Stopping Hitler

If you had a time machine, would you go back in time and kill Hitler before he became the Fuhrer in Germany? Perhaps you could kill him while he was a homeless artist in Vienna, or arrange to have him shot during World War I. If murdering a person, even Hitler before he committed his atrocities seems wrong, perhaps you could arrange for his parents never to meet. Surely a world in which Adolf Hitler was never born would be a better one.

I would not go back in time to kill Hitler if I had a time machine. I don’t think that killing Hitler would make that much of a difference. Hitler was far from being the only radical, anti-Semitic nationalist living in Germany at the time, and it is likely that if Hitler had not been there someone worse might have seized power. Perhaps someone who actually listened to his generals and won the war.

Probably every country has any number of potential Hitlers living in it at any given time. Usually, these people are cranks who organize minuscule political parties and rant about their eccentric political views. In ordinary times, such people have no chance of obtaining any power. To stop Hitler, we would have to consider what conditions in Germany allowed someone like Hitler to seize power and if those conditions could be changed.

I don’t think that there is much question that World War I created Hitler. If the war had never occurred, Hitler would have remained an obscure artist, living hand to mouth. The economic and political turmoil that followed Germany’s defeat and allowed a demagogue like Hitler to flourish would never have happened. To stop Hitler, we must stop World War I.

But how? It would not be so simple as preventing Gavrillo Princep from assassinating Grand Duke Franz Ferdinand. That assassination was the spark that set off the powder keg that was pre-war Europe, but the powder keg was already there. If the assassination of Franz Ferdinand had not occurred, something else would have been the spark.

I think the root of the problem in pre-war Europe was Germany. This is not to say that the German Empire was solely, or even primarily responsible for the war, every one of the combatants bear at least some of the blame, but the ultimate cause of the tension and uncertainty that made a general war in Europe, if not inevitable, at least highly likely was Germany. To understand why Germany was a problem, we must briefly recall some German history

Unlike countries like England or France, Germany did not emerge from the middle ages as a unified nation-state. Instead, Germany remained a conglomeration of states of various sizes from free city-states to small feudal states to large kingdoms like Prussia and Austria. All these German states were part of the Holy Roman Empire, to be sure, and owed allegiance to the Holy Roman Emperor, but the Emperor never had much power outside his personal territories and as time passed, the Holy Roman Emperors had less and less authority until the Holy Roman Empire became an empire in name only, with the various states gaining almost complete independence, until the farce was ended with the abdication of the last Emperor in 1806.

The Holy Roman Empire

After the Napoleonic Wars, German patriots began to call for German unification, generally based on the liberal ideals of the French Revolution. This did not suit the rulers of the various German states, who preferred to retain their power and privileges, and the German liberals were not very successful. After the failure of the Revolutions of 1848, it became clear that Germany would not be united as a federation of liberal states, but through blood and iron. The autocratic and militaristic Kingdom of Prussia took up the cause of German unification and under the leadership of its able chancellor, Otto von Bismark, Prussia led an alliance of German states in successful wars against Denmark (1864), Austria (1866), and France (1870-1871).

German Unification

After this series of victories, it was easy for those states not already affiliated with Prussia to join together in the new German Empire, and on January 18, 1871, Bismark proclaimed the foundation of the German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors in the palace at Versailles, with his master King Wilhelm I of Prussia becoming Kaiser Wilhelm I.

Wilhelm I

Bismarck

This new central European power disrupted existing European balances of power and German military and economic might frightened the other powers. This might not have led to disaster if Germany had been led by wise leaders, who could calm the tensions of a rising Germany, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, but leaders of Germany were not wise or disposed to calm the fears of its neighbors.

Wilhelm I had not been particularly enthusiastic about the project of German unification. He was a patriotic Prussian, proud of his kingdom’s conservative, autocratic traditions and he did not want to see Prussia absorbed into a liberal Germany. Bismark, himself a conservative autocrat, assured the King that the German Empire would be a greater Prussian Empire, and while he had to make some concessions to German liberals, such as a constitution providing for a legislature elected by universal male suffrage, permitting political parties, etc, Bismark made sure that all the real political power in the new empire stayed with the Kaiser and his chancellor.

Wilhelm I’s son, Frederick was far more liberal than his father. He was married to Queen Victoria’s oldest daughter, Victoria, and the husband and wife were agreed that the British system of constitutional monarchy was the best system of government. This did not please either Wilhelm or Bismark, and the two conspired to keep Frederick from any position of state that wielded any real power.

