assimilate to British culture, learning English and British customs. These international movements brought people of other nationalities to England just as they brought English people to other nations. In Great Britain, these foreigners were generally treated with disrespect, and it was very difficult for them to find housing and work. Violence against people who weren’t white was common.
Many people were brought to England through the slave trade, but thankfully by the 1890’s and 1900s when the Raffles stories primarily were published and take place, emancipation had been in effect for a few decades. On 28 August 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act received Royal Assent, paving the way for the abolition of slavery within the British Empire and its colonies. On 1 August 1834, all enslaved persons in the British Empire (except for India) were emancipated, but they were indentured to their former owners in an apprenticeship system that meant gradual abolition: the first set of apprenticeships came to an end on 1 August 1838, while the final apprenticeships were scheduled to cease on 1 August 1840, two years later. However, this did not mean freedom for the people who were enslaved. Many were forced to work for men who paid them next to nothing and treated them almost the same as when they had been enslaved. This was known as indentured servitude.
The oppressive structure of owning people as property may have been legally terminated, but the mentalities and power imbalances that came with it were far from gone. Even today there are many vestiges of the pain that came from the dehumanization and othering of people based on their skin color or ethnicity.
You can read more about this topic at this link.
You can find out more about the history of migration in Great Britain at this link.
Antisemitism in the Edwardian Era
While in principle we may feel we know anti-Semitism is bad, we may not understand exactly why these anti-Semitic tropes are as harmful today as they were in the early 1900s, or how to spot them. So, before you read these Raffles stories, let’s take a look at why the Jews are portrayed so negatively in literature of this period.
Jews often lived together in tight-knit religious communities, which were perceived with hostility by many Christians as ‘outsiders’ from the religious norm.
Jews are considered ‘non-white’ by eugenicists, as part of a list of races that are ‘impure’.
There were myths about Jews sucking the blood of Christian children or being ‘Christ-killers’ (with ‘evidence’ found in the Bible) at the time.
The Bible forbids Christians from being moneylenders, but Jewish religious texts do not, so often those handling money in the towns were Jewish - which led to anger and stereotypes about Jews being greedy and ‘controlling wealth’. This was only ‘confirmed’ when some Jews did well financially later on.
There were mass immigrations of Jews from Eastern Europe to Britain (due to expulsions or ‘pogroms’) and many Jews brought with them their own language and culture that was different from perceived English values. This fuelled xenophobia and fears that the ‘Jewish race’ would ‘expand’ and ‘corrupt’ English blood.
In 1903, the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ was published: a pamphlet that proclaims the "secret plans" of Jews to rule the world by manipulating the economy, controlling the media, and fostering religious conflict. This was widely believed and used to fuel acts of religious hatred against Jews.
So, when you encounter a Jewish character being portrayed as villainous, greedy, obscenely rich, scheming, perverted, manipulating, or in kahoots with someone Raffles is working against, link it back to these origins of anti-Semitism.
It is important to remember that anti-Semitism is alive and well, and the rise of the alt-right has brought a rise in anti-Jewish hate crimes across the world. One thing we can all do to stop this is to make sure we are good allies to any Jewish friends or neighbours we have, and be respectful of religious practices that are different to our own - but most importantly we can be mindful of anti-Semitism when we see it, and fully understand the harm it causes.
Here you can find a resource with different anti-Semitic imagery and caricatures, taking examples from historical sources as well as modern day ones.
If you have further questions about the impacts of content in these texts, please feel free to reach out in the discord server, on the LFB Tumblr, or via email! The best way we can engage with these parts of history is with gratuitous discussion and active work to identify the messaging and its effects.