Ionia (novel)
Encyclopedia
Ionia: Land of Wise Men and Fair Women is an 1898
utopian novel
written by Alexander Craig. It is one work in the major wave of utopian and dystopian fiction that characterized the final decades of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth.
Virtually nothing is known of the book's author, Alexander Craig. Though his novel was published in the United States, the story has a strong English
setting and ambience.
. She educates her son, Alexander Musgrave, to be generous and idealistic; when he comes into his majority and his own fortune, the younger Musgrave devotes himself to a philanthropic enterprise in a London parish. In the course of that work, he meets an impressive man named Jason Delphion, who seems to exist on a level of physical and intellectual development superior to average human beings.
Delphion, an admirer of Musgrave's philanthropic efforts, tells the young Englishman about a hidden country in the remote Himalayas
where an ideal and utopian society has evolved. Delphion invites Musgrave to visit the country, and Musgrave is eager to do so. They travel to northern India, and from there they fly, via Ionian aircraft, to the secret valley. Musgrave learns that the people are largely Greek in origin, descended from a cohort of seven thousand ancient Greek mercenaries who served the Persian Empire, and who fled eastward after the victories of Alexander the Great. The Greeks established themselves in their Himalayan valley, and for many generations lived as farmers, herders, and mercenaries in the armies of Indian princes. At the time of the Mughal Empire
, a local prince named Timoleon travelled to Europe and brought back knowledge and technology; he led the Ionians in their development of an advanced and deliberately isolated culture.
The travelers land at Iolkos, the Ionian capital, where the buildings are "palatial halls" with "towers and domes," constructed of marble in varying shades. The government is headquartered on an Acropolis
, built on an island in the valley's main lake. (Craig's description of the Acropolis of Iolkos, with palaces divided by canals surrounding a "central basin" in which is set a great statue, recalls the Court of Honor at the World's Columbian Exposition
in Chicago in 1893, the famous "White City.") The language of the Ionians remains Greek, and the country's main rivers are the Pharos and the Styx. The people are well-educated (university training is common for all), and rational in their dress, manners, and customs.
Musgrave finds that the Ionians have created a technology based on electricity, drawn from windmills and from the Earth's magnetic field. Electricity powers their land vehicles and aircraft, and lights and heats their homes and cities. Their most common metal is aluminum. They irrigate their valley into a lush agricultural garden; all the land is owned by the state. Their government is a republic, under an elected archon
; the state controls marriage and practices eugenics
, and the people generally live to be one hundred years old. Inherited wealth is limited, and poverty is unknown. The Ionians run their commerce and manufacturing along highly rational and organized lines, with no debt or advertising; they control pollution and recycle waste.
Musgrave is awed and amazed by life in Ionia, and quickly becomes a convert to its values. He leaves the country after a stay of several months, though; he is determined to bring Ionian advances to England and the rest of the world.
(1900). In Ionia, all land is owned by the state and leased to businesses and private citizens, as in Byron Brooks's Earth Revisited
(1892) and Castello Holford
's Aristopia
(1895).
Musgrave and Delphion fly to the hidden valley in a craft shaped "like an enormous egg, at least twenty feet long," with portholes around its circumference and larger windows at one end. On the ground it rests on four metal struts. The upper portion of the craft is devoted to a gas compartment full of hydrogen, which aids in lift. The craft has a fan-like "elevator" for vertical motion and a "propeller" for horizontal; once airborne it deploys a variety of masts and sails that aid in steering.
Musgrave soon learns that the Ionians possess much larger craft built along the same lines. Some decades before the time of his visit, an Ionian air fleet reached the North Pole
, on an expedition in which half the aircraft, six out of twelve, needed to be abandoned (though their crews were rescued).
Some works of "airplane fiction" unite development of the airplane with eventual exploration of outer space. Craig does not go quite that far, though he does permit himself a literary gesture in that direction. As the Ionian aircraft flies toward the valley, the pilot shuts off the lights so that Musgrave can see the stars. At a high elevation in the clear mountain air, Musgrave is overwhelmed by their brilliance, each a blazing "orb of regal splendor," and he is awed by the knowledge that each is a "distant sun."
Musgrave later learns that the astronomy of the Ionians is so advanced that they have discovered a planetary system around Sirius
.
Craig's ideal world is also marred by overt anti-Semitism
. In the story, the valley once had a small Jewish community, but they abused their wealth and power, and plotted the assassination of one unsympathetic archon. The leaders of the Jewish community were executed, and the Jews in general were forbidden to marry and reproduce, so that the community died out.
Scholar and critic Jean Pfaelzer has employed the term "conservative utopias" for a particular sub-class of the relevant literature: while the majority of utopian works of the later nineteenth century embraced liberal or socialist values, others, written in reaction to those books, advocated conservative and even reactionary views and policies. (John Macnie's The Diothas
provides some examples of this tendency, as does Addison Peale Russell
's Sub-Coelum
.) Craig's work has a number of conservative and reactionary aspects, including: strong state control over people's private lives, including personal choices of marriage and reproduction; limited individual liberty; and some specific views of extreme intolerance and insensitivity (such as the view that ugly women should not have, and should not want to have, children).
