Secrets are me-cret, I suppose

So let me let you in on a little secret (not really a secret, more of a piece of advice), universities have a lot of free info and stuff. But you might say hey I don't go to a university. Well, okay that might limit you a little, but the trick is to go to professors' pages. You can usually get a ton of free explanations and guides and history facts from professors' pages, and usually they have little to no checking. Hey, probably professors' like to have random people check out their subject-matter. You don't want to let the professors down, do you?

History is a mess, but I love it

I do apologize for the major break in my schedule, but circumstances do intervene.

Still let me wax poetic a little about history.

Or rather I would if there was a strong tradition of history poems nowadays. It's sad that this noble tradition seems in decline or if found in disarray.

Alack, alack, alack.

And what of poetic history plays? Whatever happened to those? Are they just a memory of history?

Just a momentary aberration?

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

But let me call at least for a revisiting of great history poems and plays.

For when history stirs your soul,

What magnificence shall emerge?

The Great Companion of Man

War. I was tempted to do a bad pun, like starting out with: war what is it good for, etc. But that seemed disrespectful, especially given the context in which that song was written (that's one of the burdens of knowing the history behind these songs, I imagine the many comedic videos, such as the Rush Hour trailer, were likely (although not necessarily) made by people who weren't thinking about the historical context of the song (Just to given some more exact information the song in question is "War" by Edwin Starr, written in 1970 in protest of the Vietnam War)). (Actually one of my annoyances with many journalists is their disrespectful use of puns, like for example saying the cultural changes in China are a "Cultural Revolution," I mean it's somewhat forgivable if the article focuses on the differences between the Cultural Revolution and Chinese culture today, but really...)

Actually writing about war is always a dicey endeavor, but people have written about it and in many, many different ways. You can take a funny angle to it (MASH, Hogan's Heroes, etc.), a satirical angle to it (Dr. Strangelove, etc.), a tragic angle to it (Letters from Iwo Jima, etc.), a triumphant angle to it (Glory, etc.), and there are more ways of looking at war. In fact, I say with a decent amount of certainty that war can be written from any perspective of the human experience, because war is so central to the human experience. That's a bit of a weighty, vague sentence, but essentially, war is when humans dispose of some or all of the basic rules of conduct in pursuit of some goal put higher than not only their lives, but the lives of entire peoples.

Yet, the human experience should not be reduced to war. Often that is the prelude to the common 19th century belief that war was not only the great companion of man, but his essential lover. No, humans can pursue just goals just as passionately and just as successfully within the rules of society that prevent such catostrophic conduct. In fact, if one of those just goals is the appreciation of the beauty of the human spirit, war is best avoided.

But one would be naive, and again, disrespectful to ignore war and its impact on history. Wars are often decisive events in the shaping of people and states, and when they are not, that is an immensely important fact unto itself. And thus the historian must be familiar with war, must not flinch from blood nor from horror, and must stare into the abyss, taking care not to let the abyss penetrate his soul.

With that melodramatic introduction, let me give some quick facts for those who enjoy or find useful quick facts. Here is a brief summary of the wars of the United States of America (I apologize that many of the conflicts are generalized, I will try to go into them more particularly later, but I ended up spending more time than I planned covering the general essence of the historian and war).

1775-1783 - The American Revolutionary War

1783-1794 - Conflicts and Rebellions related to the establishment of the US federal and state governments

1798-1800 - Quasi-War

1775-1900 - Wars with various Native American powers, often connected with the wars with Britain, intensifying in 1865-1900

1812-1815 - War of 1812

1846-1848 - Mexican-American War (some might include the Texas Revolution 1835-1836 as part of this, although Texas was not part of the US till 1845)

1861-1865 - American Civil War

1893 - Semi-Intervention against Hawaii

1898 - Spanish-American War

1898 - 1913 - Philippine-American War (till 1902) and suppression of remnants

1903 - Semi-Intervention against Columbia for Panama

1916 - 1917 - Punitive Expedition against Mexico

1907 - 1933 - Latin American Interventions

1917 - 1918 - World War I

1918 - 1920 - Russian Intervention

1941 - 1945 - World War II

1945 - 1981 - Cold War Conflicts

1950 - 1953 - Korean War

1959 - 1975 - Second Indo-Chinese War (Vietnam War, Cambodian and Laos Interventions)

