Spinning Clio

Spun Out

2010-01-13T11:34:00.002-05:00

It's time. Posting hereabouts had been tailing off for months (years?). I've drifted farther from the profession because of other interests and life in general--only so much time in the day and all that--and other interests have taken to dominating my time. Don't get me wrong--I still love history (more on that below), but I don't have it in me--and haven't for a while--to get into the big History debates and keep up with a field in which I'm not an official, gate-keeper approved practitioner. So I'm letting Spinning Clio spin down to stand still. Yet, while she'll lie dormant, I believe there is still some value in the ol' girl and I've taken the editorial liberty of putting what I think are the best posts "up front" and will allow her to exist for posterity.

As for me, while this blog has served its purpose, I'm still history blogging in a more focused way, over at Burgundians in the Mist. So if you're interested in things Late Antiquity/Early Medieval, please check it out.

Finally, my thanks to all who've come around and added their two bits. I'd especially like to thank Ralph Luker--the "History Blogfather"--and Sharon Howard--Keeper of the Carnivals--for all that they've done for history on the web.

Introduction to Historical Method: Index

2010-01-13T08:01:00.003-05:00

Series originally posted in Summer 2005

Below you will find a 5-part series entitled Introduction to Historical Method. The bulk of the information was taken from the notes and readings of a course in Historical Methodology taught by Professor Donna T. McCaffrey at Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island. As such, Dr. McCaffrey deserves full credit for the majority of the information provided as well as for developing the main structure of the way the information has been presented. However, I have amplified some topics and added my own touches--such as providing all of the hypertext links--where I've seen fit.

Additionally, the section devoted to "The History of the Development of Historical Method" relies heavily on Gilbert Garraghan's A Guide to Historical Method, which was a constant reference both throughout Dr. McCaffrey's course and the consolidation of these posts. Additionally, two works by John Tosh--Pursuit of History and Historians on History--have been utilized.

Finally, I realize it is somewhat ironic that a work explaining the proper use of method and technique in the study of History does not itself include proper citation. Simply put, I decided that this was the best, most web-readable way to present this information.

Part 1 : What Is History
Part 2 : The Meanings of History
Part 3 : The History of Historical Method
Part 4 : Practicing The Historical Method
Part 5 : Certainty in History

I like Medieval Women (Especially Queens)

2010-01-12T18:29:00.000-05:00

Original post 3/7/2006

So, why does a conservative guy have an interest in medieval women's history? It doesn't immediately fit the stereotype, does it? I suppose that a negative assumption could be made that a conservative is interested in medieval women's history because he probably enjoys reading and writing about a time when women were "in their place," so to speak. But that would be a bad assumption if the historian you're talking about is me. I just like the period and--simply put--medieval women are a bit of a mystery (much like all women I might add...). Also, I have two daughters and I guess I'm always on the lookout for good historical role models! What particularly intrigues me is the way that those of the ruling class used their power--either subtley or overtly--to throw their weight around. Anyway, seeing as how the next Carnivalesque is of the Ancient/Medieval sort and that--since it is Women's History Month--the theme of the aforementioned carnival is going to be Medieval Women's History, I thought I'd throw a couple recommendations out there for those unfamiliar with the topic and also write a bit about the power of medieval queens.

Where to start?

For those with an interest in both women and Medieval History, why not start with a woman who did excellent Medieval History (including some dealing with Medieval women): Eileen Power. Her Medieval People is a fine jumping off point for anyone interested in the period and her Medieval Women is a compendium of some of her work in that area.

For a more updated overview of the topic, I'd recommend A Small Sound of the Trumpet: Women in Medieval Life by Margaret Wade LaBarge. LaBarge has done a fine job of summarizing and also offers a valuable list of sources in both notes and a short but good bibliography. For a more focused study on the intellectual and religious aspects of the lives of medieval women, I'd recommend Elizabeth Petroff's Medieval Women's Visionary Literature. I've read these two books cover to cover, and though some of Petroff's work can be a bit dry for my taste, both are valuable works. Additionally, more popular books on Eleanor of Aquitaine or Heloise and Abelard are out there, though I've never read them (mostly because both are such well-covered topics). Finally, one cannot forget the work of Christine de Pizan, a magnificent woman of her time whose writings have spawned many a scholarly work.

Medieval Queens

LaBarge's chapter on Medieval Queens in Trumpet, which focused on the societal and political role of queens from the 12th to the 15th century, was one of my favorites in the book. As LaBarge explained, the queens of this era did not have the same amount of power as that wielded by their "mothers" during the Late Antiquity/Early Middle Ages (EMA). To generalize a bit, queens during the EMA were one of a small number of influential advisors at court and thus had a greater advisory role to the king. During the High Middle Ages of the 12th-15th century, royal courts had become more complex and the influx of new officials tended to reduce the role of the queen in governmental matters.

Also by this time, the Germanic traditions of either portioning the kingdom amongst heirs or selecting the ablest heir to rule from a pool of royal relatives had evolved--some would say devolved--to the more linear method of primogeniture. Thus, in the EMA, if a king died with heirs still too young to rule, the queen would often serve as regent and de facto ruler until the heir(s) came of age. It was she who was faced with staving off the attacks of royal uncles against her progeny. (See the Merovingians, for example). She was the safeguard for the hereditary desires of her king. The importance of her role in these matter was reduced by the predictiveness and general acceptance of the practice of primogeniture. The previously commonplace internecine warfare between royal uncles and the heir apparent became less common within a kingdom. As such, there was no need for a mother to serve as a safeguard for her blood. Their legitimacy as heirs was accepted.

Thus, the primary importance of the Queen shifted from being a royal consort who could wield power in her own right to being the vehicle through which the royal blood was continued. Her womb was her most valuable commodity. Yet, an individual queen’s actual power still depended on her relative strength of position as king’s consort and her own personal power, which both tended to be greater the smaller the size of the royal court. Not to be forgotten was the large part that wealth--whether it be traditional wealth in the form of land or treasure or political wealth (connections, connections!!!)--played in establishing her regal gravitas.

The attractiveness of a queenly candidate lay in the priorities of her suitor. For example, Henry I of England made a political decision to marry Edith (or Matilda) of Scotland. She was of Anglo-Saxon extract and the Norman Henry hoped a marriage to her would solidify his legitimacy to the throne. Then there is the case of Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was rich due to her holdings in the duchy of Aquitaine and was an attractive prospect to both Louis VII of France and Henry II of England, both of whom she married. (Here's where I have to mention Lion in the Winter--the original, not the remake--as an excellent and entertaining medieval movie.)

Although primogeniture reduced the likelihood that a queen would be appointed as regent, this did not mean that such a situation was necessarily avoided. Eleanor of Aquitaine and her granddaughter Blanche of Castile are both examples of strong women who served as effective regents who ably ruled their respective kingdoms while waiting for the heir to mature.

Conversely, some queens, such as Isabella of Angouleme, were wisely prevented from being appointed regents by royal councils. It was Isabella, who, after being denied the regency of her son Henry III of England, returned to France and decided to replace her ten year old daughter as wife of Hugh Le Brun, count of La Marche. She used her cache as mother of the King of England to obtain lands and lordships for her offspring by Hugh, which leads one to doubt that she would have had held the good of the Kingdom of England paramount had she served as regent. Still others were unsuccessful regents and managed to lose the stewardship of the kingdom. An example of this would be Margaret of Anjou, queen during the English civil war between the Yorkists and Lancastrians. Margaret may have fought bravely against rebellion, but she was also arrogant and suffered from a lack of political realism. She eventually died without a crown and penniless. These examples show that queens did still play an important political role, for good or ill.

The two sisters from Provence, Eleanor and Marguerite, who married Louis IX of France and Henry III of England respectively, provide examples of women who exhibited both the good and bad characteristics of the medieval queen. They could be gracious and compassionate, but they also put great stock in wielding their own power and upholding their rights as individuals and queens. Both often worked tirelessly on behalf of their sons and husbands, but were also extremely partisan. Marguerite used her position to try to exact revenge upon her political enemy Charles of Anjou while Eleanor persuaded Henry III to give gifts to a bevy of her associates.

The careers of these women point to the often dichotomous nature of having a woman with a strong personality wielding significant power. A strong queen coupled with a strong king could be a dynamic duo of regal power for a kingdom; a sort of royal dream team. However, if a king was not strong enough as compared to his ambitious queen, he may have found that the good of the kingdom had been sacrificed for the good of the queen and her followers.

Finally, LaBarge also gave two examples of contemporary idealizations of the medieval queen. One was in the form of the chess allegory (De Ludo Scachorum or De Moribus Hominum ed de Officiis Nobilium Super Ludo Scaccorum), written by Jacobus de Cessolis around 1300; the other was that of Christine de Pizan as outlined in her A Medieval Women's Mirror of Honor: The Treasury of the City of Ladies, written around 1400. (In fact, LaBarge prompted me to attempt to do a comparison of my own between these two works, which perhaps I'll delve into another time). Regardless of which ideal was to be upheld as the more accurate in the abstract, both were often difficult to uphold in reality. As a result, we are left with this final impression: for good or bad, the impact made by a medieval queen upon her kingdom, while often defined by the particular political environment in which she found herself, was primarily a function of the strength of her personality.

Christianity as a "Founding Religion" Disavowed: What DID the 1796 Treaty with Tripoli Say (and when did it say it)?

2010-01-12T17:47:00.000-05:00

Originally posted 5/13/2005

In a February 3, 2005 piece entitled "Our Godless Constitution" posted on The Nation's web site (and subsequently included in their Feb. 21, 2005 issue), Brooke Allen called upon a bit of history, the 1796 Treaty with Tripoli, to buttress the "unreligious" side of the "separation of Church and State" debate. The use of history in political rhetoric is nothing new and, by this time, we should be well-accustomed to those on both sides of this debate pulling quotes, often selectively and sans context, to support their arguments. The point of this post is not to enter the weeds of the Church/State debate, but to delve deeper into a particular piece of history to discover if it warrants the mantle it has been given.

As chance had it, I was doing research in the historical era of the Barbary Wars when I came across Allen's column that cited a 1796 Treaty with the 19th century "terrorist" nation of Tripoli. According to Allen, this official document was unique and important because it expressly disavowed any relationship between the Christian religion and the U.S. government. As Allen wrote:

In 1797 our government concluded a "Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli, or Barbary," now known simply as the Treaty of Tripoli. Article 11 [ed.- hyperlink mine] of the treaty contains these words:

"As the Government of the United States...is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion--as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity of Musselmen--and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."

This document was endorsed by Secretary of State Timothy Pickering and President John Adams. It was then sent to the Senate for ratification; the vote was unanimous. It is worth pointing out that although this was the 339th time a recorded vote had been required by the Senate, it was only the third unanimous vote in the Senate's history. There is no record of debate or dissent. The text of the treaty was printed in full in the Philadelphia Gazette and in two New York papers, but there were no screams of outrage, as one might expect today.

This was enough to persuade some historians, such as Ralph Luker, that, at least once, the U.S. had specifically stated there was a distinct wall between church (read: religion) and state. However, while I could not say upon first reading if any of the history cited by Allen was wrong, I did have a problem with the Allen's implication--supported by the observation that it was a "unanimous vote" with "no record of debate or dissent" and there were no public "screams of outrage"--that such widespread national acceptance of the Treaty indicated that the nation viewed itself as not being "in any sense founded on the Christian religion." Frankly, it didn't ring true to me and seemed to be an overreach.

Allen seemed to be dismissing much of the larger, practical and political context surrounding the Treaty--especially the sense of urgency felt by all who wanted to keep the young nation out of foreign entanglements and keep the commerce rolling--in an attempt to use the Treaty as an example of the Founders making a grand statement of America's irreligious ideals. I decided to look deeper into the history of the Treaty with the aim of filling in some of the spaces I believed Allen skipped. Admittedly, in this I was motivated by my own belief that the U.S. does indeed have a Christian heritage that was acknowledged as invaluable by the same men that Allen implied had said the opposite. However, while my initial motivation for further investigation may have been ideological, the result is a cautionary tale concerning the use of history as a rhetorical tool and believing historical facts used in contemporary context simply because they support our own ideological bent.

I began my search the way we web-savvy historians often do: I Googled "Treaty with Tripoli" and "Christian" and followed the first link, which led me to this essay, written by Jim Walker, which referenced the 1796 Treaty as support for Walker's larger argument that America was founded as a secular state.

According to Walker, Article 11 of the Treaty had also proven to him that the U.S. Government, as evidenced by an official document, had proclaimed it was not a Christian nation. Walker also provided additional details concerning the American Agent, Joel Barlow, who drew up the treaty:

The preliminary treaty began with a signing on 4 November, 1796 (the end of George Washington's last term as president). Joel Barlow, the American diplomat served as counsel to Algiers and held responsibility for the treaty negotiations. Barlow had once served under Washington as a chaplain in the revolutionary army. He became good friends with Paine, Jefferson, and read Enlightenment literature. Later he abandoned Christian orthodoxy for rationalism and became an advocate of secular government. Joel Barlow wrote the original English version of the treaty, including Amendment 11. Barlow forwarded the treaty to U.S. legislators for approval in 1797. Timothy Pickering, the secretary of state, endorsed it and John Adams concurred (now during his presidency), sending the document on to the Senate. The Senate approved the treaty on June 7, 1797, and officially ratified by the Senate with John Adams signature on 10 June, 1797. All during this multi-review process, the wording of Article 11 never raised the slightest concern. The treaty even became public through its publication in The Philadelphia Gazette on 17 June 1797.

So here we have a clear admission by the United States that our government did not found itself upon Christianity. Unlike the Declaration of Independence, this treaty represented U.S. law as all treaties do according to the Constitution (see Article VI, Sect. 2).

Although the Christian exclusionary wording in the Treaty of Tripoli only lasted for eight years and no longer has legal status, it clearly represented the feelings of our Founding Fathers at the beginning of the U.S. government.

I noted that Allen and Walker both relied on the same facts, with almost the same exact phrasing, to buttress their argument. Subsequent digging revealed other instances in which the Treaty, and Barlow's role in it, have been used to support the notion that, because there was no public outrcry against the treaty, there must have been widespread acceptance by the American people that the United States was, indeed, not a Christian nation. In fact, it would seem that the story surrounding the Treaty with Tripoli has become a sort of mantra for the church/state separatists. Thus, I came to believe that Allen's piece was simply a restatement of these historical "talking points."

While Allen and Walker were both factually correct, they did not provide some of the historical context surrounding the drafting and ratification of the treaty. In contrast, Rob Boston, who also wrote of the Treaty (in 1997) in a similar attempt to support claims identical to Allen and Walker, provided more historical context as to Barlow's more diplomatic, instead of contra-religious motivations for inserting the particular clause in Article 11.

While in Algiers, Barlow met Richard O'Brien, one of the first seamen captured by Barbary pirates. Barlow sought and won permission to send O'Brien to Europe to borrow money to pay the tribute, but on the way O'Brien's ship was captured by pirates from Tripoli. O'Brien, under Barlow's direction, used the time to negotiate the famous Treaty with Tripoli and forwarded it to Barlow for redrafting and approval.

On Nov. 4, 1796, Barlow concluded negotiations on the Treaty with Tripoli with Jussof Bashaw Mahomet, Bey of Tripoli. The treaty was forwarded to the United States. By the time it reached America, a change of administrations had occurred. President John Adams submitted it to the U.S. Senate for ratification.

In a brief note dated May 26, 1797, Adams wrote to the Senate, "I lay before you, for your consideration and advice, a treaty of perpetual peace and friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and subjects of Tripoli, of Barbary, concluded, at Tripoli, on the 4th day of November, 1796."

Unfortunately, no record of the negotiations leading to the treaty exist. It's not known how Article 11 found its way into the document. Other treaties negotiated at the same time with Algiers and Tunis do not contain similar clauses. This has led to speculation that the provision may have been inserted at the insistence of officials in Tripoli, who wanted some assurance that the United States would not use religion as a pretext for future hostilities.

The Muslim regions of North Africa would have had good reason to be concerned about this issue, given the centuries long conflict between Islam and Christianity. Muslim leaders resented their treatment at the hands of the officially Christian countries of Europe. Tripoli's leaders may have viewed the United States as a mere extension of "Christian" Great Britain and expected similar tensions over religion.

To be sure, Islam was considered an exotic religion to most Americans at this time. Although Jefferson celebrated the fact that his Virginia Bill for Religious Freedom extended its protections to "the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, the infidel of every denomination," the fact is that Muslims were rare in 18th century America if there were any at all - and most Americans continued to view Islam as a strange, even sinister, faith.

For their part, North Africa's Muslims had little love for Christianity. In 1784, Barbary pirates captured the U.S. schooner Maria and took the crew and passengers to Algiers, where they were paraded through the streets and jeered as "infidels" before being imprisoned.

In 1793, Algerian pirates captured the cargo ship Polly, plundered it and imprisoned the 12-man crew. The Algerian captain informed the American captives they could expect harsh treatment "for your history and superstition in believing in a man who was crucified by the Jews and disregarding the true doctrine of God's last and greatest prophet, Mohammed."

Incidents like this underscore the current of religious tension between the United States and the Barbary region, but they do not prove conclusively that Article 11 was an attempt to mollify those pressures.

The reality is that no one is certain how Article 11 got into the Treaty with Tripoli. "It's an interesting question - why this was put into the treaty," says Robert J. Allison, a Suffolk University history professor who authored the 1995 book The Crescent Obscured: The United States and the Muslim World. . .[and whose] research did not turn up any definitive clues, but, he adds, "I don't think you can ascribe a treaty to any one author. There are too many interests at play. Whether it came from Barlow or Tripoli will remain unknown."

Thus, the "Christian" clause seemed to have an unknown source.

Further poking around brought me back to the Avalon Project at Yale, where I found a relevant excerpt concerning the provenance of the now-mysterious Article 11:

The translation first printed is that of Barlow as written in the original treaty book, including not only the twelve articles of the treaty proper, but also the receipt and the note mentioned, according to the Barlow translation, in Article 10. The signature of Barlow is copied as it occurs, but not his initials, which are on every page of the fourteen which is not signed. The Humphreys approval or confirmation follows the translation; but the other writings, in English and Spanish, in the original treaty book, are not printed with the translation but only in these notes.

It is to be remembered that the Barlow translation is that which was submitted to the Senate (American State Papers, Foreign Relations, II, 18-19) and which is printed in the Statutes at Large and in treaty collections generally; it is that English text which in the United States has always been deemed the text of the treaty. [ed.- the American State Papers, Foreign Relations, II were published in 1832, as can be seen from the title page].

As even a casual examination of the annotated translation of 1930 shows, the Barlow translation is at best a poor attempt at a paraphrase or summary of the sense of the Arabic; and even as such its defects throughout are obvious and glaring. Most extraordinary (and wholly unexplained) is the fact that Article 11 of the Barlow translation, with its famous phrase, "the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion," does not exist at all. There is no Article 11. The Arabic text which is between Articles 10 and 12 is in form a letter, crude and flamboyant and withal quite unimportant, from the Dey of Algiers to the Pasha of Tripoli. How that script came to be written and to be regarded, as in the Barlow translation, as Article 11 of the treaty as there written, is a mystery and seemingly must remain so. Nothing in the diplomatic correspondence of the time throws any light whatever on the point

A further and perhaps equal mystery is the fact that since 1797 the Barlow translation has been trustfully and universally accepted as the just equivalent of the Arabic. Its text was not only formally proclaimed as such but has been continuously printed and reprinted as such; and yet evidence of the erroneous character of the Barlow translation has been in the archives of the Department of State since perhaps 1800 or thereabouts; for in the handwriting of James Leander Cathcart is the statement quoted above that the Barlow translation is "extremely erroneous"; and while the Italian translation of the Arabic text on which that endorsement appears, presents its own linguistic difficulties, largely owing to its literal rendering and its consequent non-literary character as Italian, it is none the less in essence a reasonable equivalent of the Arabic. Indeed, allowing for the crudeness of the original Arabic and the changes which always result from a retranslation, it may be said that a rendering of the Italian translation into English gives a result which is in general not dissimilar from the English translation of Doctor Snouck Hurgronje of 1930; and of course the most cursory examination of the Italian translation would show (assuming the Italian to be even an approximation of the Arabic), that the Barlow translation, as Cathcart wrote, was "extremely erroneous"; but nothing indicating that the Italian translation was even consulted has been found, and it does not appear that it was ever before 1930 put into English. Some account of the Italian translation as a document is given above.

With so many questions surrounding the provenance of Article 11, it seemed a flimsy foundation on which to build an argument. Assuming that the Treaty of 1796 originally included Article 11, I find it entirely plausible that the disassociation from the Christian religion was made to assuage the "Musselmen" who definitely held the power in the negotiation and didn't themselves refrain from alluding to God in this instance or others. Thus, it seemed to me, it was much more likely that the disavowment was included in the text of the treaty as a diplomatic maneuver and less likely that Barlow took the opportunity to proclaim the U.S. as an irreligious nation. Even if Barlow had a higher purpose, he did so unilaterally and it was doubtful that the language was inserted as some sort of statement of U.S. government policy.

As Walker had earlier explained, "the Christian exclusionary wording in the Treaty of Tripoli only lasted for eight years and no longer has legal status." For example, in the Treaty with Tripoli of 1805, Article 14 contains the following language:

As the Government of the United States of America, has in itself no character of enmity against the Laws, Religion or Tranquility of Musselmen, and as the said States never have entered into any voluntary war or act of hostility against any Mahometan Nation, except in the defence of their just rights to freely navigate the High Seas: It is declared by the contracting parties that no pretext arising from Religious Opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the Harmony existing between the two Nations; And the Consuls and Agents of both Nations respectively, shall have liberty to exercise his Religion in his own house; all slaves of the same Religion shall not be Impeded in going to said Consuls house at hours of Prayer.

To my eye, this section clearly called upon the familiar rhetoric of American religious tolerance to assuage "Musselmen" fears of holy war, but there was no claim that America was not founded as a Christian nation. In fact, variations of this clause showed up a few more times [see here and here] and none stated the U.S. was not founded as a Christian nation.

I concluded that the exclusion or inclusion of God in a Treaty had much more to do with the "facts on the ground" as interpreted by the parties involved in the Treaty making than in either or both making a philosophic or political statement. Thus, perhaps Boston was correct both in focusing on Barlow's role and on the American public's reaction (or lack thereof) to the 1796 Treaty with Tripoli.

However, whether or not Barlow did act unilaterally has been conveniently dismissed. Rather, what has been deemed important by the strict Church/State separation supporters was the lack of "evidence" of an outcry against the "official" disavowment of Christianity. Boston explained how subsequent arguments against religion and the state called upon the text of Article 11.

In the end, how Article 11 got into the Treaty is less important than the reaction it received in the United States. As Borden notes, "What is significant about the Tripoli treaty is ...its ready acceptance by the government. Not a word of protest was raised against Article 11 in 1797 ....Whatever their personal feelings on the question of religious equality for non-Christians in particular states, all concurred that Article 11 comported with the principles of the Constitution."

In the Senate, the treaty barely caused a ripple. According to The Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the United States Senate, the treaty was read aloud on the floor of the Senate and copies were printed for the senators. No discussion or argument about the document was recorded, and the vote in favor was unanimous.

In recent years, some "Christian nation" advocates have argued that Article 11 never appeared in the treaty. They base the claim on research conducted by a Dutch scholar, Dr. C. Snouk Hurgronje, published in The Christian Statesman in 1930. Hurgronje located the only surviving Arabic copy of the treaty and found that when translated, Article 11 was actually a letter, mostly gibberish, from the bey of Algiers to the ruler of Tripoli.

But Hurgronje's discovery is irrelevant. There is no longer any doubt that the English version of the treaty transmitted to the United States did contain the "no Christian nation" language. Article 11 appeared intact in newspapers of the day as well as in volumes of treaties and proceedings of Congress published later, including the Session Laws of the Fifth Congress, published in 1797, and in a 1799 volume titled The Laws of the United States. In 1832 Article 11 appeared in the treaty when it was reprinted in Documents, Legislative and Executive, of the Congress of the United States 17891815, Volume 11- a tome that can still be examined today at the Library of Congress.

Furthermore, in Hunter Miller's definitive 1931 work on treaties, Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of America, he notes that "the Barlow translation is that which was submitted to the Senate ....it is the English text which in the United States has always been deemed the text of the treaty." It's clear that the English version of the treaty, which Congress approved, contained the famous Article 11. Why the article was removed from the Arabic version of the treaty, who did it and when remains another mystery.

However, the Avalon project has the full extract of Hunter Miller's notes in which he discusses his examination of the original treaty.

The first to be noted is that which contains the original treaty. It is a book in the literal sense. There are fourteen pages of Arabic text; all of these are right-hand pages. In the Arabic order, the first of them is the "note" of the money and presents, mentioned, according to the Barlow translation, in Article 10 of the treaty; the second is the "receipt," also mentioned in that article, and this page, like the first, is sealed with the seal of the Dey of Algiers. Then come the twelve pages of the treaty; the preamble is on the first of these with Article 1; and there is one article on a page, except that the script on the page between Articles 10 and 12, is, as fully explained in the annotated translation of 1930, not an article at all. The last of those twelve pages has also the seals and superscriptions, of which there are eleven In all, including one for the Dey of Algiers. The fourteen pages of Arabic text are reproduced above in left-to-right order of pagination; but the twelve treaty pages come first and then the "receipt" and then the "note."

In the original treaty book, on the corresponding fourteen left-hand pages, each signed or initialed by Joel Barlow, Consul General at Algiers, is a purported English translation of the Arabic of the respective pages opposite.

It is the Barlow translation which is here printed following the Arabic text and in the same order, first the twelve articles of the treaty, then the "receipt" and the "note," after which is the approval of Col. David Humphreys, then Minister at Lisbon, dated February 10, 1797; as written in the original document.

The Barlow translation of the treaty proper is that which has been printed in all official and unofficial treaty collections ever since it appeared in the Session Laws of the first session of the Fifth Congress, in 1797, and in The Laws of the United States, Folwell ea., IV, 44-8, printed in 1799; but in those treaty collections, as, for example, in 8 Statutes at Large, 154-56, the "receipt" and the "note" (there called "notice") are omitted; and the first source of the texts of those collections was clearly a now missing copy, as is shown by the fact that they include a certification of the text as a copy; that certification is signed by Joel Barlow under date of January 4, 1797, and it is neither in the original document nor in the Cathcart copy, which is particularly described below.[ed.-further down he details his examination of the "Cathcart copy" of the treaty and notes differences].

Thus, as we continue to decipher the provenance of Article 11, those documents published well after the original treaty, such as the Annals of Congress or the American State Papers do not prove that Article 11 was original or even included in the Treaty at the time of its debate and signing. As to the Session Laws of the Fifth Congress (1797) and the The Laws of the United States (1799) mentioned by Boston, it is clear that these were based on Barlow's edition of the Treaty, which I would argue is of questionable veracity. Further, it seems that Boston has selectively taken from Miller's notes to support his argument without including points made by Miller that could call into question Barlow's credibility.

More digging on the web found reference to the Session Laws only in articles that put forth essentially the same argument made by Boston. Of these, the earliest was written in 1994 by William Edelen, who mentioned the Session Laws without providing a source and pointed to Folwell's 1799 edition of the Laws of the United States, which I confirmed existed by going here. Additionally, Boston himself pointed to another source, though it also seemed to selectively quote Miller's notes.

The bottom line is that a singular phrase--possibly belatedly inserted--in an obscure Treaty has been used time and again by those who claim that the Founders, particularly John Adams, proclaimed the U.S. to be a secular state. I think the historical "facts" are not so clear cut, as I have demonstrated, and thus it is much too thin a strand on which to hang an argument.

Yet, these "secularists" [forgive the overused label] relied heavily, and perhaps this is a more convincing point, upon the supposition that the public didn't react negatively to the Treaty with the Christianity-disavowing clause. Nearly every writer mentioned that the treaty was published in the Philadelphia Gazette (found here or here?) and 2 New York newspapers, but, other than Walker, who pointed to the Philadelphia Gazette on 17 June 1797, there was no scholarly citation to support the oft-repeated claim. This begged the question: Why are only these three newspapers cited? From whence did this claim originate? [I'd be interested to see if anyone could provide more contemporary proof of the claim. Unfortunately, I didn't (and don't) have access to those newspaper resources and, for the sake of continuing my investigation, I trusted the veracity of the claims, albeit reluctantly.]

In the end, without contrary evidence, I decided to accept, with reservations, that the 11th Article was indeed present during ratification and that it was published with nary a protest. The question that follows is: why no protest? Perhaps another (brief) explanation concerning the other, practical factors that may have contributed to a lack of an uproar is worthwhile.

