Castle Aching

[Edwardian]

41 minutes ago, jcredfer said:

 

they have not only never won a war on their own (as far as I have managed to glean from proper history books} but have been known to turn up late for major conflicts - and a minor one in their own territories, where they arrived 4 days after it finished.

 

 

 

I would say the American Revolution, but, since there was no such thing as the United States of America before 12 May 1784, that conflict is disqualified!

 

Did America not win the Spanish-American War (1898) by itself?

 

(unless you are suggesting that Young Winston rendered material assistance!)

[Andy Hayter]

1 hour ago, jcredfer said:

 

Management principles so ingrained in the US that they even extend the principle to their military...  they outsource to other countries to get on with the job.  So much so that they have not only never won a war on their own (as far as I have managed to glean from proper history books} but have been known to turn up late for major conflicts - and a minor one in their own territories, where they arrived 4 days after it finished.

 

NB.  My comment makes no adverse reference, what-so-ever, to the troops themselves, who have been as valiant as any others, worldwide, to get he job done.

 

Julian

 

American Civil war?  Or is that cheating?

[Compound2632]

31 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Did America not win the Spanish-American War (1898) by itself?

 

Not in Cuba, where US intervention was in support of existing insurgency. In the Philippines, there was also already a war of independence in progress; an outcome of the war was that Spain ceded the Philippines to the US, promptly triggering another war of independence.

 

One should also note that while the Canadians sacked Washington DC, Ottawa has never fallen to US forces.

Edited June 25, 2020 by Compound2632

[jcredfer]

56 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

I would say the American Revolution, but, since there was no such thing as the United States of America before 12 May 1784, that conflict is disqualified!

 

Did America not win the Spanish-American War (1898) by itself?

 

(unless you are suggesting that Young Winston rendered material assistance!)

 

You're quite correct, as at the time of the American Revolution, the whole of N America was being disputed and "arrangements" were agreed with the French, who were also disputing the American territories, to split the GB armies.  GB were left with a choice of which territory was more important.  {Opinions will vary about whether the result might have been a loss to the UK or of benefit!}

 

Julian

 

[Regularity]

1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

I would say the American Revolution

They would have eventually won through, for the same reason they lost nearly two centuries later in ‘Nam: it was their home ground. (Not that they learned the lesson; “success” in WW2 was down to being liberators, rather than conquestors.)

But actually, apart from it being an act of insurrection against the government of the day (and films glorifying it technically being terrorist propaganda under the PATRIOT Act!) they needed the help of the French and some of the native tribes to win. The French then imploded, and one of the true purposes of the “Revolution” was subsequently revealed when tribes found themselves dispossessed of land...

 

(For the avoidance of doubt, I have the greatest admiration for the basic principles espoused by the “American dream”, and as a whole I have found Americans to be generous and kind. Their politicians, on the other hand, are even more variable than the shambles we get.)

Edited June 25, 2020 by Regularity
Addendum

[Compound2632]

2 minutes ago, Regularity said:

and one of the true purposes of the “Revolution” was subsequently revealed when tribes found themselves dispossessed of land...

 

Quite. The real losers were the Native American and African American populations. (The anti-slavery movement already gaining momentum in Britain, following Lord Mansfield's judgement in 1772. This made the Caribbean and American slave-owners nervous. Though to be fair, several of the independent legislatures of the northern states were passing anti-slavery legislation from 1777.)

[St Enodoc]

6 hours ago, Northroader said:

Saturday night possessions, getting cables in at Wemberlee or Marrowlebone, falling asleep bombing back home on the M4 after handing back possession, how did we survive?

Quite a few didn't, to my knowledge.

[drmditch]

3 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

One should also note that while the Canadians sacked Washington DC, Ottawa has never fallen to US forces.

Canadians Sir?

That was the Royal Navy and the British Army.

(Would have to look it up to see which units and whether any North American loyalists were involved, although I doubt it.)

 

Just remember that 'the rockets red glare' refers to British missiles. Presumably Congreve Mk1s ?

 

And the President's Mansion became the White House when it was whitewashed to hide the burn marks!

[Edwardian]

It's part of the US DNA to believe that they are not a colonial power.

 

That, of course, is rubbish. 

 

I don't here just mean the acquisition through conquest of places like Puerto Rico or Guam by defeating Spain, or through purchase (e.g. Louisiana, US Virgin Islands, Alaska (but not, so far, Greenland!)). Nor do I rely upon the various other Pacific Islands, including the really dodgy offshore jurisdiction that the US keeps very quiet; the US Marshall Islands in Micronesia.

