 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Invasion literature" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(March 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Invasion literature (also theinvasion novel,invasion fiction or thefuture war genre[1]) is aliterary genre that was popular in the period between 1871 and theFirst World War (1914–1918). The invasion novel was first recognised as a literary genre in the UK, with the novellaThe Battle of Dorking: Reminiscences of a Volunteer (1871), an account of aGerman invasion of England, which, in theWestern world, aroused the national imaginations and anxieties about hypothetical invasions by foreign powers; by 1914 the genre of invasion literature comprised over 400 novels and stories.[2]
The genre was influential in Britain in shaping politics, national policies, and popular perceptions in the years leading up to the First World War, and remains a part of popular culture to this day. Several of the books were written by or ghostwritten for military officers and experts of the day who believed that the nation would be saved if the particular tactic that they favoured was or would be adopted.[3]
Nearly a century before the invasion genre became widespread after the publication ofThe Battle of Dorking in 1871, a mini-boom of invasion stories appeared soon after the French developed thehot air balloon. Poems and plays centred on balloon armies invading theUnited Kingdom could be found in France and America. However, it was not until theNorth German Confederation used advanced technologies such asrifled breech loaders andrail transport to defeat theSecond French Empire in theFranco-Prussian War in 1871 that the fear of invasion by a technologically superior enemy became more realistic.
| This sectionneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Invasion literature" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(March 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
One of those stories is a history of the French suddenly invading the United Kingdom in May 1852. According toI. F. Clarke, many feared that military weakness at home would invite attack from abroad and for the rest of the century not a decade passed without alarm. After the1851 self-coup d'état of Napoleon, there were general fears that the French might attempt an invasion. To demonstrate the defenceless condition of the country, an anonymous author wroteA history of the sudden and terrible invasion of England by the French, in the month of May, 1852 ( London, 1851). This was the first complete imaginary war of the future to be written in English and it gave a detailed account of the weaknesses that led to the disaster.
The Battle of Dorking (1871) byGeorge Tomkyns Chesney was first published inBlackwood's Magazine, a respected political journal of theVictorian era.[4]The Battle of Dorking describes the invasion of Britain by an unnamed enemy who speaks German in which the narrator and a thousand citizens defend the town ofDorking without supplies,matériel, or news of the outside world. The story's narrative moves forward fifty years, and Britain remains devastated.
Like many of his countrymen, the author was alarmed by the successful 1870 invasion of the Second French Empire by the North German Confederation, which was led by theKingdom of Prussia. They defeated Europe's largest army in only two months.[2]The Battle of Dorking was initially meant to shock readers into becoming more aware of the possible dangers of a foreign threat, but unwittingly created a new literary genre appealing to widespread anxieties. The story was an immediate success, with one reviewer saying, "We do not know that we ever saw anything better in any magazine... it describes exactly what we all feel."[2] It was so popular that the magazine was re-printed six times, a new pamphlet version was created, dozens of spoofs were created, and it was for sale throughout theBritish Empire.[2] Onerunning joke in England at the time was an injury, such as a bruise or scrape, being attributed to a wound received at the battle of Dorking.
Between the publication ofThe Battle of Dorking in 1871 and the start of theFirst World War in 1914 there were hundreds of authors writing invasion literature, often topping the best seller lists in Germany,France, England and theUnited States.[2] During the period it is estimated over 400 invasion works were published. Probably the best known work wasH. G. Wells'sThe War of the Worlds (1897), bearing plot similarities toThe Battle of Dorking but with ascience fiction theme. In 1907, Wells wroteThe War in the Air, a cautionary tale depicting purely human invasions: a German invasion of the US triggers off a worldwide chain of attacks and counter-attacks, leading to the destruction of all major cities and centers, the collapse of world economy, disintegration of all the fighting nations and the sinking of the world into new Middle Ages.
Dracula (1897) also tapped into English fears of foreign forces arriving unopposed on its shores. Between 1870 and 1903, most of these works assumed that the enemy would be France, rather than Germany. This changed with the publication ofErskine Childers's 1903 novelThe Riddle of the Sands. Often called the first modernspy novel, two men on a sailing holiday thwart a German invasion of Britain when they discover a secret fleet of invasion barges assembling on the German coast. Of these hundreds of authors, few are in print now.Saki is one of the exceptions, although his 1913 novelWhen William Came (subtitled "A Story of London Under theHohenzollerns") is morejingoistic than literary. Another isJohn Buchan, whose novelThe Thirty-Nine Steps, published in 1915 but written just before the outbreak of World War I, is a thriller dealing with German agents in Britain preparing for an invasion.