It is important to consider the logistics of treaty making in the late 18th Century. If the Congress disliked the wording of the 11th clause, and they decided to strike it, the Treaty would have had to have been renegotiated. This would have included further delays as ships carrying messages crossed the ocean to and fro. Meanwhile, more U.S. ships would have continued to be vulnerable to pirate raids. It also must not be forgotten that there were American sailors being held hostage in Tripoli and their families were imploring the government to do something to return their loved ones home. With all that, it is safe to assume that President Adams, the Congress and the American people wanted the Treaty ratified and sent back to Tripoli as soon as possible. Thus, I believe that it is more believable that politicians and citizens viewed the Treaty for what it was--a practical document crafted to meet an urgent problem. If the U.S. had to "disavow" Christianity as a founding principle to a bunch of infidel "Musselmen," so be it: the crisis had been resolved and the sailors were coming home.

In the end, my investigation reminded me that reliance solely upon "the document" can lead to flawed conclusions, or at least conclusions with a flawed emphasis. That the Treaty contained the clause in official documents is irrefutable. Yet, as I think I've shown, to make what was essentially a throwaway line of questionable provenance contained within the 11th section of a relatively obscure treaty a key pillar in the argument that Christianity was disavowed as informing the founding of the U.S is more rhetoric than history. Once again, Clio was spun.

NOTE: I originally wrote a shorter and less-well researched post on this subject on February 11, 2005, but have since deleted that original post from Spinning Clio. However, if you're curious to see how this later piece compares to that first, I cross-posted the original at my personal blog here. Just remember, it's the equivalent of a rough draft!

UPDATE: Thanks to Ralph Luker for mentioning this post and for his comments. While I'm fairly certain we don't see eye-to-eye ideologically, I've always been impressed by his historical open-mindedness and willingness to revisit topics in pursuit of historical "truth," even if it may differ from his own preconceptions. Ralph also made a point I think important. I may have implied that Ralph agreed with Allen's article in its entirety when that wasn't so. As Ralph explained:

I disagreed with much of Allen's article. Underlying our founding documents is a long history of wisdom about human nature and human communities that led the founders to insist on a mixed system of checks and balances. Among other things, that wisdom traces back through a Calvinist sense of governance and human obligation to a biblical sensibility about human nature. Having said that, it still seems to me that the unanimous adoption of this language by the United States Senate in 1797 is remarkable and important to recall. It seems unthinkable that it might be adopted without objection in today's Senate.

Ralph also offered some of his own analysis

One of Marc's interesting findings is that the surviving Arabic version of the Treaty of Tripoli does not include the language cited above in the official versions of the Treaty as published in English. Rather, in the surviving Arabic version of the Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11 is "actually a letter, mostly gibberish, from the bey of Algiers to the ruler of Tripoli." It is otherwise described as "a letter, crude and flamboyant and withal quite unimportant, from the Dey of Algiers to the Pasha of Tripoli."* What Marc doesn't see, I think, is that, if the language of the published English version of the Treaty's Article 11 doesn't appear in the only surviving Arabic copy of the Treaty, that undermines his claim that the language is there only to assuage the Muslim rulers of north Africa. It appears to me that there's need for additional research on the subject.

* In fairness to Marc, neither of these characterizations of Article 11 in the surviving Arabic version of the Treaty of Tripoli is his own. The prejudicial language is from old secondary sources.

Ralph makes a valid point regarding the inconsistency of my argument regarding Article 11. To clarify this point, this piece was sort of a running commentary, so at first I took Article 11 to be original and came up with my pragmatic explanation based on this supposition. As Ralph correctly pointed out, if Article 11 did not exist in the Arabic, then there was no need to include the disavowment to assuage any Muslim fears. I failed to go back and properly explain this. Thus, if Article 11 existed in the U.S. but not the Arabic, then, as intimated by Walker, Boston, et al, Barlow probably inserted the language on his own for different purposes. Finally, I wholeheartedly agree with Ralph that further investigation should be done, particularly by someone who has access to the contemporary newspapers of the time.

The discussion that was prompted by Ralph's analysis of my post is also worth a read, particularly the points made by Oscar Chamberlain

I think there is an important distinction between the idea of a godless constitution and a constitution that is not Christian. There was a near universal belief in some sort of intelligence shaping the universe (too many examples of intelligent design, perhaps?).

However, it is very clear that a majority in the constitutional convention plus all those who supported the first amendment did not want the United States government to be designated as Christian, or any subdivision thereof.

This was not an anti-religious impulse, except perhaps for a few. I think that the majority recognized that an appeal to any religion beyond that to a vague supreme deity would have pernicious and divisive consequences.

Think about religious belief in the 1780s and 90s. Would a majority have accepted the United States enshrining Catholicism as part of its identity? I don't think so. Once they started dividing bad Christianity from good Christianity could they have agreed on anything without chaos and dissension marking the founding of the constitution?

Again, I don't think so. They understood that the more clearly the United States identified itself officially with any religion, that the more divisiveness they would cause. Thus, while the language in the treaty is strikingly and unusually frank, I don't think the belief it expressed was uncommon.

Oscar also provides further context, but his main point is worth remembering. Even if they consciously disavowed Christianity, the Founders certainly did not disavow religion itself as a key component of the foundation of the U.S.

Science versus Humanities

2010-01-12T15:23:00.000-05:00

Originally posted 9/9/2004

A bit of a brouhaha developed some time ago as the result of a post by the blogger Michael Williams in which he questioned whether those who pursued careers in scientific fields could just as easily have chosen a career in the humanities, but the reverse is not true. William's post was prompted by an article, "Science for Smart, English for Dumb," by Eli Lehrer. Justin Katz has taken on the task of debating Williams, and the two have gone back and forth on the matter.

I think I can bring a unique perspective to this debate. I have a B.S in Engineering, currently do a lot of database management and am currently pursuing and M.A. in History. So, you see, I have a foot planted firmly in both camps. To properly discuss this, I'll use "ME" as an example. So let's crank up the way back machine, shall we?

I did well in high school, regardless of subject matter, generally. However, I was more proficient in the Humanities than in Math and Science. Why? I simply enjoyed them more, particularly History. But guess what. . . History didn't pay. Here's where I agree with Williams. I decided to pursue an Engineering degree and did so. I went to an fairly industry specific school, the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, and took extensive classes in Mechanical and Electrical engineering. Both obviously heavy on "science," and being familiar with both types of engineering required to be an adequate shipboard engineer. Yet, in which classes did consistently receive better grades? You guessed it, the Humanities, in this case English and History.

The course load at the Academy was heavy (averaged about 20 credit hours/quarter) because one year is spent at sea, training and working for slave wages as a "cadet." But I stray from my point. With at least 15 credit hours a quarter centered on science, and only 3 or so in the Humanities, the focus was obviously on the former. Given the goals of the school, it seems obvious that the Humanities Dep't. existed to provide the bare requirements for undergraduate education. Regardless of their relative unimportance in the overall realm of the Academy's educational manifesto, I embraced these courses and did appreciably better in them than in my harder, science based courses of my major. This could be because I liked them more, or because they were simply easier. Looking back, it seems like both would apply.

Why is this so? I think it's because the Humanities, especially at the undergraduate level, can lend themsevles to liberal levels of interpretation for student work. However, I also think that, as in my case, if students are interested in the topic, have decent reading comprehension and writing ability, then they will succeed. I guess I can say that I found humanities courses easier, but that may have more to do with me being more intrinsically interested in the subject matter than in any "intelligence" on my part.

Moving on, I've worked in the Engineering field now for 13 years. I started out applying my skills by working on ships, making beaucoup dollars and living life large. I then met the right girl, got married, and "came ashore," taking a job at a small engineering consulting firm in Rhode Island. I have since picked up computer skills, including a smattering of C++ and Delphi along with healthy doses of database administration skills. But this isn't a resume, merely an illustration of the point that I continue to enhance my scientific background. While still working, I decided to pursue my first love, and am currently striving for an MA in History. It is going well and I have come to appreciate the amount of thought and intellectual dexterity and depth required for a career in this particular branch of the humanities.

Given this as background, I think the essential point is that Humanities at the undergraduate level are not held to a high standard. The nature of subject matter results in a testing apparatus that leaves much open to interpretation, especially in these days of Literary Criticism (the bastardization of it, not the concept) and Post-Modernism that, though the latter is slowly fading away, still are firmly entrenched in the Ivory Tower. Conversely, the structural nature of the sciences and the fact that there is generally only one answer to any specific problem does not lend itself to such interpretation. Those who can learn the rules and apply them as they solve problems, succeed. This kind of structural intelligence is probably different than that required of the humanities. Neither is better, but the former is more measurable and quantifiable, thus trusted, while the latter's lack of measurables can lead to skepticism of quality.

Today's society offers more opportunity for immediate financial gain for those in scientifc fields as the results speak for themselves. The sciences all have nationally recognized standards. To be confirmed as qualified, a student or professional must pass a test. The test is, generally speaking, the same regardless of whether you graduated from Colgate, MIT or the University of Rhode Island. There are no similar, standard tests for the Humanities fields, to my knowledge. There is no way to quantify and compare. All qualification relies on reputation on the institution from which one graduated. There are no cold, hard facts to say "qualified," it's all based on perception formed by institutional reputation and subjective analysis of scholarly work.

Speaking now of the field of History in particular, to attain the highest degree, a PhD, requires one to basically sacrifice all life for a decade. After taking a year or two to get an MA, a PhD candidate must jump through the hoops of a particular program, usually embarking on independent study, serving as a lackey for his "advisor" by "assisting" him in teaching undergratuate courses, attending mandatory seminars and generally becoming indoctrinated into "the way we do things." All for about $10000 a year. Then it takes anywhere from 3-10 years to complete a Doctoral thesis. Gee, how could one resist? Obviously, money cannot be the motivating factor here. As a working man with a family, it is simply impossible for me to pursue a PhD after I receive my MA. That's OK and it's not really the point of this piece.

What is the point is that perhaps what is needed is for more "science" guys like me to cross the Rubicon and enter the Humanities, especially after we have put some years between our undergrad work and our current careers. In my courses, I have come across many students, either just out of undergrad or current teachers, who have never left the Academy and have a particular, often shared, view of the world. They don't realize that academia isn't the real world, and people who have worked, particularly those who have attained a level of professional success, can do a vital service by infilitrating those ivory towers, knocking down a wall or two and allowing in some fresh air. I've tried to do so, without stepping on toes and I think it is a necessity.

The Humanities aren't simply about being well-read or informed, more importantly, they help to hone skills of critical thinking. I don't mean logical thinking here, as can be found in the sciences, I mean critical; there is a difference. It's not about cultural snobbery, it's about better knowing ourselves as humans. It's about getting beneath the MTV/short attention span society and refusing to take everything at face value based on an image or conventional wisdom. It doesn't allow you to make assumptions about anything. Critical thinking doesn't have to be deconstructionist, it's most valuable contribution to society is that it can help to strengthen valued themes or institutions and the like. Once subjected to rigorous analysis informed by 2,000 years of Western Civilization and, now, Eastern and even Aboriginal if you wish "Civilization," cherished ideals such as religion or national history can emerge stronger. The Humanities are the certification societies of our culture. It's members just don't print out and send you a certificate. Yes, there is no concrete standard of measure or a priori concept. The Humanities deal with us, with Humans, and how we manifest what and how we think. Human is the root of the term, after all, and humans have Free Will, the great unknowable variable. No science has yet calculated a value for it.

Note: Originally posted here.

Template: How to Get Historians Riled Up

2010-01-11T20:10:00.000-05:00

Original post 3/31/07

Step 1: Some guy, a few thousand years ago, writes a lot of history, including a bit about some battle.

Step 2: Lots of people read the history and find that particular battle inspiring. Eventually, a pretty poor movie gets made about it.

Step 3: A comic book writer, er, "graphic novelist", using the movie mentioned in Step 2 as at least partial inspiration, creates his highly stylized interpretation of the same events. (Note: primary audience are teenage boys/young men).

Step 4: As a movie maker who has a background in horror films, (and who also saw how commercially successful another movie based on a "graphic novel" by the guy from Step 3 was) decide to make a movie based on that graphic novel (aimed at the teenage boys/young men) and not the more "historical" Step 1.

Step 5: Have a historian write the forward to the new novelization. Make sure the historian is routinely disparaged by many of his colleagues. Also be sure that the historian makes a few points about how some aspects of the film are, indeed, historical. This is important!!! It lays the groundwork for Step 7.

Step 6: With luck, the movie is popular with the simple-minded masses but receives mixed reviews from professionals (both critics and historians). Maybe it's because you left out that a bunch of actors were also involved? (Oh, not that kind of Thespian?)

Step 7: Watch as the long knives of Clio are drawn from scabbards and pointed at the guy in Step 5. At this point, a good old-fashioned--if only one-way--cat-fight ensues. (Reeowwrrr!) But who cares if its a one-way fight: lots of publicity is generated for the consumption of both the rubes and the thinking classes. (That means more money!)

Step 8: Continue to rake in millions from the unsuspecting public who just thought they were watching a sorta-historical, often campy, adaptation of a comic-book, er, "graphic novel" and didn't realize that it was really part of an ideologically driven conspiracy meant to instigate a new Crusade. (Or something like that).

Step 9: While counting money, thank all the people who actually took your simplistic comic-book-comes-to-life movie so seriously.

Step 10: Ask yourself: is there another sorta-historical comic book out there that could be a movie (or a series of them)? Can Step 5 historian write about it?

Series - French Canadians in the Civil War Era

2010-01-11T19:56:00.001-05:00

Original post 6/22/2005

This was a 4 parts series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part4). The original introduction (also in Part 1) follows:

In "Non-Natives, the Military and 'Empire'," I wrote an elaborative commentary on a piece by Max Boot in which he proposed that illegal immigrants should be recruited for military service and in which he referred to some claims that mercenaries had caused the "fall" of Rome. I also mentioned another bit of Boot's "call to history," in which he wrote:

In the past, the U.S. military had many more foreigners than we do today. (During the Civil War, at least 20% were immigrants. Now it's 7%.) The British army, among many others, has also made good use of noncitizens. Nepalese Gurkhas still fight and die for the Union Jack despite not being 'culturally bonded' to it. No doubt they would do the same for the Stars and Stripes.

As it happens, I have done research on the French Canadian immigrants to New England during the Civil War era. Thus, prompted by a historian's natural desire to offer a historical example to compare and contrast with contemporary issues, I have decided to post my research in a series, beginning today.

What follows is a conflation of a traditional research paper with online links interspersed. Time prevents me from a thorough going-over, so any mistakes, misattributions or faulty citation (in short, "sloppiness") should be taken with a grain of salt. However, while I'm aware of some formatting inconsistencies, I ask that the reader pass over those: it's about the content, not the presentation. Nonetheless, it would be appreciated if legitimate oversights were brought to my attention. A final note: Boot wrote about illegal immigrants. To my knowledge, there was no such delineation between a "legal" and an "illegal" immigrant in the Civil War era. However, this is not to say there wasn't an idea of "desirable" versus "undesirable."

New Site - The Maine Journey: Experiences in Maine

2010-01-11T19:17:00.000-05:00

Original post 1/11/09

For a couple years, I've been working off and on to complete a small side project. Today, I finally finished it up. I utilized the blog format to get it together, but it's not really a blog. Instead, it's more of a conventional web site, with a blog-style Comments section. I've explained why I chose to undertake this piece of history in the Introduction:

This website, The Maine Journey: Experiences in Maine, is a "virtual" reproduction of an actual field trip guide of the same name that was written and published for 7th Grade students from the towns of Etna, Dixmont, Carmel and Levant beginning in 1981. It was based upon the experiences of the students and staff during the 1980 Maine Journey as well as other information. The guide was written by Project Director Suzanne Smith of the Levant Consolidated School and Assistant Project Director Trudy Walo of the Etna-Dixmont school.

I moved to Levant, Maine in 1978 and attended the Levant Consolidated School in 1978/79. At that time, 5th grade students who lived in Levant then went to Caravel Jr. High School (now Caravel Middle School), which took 5th to 8th grade students from Levant and the neighboring town of Carmel (though Carmel had it's own 5th grade, too). Together, Carmel and Levant comprised MSAD (Maine Scholastic Administrative District) #23. The nearby towns of Etna and Dixmont comprised MSAD #38 and also shared a school. Both MSAD's were administered by the same School Superintendent.

Suzanne Smith began teaching at the Levant Consolidated School in September 1963 and was its principal for 30 years. She was not only the prime mover behind the Maine Journey, but also Director of the Levant recreation department. In this role, she did much to help my father obtain uniforms, bats and balls when he coached various youth baseball teams in the town. She cared about all facets of the lives of the kids of Levant and her interest in their lives continued well past the time they spent under her guidance. She was a regular attendee at the 8th grade and High School graduations of her Levant kids. Suzanne Smith passed away in June of 2005 (just a few days before her retirement). Shortly thereafter, I began to try to think of some appropriate way in which I could pay homage to this wonderful lady. That's when serendipity--or a larger force--lent a hand.

Though an engineer, I had always loved history and in 2003 I decided to pursue a Master's Degree in History at Providence College in Rhode Island (the state in which I currently live with my family). Shortly after Suzanne's death--as I was wrapping up my thesis work--I happened to be looking through some history books when I spotted my slightly tattered copy of the Maine Journey Field Trip Guide. Along with a flood of memories came a realization of the nature of the impact that Suzanne had on my life. I realized that her Maine Journey project was one of the significant educational experiences in my life. Further, I believe that the experience of traveling around the state in a school bus to learn about Maine life and history played a part in leading me towards a stint in the Merchant Marine and, eventually, to my going back to school for a history degree. As is so often the case, I never got a chance to thank her. Thus, I offer this small token of appreciation: A "virtual" Maine Journey.

The layout of this site is simple. I have reproduced--in the form of separate posts--the actual text and pictures from the guide as it pertains to a particular place that was visited--or was marked as a potential place to visit--during the Maine Journey. Please note that the original Maine Journey Field Trip Guide was written over 25 years ago and that many of the places visited and described (and prices charged!) back then have changed quite a bit. For instance, the paper industry in Maine has undergone immense change and most (if not all) of the original paper mills and Companies that were visited back in the 1980's have either closed down or have been swallowed up by larger companies. There are many listings with a "*", indicating they were not visited in 1980, which was the year prior to the publication of the guide. However, be assured that students did visit all of these places over the years.

On the right are relevant links to those sites. Some of the places have either undergone name changes or were incorporated into larger museums. Some simply ceased to exist. In general, I've made every effort to provide links to sites that I believe reflect the original places as much as possible. I've also taken the editorial license to remove references to specific people, phone numbers and addresses for points of contact that were originally provided in the Field Trip Guide.

In conclusion, "Thanks" to all of those educators and staff affiliated with the Maine Journey during its years of operation. The impact you had on innumerable students will not be forgotten. So, please feel free to leave a comment about these particular places or anything in general about Maine. Most of all: enjoy and learn.

A Positive Historical Baseline

2010-01-11T08:04:00.000-05:00

Original post 3/30/2006

Peggy Noonan writes about immigration today. Her central point is that we are not doing a good enough job of explaining to the new immigrants the special and unique aspects of the U.S.

Because we do not communicate to our immigrants, legal and illegal, that they have joined something special, some of them, understandably, get the impression they've joined not a great enterprise but a big box store. A big box store on the highway where you can get anything cheap. It's a good place. But it has no legends, no meaning, and it imparts no spirit.

Noonan thinks that part of the fault lay with history teachers. In particular, those in secondary education.

Who is at fault? Those of us who let the myth die, or let it change, or refused to let it be told. The politically correct nitwit teaching the seventh-grade history class who decides the impressionable young minds before him need to be informed, as their first serious history lesson, that the Founders were hypocrites, the Bill of Rights nothing new and imperfect in any case, that the Indians were victims of genocide, that Lincoln was a clinically depressed homosexual who compensated for the storms within by creating storms without . . .

You can turn any history into mud. You can turn great men and women into mud too, if you want to.

That is true. No one is perfect, after all and when we focus on the unflattering characteristics and individual failings of historical figures in an attempt to make them more human, more like us, we sometimes obscure what brought them to our historical attention in the first place. And Noonan doesn't just blame the "nitwits" (as she calls them), those of us who engage in honest scholarship--" people who mean to be honestly and legitimately critical, to provide a new look at the old text" should also be aware of what we're doing.

They're not noticing that the old text--the legend, the myth--isn't being taught anymore. Only the commentary is. But if all the commentary is doubting and critical, how will our kids know what to love and revere? How will they know how to balance criticism if they've never heard the positive side of the argument?

Those who teach, and who think for a living about American history, need to be told: Keep the text, teach the text, and only then, if you must, deconstruct the text.

I'm sympathetic to her argument insofar as it relates to historical education at the elementary and, for the most part, the secondary school level. That's where we lay the historical groundwork and where we should avoid the overt or covert inculcation of historical cynicism into young minds. Leave critique's and deconstruction for the later years.

There is nothing wrong with first introducing a positive history to little kids who in today's day and age seem to not hear enough positive stories. In the grand sweep of our nation's history--although many things have "gone wrong"--I think most would admit that the U.S. has historically been heading in the right direction (I'm generalizing, not being deterministic). Recognizing this, we should establish a positive historical baseline from which older students can venture. When they get older, when they reach those teenage years when so many believe history is boring and their minds are looking for something new and exciting, that's when we should introduce them with "well, did you know this part of the story about such and such."

Introducing those historical shades of gray at a later age--when the kids are more able to deal with them--seems like a better idea than saddling youngsters with too much historical irony and cynicism. I think there's a way to positive way to contrast American ideals with America's historical reality. After all, every time the nation fell short there seemed to always be those in the background or in the minority who continued to strive to meet the ideals. America has not yet been a lost cause.

Lest we forget, most of us adults learned the nuances of our history only after we learned the "happy" basics that Noonan describes. I'd guess that many future historians came to love history in college because they enjoyed learning and discovering more details--good and bad--about the same old history that they thought they had already know. It seems like it worked for us. I'm not saying we should lie to the kids or focus on some triumphant narrative, but I think Noonan has a point. We should teach our kids to give their own nation and those who built it the benefit of the doubt. That's where we started and I'd say that historians have managed to do quite well.

John Adams and the Problem of Contemporary Political Classification

2010-01-10T19:49:00.000-05:00

Original post 7/12/08

NB: A version of this was first posted at Anchor Rising.

Providence Journal editorialist Ed Achorn had a piece yesterday on John Adams and recommended taking in the HBO mini-series that is now out on DVD (I hope to). Coincidentally, I had been thinking about Adams after listening to the Independence Day show of local radio talk-show host Matt Allen, during which he he read the entire Declaration of Independence and extolled the virtues of our great nation. (Full disclosure--contributors to another website I co-founded, anchorrising.com, have a weekly spot on his show and occasionally are in-studio guests). The conversation was wide-ranging, and along the way he made an off-the-cuff remark along the lines that John Adams was a Democrat and Thomas Jefferson was a Republican.

Wha.....? I thought. I suspected it was based on the fact that Adams was a prominent member of the post-Revolution Federalist Party (along with George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, incidentally), which advocated a strong central government. Given Matt's, shall we say, inclination against big government, I can understand why he'd think that anyone for a strong national government--no matter the time or place, I suppose--was akin to what we would call a contemporary, big government Democrat.

As it turned out, Matt was being a bit anachronistic--though knowingly so--by attributing the Federalist's desire to centralize power as the equivalent of today's conception of "big government." The one-off remark missed the historical context surrounding the rise of the Federalist philosophy of government (hey, it was a talk-show!), which was based on a belief that they urgently needed to strengthen and tighten the internal ties of their nascent nation so it could survive in a belligerent world.

As I discussed with Allen (briefly), Adams is considered by most conservatives to have been the first American conservative; one of their own, much less a Founding era Democrat! He wasn't interested in encroaching on the rights of the population or imposing arbitrary taxes or monetary redistribution or instituting a vast bureaucracy or creating programs to address every ill, whether real or perceived. In fact, neither were his political opponents, Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans. I guess the truth of the matter is that, in the Founding era, there really was no equivalent to the modern conception of a big-government Democrat. They came along with Woodrow Wilson and, later, FDR.

Here's some of that historical context I was talking about.

After the Revolution, it was becoming clear to many of the Founders that the Articles of Confederation simply didn't have enough teeth. The government they provided for was very weak and the particular interests of the various states trumped those of the nation to the detriment of all. European powers played the states off of each other and threatened to economically, or even militarily, divide and conquer the young nation. For example, on economic problem was the inability of the national government to place duties on imports. This was a key economic weapon against great powers like Great Britain who restricted imports from America. In 1781 Congress, under the Articles, asked the states for permission to enact duties, but all such actions required "unanimous consent" and--would you believe it--Rhode Island refused.

As for foreign affairs, with no national army, Great Britain made excuses for not abandoning their forts in the American west; with no navy, the Barbary Pirates attacked American merchant ships and put their crews into slavery; with no consolidated diplomatic "vision", virtually no national treaties could be signed (again, because of a high hurdle of approval) while individual states made their own treaties. The colonies had won independence together, but in their freedom, they were drifting apart as each state viewed itself as a sovereign nation. In reality, they were setting themselves up to be cherries ripe for the picking. The states had become their own worst enemies.

In the debate over the creation of a new government, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay wrote the Federalist Papers to explain why the new Constitution, one that described a stronger central government than that of the Articles of Confederation, was required for a young and vulnerable nation. They were opposed by the Anti-Federalists, who argued against the centralization of power put in place by the Constitution. (Eventually, the Anti-federalist inspired Bill of Rights were thrown in as a compromise to get passage of the Constitution).

During this debate, Adams was in Great Britain, and was asked to hastily compile something to help convince the states of the wisdom of passing the new Constitution. His A Defence of the Consitution of Government of the United States of America helped elaborate further on the principles of the balance of power within government and how a more complicated government guided by laws was necessary to maintain the liberty so desired by the American people. (In this, he was informed by his own work as the chief personality involved in the drafting of the Massachusetts Constitution). A selection from Defence--in this case Adams' theory on the importance of property--is probably enough to show why many consider him a conservative:

Suppose a nation, rich and poor, high and low, ten millions in number, all assembled together; not more than one or two millions will have lands, houses, or any personal property; if we take into the account the women and children, or even if we leave them out of the question, a great majority of every nation is wholly destitute of property, except a small quantity of clothes, and a few trifles of other movables...if all were to be decided by a vote of the majority, the eight or nine millions who have no property, would not think of usurping over the rights of the one or two millions who have? Property is surely a right of mankind as really as liberty. Perhaps, at first, prejudice, habit, shame or fear, principle or religion, would restrain the poor from attacking the rich, and the idle from usurping on the industrious; but the time would not be long before courage and enterprise would come, and pretexts be invented by degrees, to countenance the majority in dividing all the property among them, or at least, in sharing it equally with its present possessors. Debts would be abolished first; taxes laid heavy on the rich, and not at all on the others; and at last a downright equal division of every thing be demanded, and voted. What would be the consequence of this? The idle, the vicious, the intemperate, would rush into the utmost extravagance of debauchery, sell and spend all their share, and then demand a new division of those who purchased from them. The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If "Thou shalt not covet," and "Thou shalt not steal," were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.

Sound like a modern day, "big government Democrat" (or "Republican" for that matter!) to you?

But it does get more complicated as we look away from political philosophy and towards actual politics. During Washington's first term as President, two factions emerged with different ideas and priorities as to how the new government should operate. Washington, Adams and Hamilton eventually identified themselves as Federalists, which wanted a strong army and navy, central banking (especially consolidation of state debt into national and the establishment of national credit), strong courts and also favored Great Britain in trade and foreign affairs. Jefferson and Madison would dub themselves Democratic-Republicans and they and their party opposed a strong central government, banking, a standing army--and especially navy--and looked to France for political and philosophical inspiration.

In reality, Washington mostly tried to stay above the partisanship. He was all about noblesse oblige and, as Father of the Country, he could pull it off (though he still came under some criticism for being too "kingly"). Hamilton was the heart-and-soul of the Federalist Party and leader of the so-called High Federalists, who, without pushing it too far, thought that Great Britain had the right idea with an aristocracy and all. For his part, as indicated above, Adams believed in the balance of power, but also in the necessity of a strong central government to facilitate the unification of the disparate colonies and factions when needed. Such was, according to Russell Kirk, Adams' "practical conservatism."

After the nasty election of 1796, Adams, who didn't get along with Hamilton and his allies, was a man very much alone as President. He was left to carve his own path during his single term. But with no allies in either party, he weathered a few crises (XYZ affair and the Quasi-war with France most notably) and served only one-term, losing to the popular Jefferson in the election of 1800 (sometimes dubbed the second revolution).

The legacy of John Adams is hard to encapsulate, and a scattershot blog post can't do him justice. But his writings and political philosophy as well as his determination in the face of personal unpopularity stand out for me. And I've got a soft spot because he managed to keep a foundering U.S. Navy afloat when so many, including Thomas Jefferson--who would later benefit from Adams investment in the Navy against the Barbary Pirates--wanted to sell it off. Adams believed in a strong national defense and strong financial institutions and a central government that could stand up to enemies "foreign and domestic." His idea of a strong national government was meant to deal with these issues, not to encroach into every aspect of Americans' lives.

