Viceroy

Viceroy (pronounced vahys-roi)

(1) A person appointed to rule a country or province as the deputy of the sovereign and exercising the powers of the sovereign.

(2) A brightly marked American butterfly (Limenitis archippus), closely mimicking the monarch butterfly in coloration but slightly smaller, hence the analogy with a sovereign and their representative.

1515–1525: From the Middle French, the construct being vice- + roy.  Vice was from the Old French vice (deputy), from the Latin vice (in place of), an ablative form of vicis.  In English (and other languages) the vice prefix was used to indicate an office in a subordinate position including air vice-marshal, vice-admiral, vice-captain, vice-chair, vice-chairman, vice-chancellor, vice-consul, vice-director, vice president, vice-president, vice-regent & vice-principal.  Roy was from the Middle English roy & roye, from the Old French roi (king), from the Latin rēgem, accusative of rēx (king) and related to regere (to keep straight, guide, lead, rule), from the primitive Indo-European root reg- (move in a straight line) with derivatives meaning “to direct in a straight line" thus the notion of "to lead, rule".  It was a doublet of loa, rajah, Rex, rex and rich.  The noun plurals was roys.  The wife of a viceroy was a vicereine, the word also used for female viceroys of whom there have been a few.  The American butterfly was named in 1881.  Viceroy and viceroy are nouns and viceregal is a noun and adjective; the noun plural is viceroys.

The noun viceregent (the official administrative deputy of a regent) attracted the attention of critics because it was so frequently confused with vicegerent (the official administrative deputy of a ruler, head of state, or church official).  Despite the perceived grandiosity of vicegerent, gained from association with offices such as the Pope as Vicar of Christ on Earth or the regent of a sovereign state, it’s merely generally descriptive of one person substituting for another and can be as well-applied to the shop assistant minding the store while the grocer has lunch.  The area of regency can be a linguistic tangle because a regent is a particular kind of viceregent and there was a time when viceregent was used instead of the correct vicegerent and was sometimes used pleonastically for regent.  The grammar Nazis never liked this and attributed the frequency of occurrence to the preference of viceregal rather than vicereoyal as the adjective of viceroy.

Under the Raj, under the pith helmets: King George V, Emperor of India with Lord Hardinge, Viceroy of India, Government House, Calcutta 1911.

In the rather haphazard way British rule in India evolved, the office of Governor-General of India was created by the Charter Act of 1833 and in an early example of the public-private partnership (PPP), the post was essentially administrative and was both appointed by and reported to the directors of the East India Company, functioning also as an informal conduit between the company and government.  The system lasted until 1858 when, in reaction to the Indian Mutiny (1857), the parliament passed the Government of India Act, creating the role of Viceroy (wholly assuming the office of Governor General), the new office having both executive and diplomatic authority and reporting (through the newly-established India Office) to the British Crown.  The viceroy was appointed by the sovereign on the advice of the parliament (ie the prime-minister) and it is this structure which is remembered as the British Raj (from the Hindi rāj (state, nation, empire, realm etc), the rule of the British Crown on the subcontinent although the maps of empire which covered the whole region as pink to indicate control were at least a bit misleading.

Viceroy butterfly.

The best-known viceroys were probably those who headed the executive government of India under the Raj although other less conspicuous appointments were also made including to Ireland when the whole island was a constituent part of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1801-1922).  As a general principle (and there were exceptions), in British constitutional law, the Dominions and colonies that were held in the name of the parliament of Great Britain were administered by Governors-General while colonies held in the name of the British Crown were governed by viceroys.  Between 1858-1947, there were twenty viceroys of India including some notable names in British politics such as Lord Lansdowne (1888–1894) who introduced the Indian Councils Act and raised the age of consent for girls from ten to twelve, Lord Curzon (1899–1905) who introduced the Indian Universities Act and presided over the partition of Bengal, Lord Hardinge (1910-1916) who was in office during the Mesopotamian Campaign, Lord Irwin (1926–1931) (better known as Lord Halifax) who summoned the first round table conference and Lord Mountbatten (1947), the last Viceroy of India who, reflecting the change in constitutional status upon independence, was between 1947-1948 briefly the new nation's first Governor-General.  He was also the second-last, the office abolished in 1950 when the Republic of India was proclaimed.