Frederick III

 

The old Kaisar couldn’t live forever, and when he died on March 9, 1888, it seemed that the German Empire would take a liberal turn under its new Kaisar Frederick III. There was just one problem. Frederick III was already dying of cancer of the larynx when he succeeded to the throne. Frederick was Kaisar for just ninety-nine days before he succumbed to his illness, clearing the way for his own son, Wilhelm to succeed him as Kaisar Wilhelm II.

Wilhelm II

Politically, Wilhelm II resembled his grandfather, Wilhelm I, rather than his more liberal father. Both Wilhelms prized the conservative Prussian values of autocracy and militarism and had no use for democracy in any form. In personality, however, Wilhelm was very different from his namesake. While Wilhelm I had already gained many years of experience in governing before becoming King of Prussia and later German Emperor, Wilhelm II was young and inexperienced when he ascended the throne. The older Wilhelm was a kindly gentleman who lived a spartan life and left the business of government to Bismarck. Wilhelm II was brash, boisterous, erratic, and impulsive. He tended to be impatient and changed his mind often. He quite likely had some form of attention deficit disorder. Unlike his grandfather, Wilhelm II insisted on ruling the German Empire himself, and it wasn’t long before Bismarck was obliged to resign as chancellor.

This was not a good idea. Wilhelm II’s aggressive manner and imprudent, saber-rattling public statements tended to frighten the other European powers, already alarmed by Germany’s growing economic and military power. Bismarck had been careful not to give the European powers cause to unite against Germany. Wilhelm II was not so careful and eventually, Germany found itself surrounded by enemies. Bismarck had tried to keep the peace in Europe after winning the Franco-Prussian War. Wilhelm II was more reckless. Kaiser Wilhelm’s impulsive nature and inexperience at statecraft led Germany, and Europe to disaster.

What if Frederick III had lived? He was only fifty-six when he succumbed to cancer. Had he survived he could easily have lived into his eighties. Both his father and son were long-lived. Frederick III could have been Kaiser into the 1920s, giving him plenty of time to turn the German Empire into a more liberal direction. If Kaiser Frederick III had died in 1920, he might have left Germany a constitutional monarchy with a strong emphasis on individual liberty. Germany might have shed its Prussian military culture and been a pillar of stability in the center of Europe. The expensive arms race that preceded the Great War need not have occurred and the War itself might have been avoided. Kaiser Wilhelm II would have ascended the throne as a mature and experienced leader in his sixties, hemmed in by constitutional safeguards and perhaps content to be an elder statesman. Adolf Hitler would be an unknown and forgotten painter. It would be a better world.

So there you have it. If you happen to possess a time machine, here is what you need to do to stop Hitler, without killing anyone. Just go back to Germany around 1887 with a cure for cancer, somehow convince Prince Frederick and his court that you are not crazy, and give the prince your cancer treatment. Easy.

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A Forgotten Battle

We ought to know history fairly well. While there may be all sorts of details to be filled in, the broad outlines of wars and revolutions, the rise and fall of empires, great migrations of peoples, etc, must surely be as well known as anything can be. Of course, our knowledge of history largely depends on written records and if no one thought an event was worth recording or if it occurred before the invention of writing, we may not know anything about it. For all we know, all sorts of things might have occurred before anyone was able to make written records. They may be whole cultures we know nothing of.

This article at Sciencemag.org about an forgotten battle in Bronze Age Northern Europe illustrates nicely how little we may actually know about our past.

About 3200 years ago, two armies clashed at a river crossing near the Baltic Sea. The confrontation can’t be found in any history books—the written word didn’t become common in these parts for another 2000 years—but this was no skirmish between local clans. Thousands of warriors came together in a brutal struggle, perhaps fought on a single day, using weapons crafted from wood, flint, and bronze, a metal that was then the height of military technology.

Struggling to find solid footing on the banks of the Tollense River, a narrow ribbon of water that flows through the marshes of northern Germany toward the Baltic Sea, the armies fought hand-to-hand, maiming and killing with war clubs, spears, swords, and knives. Bronze- and flint-tipped arrows were loosed at close range, piercing skulls and lodging deep into the bones of young men. Horses belonging to high-ranking warriors crumpled into the muck, fatally speared. Not everyone stood their ground in the melee: Some warriors broke and ran, and were struck down from behind.