's bestselling novel Lost Horizon (1933).
1898 in literature
The year 1898 in literature involved some significant new books.-New books:*Elizabeth von Arnim - Elizabeth and Her German Garden*F. W. Bain - A Digit of the Moon*L...
utopian novel
Utopian and dystopian fiction
The utopia and its offshoot, the dystopia, are genres of literature that explore social and political structures. Utopian fiction is the creation of an ideal world, or utopia, as the setting for a novel. Dystopian fiction is the opposite: creation of a nightmare world, or dystopia...
written by Alexander Craig. It is one work in the major wave of utopian and dystopian fiction that characterized the final decades of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth.
Virtually nothing is known of the book's author, Alexander Craig. Though his novel was published in the United States, the story has a strong English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
setting and ambience.
Synopsis
A London banker named David Musgrave dies prematurely in his mid-fifties, leaving a large fortune to his young wife and small son. The widow devotes her money, time, and energy to improving her home village in SurreySurrey
Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...
. She educates her son, Alexander Musgrave, to be generous and idealistic; when he comes into his majority and his own fortune, the younger Musgrave devotes himself to a philanthropic enterprise in a London parish. In the course of that work, he meets an impressive man named Jason Delphion, who seems to exist on a level of physical and intellectual development superior to average human beings.
Delphion, an admirer of Musgrave's philanthropic efforts, tells the young Englishman about a hidden country in the remote Himalayas
Himalayas
The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...
where an ideal and utopian society has evolved. Delphion invites Musgrave to visit the country, and Musgrave is eager to do so. They travel to northern India, and from there they fly, via Ionian aircraft, to the secret valley. Musgrave learns that the people are largely Greek in origin, descended from a cohort of seven thousand ancient Greek mercenaries who served the Persian Empire, and who fled eastward after the victories of Alexander the Great. The Greeks established themselves in their Himalayan valley, and for many generations lived as farmers, herders, and mercenaries in the armies of Indian princes. At the time of the Mughal Empire
Mughal Empire
The Mughal Empire , or Mogul Empire in traditional English usage, was an imperial power from the Indian Subcontinent. The Mughal emperors were descendants of the Timurids...
, a local prince named Timoleon travelled to Europe and brought back knowledge and technology; he led the Ionians in their development of an advanced and deliberately isolated culture.
The travelers land at Iolkos, the Ionian capital, where the buildings are "palatial halls" with "towers and domes," constructed of marble in varying shades. The government is headquartered on an Acropolis
Acropolis
Acropolis means "high city" in Greek, literally city on the extremity and is usually translated into English as Citadel . For purposes of defense, early people naturally chose elevated ground to build a new settlement, frequently a hill with precipitous sides...
, built on an island in the valley's main lake. (Craig's description of the Acropolis of Iolkos, with palaces divided by canals surrounding a "central basin" in which is set a great statue, recalls the Court of Honor at the World's Columbian Exposition
World's Columbian Exposition
The World's Columbian Exposition was a World's Fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. Chicago bested New York City; Washington, D.C.; and St...
in Chicago in 1893, the famous "White City.") The language of the Ionians remains Greek, and the country's main rivers are the Pharos and the Styx. The people are well-educated (university training is common for all), and rational in their dress, manners, and customs.
Musgrave finds that the Ionians have created a technology based on electricity, drawn from windmills and from the Earth's magnetic field. Electricity powers their land vehicles and aircraft, and lights and heats their homes and cities. Their most common metal is aluminum. They irrigate their valley into a lush agricultural garden; all the land is owned by the state. Their government is a republic, under an elected archon
Archon
Archon is a Greek word that means "ruler" or "lord", frequently used as the title of a specific public office. It is the masculine present participle of the verb stem ἀρχ-, meaning "to rule", derived from the same root as monarch, hierarchy, and anarchy.- Ancient Greece :In ancient Greece the...
; the state controls marriage and practices eugenics
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
, and the people generally live to be one hundred years old. Inherited wealth is limited, and poverty is unknown. The Ionians run their commerce and manufacturing along highly rational and organized lines, with no debt or advertising; they control pollution and recycle waste.
Musgrave is awed and amazed by life in Ionia, and quickly becomes a convert to its values. He leaves the country after a stay of several months, though; he is determined to bring Ionian advances to England and the rest of the world.
Linkages
Ionia shares some ideas and concepts with other utopian novels of its era, elements that were part of the general intellectual atmosphere of its generation. In Craig's arrangement of commercial matters, expenses of interest payments and advertising are nonexistent, and workers own shares in the companies that employ them — traits also found in Bradford Peck's novel The World a Department StoreThe World a Department Store
The World a Department Store: A Story of Life Under a Coöperative System is a utopian novel written by Bradford C. Peck, and published by him in 1900. The book was one entrant in the wave of utopian and dystopian writing that occurred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries...