Lindsay Lohan’s NFT for Lullaby with viceroy butterflies.

In 2021, it was announced Lindsay Lohan's non-fungible token (NFT) electronic music single Lullaby had sold for 1,000,001 in Tron (TRX) cryptocurrency (US$85,484.09).   Lullaby featured a vocal track over a beat produced by Manuel Riva and was the first NFT by a woman to be sold on #fansForever, a marketplace created for dealing in celebrity NFTs.  The graphics of the NFT Tron had a viceroy butterfly flapping its wings in unison with Ms Lohan’s eyelids to the beat of Lullaby.  Because of the underlying robustness, the blockchain and the NFT concept has an assured future for many purposes but to date the performance of celebrity items as stores of value has been patchy.

1936 Rolls-Royce Phantom III (7.7 litre (447 cubic inch) V12; chassis 3AZ47, engine Z24B, body 8594 in style 6419) by Hooper, built for the Marquess of Linlithgow (1887-1952) who served as Viceroy of India (1936-1944), seen in its original configuration with a chauffeur (left) and as re-bodied during 1952-1953 (right).  In the centre is a British plumed helmet, circa 1920, this one with a skull in gilt metal, mounted with unusually elaborate gilt ornamentation including helmet-plate (itself mounted with a white metal hobnail star bearing gilt Royal Arms), ornate gilt chins-scales with claw ends and an untypically extravagant white swan's feather plume, notably longer than regulation length.  It was used by the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at Arms, a body formed in 1539 and staffed by former army officers as the “nearest guard” to the sovereign. The helmet is based on the “Albert” pattern for Household Cavalry, a style in use for some 150 years.

Viceroys of India were always rather exalted creatures, their status reflecting India’s allure as the glittering prize of the empire and upon recall to London, were usually raised to (or in) the peerage as marquesses while a retiring prime-minister might expect at most an earldom, one notch down.  Their special needs (and some were quite needy) in office also had to be accommodated, an example of which is Lord Linlithgow’s 1937 Rolls-Royce Phantom III, built with a capacity for seven passengers (although no luggage which was always carried separately).  The coachwork by Hooper was most unusual, the engine’s side-panels being 1½ inches taller than standard, a variation required to somewhat balance the very tall passenger compartment, the dimensions of which were dictated by the viceroy’s height of 6’ 7” (2.0 m), the plumed hats of his role elongating things further.  Such high-roof-lines were not uncommon on state limousines and have been seen on Mercedes-Benz built for the Holy See and the Daimlers & Rolls-Royces in the British Royal Mews.  Delivered in dark blue with orange picking out lines and coronets on the rear doors, the interior was trimmed in dark blue leather with two sets of loose beige covers, the woodwork in solid figured walnut rather than veneer.  Signed-off 21 July 1936 and shipped to Bombay (now Mubai) on the SS Bhutan on 24 July, Hooper’s invoice to the India Office listed the price of the chassis at Stg£1405, the coachwork at Stg£725 and a total cost of Stg£2130.

After the Raj, the car passed into private hands and in 1952 was returned to the Hooper works in Westminster for re-modeling, the most obvious aspects of which were the lowering of the roof-line and a re-finishing in grey.  The high cowl (scuttle) and hood (bonnet) line were however retained so the re-configuration actually replaced one discontinuity with another but the changes certainly made it an interesting period piece and its now one of three Phantom IIIs in the collection assembled by Pranlal Bhogilal (1937-2011), displayed in his Auto World Vintage Car Museum in Kathwada, on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.