When the fighting was through, hundreds lay dead, littering the swampy valley. Some bodies were stripped of their valuables and left bobbing in shallow ponds; others sank to the bottom, protected from plundering by a meter or two of water. Peat slowly settled over the bones. Within centuries, the entire battle was forgotten.

This epic battle was forgotten until the twentieth century.

n 1996, an amateur archaeologist found a single upper arm bone sticking out of the steep riverbank—the first clue that the Tollense Valley, about 120 kilometers north of Berlin, concealed a gruesome secret. A flint arrowhead was firmly embedded in one end of the bone, prompting archaeologists to dig a small test excavation that yielded more bones, a bashed-in skull, and a 73-centimeter club resembling a baseball bat. The artifacts all were radiocarbon-dated to about 1250 B.C.E., suggesting they stemmed from a single episode during Europe’s Bronze Age.

Now, after a series of excavations between 2009 and 2015, researchers have begun to understand the battle and its startling implications for Bronze Age society. Along a 3-kilometer stretch of the Tollense River, archaeologists from the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Department of Historic Preservation (MVDHP) and the University of Greifswald (UG) have unearthed wooden clubs, bronze spearheads, and flint and bronze arrowheads. They have also found bones in extraordinary numbers: the remains of at least five horses and more than 100 men. Bones from hundreds more may remain unexcavated, and thousands of others may have fought but survived

No one knows if the men who fought at this battle were good men or bad, or why they fought and died. Archaeologists can uncover the bare facts about the battle, how many fought and with what weapons, but they cannot tell us why they were fighting or what issues they thought were important. enough to fight and die over. If any bard composed epic poems celebrating these warriors, we will never hear it. Any oral tradition has not survived. I am not sure if these warriors are any relation to the people currently living in the region. I would guess probably not. No Homer was able to preserve any epic poetry by writing it down, since these people had no knowledge of writing.

On thing is clear, however. This was no mere skirmish between villages or wandering tribes. These were small armies made up of thousands of fighters, which implies a level of political sophistication unsuspected in that place and time.

Northern Europe in the Bronze Age was long dismissed as a backwater, overshadowed by more sophisticated civilizations in the Near East and Greece. Bronze itself, created in the Near East around 3200 B.C.E., took 1000 years to arrive here. But Tollense’s scale suggests more organization—and more violence—than once thought. “We had considered scenarios of raids, with small groups of young men killing and stealing food, but to imagine such a big battle with thousands of people is very surprising,” says Svend Hansen, head of the German Archaeological Institute’s (DAI’s) Eurasia Department in Berlin. The well-preserved bones and artifacts add detail to this picture of Bronze Age sophistication, pointing to the existence of a trained warrior class and suggesting that people from across Europe joined the bloody fray.

Ancient DNA could potentially reveal much more: When compared to other Bronze Age samples from around Europe at this time, it could point to the homelands of the warriors as well as such traits as eye and hair color. Genetic analysis is just beginning, but so far it supports the notion of far-flung origins. DNA from teeth suggests some warriors are related to modern southern Europeans and others to people living in modern-day Poland and Scandinavia. “This is not a bunch of local idiots,” says University of Mainz geneticist Joachim Burger. “It’s a highly diverse population.”

As University of Aarhus’s Vandkilde puts it: “It’s an army like the one described in Homeric epics, made up of smaller war bands that gathered to sack Troy”—an event thought to have happened fewer than 100 years later, in 1184 B.C.E. That suggests an unexpectedly widespread social organization, Jantzen says. “To organize a battle like this over tremendous distances and gather all these people in one place was a tremendous accomplishment,” he says.

There could have been whole kingdoms and empires in the northern Europe that we know nothing about, a whole undiscovered history. I wonder how much unknown history there remains to be discovered in other parts of the world where the people had not yet learned about writing. Perhaps we will never know.

Some Thoughts on ISIS

There has been a lot written lately on what should be done with the growing threat of terrorism sponsored by the Islamic State and about Islamic radicalism generally. I don’t imagine I have anything significant to contribute to this discussion but here are some thoughts, for whatever they are worth.