ADDENDUM: Conservatives have long pointed to John Adams as the first prominent proponent of an American-style conservatism. Russel Kirk and Peter Viereck both wrote histories of American conservatism and each regard Adams as an American conservative touchstone. Many historians--Joseph Ellis, David McCullough and Richard Brookhiser come to mind--regard Adams as essentially conservative, too. They base their classification on Adams' on political thought as expressed in his voluminous writings.

The Encyclopedia Britannica offers a helpful and concise summary of Adams' political thought (the entry was written by Joseph Ellis):

Adams wished to warn his fellow Americans against all revolutionary manifestos that envisioned a fundamental break with the past and a fundamental transformation in human nature or society that supposedly produced a new age. All such utopian expectations were illusions, he believed, driven by what he called “ideology,” the belief that imagined ideals, so real and seductive in theory, were capable of being implemented in the world. The same kind of conflict between different classes that had bedeviled medieval Europe would, albeit in muted forms, also afflict the United States, because the seeds of such competition were planted in human nature itself. Adams blended the psychological insights of New England Puritanism, with its emphasis on the emotional forces throbbing inside all creatures, and the Enlightenment belief that government must contain and control those forces, to construct a political system capable of balancing the ambitions of individuals and competing social classes.

His insistence that elites were unavoidable realities in all societies, however, made him vulnerable to the charge of endorsing aristocratic rule in America, when in fact he was attempting to suggest that the inevitable American elite must be controlled, its ambitions channeled toward public purposes. He also was accused of endorsing monarchical principles because he argued that the chief executive in the American government, like the king in medieval European society, must possess sufficient power to check the ravenous appetites of the propertied classes. Although misunderstood by many of his contemporaries, the realistic perspective Adams proposed—and the skepticism toward utopian schemes he insisted upon—has achieved considerable support in the wake of the failed 20th-century attempts at social transformation in the communist bloc. In Adams’s own day, his political analysis enjoyed the satisfaction of correctly predicting that the French Revolution would lead to the Reign of Terror and eventual despotism by a military dictator.

By the way, Jefferson was decidedly pro-French Revolution, along with the rest of his party, the Democratic-Republicans. Ellis also wrote the EB entry forJefferson, which includes this bit about the Adams and Jefferson retirement correspondence:

The reconciliation between the two patriarchs was arranged by their mutual friend Benjamin Rush, who described them as “the North and South poles of the American Revolution.” That description suggested more than merely geographic symbolism, since Adams and Jefferson effectively, even dramatically, embodied the twin impulses of the revolutionary generation. As the “Sage of Monticello,” Jefferson represented the Revolution as a clean break with the past, the rejection of all European versions of political discipline as feudal vestiges, the ingrained hostility toward all mechanisms of governmental authority that originated in faraway places. As the “Sage of Quincy (Massachusetts),” Adams resembled an American version of Edmund Burke, which meant that he attributed the success of the American Revolution to its linkage with past practices, most especially the tradition of representative government established in the colonial assemblies. He regarded the constitutional settlement of 1787–88 as a shrewd compromise with the political necessities of a nation-state exercising jurisdiction over an extensive, eventually continental, empire, not as a betrayal of the American Revolution but an evolutionary fulfillment of its promise.

These genuine differences of opinion made Adams and Jefferson the odd couple of the American Revolution and were the primary reasons why they had drifted to different sides of the divide during the party wars of the 1790s. The exchange of 158 letters between 1812 and 1826 permitted the two sages to pose as philosopher-kings and create what is arguably the most intellectually impressive correspondence between statesmen in all of American history. Beyond the elegiac tone and almost sculpted serenity of the letters, the correspondence exposed the fundamental contradictions that the American Revolution managed to contain.

Conservatives Aren't "Whig"-ing Out

2010-01-10T12:37:00.000-05:00

Original post 10/20/2005

Cliopatria has announced that they are hosting a symposium on Princeton historian Sean Wilentz's recent New York Times piece, "Bush's Ancestors." Wilentz's thesis is that

. . . neither conservatives nor liberals have fully recognized that the Bush administration's political and ideological recipe was invented decades before McKinley by a nearly forgotten American institution: the Whig Party of the 1830's and 40's.

He compares the rhetoric, ideology and party structure of the antebellum Whigs to that of modern conservative Republicans. Wilentz obviously knows the history of the era: he has published books and articles to critical acclaim. Yet, his purported examples of the common themes shared by modern conservative and antebellum Whig thought do not tell the whole story. Many of Wilentz's observations, while they are legitimate comparisons, could also just as easily be pointed to as rhetorical or philosophical inspiration for contemporary liberal, or Democrat, political thought. In fact, the rhetoric, ideology and philosophy of the Whigs erstwhile competition, the Jacksonian Democrats, could be shown to be inspirations for both contemporary parties.

Because Wilentz is so well published in this area, it is hard to believe that he is unaware of the common rhetorical and ideological strands--from various American political antecedents--that have been caught up, filtered and dispensed by either of the contemporary political parties. As such, though I hesitate to do so, I can only assume that Wilentz purposefully left out such evidence that didn't support his claim--though he doesn't explicitly state such--that the modern conservative owes more to the antebellum Whig party than to any other political organization in our nation's history.

In general, it is my belief that any attempt to make such a 1:1 relation between a modern political entity and a historical one is too simplistic. We are all inspired by various people or ideas: rare is the person who is either willing or able to exactly mirror a loved precedent. While Wilentz does not go so far as to assert such a thing--though he does attempt at the end of his piece to describe how antebellum Whig thought "evolved" into modern conservativism--the general reader could be left with the impression that today's conservatives are "just like" the antebellum Whigs. Wilentz should have taken greater care in making the comparison. He certainly has exhibited such an ability in his scholarship, past and present.

Those are my general thoughts on Wilentz's piece. What follows is a more detailed appraisal. While I certainly went into greater depth than generally is done on a blog, I in no way claim that the ideas expressed are my "final" ones. I welcome any suggestions or corrections wholeheartedly, as any good historian (PhD or not!) should.

Background

First, it's helpful to remember that some of the tension between the Whigs and the Jacksonian Democrats grew out of the genuine belief of each that they were the true inheritors of the philosophy of classical republicanism as expressed in the writings and actions of the Founding generation. Marc W. Kruman's "The Second American Party System and the Transformation of Revolutionary Republicanism," (Journal of the Early Republic, Vol.12, No.4, p. 509-537.) explains much of this, though historians still debate the degree of how much, and from whom, the Whigs themselves derived their political philosophy. Kruman notes that

Although historians have often identified the Whigs as the heirs of the Federalist party, I am persuaded by Daniel Walker Howe’s contention that Whig ideology was an inheritance of Madisonian Republicanism, not Federalism. [For this he refers to Walker Howe's, The Political Culture of the American Whigs, (Chicago, 1979)]

Nonetheless, it is my understanding that many, if not most, former Federalists eventually became Whigs. The Whigs also attracted many former Democrats who had become disenchanted by Jackson (but more on that later). The transformation of John Quincy Adams from Federalist to Jeffersonian Republican to (briefly) Anti-Mason, to Whig illustrates the relative rapidity at which changes of party affiliation occurred during this era. However, even though people changed party affiliation, they tended to look to the same classical republican political philosophies as the core of their political beliefs. And even as individuals clung to these philosophical inspirators, the Whig and Democrat parties evolved by emphasizing some portions of their shared classical republican roots and discarding others.

Big Government

Wilentz's first attempt to illustrate the similarity between contemporary conservatives and Whigs is to compare today's conservative rhetoric concerning an "attack on big government" to that which the Whigs used against the Jackson Administration.

Modern conservatism rests on the proposition that Democrats and liberals thrive on a huge, wasteful federal bureaucracy that discourages individual initiative and lavishes public money on the liberals' shiftless political base. In his first Inaugural Address, Reagan denounced "government by an elite group," by which he unmistakably meant parasitic liberal Democrats.

In the 1830's and 40's, Whigs said much the same about the Jacksonians. They charged that President Jackson had established an executive tyranny, while Jackson's followers, as the Whig journalist Horace Greeley wrote, had turned government into "an agency mainly of corruption, oppression and robbery." In defiance of Jacksonian despotism, one North Carolinian declared in an 1835 editorial, the Whigs rallied "in defense of LIBERTY against POWER." The Whigs particularly objected, like Reagan and his successors, to federal regulation of business and financial matters. A typical Whig editorial from 1837 denounced the Democrats for warring on "the merchants and mercantile interests" in order to support federal power.

Later, Wilentz does provide an important caveat:

Of course, there are significant differences between the Whigs and today's conservatives. Governing in an age before giant private corporations, the Whigs saw federal spending on the nation's infrastructure as imperative to economic development.

It is that "significant difference" that makes all the difference in Wilentz's flawed comparison. Yes, the Whigs denounced government, but it was the particular government "ruled" by "King Andrew," whom they manifestly did not trust. To those who came to identify themselves as "Whigs," Jackson represented arbitrary, unchecked executive power.

Wilentz provides an important quote--"in defense of LIBERTY against POWER"--made by the Whigs. The Whigs took their name from the Sons of Liberty of the Revolutionary Era, who were much inspired by the Radical Whig English Commonwealthmen (see Bernard Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution). The central belief of all of these Whigs was the perpetual threat posed to liberty by the innately corruptive force of power. In the case of the Commonwealthmen, it was the King who wielded this power. Similarly, those of the Revolutionary Era, who eventually came to view the British Empire as a whole as dangerous, eventually came to believe that corrupt power was especially manifested in the person of the King (at first, they blamed Parliament). To the antebellum Whigs, it was "King Andrew" who they feared.

Jackson may not have supported a powerful Federal government, but he most definitely supported the idea that the executive--Jackson himself--should have the most power in that government. This was one of the main reasons that previously disparate political groups from the South and North coalesced to form the Whig party to oppose Jackson's Democrats. As Lynn L. Marshall explained in "The Strange Stillbirth of the American Whig Party,"

The key element in the formation of the Whig party was party organization, not ideology. There seems sufficient reason to assume that Whig ideology, in early infancy at least, limited itself to opposition to "executive usurpation," the negative issue implied in its choice of name and the focus of its electioneering efforts throughout the mid-1830's. One can hardly find another common ground between John C. Calhoun, prince of nullification, and nationalists like Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, all of whom joined to establish the party. [The American Historical Review, Vol.72, No.2, p.445]

Politics can make strange bedfellows! To conclude on this point, the Whigs weren't anti-government so much as anti-Jacksonian government. They were perfectly comfortable in supporting internal public improvements funded by tax dollars--so long as they held the purse strings. To turn Wilentz's comparison around, I could offer that modern day liberals are like the Whigs: both oppose(d) what they perceive(d) as executive power run rampant in the person of George W. Bush and Andrew Jackson, respectively. I could also argue that the Democrats under FDR, when faced with the Great Depression, or LBJ and his Great Society owe a debt to the Whig proponents of public expenditure for public good. I don't intend to, but I'm fairly confident such an essay could be written (though I'm not sure if it would make the NY Times!)

Populism

Wilentz also compares Whig populism to modern day conservative populism, while implying that both are disingenuous. He had begun the piece seemingly taking liberals to task for viewing "contemporary conservatism as a rhetorical smoke screen intended to deceive the masses," but his later analysis indicates he may also (at least somewhat) believe this to be the case. As he explains:

Whig rhetoric departed fundamentally from the aristocratic hauteur and gloominess that old-line conservatives inherited from the defunct Federalist Party. On the political stump, the example of the buckskinned Whig congressman and Tennessee rifleman Davy Crockett was widely imitated. . . While they cast themselves and their rich supporters as just plain folks, the Whigs portrayed the Democrats as smooth-handed, Champagne-drinking, out-of-touch professional politicians. The appeals helped the Whigs win the presidency in 1840 with their famous "log cabin and hard cider" campaign, presenting their well-born presidential candidate, William Henry Harrison, as a plebeian hero who lived in a humble abode and drank the common frontiersman's brew.

There is a bit more to the story, though. As Paul Johnson explained:

Harrison campaigned as a rugged frontiersman, with his running mate John Tyler (1790-1862), a dyed-in-the-wool Virginian and states’ rights man who had been alienated by Jackson’s high-handed ways, being presented as an experienced and wily professional politician. So the Whig slogan was ‘Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.’ The Democrats retaliated by ignoring Tyler and branding General Harrison, who liked his noggin-or rather his joram-as ‘The Log Cabin and Hard Cyder’ candidate. The Whigs turned this to advantage by holding ‘Log Cabin Rallies’ at which hard cider was copiously served. They also created an electorally effective image of the dapper Van Buren as an effete New York dandy, drinking wine ‘from his coolers of silver.’ [Paul Johnson, A History of the American People, p. 239]

Hugh Brogan also provides further insight:

. . . one of [the Democrats'] aggressive journalists, ignoring Harrison's genteel antecedents, wrote that he was unfit to be President, he should stay in his log-cabin with his tocacco pipe, his jug of hard cider, and his latch-string hanging out to let strangers in at the door. This snobbish remark was too much for the Americans. If the Whigs were the pary of log-cabins and cider, they must be the right party to vote for. Soon every Whig parade, barbecue and clambake...displayed log cabins borne aloft on sturdy shoulders. [Hugh Brogan, The Penguin History of the USA, p. 277]

Of course, Ol' Hickory, a plantation owner, and Martin Van Buren, probably the definition of a New York Cosmopolitan before there was such a thing (and hardly a "man of the people"), had both practiced this sort of rhetorical populism. The Whigs simply copied a tactic that had worked for their opponents. Wilentz fails to mention this inconsistency between Democrat rhetoric and reality. He then focuses on how modern conservatives have used this time-tested political tack:

Today's Republicans have repeated the makeover. In the 1970's, the conservative movement's adoption of the sunny-tempered Hollywood cowboy Reagan as its leader in place of the dour, bespectacled Barry Goldwater was the great breakthrough of modern conservative populism. Thereafter, the transformation of the Massachusetts-born patrician George H.W. Bush into a lover of pork rinds and of his Andover-, Yale- and Harvard-educated son into a rugged Texas pioneer extended the conservative populist theme. The Democrats, meanwhile, remain trapped in the public's image of them as effete "brie and Chablis" liberals.

Wilentz is correct, but omitting similar attempts made by modern Democrats (John Kerry-in hunting-camouflage; Michael Dukakis in an Abrams tank; the on-again, off-again southern accent of Hillary Clinton) gives a false impression, does it not? It's not only conservatives who strive to "relate" to "the people."

Morality

Wilentz makes the common charge that, just like contemporary conservatives, the Whigs were moralistic do-gooders who sought to impose their own version of morality on the public.

Today's Republican Party owes a great deal to its political alliance with resurgent conservative evangelical Christians, part of a wider conservative attack on liberals as the enemies of traditional morality. . .Upon enlisting in the Whig Party in 1835, Representative John Bell of Tennessee sounded like a forerunner of William Bennett, declaring that "we have, in truth, in the last 8 or 10 years, been in a continual state of moral war."

. . . The Whigs were drawn disproportionately from devotees of the enormous wave of evangelical revivalism known as the Second Great Awakening. Evangelicalism quickly led a minority of Northern Whigs into the crusade against slavery. But mainstream Whigs despised anti-slavery politics and were preoccupied by evangelically inspired efforts to enforce public morality with coercive temperance and Sunday blue-law campaigns. Democrats opposed these efforts, upholding the separation of church and state in order to prevent Congress, one Kentucky Jacksonian wrote, from becoming the "proper tribunal to determine what are the laws of God.

Daniel Walker Howe has written on this caricature of the "do-gooder" Whigs. In particular, he noted how the historiography indicates that Evangelicalism seems to have "mysteriously" changed from one century to the next.

The scholarship on the eighteenth century treats evangelical Christianity as a democratic and liberating force, whereas much of the literature on the evangelical movement of the nineteenth century emphasizes its implications for social control. Did some dramatic transformation of the revival impulse come about at the turn of the century? I would argue not; historians have concentrated on the "soft" and "hard" sides of evangelicalism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, respectively, but both were consistently present. Evangelical Protestantism did not mysteriously mutate from a democratic and liberating impulse into an elitist and repressive one when it moved from the eighteenth to the ninetheenth-century. Austerity and self-discipline were present even in eighteenth-century evangelicalism; individual autonomy was asserted even in nineteenth-century evangelicalism. The problem is that our idea of social control, implying one person or group imposing constraints on another, is appropriate for some aspects of the reform impulse, such as the treatment of the insane, but not all. It does not take account of the embrace of self-discipline, so typical of evangelicals. [Daniel Walker Howe, "The Evangelical Movement and Political Culture in the North During the Second Party System," The Journal of American History, Vol.77, No.4, p.1220. Emphasis in original]

He further proposed that we "substitute the more comprehensive category of discipline for social control" to "better understand the evangelical movement and the continuities between its colonial and antebellum phases." (ibid., 1220) Walker Howe provided further useful insight:

Evangelical Christians were and are people who have consciously decided to take charge of their own lives and identities. The Christian discipline they embrace is both liberating and restrictive. Insofar as the discipline is self-imposed, it expresses the popular will; insofar as it is imposed on others, it is social control. The reforms undertaken by nineteenth-century evangelicals were typically concerned to redeem people who were not functioning as free moral agents: slaves, criminals, the insane, alcoholics, children, even--in the case of the most logically rigorous reformers, the feminisist--women. The goal of the reformers was to substitute for external constraint the indder discipline of responsible morality. Liberation and control were thus two sides of the same redemtive process. (1220)

Wilentz seems to imply that Whig, and by comparison conservative, promotion of morality is based upon a desire to have power over people and not out of any sense of moral obligation or genuine empathy. Walker Howe's more nuanced interpretation strikes me as closer to the mark. Wilentz seems to recognize this when, towards the end of his piece, he states that conservatives,

[b]y relying on the Southern version of evangelicalism, stressing personal holiness more than the do-good reformism of Northern evangelical Whigs and enlisting the Christian right in their culture war...have built a larger and more loyal political base than the Whigs ever enjoyed.

Thus, at first he implies that the Republicans "owe much to" (which seems to want to be read as "are just like," to me) Whig do-gooders, but then backs off a bit in his later analysis.

One final comment on this point: I take issue with Wilentz's characterization of conservatives as blaming the victims for their situation ["personal failure stems not from economic and social inequalities but from the moral failings of thriftless, heedless, lawless, libertine and lazy individuals - precisely the sorts of people (conservatives charge) liberals want to coddle with needless, destructive social spending."]. I cannot speak for every conservative, but the conservatives that I know and read generally think that 40 years of the Great Society have been a marked failure and that it's time for something new.

This is not something only conservatives have concluded, either. Lest we forget, it was Democrat President Bill Clinton who signed welfare reform. By stressing the value of work and family, conservatives hope to help people help themselves out of poverty. Welfare and the social safety net were intended to help people through rough times. These programs shouldn't go away, but they also shouldn't be a way of life. I know of no conservative who thinks we should cut all social welfare programs and let people fend for themselves. Thus, Wilentz's characterization is a caricature and is, frankly, unfair.

Wilenz's assertion that "mainstream" Whigs "despised anti-slavery politics" also conflates the difference between agreeing with the politics of abolitionists and agreeing with them philosophically on the immorality of slavery. No doubt, the majority of southern Whigs weren't for freeing the slaves, and many northern Whigs--who prized stability over chaos and uncertainty-- simply couldn't abide the thought of the sort of anarchy later caused by John Brown and his fellow abolitionists {This sentence was modified from the original due to correction from commenter, below--ed.}. But Wilentz's statement obscures the fact that the anti-slavery movement was beginning to take hold, and most rapidly in those districts and states politically controlled by the Whigs.

End of the Whigs

Wilentz pointed to the ultimate failure of the Whigs.

Fate was unkind to the Whig Party. Its first president, Harrison, took sick on his frigid Inauguration Day in 1841, died one month later and was succeeded by a Virginia ex-Democrat, John Tyler, whom some in the party considered to be no Whig at all. The other Whig elected to the presidency, Zachary Taylor, a retired general, lasted only slightly longer than Harrison, felled by an attack of acute gastroenteritis in 1850 after just 16 months in the White House. In between the Tyler and Taylor presidencies, the acquisition of vast Western territories from the war against Mexico led to severe wrangling over the extension of slavery, which neither of the major parties could handle. The Democrats wound up losing their anti-slavery Northern partisans in the 1850's and became dominated by Southern slaveholders. The Whig Party collapsed completely: its anti-slavery wing joined with the Democratic bolters to form the Republican Party in 1854; its Southerners either enlisted in the pro-slavery Democratic fold or floundered in vain attempts to restore sectional comity.

He is on solid ground here, but Wilentz doesn't see fit to compare the anti-Mexican War rhetoric of the Whigs to the anti-Iraq War rhetoric of liberals (or some of the so-called paleo-conservatives). Perhaps because it wouldn't bolster his larger thesis? Regarding the dissolution of the Whigs, I think some of Kruman's analysis is helpful:

By the 1850’s, then, party conflict had generated a political consensus that rooted out important aspects of revolutionary republicanism. Americans had increasingly come to accept the government promotion of economic development as the “republican” fears of the Democratic party dissipated and to rejoice in the political equality of white men as Whigs bowed to the exigencies of the electoral struggle. ("Second American Party System," 532)

Thus, the parties had come closer together on many issues, but this was obscured by the dominant issue of slavery. The tension eventually led to the sectional crisis and party mattered less than where one stood on slavery.

From here, Wilentz extrapolates that because the Whigs were so short-lived and relative failures, modern day conservatives don't compare themselves to them. No kidding! (Setting aside political parties, how many people regularly compare their actions and motivations to people that are generally regarded as failures? "I'm just like Millard Fillmore!") He points to how conservatives (here, he cites Karl Rove) compare themselves favorably to the Jacksonians in the belief that both stick up for the little guy.

Wilentz also makes a good point regarding Jackson's anti-business politics and how they don't align at all with what would be considered modern conservative economic policy. Yet, Wilentz's attempt to call Karl Rove out on this inconsistency--writing Rove's comparison between Jackson and modern conservatives "distorts the nature of contemporary conservatism's political achievements"--only serves to highlight his own. Wilentz's indignation at such inconsistencies would be more convincing if he himself hadn't so systematically omitted such exceptions when they didn't fit his template.

Any historian takes a risk when comparing the contemporary to the historical, and Wilentz should be applauded for doing so. However, I hope the few points I've raised can illustrate how history can be used to support diverse and often contradictory forms of contemporary opinion. History is important, it can teach us lessons that can help us make decisions about our future. But we have to be careful when attempting to draw too fine a comparison between what was then and what is now.

Most modern politicians and ideologues on the right, left and middle sincerely believe that they have a plan for steering our nation along the proper course. To help explain, promote and justify those plans, they look to our nation's past. Members of both parties are always cherry-picking favorite quotes from Lincoln or Truman or FDR or Kennedy or (especially) the Founders to help emphasize a particular point. Thus, when surveying the rhetoric of modern day politicians, one can conclude that, indeed, we are all Republicans, we are all Democrats and we are all Whigs, Federalists, Know-Nothings, Anti-Masons, Bull Moose (or is it Meese?), Free Soilers...

Meet the new boss, will he turn out like the old boss?

2010-01-10T11:49:00.000-05:00

Original post 11/3/2005

Peggy Noonan's piece last week--in which she bemoaned America's plight as its political and journalistic elites have, to her mind, written the rest of the country off--set off a rash of responses. The Speculist (Phil Bowermaster) speculated that Noonan is too isolated and insulated in Manhattan to have a good grip on who the true (new) leaders of America are: engineers and scientists. According to Bowermaster, those ensconced in the nation's media and political capitals are understandably dismayed because:

they simply don't matter as much as they used to, and that they aren't the ones shaping and determining the future. . . . Some of them may be classified as belonging to some sort of "elite;" but most of them do not. They work in business and in the public sector. They are educators, doctors, sales people, farmers, clergy, and, yes, even some journalists and politicians. They are scientists and engineers.

Justin Katz also opined along a similar theme.

Ms. Noonan is surely in a better position than I to judge whether this attitude drives the Western elite, but I can't help but wonder whether, similarly, she's more susceptible to elites' false conceits. Perhaps it isn't "the whole ball of wax" that's falling apart, but just the artificial system — long sensed to be untenable — by which the elites. . . have managed to secure the "grim comfort" that "I got mine."

. . . But blogs are proving that, if the functional elites are too resigned to that trouble to lead our society through it, the underclasses now have the technology — and the faculty — to pick up the slack. Maybe the sky is falling only to reveal the truer sky beyond, and in its light, we will be better able to respond to the troubles with which life — and history — accosts us all equally.

Glenn Reynolds also weighed in and, citing both Bowermaster and Katz, offered further elaboration:

But while the members and hangers-on of yesterday's power structures are mulling their reduced prospects, ordinary people seem to be doing pretty well, as the economy continues to boom, small businesses to form, and new kinds of enterprises take off. We certainly don't view government with the same awe we felt before Watergate broke, or journalism with the same respect it had before Dan Rather struck, but all available evidence suggests that it was our earlier attitudes that were misinformed.

At any rate, Noonan is surely right that our current elites are not up to the task of steering the country. They're too ignorant, too insulated, and too concerned with "getting theirs." Fortunately, they're also a lot less important than they used to be.

Meanwhile, within the context of the recent Supreme Court nominations, both Todd Zywicki and Tony Blankeley put forth the idea that perhaps we are now seeing the results of a years-in-the-making conservative populist movement. Taken together, what we have is, perhaps, the beginning of a sea change, a tipping point, a groundswell of populism of a different sort. It is not just conservative, it is also libertarian and, yes, liberal. No matter the ideology, or cause or whatever, it is technology that is facilitating these changes. In short, technology is the sling carried by Reynold's Army of Davids. But it's more than that, it is the new leveller, the new frontier.

Over 100 years ago, Frederick Jackson Turner penned The Frontier In American History, which posited the "Frontier thesis". Years of debate ensued, and still continue, with the concept of "frontier" being redefined to the present day. So what did Turner's thesis say? In essence, this:

...geography determines the character of a people and, depending on the situation, gave them certain advantages and disadvantages. An example is that the English and Japanese, being Island Nations, would naturally have an advantage at sea combat. And, in an age of sea-trade they would, tend to be powerful. His thesis explicitly stated how the Frontier shaped the American mind to be open to new things and to strive for what was new. In our modern technological age, Americans are very open to new technologies.

The last conception--new techology as new frontier--has been commented upon by many. A post earlier this year by Ben Compaine provides a good example:

Blogging and podding and vodding or whatever else these formats might be called should not be viewed as a veneer or a Potemkin Village of phantom access to the world stage. The move to the Western frontier was real. Similarly this digital outlet that gives voice to the leafleteer, corner orator or anyone with a point of view or a story to be told is real and meaningful. . . . I believe, peercasting will have an overall positive effect on the American -- and no reason why not the rest of the world’s – experience with the expanded boundaries of this new frontier. I think that’s how Frederick Jackson Turner would describe it.

One aspect of Turner's thesis is the idea that the frontier served as a sort of "safety valve" that served to relieve social pressures. But it was more than an incident-by-incident occurence. For example, as Alan Taylor's William Cooper's Town illustrated, western expansion didn't occur all at once: it was a rolling expansion and each new wave brought about social--and eventually political--change.

William Cooper's story is an example of how a working class man became successful because of the new opportunity offered by the "open" frontier of a young nation as well as by the new political order generated through the American Revolution (which, incidentally, Cooper mostly sat out). Though he achieved financial success through land speculation and commercial ventures, Cooper's ideal of what it meant to be successful was to mimic the lives of those who were traditionally identified as the elite. But to them, money wasn't enough and "blood" still accounted for much. Thus, Cooper was never to be fully accepted by the old elite.

Cooper thought he had cracked the code to becoming a contemporary "new elite" by seeking prestige via political office. He was a successful politician for a short time, but his eyes were still on the old standard (largely paternalism and noblesse oblige--if I recall correctly) by which success had been defined. With his eyes so firmly fixed on the traditional model of elite success, failed to see the rising tide of social and political change--especially the rise of the populist Democrats in New York--that would forever alter his life. Perhaps if he would have recognized that there was a new political, democratic dynamic in the offing, he could have adjusted. But while his method of achieving success was "new," his concept of maintaining success was to follow the old blueprint. He learned too late that a new set of plans had been drawn up and followed by others who soon displaced him on the social ladder.

So what does this have to do with the "new elite"? The individuals who make up this "new elite" should be ever vigilant of falling into Cooper's trap. Today's small-time blogger may dream of becoming the next Glenn Reynolds, Matt Drudge or, heck, Wolf Blitzer or Ted Koppel. But they better make sure they don't become the next Dan Rather. The frontier isn't closed: but it isn't static either. It is constantly redefined. Those who recognize this can take advantage of the opportunities provided, but they must realize that there is always another wave of speculators behind them. If they don't see that wave, it'll sweep them away.

The Past for Itself or More?