Buffer

Buffer (pronounced buhf-er)

(1) A static apparatus at the end of a railroad car, railroad track etc, for absorbing shock during coupling, collisions etc with the contact section made usually from spring-loaded steel pads or (in areas of low-speed activity such as shunting yards) timber.

(2) Any device, material, or apparatus used as a shield, cushion, or bumper, especially on machinery.

(3) Any intermediate or intervening shield or device reducing the danger of interaction between two machines, chemicals, electronic components etc.

(4) A person or thing that shields and protects against annoyance, harm, hostile forces etc, or that lessens the impact of a shock or reversal.

(5) Any reserve moneys, negotiable securities, legal procedures, etc., that protect a person, organization, or country against financial ruin.

(6) In ecology, as buffer state, an animal population that becomes the prey of a predator that usually feeds on a different species.

(7) In computing, a storage device for temporarily holding data until the device is ready to receive or process the data, as when a receiving unit has an operating speed lower (eg a printer) than that of the unit (eg a computer) feeding data to it.

(8) In electronics, a circuit with a single output activated by one or more of several inputs.

(9) In chemistry, any substance or mixture of compounds that, added to a solution, is capable of neutralizing both acids and bases without appreciably changing the original acidity or alkalinity of the solution; also called a buffer solution; any solution containing such a substance.

(10) To treat with a buffer.

(11) To cushion, shield, or protect; to lessen the adverse effect of; ease:

(12) In computing, temporarily to save data before actively accessing it so it may be loaded at a rapid or uniform rate.

(13) A device for polishing or buffing, as a buff stick or buff wheel, often in the form “floor buffer” for polishing floors; a worker who uses such a device.

(14) In admiralty slang, the senior non-commissioned officer serving on a ship or boat.

(15) In (mostly UK) colloquial use, a good-humored, slow-witted fellow, usually an elderly man, thus often as “old buffer” (archaic).

(16) In medicine, a preparation designed to decrease acidity in the stomach.

(17) In geopolitics, as buffer state, a country the land mass of which physically separates two opposing potentially powers and the existence of which is intended to prevent conflict or permit an attacked state a greater time to organize its defense.

(18) In geopolitics as buffer zone, a region separating two areas, often demilitarized, to segregate antagonistic populations: based usually on regional, ethnic or religious lines.

1835: The noun buffer in the sense of "something that absorbs a blow, apparatus for deadening the concussion between a moving body and that against which it strikes" was an agent noun from the obsolete verb buff (make a dull sound when struck), from the mid-sixteenth century Old French buffe & bufe (a blow, slap, punch).  The figurative sense of "anything that prevents impact or neutralizes the shock of impact of opposing forces" is from 1858 and was adopted universally by the railroad industry.  The sense of “one who or that which polishes by buffing” dates from 1854, an agent noun from the verb.  The verb use extended to “lessen the impact of” by 1886.  The use in chemistry began in the mid-nineteenth century, borrowed by analogy from the railroads although the meaning in science was soon extended and was adopted in electrical engineering.  In geopolitics the term wasn’t used until the mid-nineteenth century, the word again picked up from the general use inspired by railroads.  However, the concept had been well-understood for centuries.  The Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) created the United Kingdom of the Netherlands (modern day Belgium & the Netherlands) to remove the means of conflict between the UK, France & Prussia and although it lasted only until the separation of Belgian in 1830, the defined land-mass continued to fulfil the same function.

The derived forms include buffering, buffered & bufferize; the noun plural is buffers.  In the nineteenth century, a number of languages picked up buffer directly from English, including Danish, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese & Romansch, spread apparently by the international growth in railroad construction.

Europe 1945-1989.