One reason for the appeal of Islamic radicalism in the Middle East that doesn’t seem to get much attention is that the recent history of the Islamic world, particularly at its Arabic speaking core is largely a history of repeated failure. Generally, the Middle East has had a very difficult time adjusting to the modern world. With the exception of Israel, which doesn’t really count since it is a Western transplant, the countries of the Middle East are backwards and poor with repressive, corrupt governments. They produce almost nothing the rest of the world wants in trade, except for oil. They contribute little to the progress of science and technology. Their militaries may be well equipped with purchases from the United States and Russia, but they are ill trained and not very effective, particularly against any Western power. It must be very humiliating, since Islam promises that the Muslims are the best of men who enjoy Allah’s favor, to see the infidel West enjoying success and prosperity while they languish in poverty and powerlessness, especially for proud, young men.

This may be part of the reason there is so much hatred of Israel among the Arabs. Israel is in the same part of the world, has much the same resources and geography though without oil, and even some of the same culture among the Jews from the Middle East, yet Israel is a vibrant, prosperous country that has contributed far more to the world than one might expect from a country of its size, more than the entire rest of the Middle East combined. There might be a good deal less hatred of Israel if Israel were just another third world sewer.

It is not that the Muslims haven’t tried to modernize. For most of the twentieth century,

various Muslim countries have attempted modernize, secularize, and westernize themselves, with varying degrees of success. Kemel Ataturk in Turkey, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran, the Communists in Afghanistan, and others such as Nasser, Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi all tried to transform the states they ruled. Unfortunately, these Muslim leaders picked up all the worst ideas that the West had to offer,  such as socialism, communism, militant nationalism, and others, combined with traditional Middle Eastern despotism created nothing but a series of  repressive failed states. Modernization and westernization didn’t seem to work. It is not too surprising that many people began to believe that the Middle East was going in the wrong direction. . Maybe the failure of the Islamic world was due to them abandoning the ways of Islam.Maybe instead of becoming more Western, they should become more Islamic. One by one these secular dictators have fallen, to be replaced by Islamic rulers. Turkey is something of an exception since it has long had the forms of democracy if not always the realty. However Ataturk’s secular legacy has been increasingly challenged over the last decade with the rise to power of the Justice and Development Party.

It is also worth noting that all these twentieth century efforts to modernize the Middle East were largely the top down efforts of a small, educated, westernized elite and enacted by force, while the more religious and traditional majority have been indifferent or actively hostile to efforts to modernize and westernize their countries. It doesn’t seem as if the westernized elite spent much time or effort trying to educate or change the minds of the masses in the Islamic world nor to try to achieve some sort of synthesis between Islamic and Western values. They have remained nominal Muslims while trying to undermine the influence of Islam in the people’s lives. It should not be surprising that the majority of people throughout the Middle East have tended to resent these efforts as an attempt to force an alien, irreligious culture on them. To make matters worse, the secular modernization efforts don’t seem to have worked. Countries like Egypt, Iraq or Iran have not become as wealthy and powerful as Western nations despite any attempts at westernization. The Westernized elites and despots have failed them.

Considered this way, the rise of radical Islam in the Middle East is not really that different from the revolts against the elite in the West. ISIS and al-Qaeda are not that different in principle from the TEA Party in the United States or the UK INdependence Party in Britain or any of a number of other populist movements throughout the West. ISIS and the TEA Party both seek to revive a former greatness by going back to fundamentals. What makes all the difference is that Tea Partiers study the constitution and run for office. Radical Muslims study the Koran and engage in terrorism. What makes this difference? In the West, we have learned to settle our differences more or less peacefully. In the Middle East, they seem to have not.

It is often said that the Middle East is a tribal society and that is the cause of so much violence in the region. Maybe, but the West is tribal too. Look at a map of any major city in the United States and you may still find neighborhoods labeled “Chinatown”, “Little Italy” or the like, a relic of the days when immigrants came and settled among people of their own nation, or tribe. Every human society is prone to factions. Why is it that in the West the tribes have somehow managed to learn to live in peace and even to blend together while in the Middle East old hatreds continue for generations to the detriment of the common good?

Part of the appeal of Islamic radicalism, as well as the original appeal of Islam in Mohammed’s time, is that it promises to surmount these petty differences between tribes and nations carved out from colonial empires and create a united kingdom under the rule of God. No doubt many Muslims feel that the disaster began when the Islamic community began to fracture into competing sects and empires. In the twentieth century, there was a strong pan-Arab nationalist movement promising to unite the Arabic people. If Arab nationalism didn’t unite the Middle East, perhaps Islamism might.