2010-01-10T11:17:00.000-05:00

Originally posted 6/28/2005

In the course of an attempt to formulate a Christian (but not Providential) theory of History, the Elfin Ethicist touches on the ideological uses of the past (Part IV of a series)

Humorlessness comes easily, I fear. History has so many implications in contemporary affairs that it must, indeed, be taken seriously, yet I regret that the field is so often politicized. We all find it difficult to avoid using the discipline as an ideological weapon, especially when there are so many horrible ideas based on flawed accounts of the past. What, should we refuse to respond to distortions? That would not solve the problem of politicization.

Rather, I think we must try to love the past for itself, not for what history can do for our causes. The reality of the past lies far beyond our descriptions of it; humility implies a certain amount of flexibility and congeniality. None of us will ever comprehend the past perfectly. This does not mean that we should excuse recognizable distortions, but I think it does mean that responsible scholarship begins at home.

I think it's important to realize that, much like pulling selections from the Bible, History culled from the same source (say, Jefferson on Church and State) can provide support for both sides of a given contemporary political debate. It is when used like this, often stripped of important context, that the ideological use of History can become spurious. EE also quotes the estimable Jacques Barzun:

The use of history is for the person. History is formative. Its spectacle of continuity in chaos, of attainment in the heart of disorder, of purpose in the world is what nothing else provides: science denies it, art only invents it. To try to make out the same vision for oneself in the midst of life is difficult, not to say discouraging. One might suppose that an astute synthesis of the items in the daily paper would supply it, but the paper lacks charm and solidity; its formative effect is nil, as one can see from sampling public opinion. Reading history remakes the mind by feeding primative pleasure in story, exercising thought and feeling, satisfying curiosity, and promoting the serenity of contemplation.
....
If to the beholder the deeds soon become more interesting than the explanations, this influence of the primary realities does not mark a decline in intellect or seriousness. It means rather that the reader is confident about the historical effect. Like the accomplished lover of an art, he immerses himself in the material without scruple. In other words, history is a means of cultivation much more than of instruction.

Perhaps history can teach us lessons, but those lessons are to be learned on the personal, rather than the societal, level. History can expose us to individuals who are similar to us in some aspect, though they lived at a different time. Yet, we can still draw from their experiences, compare them too ours and learn some lessons from them. It has often been said that the one constant in history is (loosely speaking) the nature of humanity, which I believe (though our sensibilities have generally become more "refined"). the macro As such, drawing from the lives of historical individuals to gain insight into our own past, present and future is a valid exercise. But can history on this personal, micro level be translated to the macro level of societiesi, nations or peoples? Individuals are complicated enough, what of the complication inherent in trying to boil down the thoughts, feelings, etc. of entire groups of people?

Perhaps we can learn enough to draw conclusions from examples in history at the macro level, but if so, it requires much more research and reflection, and a much longer treatment, than what is often passed off as historical depth in our contemporary, ideological-driven essays. When such in-depth work is done, what is often discovered is that the history called upon by those on various sides of an ideological debate actually supports all of the positions to one degree or another. In short, everyone is right. Thus, all that's left is to see who can spin Clio the best.

Shakers

2010-01-10T09:10:00.000-05:00

Original post 7/28/2006

I see that Ralph Luker has picked up on this Boston Globe piece about the last four surviving Shakers in America. I read the piece, but I suppose I didn't blog about it because, since I go past the small compound many times a year on my way to my in-laws house in Poland, Maine, I kind of forgot how unique the Shakers really are (familiarity breeds....ennui?). That is something I learned when I visited the Shaker Village in the early 1980s (a982, I think) as part of the innovative program called The Maine Journey (started by the late Suzanne Smith) and I shouldn't have let my regular drive-bys obscure this fact. (Bad Historian! Bad!)

On the face of it, a 12 or 13 year old boy can think of more exciting things to see than a religious retreat that consists of a few elderly ladies and a slightly odd man in his thirties (which is what the group was made up of in the early 1980's). In fact, what may seem so different to us in today's hi-tech world--the farming, gardening, raising animals, in short, the simple life--wasn't all that strange to anyone growing up in rural Maine. But being introduced to the Shakers' radical definition of equality was an eye-opener to a small town kid. Not only did they believe in "separate-but-equal" (men and women have different doors to the church--or meeting house, first instance), but their vow of celibacy meant they could only continue as a community by replenishing their ranks from outside. And while they had used adoption in the past, that practice had stopped in the 1960's and people weren't exactly banging down the doors to live a 19th century-style life of celibacy back in the 1970s and 80s.

Even a distracted kid of 13 could see that they were probably fighting a losing battle to stay viable. And while it seemed strange that these people took their notion of equality to the degree which they did, I admired them for not compromising their principles. I also definitely picked up on the inherent peacefulness of the whole village. It was a nice, relaxing place to visit--even with 50 or so 13 year old boys and girls running around (actually, we were a generally well-behaved bunch--at least by 13 year old standards--and we didn't even need Ritalin!).

One final note: the Shaker gift shop also sold some interesting items. I and many other kids purchased spruce gum and a mouth harp (also called a Jew's Harp). The gum was certainly an "acquired" taste, and though The Maine Journey impromptu mouth-harp band probably didn't sound very good to the outsider, it provided a couple hours worth of entertainment as we made our way back home. Especially whenever one of us "twanged" the flexible metal vibrator part into our teeth--then the "wango wang" of the harp would be puctuated by a "Yelp!" followed by the laughter of boys and girls revelling in the pain of their pals.

Pearl Harbor and 9/11: The Conspiracy Theorist's "If...Then..." Statement

2010-01-10T07:23:00.000-05:00

Original post 12/7/06

With this marking the 65th anniversary of the "day that will live in infamy", inumerable editorials and essays will be written comparing WWII to the War in Iraq and the wider fight against terrorism. Invevitably, the conspiracy theories surrounding FDR's foreknowledge of an attack on Pearl Harbor, "the backdoor to wa r" theory, will be dredged up again and contemporized with comparisons to similar theories about a government conspiracy being behind 9/11. You see, if it could happen then, it could happen now, right? The problem, of course, is that it didn't happen then.

In 1981, Gordon Prange's At Dawn We Slept was published posthumously. Prange had served in post-War Japan and eventually gone on to being a history professor at the University of Maryland. He spent a lifetime accumulating both Japanese and American documents and conducting interviews in a quest to determine whether or not there was a conspiracy.

Prange clearly lays the Pearl Harbor attack at the feet of the attackers and, more broadly, he clearly blames Japanese foreign policy and militarism for aggression in China, expansion in Southeast Asia and for making the decision to go to war with the U.S.

According to Prange, many within the Japanese navy and military opposed an attack on Pearl Harbor. The actual plan was devised by Minoru Genda, a Japanese Air officer, and it was only approved at the 11th hour when Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto threatened to resign. (One of the bigger ironies is that Yamamoto had tried to convince his superiors that going to war with the U.S.--with it's population, economic and industrial might--was not a good idea). One of those who had disagreed was Admiral Chuichi Nagumo but the rules of seniority dictated that he lead the attack and he followed his orders. Howerver, Nagumo had very little experience with naval aviation and Yamamoto assigned Genda to Nagumo's command. In short, neither the Japanese plan nor the men implementing it were infallible.

In fact, the Japanese unwittingly gave the U.S. some clues of an imminent attack and Prange provides some examples of such early warnings that could and should have tipped off U.S. forces that something was up. One example was that the first casualty of the attack was a Japanese submarine that was sunk by a U.S. destroyer one hour before the attack. This might have been reported to the U.S. Army in Oahu, which might have put the island on alert. But it didn't happen. Such clues could have been gathered and analyzed with greater imagination and less red tape in Honolulu and Washington, D.C.

At this point, it's worth taking leave of Prange for a bit and treating with Roberta Wohlstetter, whose Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision still provides one of the best studies of the uses and functions of military and political intelligence in crisis.*

Wohlstetter outlined the U.S. "magic" intelligence operation that enabled the U.S. to read Japanese diplomatic codes (not military), and thus any attempt to claim that U.S. codebreakers had information regarding an attack was missplaced. In addition to "magic", radio signals were picked up that may have led someone to conclude that an attack was imminent, but Wholstetter notes that such signals only appear to be the most important in hindsight and that, within the course of day to day activity, they may have been missed or lost in the general "noise" of the time.

As Wohlstetter emphasized, any technical advantages were often outweighed and hamstrung by the organizational defects and shortage of personnel within the U.S. Government. Even when accurate and valuable intelligence was gathered, there were still two hurdles to jump. First, the decision makers at the top had to be persuaded that the intelligence was important. Second, even if this was accomplished, there were institutional and bureaucratic roadblocks that frustrated attempts to turn information into actionable orders. As Walter Millis wrote in his review of Wohlstetter's book (American Historical Review, volume 68, #2):

The best intelligence in the world will never give unambiguous signs; it must leave it to statesmanship to make those hard decisions to which no certainty as to outcome or effect can ever attach.

Prange concluded that most U.S. officials in positions of authority knew that an attack like that which would occur at Pearl Harbor was possible, but most believed the Japanese would never take such a risk. Washington was focused on threats in SE Asia, not Hawaii, and they mistakenly believed that the commanders in Oahu had been properly warned and were prepared for a potential attack.

Admiral Husband Kimmel and General Walter Short commanded the Navy and Army at Pearl Harbor, respectively. After the attack at Pearl Harbor, both would be charged by the Roberts Commission with "dereliction of duty" and cast as the scapegoats. (Eventually, though, history would rectify the situation). Prange concluded that this was undeserved and determined that blame for being unprepared for the Pearl Harbor attack went from FDR on down.

That's not to say that Prange didn't find shortcomings with each commander, however. Kimmel didn't conduct long-range air reconnaisance during the week prior to the attack and Short misunderstood his mission: he was prepared for sabotage and safeguarded against this threat by clustering his planes together because it was easier to protect them if they were grouped together. Unfortunately, this made them all the more easy to hit from the air. He hadn't taken an air assault into account.

As for Washington, Prange explained that the Navy and War departments didn't do a good job of keeping Kimmel and Short up to speed and they didn't follow up on various warnings. The War department mistakenly thought that Short was on alert for both sabotage and other forms of assault and a number of key men in the Navy department actually thought that Kimmel's entire fleet (not just a few aircraft carriers) was at sea. Finally, Prange laid some blame at the feet of FDR, who he believed treated Japan to lightly and whose desire to not alarm the American public of the growing crisis with Japan left the public unprepared for war.

Prange summarized his conclusions thus:

Pearl Harbor resulted from a vast combination of interrelated, complicated, and strange historical factors: on the one hand, bountiful human errors of great variety, false assumptions, fallacious views, a vast store of intelligence badly handled; on the other, precise planning, tireless training, fanactical dedication, iron determination, technical know-how, tactical excellence, clever deception measures, intelligence well gathered and effectively disseminated, plain guts--and uncommon luck. (pp. xv-xvi)

Couldn't the same be said of 9/11?

We learned that the institutions charged with protecting our borders, civil aviation, and national security did not understand how grave this threat [terrorism] could be, and did not adjust their policies, plans, and practices to deter or defeat it. We learned of fault lines within our government--between foreign and domestic intelligence, and between and within agencies. We learned of the pervasive problems of managing and sharing information across a large and unwieldy government that had been built in a different era to confront different dangers.

{From the Preface of The 9/11 Commission Report}

To expect a large, sloth-like federal government to be flexible enough to take preventative actions in the face of unforseen threats is not realistic. Both Japan and terrorism were viewed as distant threats by the U.S. government. Of course, in each instance, there were those within the national defense and political structure who were alarmed and attempted to warn their superiors that oceans didn't protect the U.S. 9/11 wasn't the first time that those who had suspicions of a pending attack couldn't get themselves heard, through no fault of their own. The experience of Pearl Harbor shows that, tragically, the inability of government to act preemptively is neither new nor surprising.

ADDENDUM: For a historiographical survey of the "back door to war" debate amongst historians, Martin V. Melosi's "The Triumph of Revisionism: The Pearl Harbor Controversy, 1941-1982" {The Public Historian, Vol.5, No.2 (Spring 1983)} is very useful. Melosi himself is a Pearl Harbor revisionist (The Shadow of Pearl Harbor: Political Controversy over the Surprise Attack, 1941-1976), and while he "accept[s] the revisionist claim that the Roosevelt administration initiated a cover-up of Pearl Harbor" he also ultimately disagreed with the notion that "FDR and his chief advisors had encouraged the attack and therefore were trying to conceal their guilt." Instead, Melosi believes "that they wished to protect Roosevelt's foreign policy by quashing a political controversy over the question of responsibility." ("Triumph of Revisionism, 90.").

Frankly, I haven't the stomach to venture into the world of 9/11 conspiracy debunking, though Popular Mechanics (and many others) have.

* Its' worth mentioning that a Google search of Wohlstetter's book leads to a copy of a 1966 critique of same by Charles C. Hiles, who accuses Wholstetter of using the "blurout" method to distract the reader from the "real facts" of the attack. A close reading of Hiles piece indicates that he agrees that there was too much "noise" in Washington, but he asserts that Wholstetter's focus on contingency is misplaced and that an unseen "monkey wrench" had been thrown into the gears of government. That there was an invisible wall put up between the political branch and the military and that:

The unseen "monkey wrench" was having its effect; the gears were grinding, producing plenty of "noise" but of a far different kind than that heard by Dr. Wohlstetter.

There is no need to elaborate here on the mechanics of this figurative operational "monkey wrench." It was a hydra-headed thing of which considerations of space prohibit any detailed exposition in a brief discussion such as this.

Thus, the "monkey wrench" was a widespread government conspiracy, plain to see by all, but too complicated for him to have explained. According to Hiles we were headed to war anyway because FDR had been provoking the Japanese for just such an outcome. Pearl Harbor was just cover. See Melosi, above.

Review: The Masonic Myth

2009-09-22T20:18:00.008-04:00

Jay Kinney, The Masonic Myth: Unlocking the Truth About the Symbols, the Secret Rites, and the History of Freemasonry.

Even before I was a trained (if not practicing) historian, I was a conspiracy theory skeptic. Particularly about those concerning secret societies ruling the world. Since when do men vain enough to want to rule the world also want to keep it quiet? To me, that seems to require a unique bit of schizophrenic passive narcissism. And, if we are to believe the conspiracy theorists, this has gone on for generations.

Kinney's book, The Masonic Myth, helps to solidify my skepticism concerning one group that again finds itself thrust into the spotlight with the release of Dan Brown's latest book. Brown is but the latest to "expose" the supposed world-ruling intentions of the Masons (witness the Hysterical Channel's recent "special"). Kinney takes the novel approach of explaining, with sources, the mysteries of Masonry and the problems it faces. Of course, true conspiracy theorists would probably find the fact that Kinney is himself a Mason disqualifying. That would be too bad.

What Kinney does is show that Masonry gathered certain cultural symbols and motifs that were common to other organizations. Further, they shrouded their organization in secrecy and confused their own origins, both of which played into theories of conspiracy. Further, Kinney shows that what most current Masons care most about is the senior citizen's special and their AARP membership. Like most other men's organizations--the Lions, Elks, Oddfellows--the Masons are literally dying off. Will the New World order survive?

Whether it does or not, Kinney has done a great service to those interested in a well-researched and factual account of the origin and current state of Freemasonry.

What is Historiography Again?

2009-09-18T12:18:00.002-04:00

Yikes, been a while! Anyway, I've written plenty about historiography and historical theory/methodology, but Heather Cox Richardson offers a good way to help people understand just what the heck "historiography" is:

It may be easier to understand the concept of historiography if you put the idea of it into a different context. Think of movie Westerns. Almost invariably, they deal with the Plains West from about 1860 to about 1900. But their interpretations of the events of those years are strikingly different. It’s impossible, for example, to image someone making Brokeback Mountain in 1950, or Stagecoach in the 1980s. Just as those movies tell us a great deal about both the eras in which they were made and the filmmaking theories under which they were filmed, so too can historiography tell us much that we need to know about society.

That works for me.

Berkowitz reviews Allitt's The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History

2009-08-06T10:09:00.003-04:00

Peter Berkowitz reviews Patrick Allitt's The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History in the latest Policy Review. Berkowitz explains that Allitt helps explain the "paradoxes that constitute conservatism in America."

The questions that guide his study are straightforward: “Where did conservatism come from, what are its intellectual sources, and why is it internally divided?” In answering them, however, he is obliged to undertake considerable intellectual legwork because a recognized conservative movement in America only came into existence after 1950. This doesn’t prevent Allitt from reconstructing “a strong, complex, and continuing American conservative tradition” stretching from The Federalist to the Federalist Society. It does mean, though, that to justify his decisions about whom and what to include and exclude in the absence of a formal conservative tradition, a common canon, and an established set of spokesmen, Allitt is compelled to spell out the conflicting elements that distinguish a distinctively conservative approach to politics in America.

Allitt does not seek to go beyond his role as a historian. Yet his learned and fair-minded reconstruction lends support to the view that the proper way forward for conservatives is neither greater purity nor a more perfect unity, but a richer appreciation of the paradoxes of modern conservatism and a more assiduous cultivation of the moderation that is necessary to hold conservatism’s diverse elements, frequently both complementary and conflicting, in proper balance.

I particularly liked Allitt's definition of American Conservatism (as summarized by Berkowitz):

According to Allitt, conservatism is, first, “an attitude to social and political change that looks for support to the ideas, beliefs, and habits of the past and puts more faith in the lessons of history than in the abstractions of political philosophy.” Second, it involves “a suspicion of democracy and equality.” This can be divided into a concern that the formal equality of men before God and law not be confused with equality in all things, particularly virtue, and that too much government power not be placed directly in the people’s hands. Third, conservatism reflects “the view that civilization is fragile and easily disrupted” and therefore it teaches that “the survival of the republic presupposes the virtue of citizens” and calls for “a highly educated elite as guardians of civilization.”

Burgundians and Tolkien's Sigurd and Gudrun

2009-08-01T14:30:00.000-04:00

N.B. Cross-posted at Burgundians in the Mist.

J.R.R. Tolkien's The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun--his reworking of the Germanic/Norse legends of Sigurd and the subject matter of the Niebelungenlied, the Eddas and others--was published earlier this year to mostly positive reviews (but not all). As with all of his father's posthumous works, Tolkien's son Christopher culled and edited notes rough drafts (including lecture notes given by Prof. Tolkien who was an accomplished academic linguist) for presentation in a book. The younger Tolkien also offers his own editorial commentary on the source material and, most importantly for the historically inclined, provides some of the notes taken by his father concerning the origins of the various legends. Thus, we have J.R.R. Tolkien's own thoughts--the most contiguous presented in the appendices--on the various interpretive problems and it is here that scholars interested in the historical roots of these ancient Northern European works may profit the most.

J.R.R. Tolkien used other legends such as Widsith and Beowulf to inform his interpretation of how the stories may have evolved from history.

[Gunther/Gundahari's] tale is one of downfall after glory--and sudden downfall, not slow decay--sudden and overwhelming disaster in a great battle. It is the downfall, took, of a people that had already had an adventurous career, and disturbed things in the west by their intrusio and by the rise of a considerable power at Worms. It is easy to see how their defeat by Aetius only tow years previuosly [in 452 AD] would be telescoped in the dramatic manner of legend into the defeat by the Huns (if not actually connected in history, as it may have been).

[Gunther/Gundahari], already valieant and a generous goldgiver as patron in Widsith, must have been very renowned. Mere downfall, without previous glory, did not excite minstrels to admiration and pity. However, we are probably not far wrong in guessing that there must--quite early--have been some other element than mere misfortune in this tale to give it the fire and vitality it clearly had: living as it did down the centuries. What this was we can hardly guess. Gold? It may well have been that gold, or the acquisition of some treasure (that later still became connected with some renowned legendary gold) was introduced to explain Attila's attack. Attila (when legend or history is not on his side) is represented as grasping and greedy. It may have been in this way that Gunther/Gundahari ultimately got connected with the most renowned hoard, the dragon's hoard of Sigemund [in Old English], of Sigurd [in Old Norse]. (p.340-41)

There is also a discussion concerning Attila's part in all of this (as Atli) that is interesting and concludes with a summary by C. Tolkien that his father:

...sketched out his view of the further evolution of the Burgundian legend when the story that Attila was murdered by his bride had taken root. Such a deed must have a motive, and no motive is more likely than that it was vengeance for the murder of the bride's father, or kinsmen. Attila had come to be seen as the leader of the Huns in the massacre of the Burgundians in 437 {again, telescoping--ed}; now, the murder was done in vengeance for the destruction of Gundahari and his people. WHether or not Ildico {Attila's bride} was a Burdundian, her role in the evolving drama must make her so . And she avenges her brother, Gundahari.

Tolkien believed that the more mythical legends of Sigurd and the Nibelung horde were intertwined with the more historical fall of the Burgundians. He based this on a close reading of Anglo-Saxon poetry, particularly Beowulf and Widsith, as compared to the stories as told in Low or High Germany. From his readings, he concluded that the legend of Sigurd was fit into the fall of the Burgundians because both dealt with some sort of gold hoard. He also offers a theory as to how the Burgundians became known as the Nibelungs. In short, it makes for an interesting--if complicated--read.

Reminder: Burgundians in the Mist

2009-07-31T10:18:00.003-04:00

Just a little reminder that, from time to time, I do update my more "scholarly" Burgundians in the Mist blog. For those interested in Late Antiquity/Early Middle Ages, it may be worth a look. The centerpiece of it is my research into the Burgundians up to c. 540 AD, but I intend on touching upon other matters too (at least eventually!).

Fairy Tales are for Girls

2009-07-30T10:26:00.004-04:00

Scott Nokes recently went to Disney World and it got him wondering if "fairy tales necessarily gendered feminine". Why? Well...

Cinderella's castle does not dominate Fantasyland as you might expect. Instead, it is the centerpiece of the entire park, the hub around which everything else revolves. Main Street, then, does not open up onto the county courthouse, but onto a medieval castle.

It would be wrong, however, to over-read this as a medieval image. Instead, I think the dominant idea is one of the fairy tale, which is then associated with medieval architecture. The park is innundated with fairies and princesses, but you're hard pressed to find a knight, or happy peasants working the fields, or a monastery, or any of the other popular images associated with the Middle Ages. Fantasyland does have Excalibur in a stone that you can pose with, but there is little else Arthurian.

Consider too the cosplay. Little girls are dressed like fairies and princesses, but little boys dress as pirates -- not princes or knights or kings. Swords are either clearly pirate cutlasses or lightsabers (for nighttime play) -- but consider all the various Prince Charmings, and Robin Hoods, and other fairytale male characters that boys could be dressed as.

I noticed the same thing last year when my family was there, but I attributed it to Disney marketing its relatively current Pirates of the Carribean movies to boys. Unless and until they start cranking out movies about knights, it'll be pirate toys that attract the boys (aaargghhhh!!!).

Disney almost exclusively (and successfully) uses the princess motif to portray heroic girls/women in their movies and the easiest primary source from which to cull ideas to keep the revenue stream flowing is in fairy tales. Some of the best known fairy tales revolve around princesses and the themes of those tales still appeal to a broad audience (and I've got two of them!).

But I wonder what Disney's parks would look like had they developed Shrek? I know I've seen a lot of boys with the Shrek masks and, though not necessarily a role model for kids, I bet Disney's marketing department could have had some success with Puss-in-boots. So, maybe its only Disney-fied fairy tales that are for girls.

Southern Unionists

2009-07-22T15:23:00.004-04:00

I guess intuitively I figured there must have been some southerners (even in the "Deep South") who didn't support secession or the Confederate cause. But there were more than I thought and one of them was Mississippi's Newton Knight (h/t):

The recovery of the life of a Mississippi farmer who fought for his country is an important story. The fact that southern Unionists existed, and in very large numbers, is largely unknown to many Americans, who grew up with textbooks that perpetuated the myth of the Confederacy as a heroic Lost Cause, with its romanticized vision of the antebellum South. Some historians have even palpably sympathized with Confederate cavaliers while minimizing—and robbing of credit—the actions of southerners who remained loyal to the Union at desperate cost.

One would never know that the majority of white Southerners had opposed secession, and that many Southern whites fought for the Union. In Tennessee, for example, somewhere around 31,000 white men joined the Union army. In Arkansas more than 8,000 men eventually served in Union regiments. And in Mississippi, Newton Knight and his band of guerillas launched a virtual insurrection against the Confederacy in Jefferson Davis’ own home state.

“There’s lots of ways I’d rather die than being scared to death,” Knight said, and it was a defining statement. At almost every stage of his life this yeoman from the hill country of Jones County, Miss., took courageous stands. The grandson of a slave owner who never owned slaves, he voted against secession, deserted from the Confederate Army into which he was unwillingly impressed, and formed a band called the Jones County Scouts devoted to undermining the Rebel cause locally. Working with runaway slaves and fellow Unionists and Federal soldiers caught behind enemy lines, Knight conducted such an effective running gun battle that at the height of the war he and his allies controlled the entire lower third of the state. This "southern Yankee,” as one Rebel general termed him, remained unconquered until the end of the war. His resistance hampered the Confederate Army’s ability to operate, forced it to conduct a third-front war at home, and eroded its morale and will to fight.

Apparently, the story of Knight is "soon to be a major motion picture."

UPDATE: Apparently, there is a scholarly controversy over the matter.

Review: The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome

2009-06-29T13:48:00.007-04:00

John F. Wasik, The Cul-De-Sac Syndrome: Turning Around the Unsustainable American Dream.

After detailing the recent bursting of the housing bubble, John Wasik asks, "Why was the American psyche so heavily invested in home ownership?" Answering his own question, Wasik points to the history of Americans' inherent desire to own property to begin his explanation. He looks to the Jeffersonian conception of the "pursuit of happiness" that replaced Locke's "preservation of [men's] property" in the Declaration of Independence. According to Wasik, property was only a part of Jefferson's conception of the "American Dream."

America would expand far beyond [Jefferson's] beloved Blue Ridge Mountains. It would be an enlightened development led by yeoman farmers. THe key to this master plan: a massive acquisition and settlement of disrete parcels of land into subdivisions. It was precise. Eventually it would become a bulwark of democracy.

Thus, the Louisiana Purchase provided the opportunity for all as envisioned by Jefferson, who helped to inculcate in the American mind an ethos of opportunity based on national expansion by the expansion of property ownership. What was good for the citizens was good for the country. This basic philosophy was reinforced by Lincoln's settlement policies; the Homestead Act of 1909, the New Deal and so on.

Yet, somewhere along the way the inherent "good" of home ownership shifted. It was no longer enough to own a home (albeit, via a 30 year mortgage!). After the dot com bubble burst and 401(k)'s took a dive, "Homes became the financial panacea of the middle class," according to Wasik. Low interest rates, easy loans, sub-prime...we all know the terms by now. The result was the housing crisis of 2008/09. But there is more to the story.

As Wasik details extensively, the expansionist mindset still prevails in America and has led mostly middle-class families into sprawling "spurbs" far out in the former hinterlands. And now the reality is undercutting the conventional wisdom of the past. Does it make sense to work 1-2 hours from your home (a 5,000 square foot McMansion that houses you, your spouse and 2 kids), which forces you to spend too much time on the road commuting to and from work and traveling between box stores and play dates in your gas-guzzling SUV? As Wasik tells it, this rapid expansion away from established population centers has strained our infrastructure and our health and has foisted unneeded bills onto our budgets.

In the second half of the book, Wasik offers visions of a future towards which he hopes Americans will turn . In short, he sees our national salvation somewhere in a marriage between New Urbanism and Green Technology. However, cost is a prohibitive factor, and, recognizing this, Wasik is always willing to temper his "gee whiz" fascination with innovative green technology with pragmatic sticker shock. Custom green costs a lot, but it may lead to more cost-effective innovation down the line. Of course, someone is going to have to pay for it as the kinks get worked out! (And tax-payer dollars are going to play a big role in subsidizing such experimentation).

Cost is also a factor in Wasik's prediction that people will be moving back to the cities. So long as energy prices continue to rise, people will look to avoid paying those costs by looking for smaller abodes that are closer to work and play. However, that's assuming that those population centers reform current zoning laws, spruce up rundown sections and generally make themselves more attractive to the single set and aging boomers. Wasik thinks they will.

Though not heavy-handed, Wasik shows no love for the Bush Administration and guarded hope for the policies thus far promised by the Obama Administration. Time will tell if his faith is rewarded. Overall, Cul-De-Sac is a good synthesis of current Green and New Urbanism thinking ("Green Urbanism"?) and Wasik is an interesting and lively guide.

Gaspee Day 2009

2009-06-18T20:45:00.021-04:00

In Warwick and Cranston, Rhode Island, Gaspee Day commemorates the sinking of the HBMS Gaspee by Rhode Islanders in 1772. From Wikipedia:

In early 1772, Lieutenant William Dudings ton sailed HBMS Gaspée into Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay to aid in the enforcement of customs collection and inspection of cargo. Rhode Island had a reputation for smuggling and trading with the enemy during wartime. Dudingston and his officers quickly antagonized powerful merchant interests in the small colony. On June 9, the Gaspée gave chase to the packet boat Hannah, and ran aground in shallow water on the northwestern side of the bay. Her crew were unable to free her immediately, but the rising tide could allow the ship to free herself. A band of Providence members of the Sons of Liberty rowed out to confront the ship's crew before this could happen.^[5]
At the break of dawn on June 10, the ship was boarded. The crew put up a feeble resistance and Lieutenant Dudingston was shot and wounded, and the vessel burned to the waterline.