William Le Queux was the most prolific author of the genre; his first novel wasThe Great War in England in 1897 (1894) and he went on to publish from one to twelve books a year until he died in 1927. His work was regularly serialised in newspapers, particularly theDaily Mail, and attracted many readers. It is believedIan Fleming'sJames Bond character was inspired by Le Queux's agent "Duckworth Drew".[5] In some waysThe Great War can be considered an antithesis toThe Battle of Dorking – with the one ending for Britain in sombre and irrevocable defeat and decline, while in the other the invasion ofLondon is pushed back in the last moment with the help of Germany, portrayed as a staunch ally against theFrench Third Republic and theRussian Empire. The United Kingdom obtained enormous territorial aggrandizement; it receivesFrench Algeria andImperial Russian Central Asia and "Britannia" becomes "Empress of the World".
Le Queux's most popular invasion novel wasThe Invasion of 1910 (1906), which was translated into twenty-seven languages and sold more than a million copies worldwide. Le Queux and his publisher changed the ending depending on the language, so Germany won in the German edition, while the Germans lost in the English edition. Le Queux was said to beQueen Alexandra of Denmark's favorite author.
P. G. Wodehouse parodied the genre inThe Swoop!, in which England is simultaneously invaded by nine different armies, includingSwitzerland and theGerman Empire. English elites appear to be more interested in a cricket tournament, and the country is eventually saved by a boy scout named Clarence.
In France,Émile Driant writing as "Capitaine Danrit", wrote of future wars opposing France to Great Britain (La Guerre Fatale) or to Germany (La Guerre de Demain).
Invasion literature had its impact also inJapan, at the time undergoing a fast process ofmodernization.Shunrō Oshikawa, a pioneer of Japanesescience fiction and adventure stories (genres unknown in Japan until a few years earlier), published around the start of the 20th century thebest-sellerKaitō Bōken Kidan: Kaitei Gunkan ("Undersea Battleship"): the story of an armoured,ram-armedsubmarine involved in afuture history of war between Japan and Russia. The novel reflected theimperialist ambitions of Japan at the time, and foreshadowed theRusso-Japanese War that followed a few years later, in 1904. The story would notably be the main source of inspiration for the 1963 science-fiction movieAtragon, byIshiro Honda. When the actual war with Russia broke out, Oshikawa covered it as a journalist while also continuing to publish further volumes of fiction depicting Japanese imperial exploits set in thePacific andIndian Ocean – which also proved an enormous success with the Japanese public. In a later career as a magazine editor, he also encouraged the writing of more fiction in the same vein by other Japanese authors.
ColonialHong Kong's earliest work of invasion literature is believed to have been the 1897The Back Door. Published in serial form in a local English-language newspaper, it described a fictional French and Russian naval landing atHong Kong Island'sDeep Water Bay; the story was intended to criticise the lack ofBritish funding forthe defence of Hong Kong, and it is speculated that members of theImperial Japanese Army may have read the book in preparation for the 1941Battle of Hong Kong.[6]
One of the earliest invasion stories to appear in print in the US was "The Stricken Nation" byHenry Grattan Donnelly published in 1890 in New York. It tells of a successful invasion of the US by the UK.[7] The move of U.S. public opinion towards participation inWorld War I was reflected inUncle Sam's Boys at The Invasion of the United States byH. Irving Hancock. This four-book series, published by theHenry Altemus Company in 1916, depicts a German invasion of the US in 1920 and 1921. The plot seems to transfer the main story line of Le Queux'sThe Great War (with which the writer may have been familiar) to a US theatre: the Germans launch a surprise attack, captureBoston despite heroic resistance by "Uncle Sam's boys", overrun all ofNew England andNew York and reach as far asPittsburgh – but at last are gloriously crushed by fresh US forces.
Australia's contribution to invasion literature was set against the background of pre-Federation colonial fears of the "Yellow Peril" and the foundations of theWhite Australia policy. From the late 1880s through to the beginning of World War I, this fear was expressed in Australia through cartoons, poems, plays and novels. Three of the most well known of these novels wereWhite or Yellow? A Story of the Race War of AD 1908 (1888) by journalistWilliam Lane,The Yellow Wave (1895) by Kenneth Mackay andThe Australian Crisis (1909) by Charles H. Kirmess (possibly a pseudonym for another Australian author Frank Fox). Each of these novels contained two major common themes which were a reflection of the fears and concerns within a contemporary Australian context; the Australian continent was at risk of major invasion from a strong Asian power (ie. China or Japan, sometimes with the assistance of the Russian Empire) and that the United Kingdom was apathetic towards the protection of its faraway colonies, and would not come to Australia's aid when needed.[8]
The "First Red Scare" followingWorld War I producedEdgar Rice Burroughs'sThe Moon Men (1925), a depiction of Earth (and specifically, the United States) under the rule of cruel invaders from theMoon. This book was written initially asUnder the Red Flag as an explicitanti-Communist novel, and when rejected by the publishers, it was "recycled" by Burroughs in a science fiction format.