The deployment of ten-odd Russian army divisions on the border with Ukraine’s revived interest in the old squabble about whether, in the last days of the USSR, politicians from the West made promises or at least provided assurances to Moscow that NATO would not expand eastwards.  The archivists have for decades been looking for any document which might clarify at least what was at the time discussed but nothing emerged until some material was declassified in 2017.  The conclusion is that the USSR was never offered any formal guarantee about NATO membership but the interpretations of what happened after 1990 vary, the view from the West that the enlargement of NATO was undertaken honorably and in accordance with the rights international law accords to sovereign states whereas Moscow’s narrative is one of Western deception and duplicity. 

Most scholars of the Cold War seem to agree the story begins in February 1990 when James Baker (b 1930; US secretary of state 1989-1992), secretary of state under George HW Bush (1924–2018; US president 1989-1993 (George XLI)) met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (b 1931; leader of the USSR 1985-1991) in Moscow.  Only three months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the matter of immediate interest was whether Germany, divided since 1945 into east and west, would be reunified, something that was most feared, though for different reasons, in the Kremlin and Downing Street.  London’s concern was its traditional fear to the emergence of an overwhelmingly strong Germany; Moscow feared the specter of NATO’s missiles being stationed in the GDR (East Germany). 

What both Russian and US transcripts of the meeting reveal was that the US position was it was in everyone’s interest that a unified Germany existed within NATO's political and military structure but at no point did either side discuss any of the nations aligned with the Warsaw Pact joining NATO.  That was not on the agenda because the thought of the imminent collapse of the USSR had not then occurred to many, none of whom were prominent in the US administration.  Orthodox political thought in the US, across most of the political spectrum, was that the Soviet empire probably was doomed but it’s life was expected to extend for at least decades.  A similar spirit animated the discussion Gorbachev had the next day with the FRG’s (West Germany) Chancellor Helmut Kohl (1930–2017; Chancellor of FRG or Germany 1982 to 1998), most taken up with the matter of German unification, NATO enlargement not even mentioned.  What was agreed was that the US, France, the UK and Germany, agreed not to deploy non-German NATO forces in the former East Germany.

However, in the great geopolitical event of the second half of the twentieth century, the USSR did in 1991 collapse, ending the perhaps unhappy but essentially stable post-war arrangement whereby east and west were separated by an array of buffer states, the cordon sanitaire which was built by Comrade Stalin (1878–1953; leader of the USSR, 1924-1953), which constituted the line of the Iron Curtain from “…Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic…”.  They were difficult years for the post-Soviet buffer states but, in 1999, NATO welcomed as members, three nations of the former Warsaw Pact: Hungary, Poland & the Czech Republic.  That sounds now like an event of great significance and of course it was but with all the social and economic disruption happening in Russia, it evoked surprisingly few complaints, the political faction in Moscow which tilted towards Europe and saw their country’s future there, much more influential than today.  Some did however dwell on things.  A decade after the first NATO expansion, Gorbachev complained that the West had tricked Moscow, claiming he’d been assured NATO would not be moving “one centimeter further east."

Gorbachev later retreated from that, in 2014 admitting that in all the discussions which followed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification Germany, the topic of “NATO expansion” was never raised by either side, adding that not a single Eastern European country brought up the issue, not even after the Warsaw Pact had been dissolved 1991.  Equally sanguine seems to have been the first Russian president, Boris Yeltsin (1931–2007; president of the Russian Federation 1991-1999).  Although hardly enthusiastic about NATO expansion, he raised no objection but did urge caution on the West, warning it was important to take into account public opinion in Russia.  In that he may have had some misplaced faith in realism of those he viewed as his new Western partners, writing later that "the spirit of the treaty on the final settlement...precludes the option of expanding the NATO zone into the East."  None of that was in writing of course, the generous interpretation being inferences were drawn where no implications were intended.  Either that or, in Washington, views changed in the post Cold-War world.

Still, for a time, tensions seemed not great and cooperative structures were created including NATO-Russia Founding Act, a kind of statement of peaceful co-existence and in 2002, a joint consultative council was established as a framework in which differences could be resolved; rather wishy-washy in detail, it was regarded by most as ineffectual but at least harmless.  The real crossing of the Rubicon came in 2004 when NATO undertook its largest expansion, admitting seven more Eastern European countries including, critically, the Baltic states Latvia, Lithuania & Estonia, Latvia, all of which had been republics, unhappily, of the USSR.  It was the closest NATO’s divisions & missiles had ever been to Moscow.

