It's A Twin Thing

Many Essex locations are partnered with towns across the globe. Stephen Roberts explores some of these connections and some of the surprising origins to these unique friendships

- Stephen Roberts

The concept of ‘twinning’ was launched into a brave new post-war world in 1947. Its intention was laudable: to foster friendship and understanding among different cultures, and between former foes, as an act of peace and reconciliation, and to encourage trade and tourism.

While the concept of twin towns is quite a familiar one, you may not know that the county of Essex itself has been twinned with five other counties or regions across the globe. Is it significant that four are in countries that fought against the allies during World War II? Well, yes. When you consider that World War II cost a conservative estimate of 60 million lives, you can understand the desire to foster friendship between nations afterwards, especially as this was the second global war in a generation to have begun in Europe. Officially our county’s five sister counties or regions are Picardy in France, Thuringia in Germany, Henrico County, Virginia (USA), Jiangsu in China and Accra in Ghana.

The only one of these links that is still active at the current time is the link with Jiangsu in China, with the rest having been dormant for some time. Jiangsu is a central-eastern coastal province and one of the smallest, yet most populous, of China’s 23 provinces, with the second-highest GDP, its prosperity is centred on its capital Nanjing, the second-largest city in eastern China. Nanjing fell to the Japanese in December 1937, with Japanese occupation persisting until the end of World War II. Fighting also took place in northern Jiangsu during the civil war that followed, so the experience of warfare here was first-hand and profound.