 

No, I mean most of the lower 48. 

 

When independence was recognised in 1784, the US comprised just New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.

 

For a start, this was still a colonised territory.  The fact these were now independent colonies is, in this context, irrelevant, not least from the point of view of the pre-colonial population.

 

This US began to colonise much of the adjoining land mass.  This involved both colonising virgin territory (in the sense of territory not previously taken from its native population), and acquiring Spanish and French colonies.

 

We have a notion that a colony must be somewhere overseas, but we are an island nation.  A colony can be the vast interior space of a continent, if the edge of that continent is where you start. 

 

Colonialisnm, even in the British context, is not a single experience.  For Britain it could take the form of a client state, e.g. Egypt, or territories where the native population was dispossessed and killed in large numbers (which was, of course, the US mainland model), e.g. in Australasia, and territories where we largely organised and governed the native populations and, while no doubt preferring Britian's economic interests to that of the colonies, nevertheless brought law and order, security, education, infrastructure etc, e.g. the Raj.  While the colonial model is inherently exploitative (though I struggle to identify many relationships that are not), clearly some models are more or less relatively benign than others. The US' colonisation of the North American landmass was surely not one of the more benign. 

 

Let us not forget that, across most of the former British empire, the reason we have had to face independence movements and, post-independence, a good deal of blame and carping, is because in these places the imperial administration tended to leave the native population alive! In contrast, the US built a nation out of colonies, but at what cost? 

 

We should not forget that the British and US colonisations were in significant measure dependent upon chattel slavery; the use of one great evil to facilitate another.

 

In parallel to the US' colonisation of much of the North American land mass (mention has been made that the Canadians sent them packing), Tzarist Russian was colonising 'interior space' in the form of Central Asia.  This process continued under the Bolsheviks; plus ça change ...,

 

So, when public figures in either the US or the Russian Federation have a poke at good old Blighty because of its colonial past, the glass on my irony gauge cracks under the pressure of absurdity.  

[Compound2632]

6 hours ago, drmditch said:

Canadians Sir?

 

That's what I've been told by Canadians.

 

3 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

It's part of the US DNA to believe that they are not a colonial power.

 

This US began to colonise much of the adjoining land mass.  This involved both colonising virgin territory (in the sense of territory not previously taken from its native population), and acquiring Spanish and French colonies.

 

We have a notion that a colony must be somewhere overseas, but we are an island nation.  A colony can be the vast interior space of a continent, if the edge of that continent is where you start. 

 

In parallel to the US' colonisation of much of the North American land mass (mention has been made that the Canadians sent them packing), Tzarist Russian was colonising 'interior space' in the form of Central Asia.  This process continued under the Bolsheviks; plus ça change ...,

 

Indeed. It seems to me that the "frontier mentality" is deeply ingrained in US thinking. There was always new space to move into - once the continent had been fully colonised - at the expense of native and hispanic Americans - new frontiers had to be found including, of course, space - "the final frontier". 

 

In the Russian case, colonisation started much earlier, starting out in the late 15th / 16th century when Muscovy was on the back foot against both Poland-Lithuania and the Kazan Kahnate. In both cases, there was a sense of continuing the defence of Orthodoxy following the fall of Constantinople - Moscow as the "Third Rome". Muscovy's eventual victory against Kazan turned that defensive war into a form of expansionist crusade that was only finally pulled up by Japan in the war of 1905. 

 

Once you've run out of territory to conquer, you're doomed, as Bonaparte discovered. In the Russian case, the consequence was revolution against a despotic government; maybe we're seeing that now in the US?

[St Enodoc]

4 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Once you've run out of territory to conquer, you're doomed, as Bonaparte discovered.

Legend tells us that Alexander the Great wept when he realised that there were no more lands to conquer.

[Hroth]

4 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Once you've run out of territory to conquer, you're doomed, as Bonaparte discovered. In the Russian case, the consequence was revolution against a despotic government; maybe we're seeing that now in the US?

 

Colonial attempts on Russia over the past couple of centuries foundered on the failure to appreciate that the Russians (of whatever political hue) had lots of hinterland to pull back to, regroup and counter-attack.  Of course, General Winter was a great help too.  The interesting thing we have seen in the present is the Russian move to re-colonise territories it percieves as their property that they were forced out of in recent decades.

 

God knows what will happen in the US.