I don’t think it is very useful to blame one president or another or one policy or another for the rise of ISIS. Something like ISIS would have happened regardless of what we have done. It is tempting to believe that a superpower is the cause of everything that happens in the world but much is beyond our control. The cultural attitudes and societal trends that have led to present conditions have been occurring for a very long time and much depends on how the people in the region resolve, or fail to resolve their problems. Ultimately, we cannot solve their problems for them.

The West has had a violent, tumultuous history on its path to to liberty and democracy, and perhaps some parts of Europe have not quite completed the journey. It took periods of terrible bloodshed, the Wars of Religion during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Napoleonic Wars of the nineteenth century and the World Wars of the twentieth century to make Europe what it is today. It maybe that the Middle East must go through a generation of bloodshed to convince the people to live in peace. If so, than the only thing we can or should do is leave them alone to fight it out, taking care that the conflicts do not spill over outside the Middle East. It  may also be that allowing a generation of Muslims to live under an Islamic State is the only way to sour them on the whole idea. The people in Iran do not seem to be very enthusiastic about Islam these days. They have lived under their own Islamic State and they are sick of it. We would like to think that we can solve the world’s problems, but maybe this time we can’t . Maybe the best we can manage is to protect ourselves and hope for the best.

 

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• A People Betrayed: How The Immigration Crisis Is Being Exploited To Force Europe To Embrace Its Destruction (Guest Post) (floppingaces.net)
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Conquest: The English Kingdom of France

The Hundred Year’s War is not really an accurate name for the medieval war between England and France. The war actually lasted one hundred sixteen years, from 1337-1453, and was not a continuous war but a series of conflicts, with off and on fighting depending on the belligerence of kings and the course of the plague. The war began when the last son of Philip IV of France died without issue. As the mother of the English King Edward III was Phillip’s daughter, Edward claimed the French throne, as well as his own. The French refused his claim, citing the Salic Law which prohibited royal inheritance by a female descendant of the king and gave the crown to a nephew of Philip IV, Philip VI. Naturally there was war.

After the death of Edward III in 1377, the fighting died down somewhat as both realms were more concerned with internal matters. Henry V renewed the fighting in 1415, taking advantage of  political unrest between branches of the French royal family, particularly the feud between the Armagnac or Orleans faction and the Burgundians. After his decisive victory at Agincourt, Henry V was able to compel the French King Charles VI to disinherit his own son, the Dauphin, later known as Charles VII, and declare Henry his heir. Henry V died in 1522 leaving an infant son Henry VI who became king of France upon the death of Charles VI later that year. Thus France had an English king from 1420 to 1450, at least in theory.

This English kingdom of France is the subject of Juliet Barker‘s Conquest: The English Kingdom of France, which covers the last part of the Hundred Year’s War. It is a fascinating story of a France almost completely defeated rising again to expel the invader, of a disinherited prince with no hope of gaining his throne turning the tide with the help of Joan of Arc, and of an infant king  with a faction ridden council of regents and a land worn out by fighting, growing up into a weak king willing to make peace at any price. It is a story of battles and sieges, of brave knights and treacherous mercenaries and family squabbles that affect the course of nations.

Juliet Barker makes this story come alive with the skill of a novelist. She brings out the personalities of the principals involved in the war and politics of the two kingdoms and describes the events in a way that excites the interest of the reader. By the time I was halfway through the book, I found the narrative so fascinating that I had trouble putting it down. If you like the Game of Thrones, you’ll surely love this history of a real life game of thrones. The only complaint I have is that the maps really weren’t enough. It might have been nice to include one or two maps showing the course of the various campaigns. Other than that, this was an excellent history of a long ago war.

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• Thinking Aloud: “The Iron King” (notwhatyoumightthink.wordpress.com)

The First World War

The First World War was the single most important event of the twentieth century. Every event that followed that war, all the other wars, the great movements and revolutions, and even the scientific discoveries and inventions, began in some way, direct or indirect, from the great and terrible happenings of the years 1914-1918. A world in which that war had not occurred would be a very different and perhaps better world.