That's the short version, be sure to go to Gaspee.org for MUCH MORE.

And every year, about this time, we still hold the Gaspee Days Parade. Here are some pics (many more to be found at official websites):

The Kentish Guards

Minutemen (including Rehoboth)

Colonial Navy of Massachusetts

Ancient Mariners of Connecticut

The Patuxet Rangers

Spinning Rome

2009-06-12T12:12:00.003-04:00

A couple years ago, while dismantling a piece of contemporary policy-wonkism, Jim McCormick explained Peter Heathers' Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History, and Bryan Ward-Perkins' The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization thusly:

These books summarize the post-WW2 archaeology and literary analysis covering the late Roman and post-Roman periods, and offer a useful corrective to a more recent trend in scholarship which has created a soft-soaped "Late Antiquity" ... in competition to the "Dark Ages" of popular imagination. For these revisionist scholars of the last thirty years, the migration of barbarians into the Roman empire (both eastern and western branches) was both justifiable ("they only wanted the Roman good life") and relatively benign ("they settled in and became staunch allies"). Heather and Ward-Perkins discredit this post-modern, New Age image of the Fall very thoroughly but we shouldn't be surprised if major portions of Western academia and literati will choose to hold onto such a rosy-hued version of Roman/barbarian relations. If only the Romans had been nicer to the barbarians, they'll proclaim, so much unpleasantness could have been avoided.

Recently, David Frum reviewed Adrian Goldworthy's How Rome Fell and also threw in the aforementioned books. He essentially agrees with McCormick:

The prevailing soft multiculturalism of our times has made the phrase “the fall of Rome” a surprisingly controversial one. It’s much preferred to talk about “transformation” rather than “decline and fall.” In this “transformationist” view, the High Classical period of 200 BCE-250 CE subsides gradually, almost imperceptibly into the “Late Antiquity” of CE 350-700. The barbarians did not invade; they migrated. Rome did not fall; it experienced a “fusion” with the new migrants in a “cross-cultural exchange.” (I am quoting here from the catalogue copy of a recent museum exhibition on the arts of Late Antiquity.)

I agree that there is a tangible post-modern influence upon the cultural equivalency revision from "invasion" to "accommodation". But both Frum and McCormick engage in oversimplification and caricature of the relevant--particularly recent--historiography to comment on contemporary times (McCormick more directly than Frum) . I'll stick with Ward-Perkins and Heather directly, who have more accurate analysis and assessment of the historiography (extended and edited excerpt):

HEATHER: The old view was essentially that internal decline had destroyed its capacity to resist: moral decadence, depopulation, lead poisoning, the debilitating effects of its recent conversion to Christianity, or another internal cause of your choice. It is important to remember that the Empire had always had important limitations....But all of this had always been true, and won’t explain the catastrophic collapse of the fifth century. In my view, the roots of collapse have to be sought in the outside world, among the barbarians. I should say that I use ‘barbarian’ here only in the sense of ‘outsider’ (one of its Roman connotations).

(snip)
I am entirely convinced by all the evidence that shows that the late Empire was not being torn apart by irrevocable processes of decline by the fourth century. Where I do part company with some revisionist scholarship, however, is over the argument that, because some Roman institutions ideologies and elites survived beyond 476, therefore the fall of the western Empire was not a revolutionary moment in European history. The most influential statement of this, perhaps, is Walter Goffart’s brilliant aphorism that the fall of the Western Empire was just ‘an imaginative experiment that got a little out of hand’. Goffart means that changes in Roman policy towards the barbarians led to the emergence of the successor states, dependent on barbarian military power and incorporating Roman institutions, and that the process which brought this out was not a particularly violent one.

To my mind, this view of the end of the Western Empire is deeply mistaken. Surely, there were plenty of Roman elements in the successor states, but one key institution was missing: the central authority structure of the Western Roman Empire itself. This had unified much of Western Europe for 500 years, but by 500 AD, had entirely ceased to exist.
WARD-PERKINS: When it comes to explaining the fall of the Western Roman Empire, we both believe that a series of unfortunate events was central to the story. Events (such as the arrival of the Huns), and chance play bigger parts in both our accounts, than deep structural weaknesses. I even argue that the eastern Roman Empire, which survived until Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453, was saved, not because it was structurally stronger than the West, but mainly because it happened to have been dealt a favourable geographical hand. A thin band of sea separated and protected the heartlands of eastern prosperity (in Asia Minor and the Near East) from the barbarian-infested Balkans.

It is interesting that both of us should prioritize events and chance over structural change, because this seems to be the way that historians are moving right across the spectrum of historical thought. When I was a student, in the early seventies, we were all into profound structural changes, that swept people along inexorably; and we viewed events as banal and superficial. Nowadays (and probably it is just another fashion), individuals and concatenations of events, all of which might have gone differently, are seen as central to human history. In theory at least, according to modern thinking, I might be writing this sentence, not in England, but in a still-extant province of Britannia – if a few things had only gone better in the fifth century.

HEATHER: Here, there’s maybe a bit of difference between us because I do believe in the importance of structural change outside the Empire. It’s the argument I start to develop in the last chapter of my book, but much more elsewhere, namely that having to co-exist with a large and aggressive Empire pushes neighbouring populations into processes of socio-economic and political change, the end result of which is to generate societies more capable of parrying the Empire that started everything off. There is, in other words, a kind of Newton’s Third Law: to every Empire there is an opposite and equal reaction which undermines the preponderance of power in one locality on which the original Empire was based. This, in my view, is what happens in spades in the Near East with the Sassanians, and is already happening in important ways in non-Roman Europe, when the Huns come along to generate a precocious unity among the Germani. But, given enough time, the Germani might have got there anyway!

Review: Horse Soldiers

2009-06-07T18:37:00.005-04:00

Doug Stanton, Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Stor of a Band of U.S. Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan.

Almost immediately after terrorists attacked American soil in September, 2001, members of the Army Special Forces began to prepare for entry into Afghanistan. While a nation sat shocked at the events of September 11th, these "silent warriors" relied on their own ingenuity and creativity to prepare for battle: Cold weather gear, batteries and modern GPS's were just a few of the things these warriors purchased on their own in the days leading up to their deployment. And their ability to improvise was a preview of what was to come in Afghanistan. As in past wars, no one had written a "how-to book" on war in Afghanistan. So the members of the Special Forces learned as they went along.

In a book full of characters, the journey of Special Forces Captain Mitch Nelson and the men under his command lay at the heart of the book, particularly the time Nelson spends with larger-than-life Afghani General Abdul Rashid Dostum. It is Dostum who shows Nelson the lay of the land in Afghanistan and who helps Nelson gain insight into the tribal/Warlord culture.

Throughout the book, Stanton illustrates the intricacies of Afghanistan's politics, such as how the leaders of the three rival factions of the Northern Alliance were fighting together while also positioning themselves politically and geographically for a peacetime nation. Stanton also shows the sort of deal-brokering that went on between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, often facilitated by family and tribal ties. Dostum even mentioned to Nelson that sometimes he would go light on attacking the Taliban here or there if some of his men told him they had family in the opposing camp. In one instance, Dostum radioed the Taliban to tell them that he had Americans with him and that they were coming to get them!

For their part, the Special Forces, well trained in politics and technology, found one area in which they were unprepared: horsemanship. The Northern Alliance relied on actual horsepower on the battlefield. Stanton describes how, like warriors out of a bygone age, Afghani soldiers raced and rode at their mechanized Taliban opponents. And, with the help of well-targeted American bombs, they won the day.

Stanton doesn't focus solely on Nelson and Dostum. Several other members of the Special Forces have their stories told and one sub-plot involves the journey of the American Taliban, Johnny Walker Lindh, and how he ended up in Mazar-i-Sharif on the day 600 Taliban prisoners revolted. This last part of the book, which details the revolt and the attempt to take back the fort, is a clearly written and exciting read.

Stanton has produced a fine work of contemporary, boots-on-the-ground history. It's surprising that the story hadn't yet been told, but it was worth the wait. Now, onto the movie!

It doesn't seem as "old" when the pictures are in color

2009-06-05T09:06:00.006-04:00

New color photos of Hitler have been released and are published in Life magazine.

As a kid who grew up (mostly) in the age of all-color TV, seeing anything in black and white--old pictures from the Civil War or old movies and news reels of WWII--seemed old or "other."But these color pictures and color movies of WWII and similar images of early 20th century Russia (for instance), bring what had seemed remote historical events closer to our modern age.

And that makes the events and people of a bygone age more real, for good or ill.

Looking for Popular Ideology in Ancient Rome

2009-05-14T10:33:00.002-04:00

Mary Beard reviews T. P. Wiseman's Remembering the Roman People:

This book is ground-breaking for its simple suggestion that the ideology of Roman popular politics is not entirely lost to us, and for its virtuoso demonstration that, fragmentary, inadequate and intensively studied as our sources for the period are, they may still have more to tell us. Here as elsewhere, T. P. Wiseman offers us a view of late Republican Rome not preoccupied solely with elite self-interest, wealth and dignity – but where some voices still spoke out for equality, the sharing of wealth and land and for the rights of the common people.

Sounds like sort of a mix of PoMo LitCrit and Intellectual history. Interesting.

Life on the Plantation

2009-03-13T08:55:00.009-04:00

Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was established by Royal Charter in 1663:

Because titles to these lands rested only on Indian deeds, neighboring colonies began to covet them. To meet this threat, Roger Williams journeyed to England and secured a parliamentary patent in March 1643-44 uniting the four towns into a single colony and confirming his fellow settlers' land claims. This legislative document served adequately as the basic law until the Stuart Restoration of 1660 made it wise to seek a royal charter.
Dr. John Clarke was commissioned to secure a document from the new king, Charles II, that would both be consistent with the religious principles upon which the tiny colony was founded and also safeguard Rhode Island lands from encroachment by speculators and greedy neighbors. He succeeded admirably. The royal charter of 1663 guaranteed complete religious liberty, established a self-governing colony with local autonomy, and strengthened Rhode Island's territorial claims. It was the most liberal charter to be issued by the mother country during the entire colonial era, a fact that enabled it to serve as Rhode Island's basic law until May 1843.

To this day, the official name of the state is still the state of "Rhode Island and Providence Plantations", though the last half of the name has been forgotten by just about everyone for a very long time. Basically, the full name has been relegated to nothing but an interesting piece of trivia: the littlest U.S. state also has the longest name. So no one really thinks much about it. Well, except a few who want to officially drop the "Plantations."

A group of Smith Hill legislators, along with members of the black community, believe it’s time for a name change that does not conjure up images of the slave trade.
“That we still have the word ‘plantation’ in our name is really a grave injustice and an insult to people in our community,” said Sen. Harold M. Metts, D-Providence.
He and other legislators, reviving a decades-old proposal, have introduced companion bills in the House and Senate to place a question on the next election ballot that asks voters whether they want to change the state’s official name to “Rhode Island.”
In years past the proposal has gone nowhere, with critics saying that the state’s name –– however flawed –– is part of the fabric of the Ocean State’s history.
But supporters say otherwise.
“We’re part of history and we’re changing that history and we don’t want to see that name anymore,” said fellow sponsor Rep. Joseph Almeida, D-Providence, at a news conference yesterday.
The proposal is much bigger than a name change, they said. It’s about making the state aware of its ties to slavery and moving forward, free of that burden.
“If we look at history, history is written for us to avoid the past and to move on,” said Dennis Langley, executive director of the Urban League of Rhode Island.

Their history is correct. Newport was a major slave port and Charles Rappleye's Sons of Providence is a fine, recent work that covers both this and the role that the Brown family (founders of Brown University) had in the slave trade. In fact, Brown University has undergone a very public self-examination and has taken various steps to account for the fact that their foundations were built upon slavery. It is also true that some of the farms in the "South County" region of the state did operate with slave labor.

In Narragansett County, conditions favored large-scale farming, and here more than anywhere else in the North a system began to emerge that looked like the Southern plantation colonies. In parts of "South Country" (as Narragansett also was called), one-third of the population was black work force by the mid-18th century. That's comparable to the proportion of slaves in the Old South states in 1820. Narragansett planters used their slaves both as laborers and domestic servants. William Robinson owned an estate that was more than four miles long and two miles wide, and he kept about 40 slaves there. Robert Hazard of South Kingstown owned 12,000 acres and had 24 slave women just to work in his dairy. The Stantons of Narragansett, who were among the province's leading landowners, had at least 40 slaves.
In keeping with the usual pattern, a higher percentage of blacks meant a more strict control mechanism. South Kingstown had perhaps the harshest local slave control laws in New England. After 1718, for instance, if any black slave was caught in the cottage of a free black person, both were whipped. After 1750, anyone who sold so much as a cup of hard cider to a black slave faced a crushing fine of £30.

But the point is that the "Plantations" referred to in the original charter was a common appellation for "a new settlement or colony". Obviously, the meaning of the word became associated with chattel slavery in the South and carries a negative connotation today. I completely understand that. But by pushing to remove "Providence Plantations" from the official name, by "changing that history", proponents are being anachronistic in their application of the term.

They are also being impractical in these times. Like other states, Rhode Island is facing some serious fiscal difficulties--there are plenty of things that our politicians should be worried about besides a feel-good measure of limited appeal and utility. In addition, there are costs incurred by such a change (there are many plaques, stationary, etc. that contain the full name, which would have to be changed).

One attractive argument for dropping the name is because it is so little-used and unknown. So what's the big deal, right? Well, there is the argument that this would be just the tip of the iceberg (ah yes, the "slippery slope." I know, I know...)

But allow me to indulge...What about the City of Providence. I think many people would associate the word "Providence" with religion and one of the definitions of "Providence" is "A manifestation of the care and superintendence which God exercises over his creatures; an event ordained by divine direction." The City of Providence is an official government entity. Should a government have a name that is so overtly religious? Or is that a history that needs to be changed, too?

Review - Defying Empire:Trading with the Enemy in Colonial New York

2009-03-01T10:46:00.005-05:00

Thomas M. Truxes - Defying Empire:Trading with the Enemy in Colonial New York

Everyone in colonial New York City traded with the enemy (the French) during the Seven Years' War (what we colonial descendants refer to as the French and Indian War). OK, that's an overstatement, but as Thomas Truxes fine work explains, it comes close to the truth. The City's merchants (obviously) and politicians (surprised?) were up to their necks in illegal trade before, during and after this period. "[T]rade with the enemy...did not flow from disloyalty to the Crown or indifference to the fate of the nation," writes Truxes, "...rather, the naked manifestation of a powerful commercial impulse synonymous with the great metropolis."

And while other colonies traded with the enemy--Connecticut and Rhode Island, for instance, were notorious for their "independence" in these matters--New York had distinct advantages when it came to "laundering" illegal goods. Its deep harbor and relatively small size made it easy for large ships to load and unload quickly and it had established itself since its days as a Dutch colony, as a key transshipment port.

During the war, New York's advantages as a supply depot for the British Royal Navy lent to its importance in colonial commerce and wartime machinations. This also made it an attractive target to the French, which, in turn, caused the British to increase the naval presence further. In addition, privateers from New York struck out to capture French prizes.

But there was money to be made by trading with the enemy, too. New York was both hub and spoke of illicit trade that went between Europe, the Caribbean islands and the colonies. Already established smuggling operations easily accommodated further illicit trade with the French. War or no war, they were well practiced at avoiding the authorities.

It certainly didn't help that many local politicians and crown representatives were in on the network. And, as others have argued, by the time the Crown, or Parliament, tried to do something, it was already too late. The horse was well out of the barn: these were the unfortunate rewards of so-called salutary neglect. As Truxes writes:

The flour act of 1757 was the sole piece of parliamentary legislation directed at Briton trading with the enemy during the Seven Years' War. If it was to be effective, the law would require broad support on both sides of the Atlantic. But the restrictions and penalties contained in the act applied only to colonial America. Cargoes dispatched from Great Britain and Ireland were unaffected. The discriminatory character of the act was immediately apparent. The ill-conceived legislation was one of the great blunders of the eighteenth-century British Parliament. Before a decade had passed, there would be others. (p.68)

Truxes has conducted extensive research and it shows. He has a feel for the city at that time and also does a fine job explaining the relationships between various politicians and merchants. Indeed, through his explanation of both the geography and the personalities involved, he brings 1760's New York to life. He also provides a very good overview of the Caribean trade ports and, in general, this is a fine piecet of economic history. Further, it contributes to the historiography that supports the contention that it was Britain's reaction (or overreaction) to the conduct of its American colonists during the Seven Years' War that ultimately set the stage for the Revolution.

Rating the Presidents

2009-02-16T12:39:00.006-05:00

CSPAN has another Presidential rating survey out. I don't have time for an extended "review" (well, frankly, my general response is "whatev"). But the two things I noticed were also noticed by KC Johnson at Cliopatria (thanks Ralph and sorry KC for initially giving the wrong attribution...sloppy of me). Why the hell does JFK rate so high, and why is Bill Clinton moving UP in these things? As KC points out:

Perhaps the most dubious rankings, however, involved the overall scores given to two recent Democrats, John Kennedy and Bill Clinton. Kennedy was ranked the sixth-best President, up from eighth in 2000. The two Presidents he surpassed between 2000 and 2009: Thomas Jefferson and Woodrow Wilson. In 2000, eighth seemed like a pretty high ranking for Kennedy, but it’s hard to justify placing him over two two-term chief executives with major accomplishments in both the foreign policy and domestic spheres.

KC digs in a bit more and has some other questions, so check it out. Regardless, these things are obviously subjective. Though, the top two continue to be Lincoln and Washington. At least most can agree on that!

Al Queda Hit by the Plague?!

2009-01-19T10:39:00.001-05:00

I couldn't pass up pointing to this story:

The disease, which struck Europe in the Middle Ages killing more than 25 million people, has swept through a training camp for insurgents in Algeria.
The arrival of the plague was discovered when security forces found the body of a dead terrorist by a roadside, the Sun reports.
The victim belonged to the large al-Qaeda network AQLIM (al-Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb).
A security source told the paper: "This is the deadliest weapon yet in the war against terror. Most of the terrorists do not have the basic medical supplies needed to treat the disease.
"It spreads It spreads quickly and kills within hours. This will be really worrying al-Qaeda."
Black Death comes in various forms and was one of the deadliest pandemics in human history when it struck in the 1340s killing 75 million people across North Africa, Asia and Europe.
Bubonic Plague is spread by bites from infected rat fleas. Symptoms include painful boils in the groin, neck and armpits. In Pneumonic Plague, airborn bacteria spread like flu. Without medication it can be deadly.
The new epidemic began in the cave hideouts of AQLIM in Tizi Ouzou province, 150km east of the capital Algiers, the Sun reports.
The group, led by wanted terror figure Abdelmalek Droudkal, was forced to turn its shelters in the Yakouren forest into mass graves and flee.
The group now fears the highly-infectious disease could have spread to other al-Qaeda training camps or Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, the paper said.
A source said: "The emirs (leaders) fear surviving terrorists will surrender to escape a horrible death."

Review - The Threat Closer to Home: Hugo Chavez and the War Against America

2009-01-05T19:59:00.003-05:00

Douglas E. Schoen and Michael Rowan, The Threat Closer to Home: Hugo Chavez and the War Against America.

In the Preface, Schoen and Rowan explain:

It's important for us to set out this book--why we have spent the amount of time and effort that we have over the last few years writing about Hugo Chavez and working to change politics in Venezuela.

While admiring Chavez's intentions to eradicate poverty and corruption in his country, we have sadly come to believe that Chavez arguably presents a greater threat to America than Osama bin Laden does on a day-to-day basis, and this is our opportunity to set out the reasons why we believe this to be the case.

The authors didn't just "parachute into" Venezuela, sniff around, dig up some dirt and produce an expose. They utilized their extensive experience and contacts in the nation to get to the heart of the problem posed by Hugo Chavez.

In the Introduction, they cover the "five critical fronts of Chavez's initiative against" the United States.

These are his oil; his alliance with Iran; the FARC's guerrilla war in Colombia; promoting anti-American states; and building friendly or so-called soft assets in the United States.

The rest of the work is an amplification on these themes. They are astounded by those who justify his dictator-like actions because Chavez was democratically elected. Perhaps the first time, but not since, they argue. They cover familiar ground concerning how Chavez utilizes Venezuelan oil resources as an economic weapon, often to the detriment of his countrymen. They also explain and document his support of Islamist terrorists and contend the only explanation for such support would be "to harm the United States by any means at hand."

One of their concluding chapters is titled "Useful Idiots", in which they document the lengths to which intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky and Joseph Stiglitz as well as various activists and celebrities and, in particular, former President Jimmy Carter, have gone towards defending or turning a blind eye to Chavez's controversial policies and actions.

In their final chapter, "The Alliance of the Americas", the authors explain how Latin Americans still recent American intervention--both the government and corporations--into the region. They urge for a "post-Cold War, post-Monroe Doctrine relationship of equality with Latin Americans" as the only way to "make the United States a better nation." Clearly, they believe they have the best interests of Latin America in mind and their track record supports this and lends credence to their case against Chavez.

Medieval Scottish "Rap"

2008-12-29T12:05:00.001-05:00

According to Professor Ferenc Szasz, contemporary "rap battles" (which I thought originated from "the dozens") "derive from the ancient Caledonian art of 'flyting'."

According to the theory, Scottish slave owners took the tradition with them to the United States, where it was adopted and developed by slaves, emerging many years later as rap.

Professor Szasz is convinced there is a clear link between this tradition for settling scores in Scotland and rap battles, which were famously portrayed in Eminem's 2002 movie 8 Mile.
He said: "The Scots have a lengthy tradition of flyting - intense verbal jousting, often laced with vulgarity, that is similar to the dozens that one finds among contemporary inner-city African-American youth.
"Both cultures accord high marks to satire. The skilled use of satire takes this verbal jousting to its ultimate level - one step short of a fist fight."
The academic, who specialises in American and Scottish culture at the University of New Mexico, made the link in a new study examining the historical context of Robert Burn's work.
The most famous surviving example of flyting comes from a 16th-century piece in which two rival poets hurl increasingly obscene rhyming insults at one another before the Court of King James IV.
Titled the Flyting Of Dunbar And Kennedy, it has been described by academics as "just over 500 lines of filth".
Professor Szasz cites an American civil war poem, printed in the New York Vanity Fair magazine on November 9, 1861, as the first recorded example of the battles being used in the United States.

Burgundians Blog

2008-12-20T21:22:00.002-05:00

I mentioned my new Burgundians in the Mist blog earlier. Turns out I had inadvertently restricted access. That's been rectified and it's now open to the public. The Burgundians are the central topic, but I aim to also talk a lot about the Germanic tribes of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.

Bush Legacy? Too Soon to Tell

2008-12-16T13:19:00.001-05:00

Patrick Reddy has a fair recounting of the Bush Presidency and how history will view it. His conclusion (emphasis added):

What will be very difficult for Bush’s historic reputation to overcome is that the country is in worse shape than when he came in; that he will likely suffer in comparison to his two immediate successors, his father and Bill Clinton; and that he governed very differently than he campaigned. In 2000, Bush ran as “a uniter, not a divider” and on a “humble” foreign policy! It’s true that voters didn’t get the moderate course from Bush they expected, but this is somewhat due to events.
Right now, people are focusing on the recession, possible national bankruptcy and Iraq, so the president is leaving town quite unpopular. But since economic cycles come and go, the guess here is that the legacy all comes down to the Bush Doctrine. If Iraq becomes a stable democracy and staunch U. S. ally, if Bush’s nation-building works as well as Truman’s in Germany and Japan, then historians will upgrade him. It could be 20, 30 or even 50 years before we get a final verdict on his Iraq policy. His long-term reputation is very dependent on future events. The odds do not look good now, but things can change.
Bush may well be someday seen as the “father of Arab democracy.” By definition, the new government in Iraq is a vast improvement over Saddam. If the Iraq situation turns around, historians will write that it was an occasionally mistake-prone administration that still got the big issues right. If not, they’ll judge him to have squandered thousands of lives and trillions of dollars on a foolish policy. If Iraq never turns around, that — combined with the financial mismanagement — will probably leave Bush in the bottom quartile of presidents. But if it does, he’ll be raised to the middle of the pack. This is one presidency that will almost surely require the passage of many years before we can get a true final perspective.

"A certain kind of hubris"

2008-12-15T10:31:00.002-05:00

From the Politico:

[T]here are early rumblings of a backlash to Obama's ostentatious embrace of all things Lincoln, with his not-so-subtle invitations to compare the 44th president to the 16th, the "Savior of the Union."

Simply put, some scholars think the comparisons have gone a bit over the top hat.

Sean Wilentz, a scholar in American history at Princeton, said many presidents have sought to frame themselves in the historical legacies of illustrious predecessors, but he couldn't find any examples quite so brazen.

"Sure, they've looked back to Washington and even, at times, Jackson. Reagan echoed and at times swiped FDR's rhetoric," said Wilentz. "But there's never been anything like this, and on this scale. Ever."

Eric Foner, a Columbia historian who has written extensively on the Civil War era, agreed that comparing one's self to Lincoln sets a rather high bar for success, and could come off like "a certain kind of hubris."

"It'd be a bit like a basketball player turning up before his first game and saying, 'I'm kind of modeling myself on Michael Jordan,'" he said. "If you can do it, fine. If you're LeBron James, that'll work. But people may make that comparison to your disadvantage."

As it happens, Obama may find this an entirely apt comparison.

"I'm LeBron, baby," he told a Chicago Tribune reporter at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. "I can play on this level. I got some game."

That kind of preening highlights a risk that many presidents have encountered as they gaze in history's mirror.

Of course, one must remember that Wilentz is persona non grata in the historical profession. Don't know about Foner.

NEW PROJECT - Burgundians in the Mist

2008-12-08T10:35:00.003-05:00

I've decided to go in a new direction and start blogging about that area of history most near and dear to my heart--the history of the Burgundians of late antiquity. Not sure if I'll have anything new to add to the scholarship, but my goal is to educate and explain why the period that is now called Late Antiquity is so fascinating. I'll provide sources (both dead tree and online) as I go and will cover the historiography as well as "the facts."

This isn't to say the I'm done around here, but over the past year, I've felt less compelled to focus on "where history and politics meet." Suffice it to say "they do" and "they always will."

History Needs to be More Accessible for Historians

2008-12-02T15:19:00.005-05:00

Tim Lacy is worried that historians are engaged in "a dichotomous conversation" based on their ability to pay for (and thus access) historical sources. This follows a similar concern he expressed about the costs involved in doing good intellectual history. In short, Tim thinks there is a class problem whereby better-financed historians have access to journals that lesser-financed, and usually younger, historians do not. At the same time, the latter are generally more reliant upon--and willing to use--on-line (read "free") sources. The essence of his point is this:

It seems to me then that digital subscription issues tend to detrimentally affect non peer-reviewed output by history professionals more than other kinds of writing. This means writing on subjects where historians are acting as public intellectuals. Of course this also extends to audience---print and online audiences are only seeing writings by those who work in each medium. It's an obvious point, but it is important to remind ourselves of the consequences.

If historians can't afford the time, energy, and money to go to their home institution's library to read print subscription output, their non-peer reviewed, public-intellectual work will likely be based on easily accessible web resources, resulting in two tracks of professional conversation about larger subjects.

Tim is seeking input, so here's mine: You bet it's a problem, especially for independent types like me. As a non-academic making my living in an entirely separate field, there's no way I can regularly keep up with the latest in scholarship. However, I also understand that I'm significantly in the minority and that the entire profession needn't change to suite me!

That being said, it is worth considering how younger historians on an academic track regard these access and financial roadblocks. As a profession, historians had better work towards easier and more cost-effective individual access to journals. A new generation that is used to operating on their own (ie; without having to be "affiliated") and having vast amounts of information at their fingertips is coming fast and they correctly expect that the "scholarly superstructure" of their profession is up-to-date and "user friendly." Right now, their in for some considerable disappointment.

Review: In a Time of War

2008-11-12T20:38:00.005-05:00

Bill Murphy, Jr., In a Time of War: The Proud and Perilous Journey of West Point's Class of 2002.

Bill Murphy writes:

Todd Bryant and his classmates in the West Point class of 2002 were the heirs apparent to a military in crisis. In the wake of Vietnam, the leaders of the first army in American history to lose a war faced a stark strategic choice. They could study the war intently, learning and applying its lessons so they would never be caught flat-footed again. Or, they could decide that Vietnam was simply the product of a strange confluence of unfortunate geography, misguided tactics, and a lack of political will at home: an unnerving episode, but unlikely ever to be repeated. With a few notable exceptions, the leadership of the late-twentieth-century U.S. military chose the latter, more comfortable course. The Army set aside its Vietnam-style missions against insurgents and guerrillas, and instead prepared almost exclusively to fight the hordes of Soviet tanks that they expected would one day invade western Europe.