Ivan Petrushevich'sThe Flying Submarine (1922) depicts Soviet forces' invasion of the United Kingdom after most of Europe and Asia falls to communism. The story features the British fleet being destroyed by a swarm of insect-like single-pilot submarines that can emerge from the water to attack their foes.
Robert A. Heinlein'sSixth Column (1941) told the story of the technologically advanced PanAsians' invasion and conquest of the United States and the subsequent guerrilla struggle to overthrow them with even more advanced technology.
In the 1950s, US fears of Communist invasion were notable in the novelThe Puppet Masters (1951), byRobert A. Heinlein, the movieInvasion, USA (1952), directed byAlfred E. Green, and the US Defence Department propaganda filmRed Nightmare (1957), directed by George Waggner. An explicit invasion-and-occupation scenario is presented inPoint Ultimate (1955), byJerry Sohl, about life in the Soviet-occupied US of 1999.
In the 1960s, the invasion literature enemy changed from the political threat of Communist infiltration and indoctrination from and conquest by the Soviets, to the 19th-centuryYellow Peril of "Red China" (thePeople's Republic of China) who threaten the economy, the political stability, and the physical integrity of the US, and thus of the Western world. InGoldfinger (1964) Communist China provides the villain with a dirtyatomic bomb to irradiate and render useless the goldbullion that is the basis of the US economy. InYou Only Live Twice (1967), the PRC disrupts the geopolitical balance between the US and the Soviets, by the kidnapping of their respective spacecraft in outer space, to provoke a nuclear war, which would allow Chinese global supremacy. InBattle Beneath the Earth (1967), the PRC attempt to invade the US proper by way of a tunnel beneath the Pacific Ocean.
In 1971, when the US began acknowledging that theVietnam War (1955–1975) was a loss, two books depicting the Soviet occupation of the continental US were published; the cautionary taleVandenberg (1971), byOliver Lange, wherein most of the US accepts the Soviet overlord without much protest, and the only armed resistance is by guerrillas in New Mexico; andThe First Team (1971), byJohn Ball, which depicts a hopeless situation resolved by a band of patriots, which concludes with the country's liberation. The filmRed Dawn (1984) depicts a Soviet/Cuban invasion of the United States and a band of high school students who resist them. The television miniseriesAmerika (1987), directed by Donald Wrye, depicts life in the US a decade after the Soviet conquest.
TheTomorrow series (1993–1999) byJohn Marsden, details the perspective of adolescent guerrillas fighting against the invasion of Australia, by an unnamed country (implied to be Indonesia).
Stories of a planned German invasion rose to increasing political prominence from 1906. Taking their inspiration from the stories of Le Queux and Childers, hundreds of ordinary citizens began to suspect foreigners of espionage. This trend was accentuated by Le Queux, who collected 'sightings' brought to his attention by readers and raised them through his association with the Daily Mail. Subsequent research has since shown that no significant German espionage network existed in Britain at this time. Claims about the scale of German invasion preparations grew increasingly ambitious. The number of German spies was put at between 60,000 and 300,000 (in spite of the total German community in Britain being no more than 44,000 people). It was alleged that thousands of rifles were being stockpiled by German spies in order to arm saboteurs at the outbreak of war.
Calls for government action grew ever more intense, and in 1909 it was given as the reason for the secret foundation of theSecret Service Bureau, the forerunner ofMI5 andMI6. Historians today debate whether this was in fact the real reason, but in any case the concerns raised in invasion literature came to define the early duties of the Bureau's Home Section.Vernon Kell, the section head, remained obsessed with the location of these saboteurs, focusing his operational plans both before and during the war on defeating the saboteurs imagined by Le Queux.
Invasion literature was not without detractors; policy experts in the years preceding the First World War said invasion literature risked inciting war between England and Germany and France. Critics such asPrime MinisterHenry Campbell-Bannerman denounced Le Queux'sThe Invasion of 1910 as "calculated to inflame public opinion abroad and alarm the more ignorant public at home."[2] JournalistCharles Lowe wrote in 1910: "Among all the causes contributing to the continuance of a state of bad blood between England and Germany perhaps the most potent is the baneful industry of those unscrupulous writers who are forever asserting that the Germans are only awaiting a fitting opportunity to attack us in our island home and burst us up."[2]