1979 - Grenada Intervention

1982 - 1984 - Lebanon Intervention

1991 - Persian Gulf War

1992 - Somali Intervention

1994 - Haiti Intervention in support of Aristite

1995 - Bosnian Intervention

1998 - Iraq Bombing Campaign

1999 - Kosovo Intervention

2003 - Liberian Intervention

2004 - Haiti Intervention - escorting Aristite out of the country


2003 - Current - Iraq War


Sorry for the briefness, but I got carried away with the intro. I hope to expand on all of this later, but till then, the History is out there.

The art of revision

One of the greatest insults among historians, or one of the greatest badges of honor for historians of a certain stripe, is revisionist.

The revisionist's essence is that they rebel against old research, which they believe is ideologically slanted beyond any worth, by creating all new research and a new point of view on the history, which, despite a usual protestation of less bias than the past, somehow agrees with their ideological point of view.

The essential flaw of revisionist in its purest is that they discard all the old research and create history so ideologically slanted that it's almost impossible for those not sharing the ideology to read it without a burst of vomit shooting up their stomachs.

But to be fair, the revisionist is usually correct, to a lesser degree though, about the bias of the old research, and moreover the revisionist often has new research that has a few gems of useful information.

In the end though, I object terribly to any throw out all the old movement, and revisionism is one of them. There are so many points to object to, but I think I covered most of the major ones in my description. My point essentially is that old, consensus research, while biased often, usually has at least some worth that should not be discarded.

Having said all that, let me come to the newest bit of revisionism. Although revisionist usually belong to the left-wing of politics, they also inhabit the right-wing, and this figure belongs firmly in the latter. Pat Buchannan has written a history book that to a greater or lesser extent almost certainly belongs in the revisionist column. Since I've been dealing with essences largely so far, let me get to the essence of his book. WWII could have been avoided if we just let Nazi Germany take Poland.

I have to say I don't have his argument down precisely, you can check it out on Amazon.com if you'd like. I may read it, but I might find that I can only stomach a summary. The key problem with his logic I think, or if not with the logic of his book, the logic of much of his rhetoric, is that he assumes strong nations have the right to sacrifice weak nations.

Morally, that's monstrous, geopolitically, that will cost you in terms of bitterness and the future changing position of countries.

But just to strike at one argument to shoot at his book, without even reading it, admittedly, and if someone has read it and like to shoot this argument down, feel free to:

Nazi Germany was part of the Axis pact with at the time. Even if Germany would have been satisfied with Poland (which it wouldn't have been), other Axis powers such as Italy and Hungary were moving on their own territorial ambitions, notably Greece and Transylvania. It is very hard to imagine that Yugoslavia would not get involved in the mix, and then the European geopolitical situation would be reduced to this:

Portugal, Spain, France, Britain, Scandanavia, Switzerland, Axis powers, USSR. Envision that for a second, and realize that you have there Hitler lying surrounded by passively or actively hostile enemies with very rebellious territories barely under his control. It is hard not to imagine the war widening.

But to attack something further. Pat Buchanan combines in his argument that the reason why WWII was so sad, is because it cost Britain its empire. Screw the British Empire. It did provide some marginal improvement in SOME situations, but it was an oppressive, exploitive regime and it needed to fall.

The Cold War was awful, it really was, but you can't let that get you nostalgic for colonialism and imperialism. Imperialism was just wrong Pat. It was just wrong.

If there were only a few more Ruskies

So here's a new segment.

Grand historical question time.

So all you history buffs out there, let me give you a thinker...

Now Russia in the first World War lost more people than any other combatant. Moreover, many of these were Russia's best and brightest. Some historians (including I believe, Orlando Figes) have cited Russia's lack of a strong middle position party between the militarist White Russians and the Bolshevik-led Reds in the Russian Civil War as the cause of the Bolshevik victory. Many of those historians have assumed this was then due to Russia's incomplete industrial revolution (often using a progress/stages version of history which I'm always suspicious of).