Because of these decisions, members of the West Point Class of 2002 would find themselves on the front lines of war in which neither they nor the majority of their commanders were prepared. Instead, belatedly, they were forced to learn on-the-job while military and political leaders made misstep after misstep until the arrival of General David Petraeus and the implementation of a new strategy and new tactics. But that is only the backdrop to Murphy's work. At the heart lay the individual and collective stories of some of the cadets of the West Point Class of 2002. Young men and women who entered the Academy in 1998, at a time when:

A great gulf had opened between those who served in the military and those who didn't. Americans no longer believed they had to serve to be good citizens. Instead, they simply had to "support the troops," whatever that might mean.

With no Cold War and no other major conflict on the radar, the Army was searching for its identity and the bicentennial class of 2002--dubbed the Golden Children--were to be in the vanguard of the new Army. They entered with careers in mind that weren't necessarily related to war fighting. And perhaps it was the seemingly remote chance of ever fighting in a big war that enabled romantic thoughts of battlefield glory. Yet, no matter the individual motives for entering the Academy, the cadets emerged with a sense of duty and a camaraderie with their classmates that was deeper than personal ambition.

The reality of the Iraq War scraped the luster off of the battlefield medals that had danced in the heads of so many of these young Army officers. And decisions made higher up in the chain of command, such as taking the tanks away from a cavalry unit prior to their deployment to Iraq, were met with disbelief, consternation and a can-do attitude. They may not have approved of the decisions being made, but they followed orders and made due. If for nothing else, then for each other and, more importantly, for the men under their command. In the end, that was the ultimate goal of the platoon leader: to bring all of his men back from patrol. How it may or may not have helped the policy of the United States government was secondary. Especially when they had doubts as to the overall strategy and observed the gap between the rhetoric and the reality they encountered. As one soldier wrote, "These people don't want democracy...It is totally against their culture. They do, however, want capitalism."

The war affected their outlook on a career in the Army, too. To one young officer:

[T]he idea of making a twenty-year professional commitment to a large, bureaucratic organization--even one with as honorable and important a role as the U.S. Army--was foreign to most people of his generation....Of his West Point classmates, he could hardly think of any who were talking about staying in past five years. But they were all worried about the stop-loss policy...

And the arguments used by higher-ranking officers to try to persuade younger officers to make a career of the Army fell on many a deaf ear:

Today's field-grade officers had had it easy when they were [his] age. You could walk around Fort Hood and see plenty of majors and lieutenant colonels without a combat patch on the right sleeve, meaning that in ten or fifteen years in the Army they hadn't once deployed to war. What right did they have to judge him and his cohort?

But there were also members of the class of 2002 who valued their place in the Army and believed in its mission:

Visiting his family...he felt he was forever defending his choices: going to West Point, serving in the Army, fightin in Iraq. Civilians didn't always understand why the military mattered to him so much. He, his classmates, and his fellow soldiers had given their all for the nation....[He] understood that a moajority of his countrymen no longer thought the war in Iraq was worth fighting, but he [and others thought] America had learned from its mistakes and was no following a viable strategy [under General David Petreaus].

As another soldier, injured in Afghanistan, explained to a group of friends from Europe and America:

The U.S. invasion had been launched with the best intentions, he told them, and by liberating the country from Saddam, America had intended to bring prosperity to the Iraqi people. Obviously things haven't gone as well as we hoped...but he was convinced if the United States pulled out now, the result would be utter chaos. Having created a power vacuum...America had an obligation to stay until it was certain that whatever emerged in the wake of the U.S. military would bring postive change to the country.

Finally, on his way to his third deployment, a soldier was able to remain optimistic, no matter his personal sacrifice:

"What do you think about the surge?" the man asked.

"It has achieved a lot, " Will said, but then added that he was worried that the next president might be unreasonably optimistic about how quicly American troops could be withdrawn. Iraq seemed to have all but disappeared as a political issu. In polls, far more people now said their chief concern in the 2008 election was the economy, or health care.

"In Bush's defense--" Will started to say. [His wife] was amazed to hear these words come out of his mouth.

But the man started speaking at the same time. "Everyone wants the war to be over," he said.

"Americans want everything instantly," Will agreed, shaking his head. Then he added: "I think we'll be there for ten years or more."

Murphy does a fine job of stepping back and letting the soldiers and their spouses tell their stories. The impact that decisions made up the chain of command have on these men and women are often disappointing and tragic. Especially to a group of officers who entered West Point in one environment and concomitant professional expectations but graduated into a world where war was at hand. As one Class of 2002 member observed, the cadets who entered West Point after 9/11 were different than his class:

He and his class had committed to the Army during peacetime. The cadets now attending West Point knew from their first day that they were probably going to serve in Iraq--or some other war zone--after they graduated.

"It is one thing to have to go to war...It is quite another to volunteer for it."

But whatever their expectations, they heeded the call to duty and some gave the ultimate sacrifice. Their personal stories have been well served by Murphy's re-telling.

Obama Already Among the Best?

2008-11-09T19:59:00.009-05:00

It took historians a full term of George W. Bush's presidency before they declared he was "the worst president ever." Now, only days after the election, at least one prominent historian is declaring that the presidency of Barack Obama will be "unforgettable" (h/t).

Like Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D.Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F.Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan - the most memorable of the 18 presidents who served in the last century - Obama seems likely to become an unforgettable personality who presided over a transforming administration....

If Obama's campaign that brought him from relative obscurity in Illinois to the White House in so brief a time is any true measure of the man, we can have every hope that he will acquit himself admirably in the days ahead - and claim a place in the pantheon of America's most distinguished presidents.

There's no doubt that the election of Barack Obama is already historic. But the confidence and the stake-claiming already being made by historians regarding his Presidency gives me pause. In the coming years, through the various trials and tribulations that confront every President, I suspect that many of the "Historians for Obama" will be less than willing to admit their man have been wrong over this or that. Instead, we'll have contemporary "history" being written to justify his decisions and--by extension--the wisdom of those historians who so very publicly supported him. The reputation of the profession will be at stake, you see.

Cliopatria History Blogging Awards

2008-11-06T09:06:00.002-05:00

Nominations for The Cliopatria Awards for the best history blogging are open through November. Final selections will be made by panels of history bloggers and announced at the American Historical Association Annual Meeting in early January. Previous winners can be found here, and Cliopatria's History Blogroll can be found here.

Categories: Best Group Blog, Best Individual Blog, Best New Blog, Best Post, Best Series of Posts, Best Writer

President Obama

2008-11-05T09:54:00.002-05:00

Obviously, the historical importance of the moment is unmistakable. An African-American President has been elected through the normal means we've always followed: through a vociferous debate over ideas and principles. Even those of us who oppose President-elect Obama on the issues can appreciate the skill and talent and weight of Obama's ideas that carried the day. Few thought this moment possible, but America is about possibilities. Americans have proved yet again that we are a land of opportunity, that we do live up to our ideals--if sometimes we take too long--and that we truly are the greatest nation in the world.

Tomorrow is another day, but for now, be proud.

Review: Lincoln's Admirals

2008-10-29T20:14:00.004-04:00

Craig L. Symonds, Lincoln and his Admirals

Weeks into his presidency, Abraham Lincoln was confronted with his first naval question: What to do about Fort Sumter? First, should he re-supply it--and risk war--or not and concede defeat, thereby giving the secessionist South a valuable bit of propaganda? Was there a diplomatic solution? To help answer these questions, he turned to men, most of whom he barely knew, with military, naval and diplomatic expertise. He looked for conventional and unconventional solutions and, in the end, as he did so often, ultimately made the decision himself. An expedition was organized to help the fort. But his lack of experience, the disorganization of his nascent administration and deliberate nature doomed the expedition. Lincoln blamed himself, but learned from the experience. Lincoln's Vice-President Hannibal Hamlin agreed. Writes Symonds:

Hamlin argued that there were two Lincolns: the one who came from Illinois, inexperienced in wielding great power," and the one who emerged later as "the conqueror of a gigantice civil war, the emancipator of slaves, master of the political situation, and savior of the nation."

Lincoln improved upon his performance in matters naval by taking some those matters into his own hands. In the west, he championed a river campaign utilizing combined army and naval forces that could strike simultaneously at separate targets and force the South to split its military resources. While not as directly involved, he was similarly heartened by the success of Admiral David Farragut's taking of New Orleans and run up the Mississippi. These combined operations were part of the "Anaconda Plan" and succeeded in giving the North a toehold on both ends of the Mississippi as it ran through the South.

The other significant part of the Anaconda plan was the blockade of southern ports. Here, Lincoln first had to navigate admiralty law while his fleet was built or acquired. Thanks to "King Cotton," European nations had a vested interest in maintaining trade with the South. They would not submit to a "paper blockade": the North would have to have a real force in place. Yet, the logistics of putting a blockade in place seemed to worry Lincoln less than the legal gymnastics required to legitimize a blockade against the South, which Lincoln had contended was not an entity in and of itself. Symond's explains this well.

One of the best stories told by Symonds is that of Lincoln's visit to the Hampton Roads region of Virginia while the Merrimack and Monitor circled each other warily amidst the Union blockade. Lincoln's personal intervention and suggestions prompted both the taking of a key shore positions as well as, ultimately, the scuttling of the infamous Confederate ironclad.

Symond's also covers the role that "contraband" (freed slaves) played in the Navy and how, traditionally, the maritime service was more accustomed to having blacks among its ranks.

Absorbing the contrabands into the blockade fleet caused scarcely a ripple either among the public at large or within the navy. Historically, free blacks had made up some 15 percent of the navy's enlisted force. During the 1850s, the figure dropped to only about 5 percent; now it would grow again back up to 15 percent. Naval officers, always eager for more hands, generally welcomed the contrabands on board as simply so many more strong backs, and the white sailors welcomed them, too, mainly because the newcomers were generally assigned "the dirtiest, most strenuous, and most physically demanding jobs," thereby relieving white sailors of those duties....White officers and men alike took a certain delight in using the enemy's slaves against them.

Interestingly, according to Symonds, Lincoln's early success on the rivers of the West and in implementing the blockade

...may have encourage Lincoln to take a slightly harder line with McClellan, who was still stalled on the Virginia peninsula battling the mud and his own fears. Union forces were successful elsewhere, so why not in Virginia?

Elsewhere in the book, Symond's describes the political management Lincoln had to engage in to sooth fragile egos and get the right men in the right places as he deemed necessary. His support of the ordnance expert John A. Dahlgren often put him at odds with the navy establishment, but he believed in Dahlgren and promoted him to admiral even though he lacked seagoing experience. At higher levels, he constantly had to manage the relationship (or lack thereof) and differing agendas of Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles and Secretary of State William Seward.

Symonds covers other matters, such as the Trent affair and the hunt for the Confederate blockade runners (both involving the combustible Admiral Charles Wilkes, incidentally) as well as the messy aftermath of the "easing out" of Admiral Samuel Du Pont and the French invasion of Mexico.

Symonds has done a fine job of narrative history. While the focus is on the navy, he doesn't leave out the better known historical touchstones, which help to provide context for Civil War afficianados who may not be as familiar with naval timelines. The work is well-sourced and a valuable contribution to the existing Civil War literature. Symond's is to be commended.

So You Think You Remember the Fifties?

2008-09-29T11:44:00.003-04:00

George and Robert Leonard, founding members of the Fifties retro group Sha Na Na, examine the scholarly interest in how their singing group helped change the way Americans remembered the decade of the 1950's.

In the last few years, an unlikely group of scholars has been studying Columbia’s Sha Na Na as a test case: meta-historians, theoreticians of cultural history itself. In 2004, Rutgers University Press published a bold new book by Goucher professor Daniel Marcus, Happy Days and Wonder Years: The Fifties and Sixties in Contemporary Cultural Politics. In 2006, Elizabeth E. Guffey, a Stanford Ph.D. and associate professor at SUNY Purchase, published Retro: The Culture of Revival (London and Chicago: Reaktion Books distributed by the University of Chicago Press, retrothebook.com). Both books contain extensive studies of Sha Na Na’s “Fabricated Fifties” (Guffey’s term) because Marcus and Guffey — working quite independently — discovered Sha Na Na and Columbia College, in 1969, playing an unusual role in 20th century American history.

More precisely, in inventing it.

Read the whole thing for an interesting case study on the differences between history and preferred memory.

The Civil War in Four Minutes

2008-09-29T11:29:00.001-04:00

La Guerre de Sécession en 4 minutes - Videos

Review: Failures of the Presidents

2008-09-28T19:46:00.006-04:00

Thomas J. Craughwell (with M. William Phelps), Failures of the Presidents: From the Whiskey Rebellion and War of 1812 to the Bay of Pis and War in Iraq.

Every president has his failures and successes (well, maybe not Andrew Johnson) and Thomas J. Craughwell has presented some interesting Presidential decisions in the interest of showing the former. He starts out explaining how Washington's reaction to the Whiskey Rebellion and Adams' acceptance of the Alien and Sedition Acts were major contributing factors to the fall of the Federalists and the rise of Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans. Jefferson also comes under criticism (the Embargo Act) as do many others up through George W. Bush (Iraq). Interestingly, Presidents Nixon (the bombing of Cambodia and Watergate) and Carter (Iran hostages and Energy Crisis/"Malaise") earn the dubious distinction of having two major failures addressed by Craughwell.

Craughwell does a good job of laying the historical context for the layman on the way to explaining why each of his examples were, indeed, failure. However, sometimes he pushes too hard in one direction. Did the Whiskey tax, the impetus for the Rebellion, and the Alien and Sedition Acts contribute to the end of the Federalist Party? Yes. But so did the propaganda and hysteria fomented by Jefferson and his D/Rs. Craughwell does mention this, but the emphasis is clearly on the actions of the then-current Presidents (Washington and Adams), not on the actions of the one who sought that office (Jefferson) and his supporters.

However, in other instances he's spot on, such as when he takes Andrew Jackson to task for the Trail of Tears, FDR for the Japanese internment and Jimmy Carter for the Iranian hostage crisis. He also presents a few obscure decisions as historical turning points, thus enabling a new perspective on an old issue. One such example is his account of President Grant's attempt to annex Santo Domingo. Grant's idea was to relieve the pressure between newly freed slaves and whites in the newly-conquered South by allowing the emigration of freed blacks to Santo Domingo. Craughwell's explanation--that this sent the signal that Grant himself believed that there would never be a reconciliation between the races in the South--is intriguing and warrants deeper analysis.

Craughwell begins his book explaining that "weighing the successes and failures of a presidency takes time." Nonetheless, he still attempts to analyze the "failure" of more contemporary events such as those by Nixon, Carter, Iran-Contra and the War in Iraq. (He also explains in the Forward that he, his co-author and editors couldn't agree as to whether the Clinton sex scandals did serious harm to the nation).

There are no citations or bibliography, but a review of the "Suggested Reading" list offers clues as to Craughwell's source material and may help explain the tone and nature of his conclusions for a couple of these later chapters. For instance, the reading list he suggests for the topic of George W. Bush and Iraq consists of these 9 items:

Paul Berman's, Terror and Liberalism
Rajiv Chandrasekaran's, Imperial Life in the Emerald City
Andrew Cockbrun's, Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy
Karen DeYoung's, Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell
Robert W. Drapers, Dead Certain
David Hare's anti-war play, Stuff Happens
Michael Isikoff and David Corn's, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and Selling of the Iraq War
Bob Woodward's, State of Denial
Valerie Plame Wilson's, Fair Game

An informed reader will recognize that this is not exactly a reading list where one would find an unbiased--much less a sympathetic--account of the Iraq War. Perhaps Craughwell should have followed his own advice, resisted temptation and left more for a sequel?

In fact, a sequel would be welcome. Setting aside the more contemporary accounts, Craughwell offers an interesting presentation and analysis of many events. There are many more that are deserving analysis. Would he be so bold as to argue that dropping the Bomb on Hiroshima was a failure? Or what about the War with Mexico?

Obviously, there is room to argue over every "failure" presented, and that's what is so fun about the book. It would be a great conversation-starter in history courses for older high school or undergraduate students and, for the non-scholar, it makes for thoughtful and entertaining reading.

Review: A Declaration of Energy Independence

2008-09-21T21:06:00.008-04:00

Jay Hakes, A Declaration of Energy Independence: How Freedom from Foreign Oil Can Improve National Security, Our Economy, and the Environment

Jay Hakes was the Head of the Energy Information Administration at the U.S. Department of Energy under President Bill Clinton for eight years and currently oversees the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum.

Hakes begins by recounting the last 40 years of energy policy, from oil embargoes, to President Carter's plan to get America off of foreign oil to (as Hakes portrays it) the failure to follow up on the aforementioned plan by Carter's presidential successors. Basically, throughout this recent-history lesson, Hakes portrays the plans laid out by Carter (and some of those by President Ford) as a missed opportunity, one that should have been seized upon but wasn't. This recounting is interesting and thorough and, a quibble here or there aside, contains valuable background for the proposals that Hakes offers in the second part of the book.

As Hakes explains, though, there is a problem with implementing necessarily long-term energy plans:

There are several valuable lessons from this forgotten story of regaining energy independence. First, there are no quick fixes, byt there are fixes. It generally takes at least two to six years for positive effects of federal legislation to have much impact (and longer for investments in research and development). Any politician who promises immediate results is porbably going to make things worse.

Second, there are no silver bullets for winning energy independence, but there is plenty of silver buckshot. Some trumpeted solutions to the energy crisis, such as making liquid transportation fuels from coal, played no role at all. Even the larges contributors could not turn around a major trend by themselves. Those who want to wage "the moral equivalent of war" must attack on many fronts.

There is one problem with winning a war. People soon want to settle back to life as usual, and complacency sets in. After losing energy independence in 1970, it took America a dozen years to regain it. It would take 17 years to lose it.

But Hakes proceeds to give it a try, though only after taking the Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush administrations to task for letting Carter's plans slip away. However, Hakes thinks the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 "will likely be seen as an important turning point and the end of a 26-year era of energy complacency." Well, maybe we can hope, but Hakes also explains that there are some partisan blinders that need to be removed before any hope of progress can realistically be felt.

On the Left, Hakes explains, many "rule out most sources of energy." Coal, oil, nuclear, windmills and dams all have been rhetorically shot down by the environmental left. And while acute arguments against each form of energy may "make sense" on their own, "In combination," Hakes writes, "they create an almost impossible situation." He states that "the ideology of the Left often castigates any increases in energy prices" believing that big business is gouging consumers. Hakes believes that "price increases are often best explained by the normal fluctuations of commodity markets or added costs." In summary, Hakes writes of the Left that "Both the insistence that energy prices should never rise and the demonization of major corporations often provide excuses for avoiding tough decisions about energy."

On the Right, Hakes explains that ideologues "tend to abhor any government action that raises energy prices or slows economic growth." Further, "this...shut the door on most new government measures to protect the environment or national security interests." He also accuses the Right of "sloppy thinking about free markets" when they don't "recognize the external costs of fossil fuels--the costs to national security, the economy, and the environment not included in retail prices." He also accuses conservatives of selective memory in that they overstate the effect that deregulation and more effective distribution had on energy prices without recognizing the government policies, most put in place by President Carter, "that promoted conservation and fuel-shifting away from oil."

Hakes also thinks the Right "tend to dismiss ideas they do not like with the simple assertion they were advance by someone they do not like." He offers Al Gore as an object lesson, but here he manifestly overreaches and is guilty of a reductionism all his own. The arguments against Al Gore and his Inconvenient Truth are much deeper than personal animosity. But perhaps Hakes is dismissing them because he doesn't like many on the ideological Right?

The last third of the book contains a series of chapters devoted to various solutions: we should increase our emergency reserves, develop the "car of the future", alternative fuels, "an electric future", implement acceptable energy taxes, "make energy conservation a patriotic duty" and "throw some Hail Marys." All and all, Hakes has several good ideas, many of which have been discussed by others and some of which are likely to be acted upon.

He concludes with an exhortation for both politicians and voters to take his suggestions (or others) and implement them fully. Yet, the same problem remains: even if we begin to implement these policies--and they begin to work--will we be able to keep our collective eyes on the ball long enough to see it all through? Hakes thinks we can if we accept it as a patriotic duty. That all depends on exactly how much we're asked to do for our country.

Unspinnning Clio

2008-09-15T11:45:00.006-04:00

79.2 percent of historians self-identify as Democrats (h/t). Many even going so far as to actively campaign for the Democratic Party nominee this year. And that is perfectly fine, patriotic and all that. And yet, we are supposed to believe that when history is written, the biases and predispositions will be self-considered and the unvarnished, and historical "truth" will be produced about the current times in which we live. Right. I'll try to remember that in 20 years. (And I know how loaded all of that prior phraseology was....meh.)

I guess I'm at the "tipping point." If it isn't obvious by now, I've been in a slow process of disengagement with the professional history bloggers out there. I don't comment at HNN or engage other bloggers nearly as much as I used to. Partly because I just don't looking at things the same way an academic does (because I'll never be one--they're right about one thing; it doesn't pay enough!). I guess I just can't relate. I've also stepped back because of a change in priorities. Family and other interests have taken precedence.

I started history blogging because I liked History. I still do. But arguing over the minutiae and marshaling historical arguments to defend political stances has gotten tiresome and predictable. There really is no chance of persuasion or concession when historians talk politics. Cherry-picking historical arguments is easy for all of us and essentially non-productive. Face it, the sides have been drawn, and that's that. Hey, it's OK, but it's just a waste of my time. I can't keep up and, frankly, just don't care anymore.

So, the 79.2% of historians who call themselves Democrats can continue to talk to themselves and bemoan the poor rubes in the hinterlands who get tricked all of the time. Make fun of Bush (quickly...you only have a few more months) and think about which reductionist foil you can next set your sights on. Whatever. I'm out. I'll just review some books and post now and then about history when the mood strikes. I'm going to try to keep the contemporary politics far away from here. Spinning Clio is done worrying about the Spinning. I'm going to focus on "the Clio" from here on out.

A People's Documentary

2008-09-11T16:53:00.003-04:00

Matt Damon is adapting Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States” into a documentary. That's just great. Way to puncture that stereotypical, Hollywood=leftist-America-haters balloon, Matt. Historians are split on the work, but every undergrad history wannabe goes through their own love affair with Zinn's "classic" work. I guess Mr. Damon is still channeling "Good Will Hunting" himself.

Gaddis Looks at the Bush "Doctrine"

2008-08-28T12:41:00.004-04:00

Ralph Luker called attention to Ending Tyranny: The Past and Future of an Idea by John Lewis Gaddis, and (after dissing Victor Davis Hansen) offered that this "may be the first attempt at a positive reappraisal of the Bush administration's legacy in foreign policy." And Ralph followed that up with, "Can you say the Stanford/Yale [Hansen/Gaddis] axis of hackery?"

Anyway, while I know I'm not a bona fide academic historian, I read the piece and I don't see the "hackery."

Gaddis' central goal is to analyze whether there really is a "Bush Doctrine" and whether or not, if it does exist, it will be a flash in the pan or long-lasting; perhaps picked-up by succeeding generations (if not immediately). He surveys the successes and failures of other presidential "doctrines" in an attempt to place Bush's in context. Here's an (extended) example of the sort of analysis Gaddis is trying to provide:

The end of the Cold War left the United States in a position of dominance unrivaled since the days of the Roman Empire. Maintaining humility under such circumstances would have demanded the self-discipline of a saint—and the Americans, like the Romans, have never been particularly saintly. So all at once their efforts to encourage democracy, which had come across during the Cold War as constraining the power of dictators, now looked like an effort to concentrate power in their own hands.
***
And after... September 11, 2001, a wounded nation that was still the most powerful nation began insisting that its future security required the expansion of democracy everywhere. No wonder this frightened people elsewhere, even those also frightened by terrorism.
President Bush reflected this “one size fits all” mentality when he called for “the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture.” That sounded like knowing what was best for the world. But then he added: “with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.” That sounded like liberating people so that they could decide what was best for them; it was language of which the Founding Fathers, John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln and Isaiah Berlin might have approved. So the President managed to compress, into a single sentence, the concepts of both positive and negative liberty.
This may have been a triumph for succinct speech writing, but it was not one for philosophical coherence. Promoting democracy, for the reasons I’ve mentioned, offers no guarantee of ending tyranny, just as ending tyranny offers no guarantee that the newly liberated will choose democracy. Telling people simultaneously that we know best and that they know best is likely to confuse them as well as us. But what if we were to read the President’s sentence as a political rather than a philosophical statement, as a way of respecting the recent past while shifting priorities for the future? A presidential speech, after all, cannot simply dismiss what has gone before, even as it suggests where we should now be going.
If the Bush Doctrine was meant in that sense—if ending tyranny is now to be the objective of the United States in world affairs—then this would amount to a course correction away from the 20th-century idea of promoting democracy as a solution for all the world’s problems, and back toward an older concept of seeking to liberate people so they can solve their own problems. It could be a navigational beacon for the future that reflects more accurately where we started and who we’ve been.

He continues on and asks many questions. He concludes by leaving options open:

President Bush may have proclaimed a doctrine for the 21st century comparable to the Monroe Doctrine in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and to the Truman Doctrine during the Cold War. Only historians not yet born will be able to say for sure. Even that possibility, however, should earn Bush’s memorable sentence greater scrutiny than it has so far received. For it raises an issue that future administrations—whether those of Obama, McCain or their successors—are going to have to resolve: If the goal of the United States is to be “ending tyranny in our world”, then is encouraging “the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture” the best way to go about it?

Poor Wilentz

2008-08-26T09:46:00.003-04:00

Sean Wilentz's head must be spinning. It must be tough to have been firmly ensconced within the fraternity of Democratic Party House Historians one day, and then marked as a pariah the next. Wilentz has an essay in Newsweek that has been savaged by historian/blogger/Obamaniacs (here, here and here, for example--h/t) everywhere. I'm not saying that the criticisms of Wilentz are or aren't legit, just that it must be weird to find yourself on the outs so quickly.

It's All Medieval

2008-08-13T12:01:00.003-04:00

Jeff Sypeck at Quid Plura explains that the people in the center of the Russia/Georgia conflict consider themselves to be contemporary Alans.

After the breakup of the Soviet Union, with North Ossetia as part of Russia and South Ossetia lumped in with Georgia, the Ossetians looked to historians, philologists, and archaeologists to tell them who they were. Was “Ossetia,” a Georgian term filtered through Russian, the name they should use? Shouldn’t they call themselves “Alans”? As Victor Shnirelman explains, speakers of the two Ossetian dialects, Digor and Iron, argued over whose speech was more pure; North Ossetia became North Ossetia-Alania; and the Alan name was slapped on everything from soccer teams to supermarkets. Never mind that “Alans” may have been a term used only by outsiders; or that the name “Ossetia” probably comes from *ās, which the Alans used to refer to themselves; or that the original Alans were famously inclined to assimilate and be assimilated. The Alanian nationalism of the 1990s soon took on moral and racial overtones, especially as neighboring enemies tried on the name for size. The Ossetes should have looked westward for precedent and warning: Once you buttress your national identity with medievalism, expect politicized folklore to beguile the public —and to take on a life of its own.

Patrick Geary's thesis seems to still hold up, eh?

China's Modern Imperialism

2008-08-13T08:22:00.002-04:00

Peter Navarro, author of The Coming China Wars (reviewed here), is critical of ABC's Bob Woodruff's recent "China Inside Out" documentary, calling it "So near to the truth, yet so far." To take just one example, Navarro writes:

The Angolan segment highlighted China’s economic development model in Africa. The myth perpetrated in this segment is that the development has actually provided a net benefit to the people of Africa.

In fact, the real truth China is practicing a very sophisticated 21st century version of imperialism in which China loans African countries billions of dollars in exchange for encumbering natural resources. These resources range from oil and natural gas to copper, cobalt, and titanium. As part of its debt encumbrance strategy, China gets to reduce its unemployment rate by using a large Chinese construction workforce to actually do the work – rather than relying so much on the native population.

In this segment, Woodruff makes repeated references to corruption. However, in a glaring omission, he fails to make explicit just how much of the billions in Chinese aid is actually siphoned off into offshore bank accounts held by the African elites. Nor does Woodruff highlight the intense poverty in the countries China is supposed to be “benefiting” -- other than offering a few images of slums.

Navarro also taked Woodruff to task for basically ignoring China's enabling role in the Darfur crisis.

Review: Your Government Failed You

2008-08-10T10:00:00.003-04:00

Richard Clarke, Your Government Failed You: Breaking the Cycle of National Security Disasters

Your government failed you.

So said Richard Clarke to the American people during the 9/11 Commission hearings a few years back. Clarke's resume of over 30 years in the foreign policy arena speaks for itself and adds weight to his point of view. At times, his tales of frustration infuriate because they show just how much government did fail leading up to 9/11.