By 2007 with the oil price high and the Russian economy thus buoyant, if rather distorted by its reliance on energy exports, the new Russian president, Vladimir Putin (b 1952; Russian president or prime-minister since 1999) made the official Russian position explicit, accusing NATO (ie the US) of duplicity and threatening Russia:  “I think it is obvious that NATO expansion has no relation with the modernization of the alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust.”  “What happened to the assurances our Western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today?"  There being no documents, it seems Mr Putin might be relying on Mr Yeltsin’s evocation of the “spirit” of the discussions which both he and Mr Gorbachev had earlier confirmed contained no discussion of NATO expansion.  Still, some sense of realism was on display at a summit in Bucharest in 2008 when NATO declined to offer Georgia and Ukraine a fast-track path to membership but assured both they would eventually join the alliance.  No date was mentioned and it seemed a quiet triumph of Realpolitik for the Kremlin.

However, four months later, Russia invaded Georgia, crushing its armed forces and occupying two regions that had already had near complete autonomy.  Then, in 2014, after seizing and then annexing the Ukraine's Crimea Peninsula, Moscow equipped, financed, and provided military support to separatist fighters in eastern Ukraine, stoking the war that continues to this day, the death toll some fourteen-thousand.  NATO and the Kremlin no longer have active anything but emergency channels of communications.

Mr Putin is quite emphatic that assurances were provided NATO would never expand beyond what was necessitated by the unification of Germany and the last US ambassador to the USSR did insist, in his testimony to a congressional enquiry, that Mr Gorbachev had received assurances that if Germany united and remained in NATO, the borders of NATO would not move eastward and declassified documents released in 2017 do suggest Mr Baker may well have said “not one inch eastward” (source or Mr Gorbachev’s “one centimetre”) but that this was subsequently vetoed by Mr Bush who had a different vision of a “new world order”.  In the West, over the years, many seemed to treat all this as hearsay evidence and prefer to cite the 1990 treaty (the 2+4 Treaty) which created the framework by which German unification would be achieved.  There was no mention of NATO enlargement.  Beyond that, also invoked in the West is an argument apparently based on the doctrine of “acceptance by acquiescence” from contract law: Russia accepted enlargement, with detailed conditions, and in writing, when the NATO-Russia Founding Act was agreed.  One can see what they’re getting at but to use an analogy with domestic contract law seems a bit of a stretch but NATO expansion anyway didn’t happen in isolation.  The first expansion, in 1999, came around the time of the NATO’s bombing campaigns in the Balkans, a traditional Russian sphere of influence and aimed at their traditional allies the Serbs.  While sympathetic to the US operation in Afghanistan, the 2003 invasion of Iraq raised Moscow's ire.

Mr Putin’s position has since hardened.  The massing of infantry and cavalry divisions on the border has a nineteenth century feel but the economic and cyber warfare is already being waged and what’s already being called the Ukrainian crisis has attracted speculation from military and political theorists.  All agree (1) Mr Putin wants his buffer states back, (2) this is the first time in history the timing of military action must await the end of the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics and (3), the Kremlin learned certain lessons about the nature of the Biden administration from the scuttle from Afghanistan.  There the consensus seems to end but Mr Putin's ambition, no less than a re-configuration of the architecture of European security arrangements back to the 1992 lines on the map, is breathtaking.  This is not however 1941 and the world isn't (yet) quite holding it's breath.  Mr Putin has gambled before and won and if he can emerge from this round with something tangible, like a land bridge to the Crimea, he'd take it.  He plans anyway to still be Tsar when all the Western leaders facing him are gone and believes Russia's position in the future will only strengthen.