Despite the importance of World War One, I have never known very much about it. I had some knowledge of the general outlines, which countries fought on which side, and which side won. I knew the names of some of the battles, the Somme, Verdun, but nothing in detail. I had some familiarity of the conditions of the Western Front but knew almost nothing at all about the Eastern Front, save that Russia ended up losing. I do not think that I am alone in knowing so little about World War One. The First World War tends to be overshadowed, in contemporary minds, by the still greater and more catastrophic Second World War. Yet, had the first war not been fought, it is very unlikely the second war would have broken out. At first the nature of the combatants would have been different, no Nazis in Germany and no Communist Soviet Union. In the United States, World War One tends to get little attention because we only entered the war in its last year. While the US contribution was crucial to the Allied victory, the war did not hurt us as badly as it did the European powers that fought it. Unlike France, Germany or Britain, America did not lose much of a generation in the fighting.

To learn more about this war, I turned to The First World War by the eminent military historian John Keegan. I am happy to report that Mr. Keegan does a truly marvelous job in relating the course of the war, from its beginnings, in the plans by the military staffs of the various combatants to fight the next war, to the assassination of Franz Ferdinand that sparked the war, through the years of trench warfare when massive armies butted heads to no avail, all the way to the last desperate attempt by the Germans to knock Britain and France out of the war before fresh American soldiers arrived to reinforce them. He seems to pay equal attention to both the Western and Eastern fronts. I learned quite a lot about the fighting between Russian and the German-Austrian alliance, not to mention the fighting in the Balkans where the war started.
Keegan mostly dwells on the military aspects of the war and has relatively little to say about the domestic politics of the European nations. He does go into some detail about the diplomatic maneuverings the nations of Europe engaged in during the Balkan crisis that led up to the war. It is somewhat poignant to learn that neither side really wanted a general war in Europe, but no one seemed strong enough to end the crisis. Keegan speculates that if Austria-Hungary had launched an immediate invasion of Serbia in retaliation of their support for terrorist activities, the crisis would have ended before it had grown out of control. As it happened, Austria-Hungary waited for support from Germany, and the wait proved fatal for Europe.

Keegan challenges some myths and ideas that have grown up about the war. He argues that the various generals were not as incompetent or unconcerned about casualties as is often supposed. As he points out, they tried to fight the war as best they could, but technological development was at an awkward phase for fighting a war. Barbed wired and the machine gun made defended positions nearly impregnable, while the technologies that would have aided the offensive, tanks and airplanes were only beginning to be developed. Improvements in transportation, especially trains, made it possible to send many thousands of men into battle, but the generals had no way to keep in contact with their armies once battle had begun. It was no longer possible for generals to lead their men in person; the battles were too large for that. Telephone and telegraph wires were easily cut. Radio was still in its infancy. The generals were removed from the battlefields because they had no choice. They sent their men to be slaughtered because wars cannot be won without attacking the enemy and attacking the enemy’s positions killed thousands.

I enjoyed learning about World War One from John Keegan’s book and I think it serves as an excellent introduction to the war. It covers all the major battles and aspects of the war without getting bogged down in details. Best of all, it can be understood easily even by the reader not familiar with military affairs. I can highly recommend The First World War.

 

The Christian Dark Ages I:The High Middle Ages

I have seen this graphic here and there on the Internet.

The atheist blog where I stole that particular image provides an explanation of the Christian Dark Ages.

I am sure you have heard of the Dark Ages, but if not I’ll help you out. This was when, basically, science was outlawed, to the extent that if you were doing something that the church deemed blasphemous you were killed. This is when we hunted for witches because the bible says to kill witches, homosexuals, those who commit adultery, and the list goes on. If you were not a believer in god you were killed.

In addition this was also the time when the Crusades were going on. So we were killing both our own people and the people of other nations in the name of god. Following god’s laws was one of the worst times in history (IMO).

Ayn Rand described the Dark Ages by having John Galt, the protagonist of her book, “Atlas Shrugged” saying,

The infamous times you call the Dark Ages were an era of intelligence on strike, when men of ability went underground and lived undiscovered, studying in secret, and died, destroying the works of their mind, when only a few of the bravest martyrs remained to keep the human race alive. Every period ruled by mystics was an era of stagnation and want, when most men were on strike against existence, working for less than their barest survival, leaving nothing but scraps for their rulers to loot, refusing to think, to venture, to produce, when the ultimate collector of their profits and the final authority on truth or error was the whim of some gilded degenerate sanctioned as superior to reason by divine right and by grace of a club.