But, as reaction to his first book Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror made evident, he can also be frustrating to those who are familiar with events he describes. And this familiarity with acute events can lead, ultimately, to a wholesale--albeit unwarranted--distrust of Clarke.

If I know that he's not being completely forthcoming on Event "A" for which I know a lot about, then how can I be sure he's not doing the same for Events "B, C and D" for which I'm not as familiar? And to the degree that his diagnoses and prescriptions rely upon his experience and expertise, as supported by his explanation of various events, then how seriously am I to take his ideas? In other words, are Clarke's ideas well-informed and worthwhile or just part of an exercise in legacy-protection? The answer, unsurprisingly, is all of the above.

When reading and analyzing a first-hand account of events, a reader should always be on the look out for bias; on the part of both the source and the reader. Ultimately, each of us have to rely on our sense of what seems like good, sound reasoning and argumentation. So, despite these reservations, there are still some things that even those most predisposed to distrust him can learn from Clarke.

Throughout Your Government Failed You, Clarke clearly names names and assesses blame. His reasoning seems sound and his grasp of the nuances of foreign affairs and diplomacy is worth noting as is his recognition of the role that contingency can play in outcomes. And while he doesn't let himself off the hook for some of the errors made, his phraseology can be passive/aggressive. For instance, the phrasing of his "apology" that gave title to this book leaves the impression that he's apologizing more for others than himself. In his opening to Chapter 5, Clarke explains that on the morning of 9/11

I knew that I had failed. In the days and years leading up to that awful moment I had failed to persuade two administrations to do enough to prevent the attacks that were now happening around me.

You see, the decision makers in government didn't listen to Clarke, which is why they failed. And he only failed because they didn't listen. That's a fairly obtuse way of taking blame. The question is then: should we listen to him? Based on my reading and analysis of the events that Clarke describes, I certainly am wary of accepting Clarke's version of events prima facia.

For instance, he notes "the refusal of the Bush administration to ratify the [Kyoto] protocol...(p.277)" and makes no mention of the Clinton administrations similar "refusal." Elsewhere, he explains how he thinks partisanship is bad for national security, something for which many would agree. But the examples of partisanship he provides are markedly one-sided.

I think the record is fairly indisputable that national security issues have been used for partisan electoral advantage in recent years: terrorism threats have been overhyped near elections, predictions have been made about terrorist attacks occurring if the other party wins, people's patriotism has been questioned. (p.340-41)

Common charges levied against the Republicans, all. No mention of the political rhetoric flying from the Democratic side--immediate withdrawal, illegal war, the Bush fascist state, etc.--which helped them sweep to Congressional power in 2006. I suppose if you believe one set of arguments, then they aren't partisan?

Much of the first part of the book is devoted to Clarke's restatement of many of the same charges he made in Against All Enemies. He still thinks Iraq is a distraction away from Afghanistan, which is an arguable point, especially with Osama bin Laden still loose. He also puts much blame for Iraq at the feet of the generals charged with preparing our forces for the invasion:

1) "Neither the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff [General Richard Myers] nor the regional commander at CENTCOM [General Tommy Franks] dissented from the initial war plan..."
2) The generals didn't implement proper counter-insurgency activities though they were aware of analysis from the CIA and State department that predicted insurgent activity in post-invasion Iraq.
3) Related to #2, once it became clear that the President intended to invade Iraq, the Generals did not advise the President and Congress that they did not have enough troops to deal with an insurgency.
4) "Inadequate training and...equipment" for American troops in Iraq.
5) Generals tacitly condoned torture, such as at Abu Grahib.
6) Generals didn't ensure that wounded troops were treated adequately (Walter Reed).

All of these points are worth debating. But elsewhere, Clarke essentially accuses General David Petraeus, architect of the proving-successful surge implemented in 2007, of moving the goalposts himself when his own counter-insurgency efforts were initially exhibiting slow returns. "It began to seem as if the reason for the surge, in Petraeus's mind, was to prove that his new counterinsurgency strategy could work."

The recent success in Iraq is making Clarke a victim of the time line. For he claims that Petraeus

[b]y defending a policy that in the larger sense was injurious to the United States and the Army, by arguing for staying on when he admitted that his own condition for the U.S. presence (real progress toward Iraqi unity) was not being met...raised new questions about what makes a general political.

When Clarke wrote these words, the effectiveness of the surge was still in doubt. But no matter the expertise that lay on the side of the predictor, reality has a way of ruining predictions.

Clarke has much else to say about a plethora of items related to national security and, not as impressively, global warming. As to the last, he essentially toes the Al Gore line. Nothing earth shattering (or warming?).

Further, it becomes clear that Clarke is a supporter of the Powell doctrine, though redefined for the times, which is entirely defensible. On the other hand, he also channels Thomas Franks (the academic, not the general) by basically asking "what's the matter with the military," because he can't understand why they have become so overwhelmingly Republican (though he notes that Democrats are gaining support).

All in all, this is a "thick" book. There is a lot to digest and a lot to think about. Clarke's writing isn't florid or light. Instead, he hits you time and again with anecdotes and antidotes that spring from the mind of the man who apologized to the American people on behalf of the U.S. Government. In the end, his is a voice that warrants a listen. Perhaps the best way to get a balanced view of some of the events is to read Clarke's book in combination with Douglas Feith's War and Decision. To quote Ronald Reagan, "Trust, but verify."

Going to School on the Barbary Wars

2008-08-07T11:08:00.003-04:00

I've done a few substantive posts about the Barbary Wars in the past. Michael Medved is the latest (here's another) to use them to buttress his particular position in contemporary arguments about the War in Iraq and the GWOT. Here are his 7 points.

1. The U.S. often goes to war when it is not directly attacked. One of the dumbest lines about the Iraq War claims that “this was the first time we ever attacked a nation that hadn’t attacked us.” Obviously, Barbary raids against private shipping hardly constituted a direct invasion of the American homeland, but founding fathers Jefferson and Madison nonetheless felt the need to strike back. Of more than 140 conflicts in which American troops have fought on foreign soil, only one (World War II, obviously) represented a response to an unambiguous attack on America itself. Iraq and Afghanistan are part of a long-standing tradition of fighting for U.S. interests, and not just to defend the homeland.
2. Most conflicts unfold without a Declaration of War. Jefferson informed Congress of his determination to hit back against the North African sponsors of terrorism (piracy), but during four years of fighting never sought a declaration of war. In fact, only five times in American history did Congress actually declare war – the War of 1812, the Mexican War, The Spanish American War, World War I and World War II. None of the 135 other struggles in which U.S. troops fought in the far corners of the earth saw Congress formally declare war—and these undeclared conflicts (including Korea, Vietnam, the First Gulf War, and many more) involved a total of millions of troops and more than a hundred thousand total battlefield deaths.
3. Islamic enmity toward the US is rooted in the Muslim religion, not recent American policy. In 1786, America’s Ambassador to France, Thomas Jefferson, joined our Ambassador in London, John Adams, to negotiate with the Ambassador from Tripoli, Sidi Haji Abdrahaman. The Americans asked their counterpart why the North African nations made war against the United States, a power “who had done them no injury", and according the report filed by Jefferson and Adams the Tripolitan diplomat replied: “It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every mussulman who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise.”
4. Cruel Treatment of enemies by Muslim extremists is a long-standing tradition. In 1793, Algerian pirates captured the merchant brig Polly and paraded the enslaved crewmen through jeering crowds in the streets of Algiers. Dey Hassan Pasha, the local ruler, bellowed triumphantly: “Now I have got you, you Christian dogs, you shall eat stones.” American slaves indeed spent their years of captivity breaking rocks. According to Max Boot in his fine book The Savage Wars of Peace: “A slave who spoke disrespectfully to a Muslim could be roasted alive, crucified, or impaled (a stake was driven through the arms until it came out at the back of the neck). A special agony was reserved for a slave who killed a Muslim – he would be cast over the city walls and left to dangle on giant iron hooks for days before expiring of his wounds.”
5. There’s nothing new in far-flung American wars to defend U.S. economic interests. Every war in American history involved an economic motivation – at least in part, and nearly all of our great leaders saw nothing disgraceful in going to battle to defend the commercial vitality of the country. Jefferson and Madison felt no shame in mobilizing – and sacrificing – ships and ground forces to protect the integrity of commercial shipping interests in the distant Mediterranean.
Fortunately for them, they never had to contend with demonstrators who shouted “No blood for shipping!”
6. Even leaders who have worried about the growth of the U.S. military establishment came to see the necessity of robust and formidable armed forces. Jefferson and Madison both wanted to shrink and restrain the standing army and initially opposed the determination by President Adams to build an expensive new American Navy. When Jefferson succeeded Adams as president, however, he quickly and gratefully used the ships his predecessor built. The Barbary Wars taught the nation that there is no real substitute for military power, and professional forces that stand ready for anything.
7. America has always played “the cop of the world.” In part, Jefferson and Madison justified the sacrifices of the Barbary Wars as a defense of civilization, not just the protection of U.S. interests – and the European powers granted new respect to the upstart nation that finally tamed the North African pirates. Jefferson and Madison may not have fought for a New World Order but they most certainly sought a more orderly world. Many American conflicts over the last 200 years have involved an effort to enfort to enforce international rules and norms as much as to advance national interests. Wide-ranging and occasionally bloody expeditions throughout Central America, China, the Philippines, Africa and even Russia after the Revolution used American forces to prevent internal and international chaos.

Plimouth Plantation Vandalized

2008-08-05T10:41:00.004-04:00

This is just too bad.

Plymouth police say vandals broke into Plimoth Plantation, damaged eight houses, smashed fence sections and stole furs and other items from the replica Pilgrim village.
Police say the living history museum's property manager discovered the damage when she arrived early Saturday morning. A security guard was on duty overnight, but did not report any disturbances.

Police say one or more vandals broke the locks on the houses, smashed crockery and left hatchet marks on the inside walls. They uprooted plants, stole reproduction armor, several beaver and otter furs, and other household items.
Plantation officials gave no damage estimate and are conducting visitor tours as usual. Police say staff cleaning up after the vandalism may have destroyed evidence.

Review: The Road to Monticello

2008-08-03T19:00:00.000-04:00

Kevin J. Hayes, The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson.

This book could easily have been titled, "Jefferson the Bibliophile," but the author's inspiration for the actual title was to pay homage to John Livingston Lowe's study of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Road to Xanadu. Hayes' literary and intellectual biography uses the books Jefferson loved--as well as those read or possessed by the people taught, met or impacted Jefferson--to chart the intellectual provenance of the Sage of Monticello.

Unsurprisingly, the list of books cataloged by Hayes is immense and impressive. But the insight that Hayes derives from his study of the Sage's reading list (as well as those Jefferson compiled for others), particularly the marginalia found in the books themselves, are the key that unlocks the door to the Jeffersonian mind.

Hayes consistently points out that "Jefferson preferred the life of the mind" and one would have to agree: how else could on man read and write so copiously if he didn't prize intellectual pursuits over most else? The importance of Bacon, Locke and Newton to Jefferson are unsurprising. But Jefferson was also particularly keen for Aesop's fables

...especially those that were useful as political allegories, like the one about the miller, his son, and their ass. By trying to please everyone, the miller ends up pleasing no one and loses his ass in the bargain.

It wasn't always the serious, or at least the factual, book that piqued the Jeffersonian mind

Fiction, Jefferson observed, could fulfill the purpose of teaching moral virtue better than fact. History was too uneven--few episodes in history could excite the "sympathetic emotion of virtue" at its highest level. Fiction, alternatively, could evoke a reader's sympathy because imaginary characters can be fashioned in a way real personages cannot. Fictional characters can illustrate and exemplify "every moral rule of life. Thus a lively and lasting sense of filial duty...is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the ry volumes of ethics and divinity that ever were written."

Thus did emotion, or a good yarn, help the mind see its way to logic.

For the intellectual historian, the meat-and-potato portions of the book are those in which Hayes traces the literary and philosophical influences of acute Jeffersonian works. Name a piece of writing produced by Jefferson and Hayes will trace its intellectual and literary genealogy. But he does so within the context of the times in which Jefferson was writing and illustrates how Jefferson did more than simply collate and regurgitate information. Jefferson's writing is filled with wisdom gained from reading, but also from his ability to observe and reason.

Jefferson was more than just a man of books, he was also, indelibly, a man--perhaps the man--of his time. Hayes puts Jefferson within historical and intellectual context and illustrates how this impressive thinker was able to build upon past literary works to help create a new and hopefully better nation. There is much here for the scholar and the layperson to digest. Road to Monticello is an important addition to anyone's, even Jefferson's, library.

Colonial America, or America's Medieval Period

2008-07-31T15:01:00.004-04:00

Trevor Burnard, in a piece on the importance of geography over time for historians of Colonial America explains why this is so:

Why are early Americanists so obsessed with region—with geography, in short—rather than with chronology? Why is early America generally organized by space rather than time, at least until the Revolution comes along? In part, of course, the reason for such fixation upon space is because the colonial period is the very important prologue to the main event, which is the formation of the nation state and of United States history proper. The colonial period is thus the medieval section of American history.

Interesting. And it might explain why, as an Americanist, I'm mostly attracted to the Colonial and Revolutionary eras in addition to my "minor" of early Medieval History. Must be that beginnings/transitions appeal to me.

Medieval Shark Week

2008-07-28T13:49:00.002-04:00

What is it about sharks? Welp, whatever, but Jeff Sypek at "Quid Plura" has decided to host "Medieval Shark Week". My favorite "entry":

Medieval Shark Week is about fun!

If you’re a gamer, you’ll want to play TIMESHARK II: Medieval Shark Strike Force, in which you become a time-traveling shark transported back to medieval Germany to feast on clones of Adolf Hitler....
Download the game for Mac or PC here. You’ll find instructions on the second page of this thread, where the game’s author reveals that TIMESHARK is an acronym for “Time-travelling Intimidation and Mastication Expert: Sharks Have Ample Reason to Kill.”

Cool.

Review: Tosh's "Historians on History" and "Pursuit of History"

2008-07-24T16:42:00.004-04:00

The Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods and New Directions in the Study of Modern History (3rd Edition) and Historians on History: An Anthology by John Tosh

Early in The Pursuit of History, Tosh explains that "[h]ow the past is known and how it is applied to present need are open to widely varying approaches." Pursuit is a solid effort by Tosh to trace the origins of historical study and the methodologies that have evolved over time. He explains the difference between popular history and academic history and describes the importance of the latter.

The first half of Pursuit is dedicated to showing how historians should properly do their work, including how to find and use sources as well as how to write and interpret historical findings. All are well covered. The second half of the book is much more philosophical in tone. Tosh tackles a number of questions relating to objectivity, true knowledge and the reliability of so-called facts.

Simply put, he describes the battle between those who believe history is a cumulative discipline and those who view it as a relative and interpretive exercise as well as all of those with positions in between. Most importantly, he defends the discipline's viability and importance against those who attack it, including the postmodernists (though he doesn't dismiss all of the postmodernist contributions to the field). His notes and references are plentiful and he is fair with each of the "schools" of history.

Historians on History grew as an outgrowth of Pursuit and is essentially primary source material for the aforementioned work. It is comprised of excerpts from historiographical works on the field of history with brief input from Tosh. He lays the foundation for the book by describing the traditional reasons for studying history as well as the innovations and dialectic debates of the past 30 years.

He introduces each section with a brief biography of the author from whose work he has excerpted as well as an explanation of the particular historical philosophy which will be covered in that section. He then steps back and allows historians to illustrate their thoughts on a particular methodology or philosophy.

Not all sections are filled with works championing a certain method. For instance, the sections on Social Sciences and Postmodernism each contain relatively spirited articles defending or attacking these methods and Tosh doesn't interfere as he allows the reader to make up his own mind.

Tosh ends his compilation with a defense of the field of historical study. Tosh's writing is relatively clear and concise, though the same cannot be said for some of the excerpted writings. Though not always an enjoyable read, Historians on History is still a valuable work as it illuminates the thought processes of some of the field's finest minds.

Review: Simplexity

2008-07-22T15:00:00.002-04:00

Jeffrey Kluger: Simplexity: Why Simple Things Become Complex (and How Complex Things Can Be Made Simple)

What, or who, is more effective at guessing the needs of a particular book-buyer? Amazon with its buildings of servers and aggregation of data based on demographics and past purchasing patterns? Or a small book, traditional book store with a knowledgeable trained at picking up the little cues that allow them to anticipate a customers needs? And which is more complex; or simple? Neither or both? How we can try to determine the answers to these questions and many others stretching from topics as diverse as how humans react in crisis to why bad sports teams beat better ones is the task Jeffrey Kluger sets out to explain in Simplexity.

Throughout his search, he returns to the researchers of the Sante Fe Institute, quite literally a think tank, which was founded by Nobel Prize (physics) winner Murray Gell-Mann. But the "complexity scientists" and scholars at SFI are engaged in all sorts of thought, including various experiments and studies. All to try to better understand why things work the way they do.

Complexity scientists like to talk about the ideas of pure chaos and pure robustness--and both are exceedingly simple things. An empty room pumped full of air molecules may not be a particularly interesting place, but it is an extraordinary active one, with the molecules swirling in all directions at once, dispersing chaotically to every possible crack and corner. On the other hand, a lump of carbon chilled to what scientists call absolute zero--or the point at which molecular motion is the slowest it can possibly be--is neither interesting nor active. The carbon is exceedingly static, or robust, as complexity researchers call it; the room is exceedingly chaotic. What neither of them is, however, is complex, offering only spinning disorder at one end and flash frozen order at the other.

Where you'd fine real complexity would be somewhere between these two states, the point at which the molecules begin to climb from disorder, sorting themselves into something interesting and organized...but catching themselves before they descend down the other side of the complexity hill, sliding into something lumpish and fixed. (p.27-9)

This is the so-called "Complexity Arc" and Kluger refers to it again and again as helpful tool in helping to analyze various topics. Using this tool, the stock market appears relatively simple; it usually finds itself in chaos or remarkably stable, very rarely in between. But the models are deceiving, and markets are affected by Adam Smith's "invisible hand" guided by "invisible brains," as Kluger puts it.

Capitalism functions reasonably well and communism flopped so badly because one system includes human needs, motivations, and occasional wisdom in its equations and the other stripped them out. Many complexity theorists studying stock trades argue that collective human brainpower is an underestimated thing, and the more minds you put to work in a market, the better you're all likely to do.

Here, Kluger turns to Brown University's Brook Harrington, who gives the jellybeans-in-a-jar guessing game as an example and boils it down: "It's the old story of the wisdom of the crowds." Using this as a guide, Harrington has shown that, time after time, investment clubs are more successful than individuals in earning money off of stock investments.

Kluger also explains that investors can also act in a moral way. If they don't like what a company has done--an oil spill, doing business with dictators, Enron--they may not favor them as much as earnings or potential would otherwise indicate. Traders are like most people and have an inherent desire to take part in a "fair deal." Kluger's illustration of this principle is eye-opening: if given the opportunity to get a share of $100, most people will reject anything too far away from a 50/50 split. For instance, they'd reject $20 if that meant the other person would get $80. Better nothing than letting someone else get more.

Ahh. Human nature.

It is the variable that most vexes complexity scientists and one they are vigorously seeking to study and quantify and qualify. A hopeless quest? Perhaps, but the little bits of data learned along the way have helped engineers and planners and others design better products, make safer buildings and, yes, decide if baseball or football are the more complex sport. You'll have to read the book to find out.

Some of the other examples Kluger provides are wondrous, such as how a simple fungus in Indonesia helped prop-up a dictator. Others are frustrating, as he explains that it's difficult to get people--and the groups they form--to change their minds. It's true of bureaucracies and armies and political parties or ideologies. Through it all, Kluger does an excellent job of explaining how seemingly complicated things aren't as well as the opposite. He takes complex matters and makes them simple to understand in a very entertaining and engaging way. In short, this is a really cool book!

Review: The Coming China Wars

2008-06-22T15:05:00.005-04:00

Peter Navarro, The Coming China Wars: Where They Will be Fought, How The Can Be Won.

The purpose of this book is to warn that unless strong actions are taken now both by China and the rest of the world, The Coming China Wars are destined to be fought over everything from decent jobs, livable wages, and leading-edge technologies to strategic resources such as oil, copper, and steel, and eventually to our most basic of all needs--bread, water, and air.

To achieve his purpose, Navarro explains and examines how various Chinese policies affect its people and government and those of the rest of the world. For example, the book is replete with examples of how China's government has set-up uneven economic playing fields domestically and globally through currency manipulation, protectionism, worker mistreatment, lax regulation--if any at all--and ignoring product piracy within its borders (80% of pirate products seized at U.S. borders come from China). Such practices have fueled China's economic growth at an unsustainable pace, according to Navarro. Throw in a growing appetite for natural resources, both its own and those of other countries, and China is a ravenous beast not easily sated. Its economic needs affect its judgment as the pressure to maintain the rate of economic growth encourages the maintenance of the same unfair and immoral practices.

Given the way China operates within its own borders, it is no surprise to learn that it makes no moral ties to its economic needs abroad; looking the other way when dealing with dictators in Africa or Iran or North Korea for natural resources in exchange for weapons or help with infrastructure, which in turn helps China extract the aforementioned resources. Environmental issues are also not high on their list of priorities. 18 of the 20 smoggiest cities are in China and that so-called "chog" finds its way into the air of its Asian neighbors and the West Coast of North America. Then there is the disastrous treatment of the Chinese waterways: the Yellow River is often also blue, green or red; the three Gorges Damn is proving to be an environmental and health disaster. One wonders if the coverage of the upcoming Beijing Olympics will reveal such things for the world to see.

Their willingness to take environmental short-cuts buys them economic growth because such a lax atmosphere proves too tempting to foreign companies. Here, Navarro makes an important historical point:

There is both a danger and a paradox here that should not be lost on any student of Chinese history aware of the "foreign humiliation" that China was subjected to in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The danger is that these powerful foreign economic interests are overpowering the political will of the central government, thereby rendering it impossible for China to get a handle on its own pollution problems. The paradox is that as China's Communist Party seeks to mold the country into a superpower, it is quickly losing control of its own destiny to powerful foreign economic interests.

Thus do foreign companies and countries (and their consumers) prop up Chinese economic practices. However, Navarro does suggest that such a climate is causing worker unrest upset over unpaid wages, revoked or reduced pensions and poor health. Then again, the Chinese government has also engaged in repression (Falun Gong, Tibet, Uighur), often with the implicit help of foreign companies (Yahoo! is singled out). This belligerence is also turning outward as China is amidst a dramatic military buildup with the apparent goal of power projection around the world and even into outer space. (An aside: this was the first time I'd heard that the moon may have rich deposits of Helium 3, a rare isotope that scientists believe could help with nuclear fusion.)

So what should we do about all of this? Navarro's concluding chapter offers some suggestions to both governments and to we the people. Focusing on his prescriptions for the individual, Navarro explains that we haven't really, truly been paying attention because of "the narcotic effect that cheap Chinese goods have had on us" or we've been more worried about the Middle East. Or, perhaps most importantly, there "is a general lack of awareness of the far-ranging implications of a world increasingly 'Made in China.'" As to this last, The Coming China Wars is a quick and succinct way to get up to speed. Cheap goods are good for the American consumer, but not if they are produced on playing field tilted as dramatically as portrayed by Navarro.

The Baby-Mama Witches of Gloucester

2008-06-20T10:35:00.012-04:00

The first thing I thought of when I read the story about the 17 wanna-be baby mamas of Gloucester, Massachusetts were the teenage girls who lay at the center of the Salem Witch Trials. No doubt, this was probably because of the proximity of Gloucester to Salem Village (now Danvers, Mass.). Now, I'm simply not well-versed enough in group psychology or the deeper history of the Salem Witch hysteria to draw any conclusions. I just found these parallels interesting (if they are indeed parallel!).

A little digging brought up some statistical similarities: there were 16 girls in Salem Village who claimed they were the victims of witchcraft, and most were teenagers; there are 17 new baby mama teenagers in Gloucester. Maybe both groups of girls were depressed by their surroundings, or at least picked up on the depression from their parents and community.

Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum theorized in Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft that the Salem Village witchcraft accusations were a sort of psychological projection that exposed tensions between the agrarian and economically poor Salem Village and its more economically successful neighbor Salem Town. As Philip Greven, Jr. wrote in his review of Salem Possessed (Reviews in American History, Vol.2, No.4, 1974; p.516):

Throughout their book, the underlying assumption which shapes their analysis of the Village and its inhabitants is that this community reflects a particular transitional point in a long-term historical process which was transforming precapitalist agrarian society into more urban, commercial, and capitalistic society. As they observe of [Reverend Samuel] Parriss and the Village, "All the elements of their respective histories were deeply rooted in the social realities of late seventeenth century western culture--a culture in which a subsistence, peasant-based economy was being subverted by mercantile capitalism" (p. 178).

The Time piece on the Gloucester 17 noted:

The past decade has been difficult for this mostly white, mostly blue-collar city (pop. 30,000). In Gloucester, perched on scenic Cape Ann, the economy has always depended on a strong fishing industry. But in recent years, such jobs have all but disappeared overseas, and with them much of the community's wherewithal. "Families are broken," says school superintendent Christopher Farmer. "Many of our young people are growing up directionless."

***
Amanda Ireland, who graduated from Gloucester High on June 8, thinks she knows why these girls wanted to get pregnant. Ireland, 18, gave birth her freshman year and says some of her now pregnant schoolmates regularly approached her in the hall, remarking how lucky she was to have a baby. "They're so excited to finally have someone to love them unconditionally," Ireland says.

Also, its apparent that both groups of teenage girls may have coordinated their actions. Although many believe that the Salem accusers were victims of mass hysteria, perhaps even chemically induced, there is also evidence that they were just "hav[ing] some sport."

Daniel Elliott: Deposition for Elizabeth Proctor

the testimony of Daniel elet aged 27 years or thear abouts who testifieth & saith that I being at the hous of leutennant ingasone one the 28 of march in the year 1692 thear being preasent one of the aflicted persons which cryed out and said thears goody procter William raiment juner being theare present told the garle he beleved she lyed for he saw nothing then goody ingerson told the garl she told aly for thear was nothing: then the garl said that she did it for sport they must have some sport

( Essex County Archives, Salem -- Witchcraft Vol. 1 Page 27 )

The Gloucester baby mamas consciously decided to get pregnant and raise their kids together.

By May, several students had returned multiple times to get pregnancy tests, and on hearing the results, "some girls seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant than when they were," [school principal Joseph] Sullivan says. All it took was a few simple questions before nearly half the expecting students, none older than 16, confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together.

And once each group embarked on their respective escapades, they knew that adults were in place to provide, shall we say, support. In the case of the Salem girls, society was predisposed to attribute their actions to supernatural causes:

At the time, however, there was another theory to explain the girls' symptoms. Cotton Mather had recently published a popular book, "Memorable Providences," describing the suspected witchcraft of an Irish washerwoman in Boston, and Betty [Parriss]'s behavior in some ways mirrored that of the afflicted person described in Mather's widely read and discussed book. It was easy to believe in 1692 in Salem, with an Indian war raging less than seventy miles away (and many refugees from the war in the area) that the devil was close at hand. Sudden and violent death occupied minds.
Talk of witchcraft increased when other playmates of Betty, including eleven-year-old Ann Putnam, seventeen-year-old Mercy Lewis, and Mary Walcott, began to exhibit similar unusual behavior. When his own nostrums failed to effect a cure, William Griggs, a doctor called to examine the girls, suggested that the girls' problems might have a supernatural origin. The widespread belief that witches targeted children made the doctor's diagnosis seem increasing likely.
***
Meanwhile, the number of girls afflicted continued to grow, rising to seven with the addition of Ann Putnam, Elizabeth Hubbard, Susannah Sheldon, and Mary Warren. According to historian Peter Hoffer, the girls "turned themselves from a circle of friends into a gang of juvenile delinquents." ( Many people of the period complained that young people lacked the piety and sense of purpose of the founders' generation.) The girls contorted into grotesque poses, fell down into frozen postures, and complained of biting and pinching sensations. In a village where everyone believed that the devil was real, close at hand, and acted in the real world, the suspected affliction of the girls became an obsession.

The Gloucester girls are surrounded by a support system of a different kind.

The high school has done perhaps too good a job of embracing young mothers. Sex-ed classes end freshman year at Gloucester, where teen parents are encouraged to take their children to a free on-site day-care center. Strollers mingle seamlessly in school hallways among cheerleaders and junior ROTC. "We're proud to help the mothers stay in school," says Sue Todd, CEO of Pathways for Children, which runs the day-care center.
But by May, after nurse practitioner Kim Daly had administered some 150 pregnancy tests at Gloucester High's student clinic, she and the clinic's medical director, Dr. Brian Orr, a local pediatrician, began to advocate prescribing contraceptives regardless of parental consent, a practice at about 15 public high schools in Massachusetts. Currently Gloucester teens must travel about 20 miles (30 km) to reach the nearest women's health clinic; younger girls have to get a ride or take the train and walk. But the notion of a school handing out birth control pills has met with hostility. Says Mayor Carolyn Kirk: "Dr. Orr and Ms. Daly have no right to decide this for our children." The pair resigned in protest on May 30.

