Men They Once Were And Could Be Again

Mankind has always expressed things by using colour. The colours adopted on coats of arms or by sports teams are precisely formulated and have a distinct meaning. By changing the colour of something you change the nature of the thing and with it its significance to your target audience. You cannot buy British-grown baked beans for example because they are black. They taste OK but baked beans are always white under the sauce. No one will buy baked beans which are black as all the weight of their historic appreciation would be lost and they would have to compete with forgotten or unpopular dishes for a much smaller market.

This brings us to the case of the red chessmen. Look at oriental sets or even mediaeval European ones and you see them all the time. Now they have been transformed to black. Is black cheaper to produce than red? No. The alteration is the sole visual sign of a quite remarkable tale.

As we all know the white men have the first move in chess. It is expected. The pure unsullied ivory will always take the first step as it is the innocent beginning of a new dawn. The stained ivory of the red will follow with its experience and observe the movement of the virginal white. It hangs there ready to take advantage of the mistakes of inexperience. It challenges the newcomer to prove itself by taking advantage of having made the first move.

Early players were aware of this distinction. It was customary for the less experienced player to be given the white men and with them the first move. The better player waited to gobble them up. The non-white men were originally several different colours. Eventually red became the standard for one simple reason. Experienced players were always likely to prevail over less experienced. Red represented the blood of the white men as they were gradually hacked down by the better moves of the coloured ones.

Things continued this way until around 1550. By then the relative levels of experience in chess had levelled out. There was no longer such an advantage in having played more often than your opponent. Consequently the first move became a greater and greater advantage. White began to dominate so much that the draw for colour was developed to give both players a chance of using it. This was not all. The red men suddenly appeared redder than before. Their colour got deeper and richer. Soon it became obvious what was happening on the board. The red men were getting redder because it was their own blood which was being shed on contact with the white. The blood of the anaemic whites was too pale to affect the original stain. Now defeated red men were turning practically purple at each new slaughter. In some sets it got so bad that the red men had to be drained before each game.

Clearly something needed to be done. In one brilliant stroke the celebrated Father Feneredo of Galicia transformed the game. Reckoning that all the red men would turn black eventually with the sheer amount of blood they were shedding he introduced new black men by slowly burning red ones with a toasting iron. This is the same method used today for the top level chessmen used in international tournaments. Father Feneredo may not have been fully aware of the consequences of what he was doing but the world soon realised that black is not a colour but a non-colour. It is therefore devoid of emotion. Father Feneredo had created chessmen which simply fulfilled their mathematical obligations and could not engage on a personal level with their opposite numbers. The previously innocent whites which could no longer see their whiteness reflected soon followed suit. Soon only the players could engage with each other emotionally. What were once chessmen were now chess pieces. No more blood was spilled. No emotion ever entered the game of chess again. It became the last refuge of the technical and the bored whose twisted mentalities prevented them from ever engaging with other human beings and the men mere functionaries at the service of non-aggressive minds.

Black pieces never show the blood of whites. It has ceased to flow. No longer can a budding general talk to chessmen to learn his craft. The healthy violence of early chess is now a collection of pointless theories which have no relevance outside the game. Is this of any use? Chess players would like us to think so. Clearly the idea is erroneous however as the practitioners would not bear the dismissive title of 'players' if what they were doing had any real value. Modern men complain of being more and more castrated as society re-evaluates their traditional role. There is a way of fighting back. Refuse to buy black chess pieces. In certain parts of East Africa they contend that what we call white people are actually red in colour. Clearly all the male gender needs to do is allow East Africans to set all our standards for us to become real men again.