Is any of this true? Were the Middle Ages a period of Darkness in which religious fanatics ran amok,  science was a crime punishable by death, and men of intelligence went on strike? Well, no. The idea that there was a thousand-year period of poverty, ignorance and stagnation caused by fanatic Christians who were opposed to any sort of intellectual endeavor is the result of a dramatic oversimplification of Medieval history and anti-Christian bigotry. It is simply not the truth.

There are not many historians nowadays who would fell comfortable labeling any period of the Middle Ages as the Dark Ages. This is not simply due to political correctness, but an acknowledgement that the period from around AD 500-1500 in European  history was too complex and diverse to be so simply labeled. There were indeed times and places in that period of history that were very dark, but there were also very bright times and places which attained a very highly developed civilization. Any two word phrase simply cannot do justice to the vast sweep of Medieval European History.

In general, historians divide the Middle Ages into the Early Middle Ages, from around 500-1000, the High Middle Ages, from around 1000-1350, and the Late Middle Ages, from around 1350-1500. I will ignore the Late Middle Ages since that period of time is usually referred to as the Renaissance, except to say that there was a sort of mini-dark age in the wake of the Black Death of 1349 and the general breakdown of Medieval institutions throughout the fourteenth fifteenth century.

Europe in 1190

I have already dealt with the Scholastic philosopher-theologians of the High Middle Ages and the important role they played in paving the way for the development of modern science. The High Middle Ages were the period in which the university was developed. European scholars gained access to ancient texts in Greek, and Arabic.  The population throughout Europe increased dramatically. More lands were cleared for settlement. Long distance trade expanded and modern banking and capitalism began to develop. Politically, this was the age in which nationalism began to develop and European states began to be more centralized and more efficiently governed. This was also an age in which the city states of Italy and norther Europe could flourish. Culturally, new movements in art and architecture began and literature began to be written in vernacular languages. The High Middle Ages saw an increase in religious devotion, along with the intellectual ferment, which should put to rest the idea that Christian piety and science are forever at odds. The Dominican and Franciscan monastic orders were introduced and there was an increase in religious activity among the laity which foreshadowed the Protestant Reformation. Among the new technologies either invented by Europeans or introduced to Europe were paper making, the magnetic compass, eyeglasses, the wind mill, the spinning wheel, the first mechanical clock, gunpowder and Arabic numerals, along with the re-introduction of the abacus.

Even the Crusades were a positive development.  As we will see, the Early Middle Ages was a period in which Europe was continually invaded from without. The Crusades were not just the result of mindless religious fanaticism, in which Christian barbarians slaughtered anyone who worshiped the wrong god. The Crusades were an attempt by the nations of Christendom to go on the offensive against enemies who had been threatening them for centuries. Transporting armies across a continent and defeating the Moslims on their own ground took a considerable amount of wealth and preparation. The fact that the Crusaders were victorious in the First Crusade is an early indication that the Europeans were beginning to pull ahead in technology.

The High Middle Ages were not a Dark  Age by any means. Instead, the High Middle Ages must be counted among the most brilliant and dynamic in human history. We would not be where we are today if the High Middle Ages had really been the Christian Dark Ages.

I had intended to take up the subject of the Early Middle Ages which could more justly be called a Dark Age but this post is getting long so I think the Early Middle Ages will have to have a post of its own.

 

 

 

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Ten Great Events in History

Ten Great Events in History by James Johonnot is not really a history book. It is, rather a book of stories about historical events. This is not a criticism, but the distinction is a necessary one. A historian tries to determine what events actually occurred and when, how and why they happened. He then tries to write about the events in as evenhanded and unbiased manner as possible. A storyteller, on the other hand, makes use of historical events to entertain or educate the reader. He does not necessarily let the way of a good story. It is not that he tells falsehoods but his focus is on what amuses or edifies the reader.

James Johonnot was not acting as a sober historian in Ten Great Events in History. He was telling inspiring stories of deeds done by valiant people. The general theme of these stories is the defense of freedom against tyranny.  The ten events are
Defense of freedom by Greek valor

Crusades and the Crusaders

Defense of freedom in Alpine passes

Bruce and Bannockburn

Columbus and the New World

Defense of freedom on Dutch dikes

The Invincible Armada

Freedom’s voyage to America

Plessey and how an empire was won

Lexington and Bunker Hill.