There are also other reports attempting to link the episode to celebrity culture, "abstinence only" education or a reduction in sex education classes in Massachusetts.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that teenage girls are probably the clique-iest species in the world. Perhaps all that can be concluded is that the phenomena of girls behaving badly is really nothing new: its easier to act out against social mores with your peers than by yourself. And there really is safety in numbers. If you are a teenage girl and you and a group of your friends cross the line, many adults--including your own parents--will trip all over themselves to find alternative explanations for your behavior. If you do something stupid all by yourself, then you, young lady, were just being an idiot. But if you are wise enough to get a group together to engage in unacceptable behavior, then the temptation is to shift the burden of responsibility from the individuals to the larger society.

US Navy To Raise Sunken Russian Sub

2008-06-19T10:29:00.003-04:00

Providence, Rhode Island's sunken Russian submarine will finally be raised as part of a training exercise by the US Navy. The sub, which was used in a Harrison Ford movie and served as a floating museum on the Providence waterfront, has been underwater for a year after sinking during a storm. Unfortunately, it looks like its days as a museum may be over. The Providence Journal has details:

Next week, a team of Army and Navy salvage divers will pull the sunken Juliett 484 upright using heavy machinery. Once the sub is standing straight, they expect to raise it out of the water, probably on July 15.
While it’s a great training exercise for the military’s salvage divers, they may be among the last people who will ever set foot inside the Russian sub; its days as a museum boat are likely over, thanks to the rust and growth inside. They won’t know for sure until the submarine is refloated.
“If it’s in really bad shape, we have to be realistic, it’s been underwater for a year,” said Frank Lennon, president of the USS Saratoga Foundation, which operates the museum.
There’s still a chance the submarine could be restored, but that would likely be too expensive for the foundation. It’s possible that it could be beached somewhere, or that the military could have a hand in restoring it, but it’s equally likely it could end up as scrap, or sunken again to serve as an underwater reef.
One thing is certain: the Russian sub museum at Collier Point Park is a thing of the past. “That is not an option,” Lennon said.

New Nathaniel Greene Bio Coming Next Week

2008-06-18T08:22:00.003-04:00

A new book by Rhode Island author Gerald Carbone, Nathanael Greene: A Biography of the American Revolution, may finally put one of America's finest generals into the spotlight. Historians of the American Revolution know that Nathanael Greene, son of a Rhode Island Quaker family, was the most successful general in the Continental Army. But, he has been overshadowed by a certain other General (you know, Father of the Country and all that) and his victories came in the South, which has always been kind of the sub-plot to the Northeast-centric narrative of the AmRev.

Review: Sin in the Second City

2008-06-13T21:08:00.003-04:00

Karen Abbott, Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys and the Battle for America’s Soul.

Minna and Ada Everleigh owned the preeminent brothel in turn-of-the century Chicago and entertained prize-fighters and princes during the decade plus tenure as proprietors of the eponymous Everleigh Club. World famous, the establishment catered to well-monied men of expensive tastes—a conscious decision on the part of the sisters—and engendered jealousy (from competitors) and anger (from reformers) as well as revenue (for the sisters and the politicians they bribed). Oh, and they have been credited with helping to proliferate a certain term for coitus, based upon a pun on their name.

Abbott exposes their invented backstory for what it was, though there is still plenty of murkiness about their past. What is known is that the ladies set up shop in Chicago and found instant success. But they didn’t do so blindly. They weren’t your average prospective madams; they knew the importance of market research and selected Chicago after a nationwide canvassing of various cities. It was a good choice and they prospered so long as they bribed the right politicians and deflected attention away when various incidences could have caused them trouble.

Yet, they also went into business at the same time that a nascent Progressive movement was growing, encompassing everything from banning cigarettes and alcohol to advocating against prostitution. Obvoiusly the Everleighs were concerned mostly with the last and Abbott intersperses her story about the business of running the Everleigh Club with snippets regarding the growing movement against white slavery, which quickly became a proxy for the fight against prostitution.

As the years went by, the reformers became more aggressive and even resorted to exaggeration or outright lies in an effort to shut down red light districts across the nation. The Everleighs avoided trouble and continued to reap the rewards for supplying their vice. Eventually, however, the wrong Mayor got elected and the wrong review committee suggested that Chicago clamp down on prostitution. And what better target than the high-profile Everleigh Club to set the example? The end was quick, and despite initially thinking they could re-establish themselves, the Everleigh’s eventually retired in anonymity to New York City, living out their days amongst the remnants of their wealth.

To be sure, Abbot’s sympathies are clearly with the sinners rather than the saints in this story. This leads to a tendency to gloss over—or leave unmentioned—some of the consequences of the Everleigh sisters actions. There can be little doubt that their support for local politicians via bribes helped to seed and strengthen organized crime. And regardless of whether or not they ran a high class establishment, the sisters contributed to the corruption of many a person. Abbott does try to be fair to the reformers, but they are clearly the antagonists in this tale.

Sin in the Second City is a hybrid work. Abbott combines her knowledge of the historical record--backed by extensive research--with her interpretation of the words and psychology of the several “characters” who make up her story. This is not historical fiction, but Abbot offers up a substantive amount of speculation—from quotes, to divining motivation or thoughts, to describing impossible to know physical actions—to dissuade one from calling this a work of straight history. But her research shows in the attention to detail and the overall result is a highly readable and interesting story that allows the reader to appreciate one version of this interesting era.

Medieval Mass Transit

2008-06-12T15:39:00.002-04:00

I wonder if they were talking about this at K'Zoo:

With no end in sight to the rise in fuel prices, commuters in Albany are using a network of trebuchets to save on gas and the airlines are taking notice.

“We have a high-density of renaissance festival attendees, so it’s only natural that the trend started here,” said Clinton Decola who heads the Trebuchet Transport Cooperative of Albany (TTCA). “In medieval times the trebuchet was accurate, but with today’s technology we can make it even more accurate. People can launch themselves from house to house until they’re near enough their work to walk.”

The members of the TTCA operate over one hundred trebuchets and catapults around the Albany area. Members pay a small fee to maintain the trebuchets, then they can use the network to travel anywhere the trebuchets launch to.

Christian Rega uses the network to fling himself to work and back saving over $100 a week on gas. “I save money; I’m helping break America’s addiction to oil and defying death every day. It doesn’t get much better than that,” said Rega.

Kudo's to the Cliopats

2008-06-04T13:37:00.003-04:00

'Spose "kudos" are in order to the Cliopats and their fellow travelers for the part they played in helping He Who Is Change gain the Democratic Party nomination. Me? I don't get the infatuation, but I've also not seen as effective a political cipher as mssr. Obama. Anyway, congrats to Ralph et al. For the rest of us, take note of the list of HfO historians, check it twice and keep it in mind thirty years on when the history of the Obama campaign/Presidency is written. There sure are a lot of candidates for court historian, no?

Review: Pennsylvania Avenue

2008-05-28T07:45:00.004-04:00

John Harwood and Gerald F. Seib, Pennsylvania Avenue: Profiles in Backroom Power, (New York, Random House, 2008).

Pennsylvania Avenue is the capital’s best address, the street of status, where the powerful work, and meet, and where the ambitious come to get things done….Over the span of American history, the powerful have come together here to accomplish great things—to free the oppressed, to win great battles, to launch great public works, to comfort the downtrodden. The people of Pennsylvania can be vain, greedy, downright nasty as well. Sometimes the Avenue is where they manage to stop things from getting done. Interspersed with the moments of great glory are those occasions when fear, mistrust, or simple disagreements run out of control to produce confrontation and gridlock on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Thus begins this compendium of Beltway Biographies compiled by Harwood and Seib. Various behind-the-scenes characters are profiled and one or two of their individual successes and failures in “getting things done” are highlighted.

Throughout, the authors try to illustrate—indeed, seem to yearn for—a time when relations between the parties were better. To be sure, while the politics of bygone eras saw their own tensions and fundamental differences, more often than not, most politicians of different stripes could at least agree on big picture issues such as the Cold War.

According to the authors, that changed—and they make their case in the sections on Ken Mehlman and a few, sprinkled allusions to Barack Obama—when the Baby Boom generation developed ideological fault lines during the Vietnam War. The differences that separated the factions born of that conflict exist to this day. In short, there is a basic distrust between the two main factions and both work to undermine the ideas of their opponent, no matter the cost.

To this basic explanation, they would also seem to add the significant role the modern mass media has played. This factor they highlight in their profile of Karl Rove, who also holds this view, and whose position is that a mass media explosion led to more outlets competing against each other. This provided incentive to produce compelling content. The subsequent emergence of the “talking head” format on television has only served to continually feed the partisan beasts. We talk past each other an awful lot these days.

There are also some good bits not related to the main thesis. The chapter on Elliot Abrams includes as fair and concise an explanation of the much maligned “neocons” as I've seen, for example. Abrams also explains that a Presidential speech is a major event because it “compels the administration to decide what it really believes.” Perhaps. Though I suspect more than one politician has delivered a major speech based more on what he thought the audience wanted to hear rather than what he really believes.

In summary, the authors are even-handed with their subjects, including fair and illuminating portrayals of some selected successes and failures enjoyed (or not) by these beltway insiders. It is a well-written and informative work that concisely describes how things get done. Yet, the authors' obvious desire for a kinder, gentler Washington sometimes seems overwrought. I don't believe I'm alone in being neither as optimistic, nor desirous, of a Washington, D.C. where everyone gets along and gets things done. Sometimes, the best thing that Washington can do is nothing, after all.

Is Feith's Book a Model for Future Scholarly Publishing?

2008-04-24T16:31:00.005-04:00

Douglas Feith's War and Decision has been reviewed by National Review, The Wall Street Journal and NPR (h/t). Now, I know that--especially among academics--Feith is considered one of the neocon Sith Lords, but I think he's done something with his book that is, well, pretty neat. He's created a companion website to the book on which he provides links to the 600 documents he's cited in his work. How cool is that? Could this be a way for academics to publish serious and scholarly history and save money by putting their citations on the web? Don't know, but it seems to have potential to me.

Time Flies, and Baseball is Here

2008-04-01T11:07:00.004-04:00

Wow, almost a month, huh? Well, since my beloved Sawx are back in action tonight against the Athletics, why not a shout out to the Library of Congress and their History of Baseball web site? It includes a section on baseball cards (before they became "investments"). Ahhh, that cardboard tasting gum. MMMM.

And "history of baseball" reminds me of Louis Sockalexis, a Penobscot Indian from Maine (where I grew up) who was the first recognized American Indian to play in the big leagues and was the supposed "inspiration" for the Cleveland Indians mascot and logo. (More on Sockalexis' historical importance and the controversy surrounding the Indian's here).

"I don't remember ever seeing a quicker bat or a stronger arm. Among the moderns, possibly one player worthy of comparison is that young man Joe DiMaggio. He has a trace of Sockalexis's stuff, but I don't believe he can run or throw with the Indian." - Red Sox Manager Bill Carrigan
{source}

Clinton's Shut Record Access Down

2008-03-07T10:07:00.004-05:00

USA Today reports that "Archivists block release of Clinton papers":

Federal archivists at the Clinton Presidential Library are blocking the release of hundreds of pages of White House papers on pardons that the former president approved, including clemency for fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich.
That archivists' decision, based on guidance provided by Bill Clinton that restricts the disclosure of advice he received from aides, prevents public scrutiny of documents that would shed light on how he decided which pardons to approve from among hundreds of requests.

Clinton's legal agent declined the option of reviewing and releasing the documents that were withheld, said the archivists, who work for the federal government, not the Clintons.

The Clinton team is spinning it as being the decision of the archivists, and USA Today is pretty much following that line. But there is this:

In 2002, Clinton sent a guidance letter to his library that urged quick release of most White House records, but retained the confidentiality prerogative covering advice from his staff. Still, he said the restriction should be interpreted "narrowly" and allowed that certain records detailing internal communications could be made public if reviewed and approved for release by his designated legal agent.
Emily Robison, the library's deputy director, said Clinton's agent, former deputy White House counsel Bruce Lindsey, chose not to review the withheld documents.

Lindsey "was given the opportunity to look at what we withheld under the (president's) guidelines, and he chose not to.... Only Mr. Lindsey and the president have the authority to open those," she said.

The William J. Clinton Foundation, which Lindsey helps oversee, said in a written statement that the National Archives is responsible for deciding which records are withheld under the Presidential Records Act. Archivists were exclusively responsible for "determinations with respect to these materials," the statement said.

Basically, the archivists are being characteristically conservative about their interpretation of what should be made accessible and deferring to the process of allowing the Clinton team to review and OK the release. But the Clinton's are taking advantage by essentially "pocket vetoing" the release by refusing to review them while trying to put the onus (blame?) back on the National Archives (and George Bush). I'll be interested to see how the AHA and NCH address this latest development.

UPDATE: The NCH has an even-handed story, though a bit broader in scope, and it also mentions the USA Today story referenced above. Kudos.

History Carnival 62

2008-03-01T00:00:00.014-05:00

Welcome to the 62nd History Carnival. It only seems like yesterday that I hosted History Carnival #10 (the Aluminum and Tin anniversary) back in 2005. It was easier when there weren't so many of us! Anyway, since I've just missed the Diamond anniversary (#60), no "ice" will be handed out by way of celebration. Instead, I'll offer my gratitude that we're all just happy we're still together after all these iterations.

OK, I've blabbed enough: I'm an engineer by trade, so allow me to dispense with the ruffles and flourishes and exhibit the utilitarianism commensurate with my avocation. (Who am I kidding? I've already over-engineered this intro all to hell).

To the task at hand....

History and Theory and other Building Blocks

We begin with a cautionary note: Nathanael Robinson (with an assist from Jonathan Dresner) reminds us that blogs are sources too. So when you get something from them, please be kind and acknowledge. That goes for all of you blog-newbies / jurassic history profs out there. We're watching.

In Presentism in the Service of Diversity? Chris Green discusses the notion of "medieval Islamic psychology." Ah yes, Al-Sigmunda Freud and Carl bin Jung....

Are we still working in Gibbon's shadow? Manan Ahmed takes on the historiography of the Imperial Decline Scenario.

Thomas Carlyle introduces his Western Intellectual History Lecture Series podcasts, Mercurius Politicus wants us to read about the history and historiography of the book and Jeremy Burman examines the difference between good scholarship in the history of science and the best historical science writing.

Philippe Watrelot (en français) says Nikolas Sarkozy's proposal that each 10 year old in France should memorize the biography of one French child deported during the Holocaust is clouding pedagogy with emotion. Ce n'est pas bon.

Phil Paine thinks historians haven't cast their theoretical nets far enough and have missed the role that fishing has played in history. The hook is baited and floating in the water, you gonna bite?

War

David Gross takes a look at war tax resistance during World War I, where resisters risked vigilante mob violence in trying to resist what was, nominally, a volunteer fund-raising drive.

Martin Waligorski explains that the Bentley Priory mansion which housed Fighter Command HQ during the Battle of Britain--including Dowding's own cabinet--may soon be lost to future generations.

Andy Young looks at Khalkhin-Gol: The forgotten battle that shaped WW2.

History and Memory

Norman Geras explains that "there must be different modes, different episodes and details, of remembrance" when remembering Hitler and the Holocaust and other historical tragedies.

Terry Teachout (h/t D.B. Light) hopes Hiroaki Kuromiya's "straightforward" telling of Stalin's Great Terror--The Voices of the Dead: Stalin’s Great Terror in the 1930s--proves to be the rule rather than the exception. Moving along the timeline, Dmitri Minaev discusses the people whose lives were affected by the 1947 USSR decree "On prohibition of marriages between citizens of the USSR and foreigners".

Charles Crawford asks, "Nazism or Communism? Which was 'worse'? And why?"

Agnieszka Szmidel at Historia i Media uses Youtube to present documentaries, comics and short films about how the troubled history of Argentina and Chile affected regular people.

Dave Tabler mines the sources and discovers the worst industrial tragedy in West Virginia history.

Black History Month

Over at Sandusky History, George J. Reynolds, Carriage Maker and Underground Railroad Conductor is discussed. Meanwhile, J. L. Bell looks at how Oscar Marion has been remembered.

Tim Abbott looks at slave-owners in his own family tree in The Tally Sheet of Shame, part of a series of posts about race and memory in America.

Prompted by an email from Melissa Spore, Ralph Luker looks into whether Harriet Tubman really said, "I could have saved thousands-if only I'd been able to convince them they were slaves." If she didn't, well, who did?

Ancient and Medieval

Archaeozoo looks at Red Deer in Early Medieval Ireland. Mmmmm, venison.

Steve Muhlberger is Laughing Along with Cornelius Tacitus. Is a Comedy Central special imminent?

HairySwede discovers that recent archaeological evidence indicates that there were some big-breasted and Sexy Historical Swedes.

Carla Nayland prompts a discussion over whether or not the Picts may have been a matrilineal society.

Mark A. Rayner presents The Lost PowerPoint Slides (Caligula Edition), minus the slides.

Globalization is nothing new as JK's review of The Spicy History of Malabar shows.

Channeling James Burke, Martin Rundkvist explains the connections between amber beads in Jutland, CT scans and The Beatles.

Jonathan Jarrett presents a medieval Irish skeleton in a (possibly) compromising position. Hey, I like mutton as much as the next guy, but....

When good listervs (remember them?) go bad: Michael Drout is frustrated that his favorite Anglo-Saxon listserv has been taken over by people who hold "crackpot theories about the secret messages hidden in Beowulf and other poems through various means involving either scribal practice or numerology." Hey, maybe Grendel was really the original founder of the Illuminati? Is he a Merovingian (ed ~ Um, then they'd have been the Grendelingians....)

Pretty Pictures and the Like

Laurie Bluedorn gives us prose and pictures discussing the artistry of Edwin Landseer. That dog will hunt.

It is in the eye of the beholder, but you've got to at least open your eyes. Neatorama examines The Evolution of Tech Companies' Logos, so you can see for yourself how Nokia lost the fish and the Mozilla Phoenix got Foxy. Meanwhile, GrrlScientist presents a brief history of NY City subway platform tile mosaic artworks.

Nat Taylor looks at a sketch reminiscent of WWII era aircraft nose art and wonders if "The Scrubbed Goose" ever flew. (Avert thy eyes if you're wary of breastesses.)

The Cranky Professor thinks he's found the world's ugliest pulpit. Yech. He just may be right.

Victorian-ish

Over at The Victorian Peeper, Kristan Tetens takes a look at Britain's earliest surviving purpose-built mosque, the Shah Jahan Mosque in Woking, Surrey, which was built in 1889 by a Hungarian-born linguist. Oh, he was Jewish, too.

Does the Society of Creative Anachronism take time out for tea? Tea Party Girl explains that Jane Austen Lived Before the Inventor of the Tea Party.

Dangerous liaisons? Elizabeth Kerri Mahon remembers Evelyn Nesbit and the Murder of the Century while Romeo Vitelli investigates Constance Kent, who could have been a victim, a murderer or even Jack the Ripper.

Melissa Bellanta explains that the contemporary notion that ol' time magicians (like those in the recent movie The Prestige) put the dark back into the ritz and patter runs counter to the evidence that they were really trying to demystify and modernize the "dark arts."

Culture and Society

Tim Lacy says you can learn all you need to know about 19th century sailing by either reading Patrick O'Brian's twenty-book Aubrey/Maturin series or Richard Henry Dana, Jr.'s Two Years Before the Mast, but the former is more fun.

Silveral delves into The History of Celebrity and finds that being "larger than life" is a common thread. And who's bigger than St. Valentine? Well, Mary Beard wonders if St. Valentine actually existed, while Jeff Sypeck says he did, which is why we celebrate both his holiday and "Valentimes...a parallel holiday observed by supermodels and the illiterate."

History and Politics

While historians often find studying the past to be intrinsically worthwhile, we also like to use it to try to explain just what the hell is going on now. Thus do history and politics meet (OK, maybe I'm being a bit too obvious with the self-referential plug...how's this...) Here's what's been going on over the last month at the intersection of history and politics (that better?).

Over at Progressive Historian, contributor "midtowng" believes that the S&L Crisis is repeating today and compares it to the S&L crisis of the 1980's .

Jon Swift exclaims Castro Resigns! Sanctions Work!

"It has now been forty years since May '68, and yet we still haven't gotten over it." Greg Afinogenov looks at why.

Jonah Goldberg has certainly generated a conversation with his latest book, Liberal Fascism. Now he explains (and revises) why Obama appears to some as the messiah of a new political religion, for good or ill.

Wretchard uses a Goldberg interview as a jumping off point to explain that liberal fascism and Islamic fundamentalism share common ground with Rousseau's philosophy in that they seek to create heaven on earth. Locke also gets a mention. As Linda Richman would say, "Discuss." And try not to get verklempt.

But back to Obamamania. (Schadenfreude alert!) Sean Wilentz has made a career out of using his curriculum vitae to lend credence to his preferred politics and is no stranger to stirring the pot. Now, Wilentz is being applauded by some (like Taylor Marsh) for his "Race Man" piece, which took on some of the campaign tactics of Barack Obama. But Wilentz may not have been prepared for the reaction he got from some of his heretofore ideological fellow travelers (and others) for taking on the Golden Child of the historo-blogosphere. KC Johnson, Kevin Murphy, Oliver Willis and DnA at Too Sense are just some of those who dragged Wilentz to the woodshed. The beatings continue.

Michael Meckler compares the upbringing of Barack Obama to that of Alexander Hamilton.

Congrats to history blogger / muckraker Josh Marshall, whose Talking Points Memo won the Polk Award for investigative journalism for looking into the Bush Administration's attorney firings last year.

Finally, American conservative icon William F. Buckley, Jr. passed away and Michelle Malkin, Daniel Larison, Tim Noah and Rick Perlstein are just a few of those--both pundits and the public--who offered thoughts on his impact on American politics and history.

OK, that's a wrap. Hope I kept it interesting. Thanks to all for your contributions and to Sharon for keeping this thing alive. I excluded no submissions that made it to my "Inbox" (except for the spam--I didn't know that a History Carnival was fertile ground for so many investment strategies!). If you didn't get mentioned, well, submit something next time. Or, if you've got a hankering, host one yourself. It's fun!

History Carnival 62 on the way

2008-02-29T14:08:00.002-05:00

History Carnival 62 will be up tomorrow. Stay tuned!

O'Sullivan Offers a Conservative Case for Obama

2008-02-21T11:20:00.004-05:00

For my money, National Review's John O'Sullivan does a better job explaining the historical reasons for electing Obama than do the Historians for Obama. He does so by assuming that a more unified and stable nation is the bedrock on which American conservatism is built and that and Obama Presidency wouldn't be so bad for conservatives.

A political event is in the conservative interest if it strengthens and stabilizes the country. At times that greater strength may be to the disadvantage of the conservative party or come at some (temporary) cost in conservative principles. But when the smoke of battle clears, conservatives will see, sometimes with surprise, that the nation is better for the change from a conservative standpoint....

It is important not to be starry-eyed about the conservative interest. It is rooted in prudence rather than any more idealistic virtue. It is an amoral basis of calculation, sometime allied with justice, sometimes indifferent to it, but always seeking social stability, as my two American examples will demonstrate.

The first one is the abandonment of Reconstruction after the Civil War in order to reintegrate the south into the United States. That object was achieved but at the cost of the U.S. allowing the installation of Jim Crow laws throughout the south....So the rights of black America were sacrificed for 70 years to the object of reintegrating the south in the federal republic. And whatever we may now think of that bargain, its object was achieved....

My second example is the reversal of the first: namely, the civil-rights revolution of the 1950s and 1960s. It was clear after the Second World War that the post-Reconstruction bargain was now itself unsustainable. Most Americans, including some in the south, recognized that the black Americans who had served alongside them in the Second World War were denied elementary rights in part of the country that they had fought to defend.... Jim Crow was reversed....

What does the conservative interest indicate on this occasion? It seems possible and even likely that a victory by Barack Obama would be the climax of this long policy of fully integrating black and minority America into the nation and putting the querulous politics of race behind us. As I have argued elsewhere, the mere fact of a President Obama would strengthen and stabilize America just as a Polish pope undermined Soviet rule in Eastern Europe. Black and minority America would be fully integrated into the nation.... Americans would feel better about themselves and the world would feel very differently about America. The conservative interest, as defined above, would therefore smile upon a vote for Obama.

O'Sullivan also explains that actual political work also needs to be done to elect Republican (and Democratic) legislators who will mitigate against some of the executive tendencies of a President Obama that conservatives will disagree with.

Free JSTOR

2008-02-20T09:43:00.003-05:00

Manan Ahmed points to both Danah Boyd's decision to publish in only Open Access Journals and Harvard's decision to require that all scholars affiliated with it allow free publication of their work. Thus inspired, he has decided to instigate a "Free JSTOR" campaign. Why? As Manan writes:

One of my biggest complaint about our academic world is about the inaccessibility of research to anyone without institutional affiliation or a hefty bank account. The impact of which is that, academic work in the humanities remains largely confined to a handful of readers and commentators.

I couldn't agree more. As a non-affiliated, "independent" historian, I can't access JSTOR from home because I can't justify paying the single-user fee. Of course, I can do so from one of the many libraries around, but having to take a trip to the stacks sort of takes the spontaneity out of history blogging. Being able to access them online for free, or even a minimal charge, would certainly be better!

Dark Ages, Shmark Ages / Sidonuis, the first neocon?

2008-02-08T09:19:00.000-05:00

That popular conceptions of history tend to lag scholarly thought by a couple decades is nothing new. Witness this article in The Independent, "New light on the Dark Ages: Who are you calling barbaric?". For scholars of the period (late antique/earl MA), the discussion is nothing new and the article mentions Gibbon and alludes to "other interpretations." The re-examination was prompted by a new exhibit at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, Italy. Sounds like good stuff. Unfortunately, the author saw fit to characterize the revisionist vs. traditional historiography this way:

But what if the barbarians weren't all that barbaric after all? What if the black/white, good/bad, God's chosen versus axis of evil, neo-conservative type explanation for this historical event is just as much state propaganda as the claim that Saddam Hussein was an hour away from bombarding us all with nuclear missiles?

Pathetic, really. Believe it or not, everything doesn't come back to Bushitler. Does this mean that we can now peg Sidonius Apollinaris as the first neo-con?

Anyway, here's the meat:

... what the new exhibition lays finally to rest is the notion that the barbarians were barbaric. True, they were often blond, worshipped their own gods, lacked cities with sewerage systems, heated floors, bathhouses and aqueducts. Often they were nomads. But the idea that they were in some absolute sense less civilised was Roman state propaganda. Crueller than the Romans? Hardly possible. More violent, more militaristic than the most militaristic state in history? Hard to conceive.
Once one steps back from the paranoid them-and-us, self-and-other way of looking at it, one sees that rather than the cataclysmic end of a great civilisation and its replacement by the forces of darkness, something far more compelling and creative was under way: the creation (as the curators of this exhibition put it) of Europe as we know it, welded together by Christianity, and with deeply rooted memories of Roman heritage which make dramatic returns to our collective consciousness every few hundred years: during the Renaissance, for example.
"The Barbarian kingdoms," writes Jean-Jacques Aillagon in the catalogue, "gradually drew a new political map of Europe, dividing it between the Ostrogoths and the Lombards in Italy, the Franks in western Germany, Belgium and France, the Visigoths in Languedoc, Aquitaine and the Iberian peninsula."
He continues: "If Europe was born in Athens, Jerusalem and Rome, many of its roots also lie in the peoples of the north and east of the European continent." The aim of the exhibition, he writes: "Is to reveal the profound and subtle mix between Graeco-Roman and Germanic roots from which European culture stems."

Larson: "The Politics of History"

2008-02-07T09:48:00.000-05:00

This column by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Edward Larson is pretty much in the Spinning Clio wheelhouse. In it, Larson attempts to answer the question, "Why do conservatives like history more than liberals?":

Liberal Democrats have always looked to the future with hope and embraced marginalized groups. When they look back, even to the deeds of their own former leaders, they see trails of tears like the one over which Andrew Jackson drove out the Cherokee. Blemishes on past presidents, even those who pointed the way toward future progress, tend to stain them wholly for at least some key elements within the Democratic coalition.
In contrast, conservative Republicans look to the past for inspiration but often to the future with trepidation. Originalists at heart, they tend to see only the shining city on a hill of earlier times and not its darker neighborhoods. George Washington's slaves are forgotten along with Adams's Alien and Sedition Acts. For some Republicans, both Lincoln and Robert E. Lee become models of Christian virtue as if they never ordered millions of men into battle against the other.

I'd say that, generally, that's about right. Conservatives believe in preserving the good things from the past and liberals believe in creating good things in the future. Then what happens is too many liberals throw the baby out with the bathwater in the name of "progress" while conservatives don't realize that changing the bath water every now and then is a healthy thing to do.