Invasion literature
Invasion literature is a literary genre that was popular in the period between 1871 and the First World War. The invasion novel was first recognised as a literary genre in the UK, with the novella The Battle of Dorking: Reminiscences of a Volunteer, an account of a German invasion of England, which, in the Western 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.
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.
Pre-"Dorking"
Nearly a century before the invasion genre became widespread after the publication of The Battle of Dorking in 1871, a mini-boom of invasion stories appeared soon after the French developed the hot air balloon. Poems and plays centred on balloon armies invading the United Kingdom could be found in France and America. However, it was not until the North German Confederation used advanced technologies such as rifled breech loaders and rail transport to defeat the Second French Empire in the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 that the fear of invasion by a technologically superior enemy became more realistic.In Europe
One of those stories is a history of the French suddenly invading the United Kingdom in May 1852. According to I. 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 the 1851 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 wrote A history of the sudden and terrible invasion of England by the French, in the month of May, 1852. 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 by George Tomkyns Chesney was first published in Blackwood's Magazine, a respected political journal of the Victorian era. 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 of Dorking 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 the Kingdom of Prussia. They defeated Europe's largest army in only two months. 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." 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 the British Empire. One running 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 of The Battle of Dorking in 1871 and the start of the First World War in 1914 there were hundreds of authors writing invasion literature, often topping the best seller lists in Germany, France, England and the United States. During the period it is estimated over 400 invasion works were published. Probably the best known work was H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, bearing plot similarities to The Battle of Dorking but with a science fiction theme. In 1907, Wells wrote The 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 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 of Erskine Childers's 1903 novel The Riddle of the Sands. Often called the first modern spy 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 novel When William Came is more jingoistic than literary. Another is John Buchan, whose novel The 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 was The Great War in England in 1897 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 the Daily Mail, and attracted many readers. It is believed Ian Fleming's James Bond character was inspired by Le Queux's agent "Duckworth Drew". In some ways The Great War can be considered an antithesis to The Battle of Dorking – with the one ending for Britain in sombre and irrevocable defeat and decline, while in the other the invasion of London is pushed back in the last moment with the help of Germany, portrayed as a staunch ally against the French Third Republic and the Russian Empire. The United Kingdom obtained enormous territorial aggrandizement; it receives French Algeria and Imperial Russian Central Asia and "Britannia" becomes "Empress of the World".
Le Queux's most popular invasion novel was The Invasion of 1910, 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 be Queen Alexandra of Denmark's favorite author.
P. G. Wodehouse parodied the genre in The Swoop!, in which England is simultaneously invaded by nine different armies, including Switzerland and the German 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 or to Germany.
In Asia
Invasion literature had its impact also in Japan, at the time undergoing a fast process of modernization. Shunrō Oshikawa, a pioneer of Japanese science fiction and adventure stories, published around the start of the 20th century the best-seller Kaitō Bōken Kidan: Kaitei Gunkan : the story of an armoured, ram-armed submarine involved in a future history of war between Japan and Russia. The novel reflected the imperialist ambitions of Japan at the time, and foreshadowed the Russo-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 movie Atragon, by Ishiro 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 the Pacific and Indian 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.Colonial Hong Kong's earliest work of invasion literature is believed to have been the 1897 The Back Door. Published in serial form in a local English-language newspaper, it described a fictional French and Russian naval landing at Hong Kong Island's Deep Water Bay; the story was intended to criticise the lack of British funding for the defence of Hong Kong, and it is speculated that members of the Imperial Japanese Army may have read the book in preparation for the 1941 Battle of Hong Kong.