(1900). In Ionia, all land is owned by the state and leased to businesses and private citizens, as in Byron Brooks's Earth Revisited
Earth Revisited
Earth Revisited is an 1893 utopian novel by Byron Alden Brooks. It is one entrant in the large body of utopian and speculative fiction that characterized the later 19th and early 20th centuries.-Genre:...
(1892) and Castello Holford
Castello Holford
Castello Holford was an American writer best known for writing Aristopia in 1895. It is perhaps the first true alternative history novel to be written in English and imagines a utopian society founded by the first settlers of Virginia ....
's Aristopia
Aristopia
Aristopia: A Romance-History of the New World is an 1895 utopian novel by Castello Holford, considered the first novel-length alternate history in English ....
(1895).
Ionian aircraft
Craig's novel belongs to a sub-genre of speculative fiction that might be called "airplane fiction." A number of novels of the later nineteenth century looked forward to the invention of powered flight. Craig gives a description of what he imagines such an aircraft might be like.Musgrave and Delphion fly to the hidden valley in a craft shaped "like an enormous egg, at least twenty feet long," with portholes around its circumference and larger windows at one end. On the ground it rests on four metal struts. The upper portion of the craft is devoted to a gas compartment full of hydrogen, which aids in lift. The craft has a fan-like "elevator" for vertical motion and a "propeller" for horizontal; once airborne it deploys a variety of masts and sails that aid in steering.
Musgrave soon learns that the Ionians possess much larger craft built along the same lines. Some decades before the time of his visit, an Ionian air fleet reached the North Pole
North Pole
The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is, subject to the caveats explained below, defined as the point in the northern hemisphere where the Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface...
, on an expedition in which half the aircraft, six out of twelve, needed to be abandoned (though their crews were rescued).
Some works of "airplane fiction" unite development of the airplane with eventual exploration of outer space. Craig does not go quite that far, though he does permit himself a literary gesture in that direction. As the Ionian aircraft flies toward the valley, the pilot shuts off the lights so that Musgrave can see the stars. At a high elevation in the clear mountain air, Musgrave is overwhelmed by their brilliance, each a blazing "orb of regal splendor," and he is awed by the knowledge that each is a "distant sun."
Musgrave later learns that the astronomy of the Ionians is so advanced that they have discovered a planetary system around Sirius
Sirius
Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky. With a visual apparent magnitude of −1.46, it is almost twice as bright as Canopus, the next brightest star. The name "Sirius" is derived from the Ancient Greek: Seirios . The star has the Bayer designation Alpha Canis Majoris...
.
Harsh laws
The Ionians of Craig's fiction have virtually eliminated crime from their society — through extreme severity of punishment. Felons are penalized with castration for the first offense, and for the second, execution.Craig's ideal world is also marred by overt anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
. In the story, the valley once had a small Jewish community, but they abused their wealth and power, and plotted the assassination of one unsympathetic archon. The leaders of the Jewish community were executed, and the Jews in general were forbidden to marry and reproduce, so that the community died out.
Scholar and critic Jean Pfaelzer has employed the term "conservative utopias" for a particular sub-class of the relevant literature: while the majority of utopian works of the later nineteenth century embraced liberal or socialist values, others, written in reaction to those books, advocated conservative and even reactionary views and policies. (John Macnie's The Diothas
The Diothas
The Diothas; or, A Far Look Ahead is a 1883 utopian novel written by John Macnie and published using the pseudonym "Ismar Thiusen". The Diothas has been called "perhaps the second most important American nineteenth-century ideal society" after Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward .-Synopsis:The novel...
provides some examples of this tendency, as does Addison Peale Russell
Addison Peale Russell
Addison Peale Russell was an American author of the later nineteenth century. He is remembered mainly for his Sub-Coelum — "his best book...a Utopian protest against materialistic socialism."...
's Sub-Coelum
Sub-Coelum
Sub-Coelum: A Sky-Built Human World is an 1893 utopian fiction written by Addison Peale Russell. The book is one volume in the large body of utopian, dystopian, and speculative literature that characterized the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.-Genre:Scholar of the genre Jean Pfaelzer...
.) Craig's work has a number of conservative and reactionary aspects, including: strong state control over people's private lives, including personal choices of marriage and reproduction; limited individual liberty; and some specific views of extreme intolerance and insensitivity (such as the view that ugly women should not have, and should not want to have, children).
Lost Horizon
A somewhat eccentric and idealistic Englishman travels by air to a remote valley in the Himalayas, where he finds a secretive, utopian community. The people there enjoy pronounced longevity. He finds the place intensely attractive, but later chooses to leave the valley and return to his own country. In all of these respects, Ionia anticipates James HiltonJames Hilton
James Hilton was an English novelist who wrote several best-sellers, including Lost Horizon and Goodbye, Mr. Chips.-Biography:...
's bestselling novel Lost Horizon (1933).