But what if there was the potential for a middle position party? What if there were dynamic youths who could have led a new faction of Russians who could overcome the Reds and charm/defeat the Whites... that is if they hadn't been killed in the early years of the first World War.

The early years of the first World War gutted the Russian officer class, and the military was often the best route for advancement for upwardly-mobile Russians. If it hadn't been for all that slaughter, perhaps the even greater slaughters to follow might have been avoided.

If the idea is true, it adds another layer of tragedy to early 20th century history, but perhaps it also gives us a new way to interpret the Russian Revolution. And then the lessons derived from the birth of the Soviet Union might need some rethinking as well...

Perhaps...
Perhaps...
Perhaps...

Tipu, if not Sultan then what?

My brother's doing a report on Tipu Sultan, and since he is a most fascinating character I thought I might share a little on the man with you.

But here I'd like to display a little of my oft-maligned superpower, random history knowledge off the top of my head, so there will be no references here, there will be perhaps a few errors, ah, but this should be interesting. (I'll try to give a more researched overview of Tipu Sultan in the future)

First of all, for those who do not know, Tipu Sultan was the ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore in the late 18th century. Mysore now is a city in the Indian state of Karnataka (I did look up the proper spelling there, but just so I could avoid any offense), but it once was a center of a Kingdom that covered perhaps a good 1/3 to 1/2 of South India. Tipu Sultan was not born of the line of Mysore Maharaja's that are there today. Rather his father overthrew that line, which was restored after Tipu Sultan's death.

It is interesting then to note that Tipu Sultan was essentially a usurper, and the fight between him and the British was between two usurpers, ah, but India in those days was a land of usurpers.

In those days of the late 18th century, the British East India Company was near hegemony (although not quite dominance) in North India and was making deep in roads into South India. The great forces which could oppose it, such as the Mughal Empire or the Maratha Confederacy were in steep decline. The French remained even their influence was starting to drop. One striking exception (there were a few others such as the Sikh's to the northwest and the Afghans, but those are other stories), was the Kingdom of Mysore. Whereas other powers were declining, Mysore was ascendant, and Tipu Sultan was an important cause of that ascent.

There were other causes, such as the wise management of his father, the key location of Mysore in trade routes, and Mysore's position within the Franco-British contest, but Tipu Sultan was a strong ruler. He centralized the state, abolished the tax farmers, modernized the military, essentially accomplished all those steps which would save the monarchies of Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Thailand in later years. In short he was a formidable foe to the British expansion on the subcontinent.

The details of the Anglo-Mysore wars are beyond off-my-head knowledge, but they did involve the future Duke of Wellington, who was prouder of his victories here than those in Europe. But to summarize, while the first was a draw, the second saw Mysore gain, and the third saw Mysore weakened, and the fourth left Mysore a British dependency and Tipu Sultan dead.

The difficulty of defeating Tipu Sultan and that tantalizing counter-factual of his victory continues to taunt historians. Unlike some of the more recent historians, I do not wish to romanticize Tipu Sultan. He was ruthless, the surrounding states of South India were justified to be afraid of him and probably got better deals from the British to oppose him than Tipu would have given them. Moreover, he did devastate the countryside of Malabar in his campaigns there. Yet he was a strong and talented ruler, who did shape and develop his kingdom well. And he represents an alternate possibility. In essence, he did many of the steps that made the British East India company a formidable force within his own country. Could he have been the ruler of India? Could he have forced a split? Ah, but the could's of history are many, and while worth pondering, require more than off-the-top of my head knowledge. Maybe another day.

I hope therefore you have an idea of why Tipu Sultan is worthy of my brother's report. An impressive man, a cruel man, a blood-soaked man, a great ruler, essentially an important historical figure, with all the ambivalence of history carried in his name.

History = Awesome

The most perfect equation in history, History = Awesome.

To cite proof:

A History of the Spanish Inquisition

A History of the French Revolution

A History of Alexander Hamilton

A History of Dance

And for you real history buffs, a piece of history that's mostly accurate:

A History of Macross

I realize I have been lax in my posting duties, and I don't see that changing, but the web is wide, and history is out there. Go Forth I Command Thee!