It is a little difficult to see how some of these events actually advanced the cause of freedom. The native inhabitants of the New World were not made freer by Columbus’s voyage. The Battle Plessey began the process by which the British conquered India. Though Britain undoubtedly ruled India with more efficiency and justice than the Mughals, India was not exactly freed.

James Jononnot wrote this book in 1887, long before our modern age of political correctness, when writers were freer to say what they really thought about other cultures. Thus, there are the usual nineteenth century stereotypes in Ten Great Events. Orientals are indolent and subject to despotism. Spaniards are cruel and superstitious. Anglo-Saxons are brave and freedom loving. Despite such weaknesses, Ten Great Events in History is fun and easy to read. If the whole stories behind some of the events are not told, at least the reader has a good starting point and the stories are really inspiring.

RIP Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher, one of Britain’s greatest Prime Ministers died of a stroke today. She took control of a nation in decline and turned things around, at least temporarily, giving Britain one last moment of glory. Unfortunately none of her successors have seen fit to continue her policies, even her own Conservative Party, and so Britain is on the way down again. On the international stage, she was a stalwart supporter of freedom and a friend to America. She, along with President Reagan was instrumental in winning the Cold War and ending Soviet tyranny. She will be greatly missed.

 

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The Birth of Classical Europe

 

The Birth of Classical Europe, by Simon Price and Peter Thronemann is the first book in a series, The Penguin History of Europe. This first book covers the beginnings of Western Civilization from the Trojan War to the time of Augustine of Hippo. That is a lot of ground to cover in only four hundred pages, and The Birth of Classical Europe barely skims the centuries of history. Still, these are appropriate endpoints.

 

The Birth of Classical Europe is really not so much a narrative history as a study on how history was used by the Greeks, Romans, and others to establish their place in the world. For the people of classical Europe, the Trojan War was, in many respects the beginning of history, as the first event of consequence that they could date and had any information about. The fact that their information was filtered through the legends memorialized in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, and that they did not, in fact, have any real knowledge of the events centuries before their time was irrelevant. Greek cities and families traced their origins to heroes and events in Homer and other myths and any new custom or institution was invariably held to have had its actual origins in the legendary past. Thus, Athenian democracy, which was only fully established in the fifth century, was believed to have been started by Theseus. The Persian invasion was another chapter in the long struggle between East and West. The Romans got into the act too. They believed themselves to be descended from the Trojan prince Aeneas and placed themselves firmly in the mythological history of the Greeks. Even unrelated peoples such as the Gauls and inhabitants of Asia came to view themselves in this context.

If the Trojan War is a good point to begin this survey, than Augustine is the natural endpoint. For by Augustine’s time the rising faith of Christianity had begun to create a new historical context for the people of the West. While the Romans hardly abandoned their classical heritage, they did begin to draw more on the history in the Bible to understand their place in the history and the world. This tendency perhaps reached its climax with Augustine’s greatest work, The City of God, and it may well be said that after him we find the habits of thought we associate with the medieval period.

The Birth of Classical Europe is worth reading in order to get a good bird’s eye view of the formation of our civilization and if it has a fault, it is simply that there is not enough space in the book to give every cultural and historical development its full attention.

 

Yes, The Titanic was Real

I  had thought I had lost any capacity to be amazed by the ignorance of some people but I was wrong. I would have thought that even someone with only the vaguest grasp of history would have realized that the movie Titanic was based on real events. According to this article in the Independent, I would be wrong.

IT may have been one of the most iconic disasters of the twentieth century but it appears that some Twitter users are only now waking up to the fact that the sinking of the Titanic was not just the plot of a blockbuster film.

While subscribers to the microblogging site may be kept constantly up to date with the latest news and gossip, it is appears that some are less than familiar with the major events of the more distant past.

The sinking of the White Star liner with the loss of 1,500 lives in 1912 stunned the world and became a byword for tragedy.

But it appears that it has become so enmeshed in popular culture – particularly with the recently re-released film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet – that some were not aware of the historical reality.

Twitter: Kelly Derrick: Is it bad that I didn’t know the titanic was real? Always thought it was just a film” :literally dont know what to say

Neither do I. I really don’t know how someone could be so ignorant. Maybe they don’t teach history in public schools anymore, except for politically correct victimology. I just don’t know.

It really happened.

 

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