Is Hamilton academical?
QUESTION How historically accurate is the West End hit musical Hamilton?
In 1804, Vice-President Aaron Burr fought a duel with the country’s first Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804), the man most responsible for shaping the U.S. Constitution and establishing the American economic system.
Hamilton was mortally wounded and, in the main, relegated to historical obscurity compared with George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
That was until Hamilton hit Broadway. The show was created by Lin-Manuel Miranda and based on the 2004 biography Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow. The score incorporates hip-hop, rhythm and blues, pop, soul and traditional show tunes.
The most striking inaccuracy is the decision to cast non-white actors as the Founding Fathers. Hamilton is played by a mixed-race actor, and ethnicminority performers also play Jefferson, Madison, Burr and Washington.
The idea is to suggest that America’s thrust and energy are derived from the talents of incomers irrespective of their origin. This enables the author to dodge some uncomfortable facts.
The founding fathers included prosperous white capitalists who used black slaves as concubines and labourers. Presenting Hamilton as an abolitionist is debatable at best.
The show is correct in pointing out that Hamilton was born out of wedlock in the Caribbean and orphaned in childhood. As a 17-year-old in the 1770s, he sailed from the West Indies to Boston. This supposedly qualifies him as an ‘immigrant’, but at that time the U.S. was a British crown colony, so Hamilton was simply moving from one British dependency to another.
Yet the show’s departures from historical fact do what all narrative history must do: collect the actions and dispositions of individuals of the past, with some degree of selectivity and adaptation, for the sake of communicating them to individuals of the present.
While Hamilton and Jefferson unequivocally did not go head-to-head in rap battles during cabinet meetings, they did compete against each other with an energy and animosity that is put forward with clarity in such exchanges.
Historians have marvelled how such scenes have immersed the audience in the show’s detailed presentation of the founding period’s complicated politics.
Simon Cowan, St Andrews, Fife.
QUESTION I find a good way to establish someone’s age is to ask what they call the English Football League Cup, e.g. they are in their late-30s if they are still calling it the Coca-Cola Cup. What other systems are there for calculating how old a stranger is?
I USE various questions. The weather, topically, is a good guide, for example if they remember the bad winters of 1947, 1963 or maybe 1982. Do they remember ration books or bananas being as rare as ‘hen’s teeth?’ Did they have an Anderson Shelter or did they see The Beatles live?
I remember, having just started work, a chap who kept the joiner’s shop clean and tidy. He looked extremely old (to me), and I asked his age. He replied: ‘I can’t tell you, son, but I can remember when the town hall was a barber’s shop.’
Having determined that Birmingham Town Hall was built in 1834, I guessed he had no intention of divulging the answer. We were all amazed when, two years later, he retired aged 83 only to take up a new career as a chimney sweep.
Robert Betteridge, Birmingham. ASk the stranger who their favourite Dr Who actor is.
Adeyemi Banjo, London, SE15. A ROUGH guide is to ask someone for their national Service number — I served in the RAF 65 years ago, and my number was 2585109 — it is something no national Serviceman ever forgets.
Jack Marsh, Orpington, Kent.
QUESTION The gap under bridges for big lorries, especially loaded car transporters, looks very small from a car. What is the clearance that loaders of these lorries work to?
THE Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations (1986) lay down the rules for the manufacture of all vehicles used on British roads.
There are numerous caveats: the number of axles the vehicle has etc, but in broad terms the maximum dimensions for a road vehicle in the Uk are: length 18m, width 2.5m, height 4.57m and maximum laden weight 44 tonnes.
These cover not just the vehicle, but also any load it is carrying, so they apply to fully-loaded car transporters.
In Britain the minimum clearance for a bridge across a motorway is five metres. So a vehicle of maximum height passing under a bridge with a minimum clearance will have a 43cm gap above it. That is approximately 17in.
Bridge strikes on roads other than motorways are not uncommon because many Uk bridges were built before the C&U regulations were introduced, and, of course, many railway bridges and canal aqueducts were built long before the advent of motor transport.
Lorry drivers have been known to deflate their tyres so that they can pass under a bridge when no other route is available. Bob Cubitt, Northampton.