 

[Compound2632]

I meant to add to my homily the observation that US frontierism was in part driven by the belief, derived from a misreading of Genesis, that the Earth exists to be exploited for man's benefit. 

[Edwardian]

14 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

I meant to add to my homily the observation that US frontierism was in part driven by the belief, derived from a misreading of Genesis, that the Earth exists to be exploited for man's benefit. 

 

In a similar way, much of British colonialism was imbued with the idea of spreading christianity and a 'civilising mission'.

 

Both these ideas are now regarded as noxious;  propagation of these foreign creeds may be seen as equally bad as, or, perhaps, worse than the material exploitation and control of the colonies, because it may be seen as an attack upon native cultures.  Of course, this is another complex area.  For instance, was John Company wrong to suppress suttee?

 

Be that as it may, I doubt that the moral crusade was the mainspring of colonial effort; that was economic.  This is not to say that the moral dimension was empty or insincere.  Quite the reverse; I would say that it came from the best intentions (such, no doubt, as lead you know where) and resulted from a sense that colonialism should be more than a one-sided economic transaction.  Rather, it should have some Higher Purpose and do some Good.  Of course, as I say, that probably was quite unwelcome and counterproductive at times. 

 

The other thing I bear in mind is how Britain, in the sense of the Crown/HMG, was a remarkably reluctant coloniser; remarkable given how much of the map became pink. The colonisers were the commercial companies and the local colonial administrations.  Familiar examples are the East India Company and Rhodes et al in Africa.  Local colonial administrations were often expansionist and effectively dragged the Crown kicking and screaming into their plans.  A plumb example is how the Cape authorities engineered the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879.

 

The evangelical and moral dimension was a further pressure on HMG to become increasingly involved in 'imperial' matters.  When that and popular jingoism conspired, public opinion could become irresistible to a democratic Westminster government, as Gladstone discovered in the case of Gordon.

[Compound2632]

5 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

In a similar way, much of British colonialism was imbued with the idea of spreading christianity and a 'civilising mission'.

 

Though as justification after the event, at least in India. The Company's hegemony was pretty well established before the Evangelicals started getting a foothold - the change in attitude brought about by the earnest young men of the early Victorian period, in contrast to the relaxed attitude to cultural assimilation of the old hands, was one of the triggers for the events of 1857 that, @Edwardian, you once reminded me were technically a mutiny. 

 

British African colonialism was rather different, being the last and briefest phase of Empire-building, after the 'civilising mission' idea had become established. 

 

Going back to the rebellion of the American colonies, that war has points of commonality with the Second Boer War, though the outcome was different. Asymmetric warfare against a settler population that had roots in the land going back to the 17th century with the British Army dependent on extended and precarious lines of supply, with the status of the native population a secondary issue.

[drmditch]

Re: Colonialism

We may be getting fixated with this subject, and may be we should do so.

 

In relation to the US and also the 'civilising mission'.

Rudyard Kipling's poem , 'The White Man's Burden' was written to the USA at the time of their war in the Philippines from 1899.

 

In relation to the 19th development of a British  'civilising mission and spreading Christianity', this probably caused even more harm than a straight commercial exploitation  did.

The assumption of 'we know better' had the effect of making the suppression of the Atlantic Slave Trade more difficult.

'The Slave Trade' - Hugh Thomas  (An ebook version is available) 

also required reading should be:-

'The Scramble for Africa' - Thomas Pakenham (also in ebook form)

 

When you have finished those two, which are well -written and deeply depressing, then you really should also read:

'The Black Man's Burden'  - Basil Davidson

 

I expect that more recent works are available, but these and several others which I purchased during my time in West Africa are the ones on my bookshelves. They should be re-read at least once every five years (more frequently would certainly be too depressing).

 

I suspect in some of Mr Edwardian's posts above, (and despite his being a generation or two younger than myself) he may have grown up, as I did,  with a view that although Britain has done many reprehensible things in the world 'our hearts were in the right place' and some things did confer lasting benefits. While that me be partially true, possibly with a legal system which gives people in tropical climates the chance to look very smart in white wigs and black gowns, I think that overall view is and should be totally exploded.

 

Sorry everybody, the British are not best. If you need even more evidence, just ask the Irish.

(And that last statement may upset some people this side of the water, and that is in itself indicative of the enduring nature of the problems that still and will persist in our society.)

 

And after that rant, for which I do not apologise, here is some progress on the signal cabin which I mentioned some pages ago:-

 

 

[Compound2632]

19 minutes ago, drmditch said:

Re: Colonialism

We may be getting fixated with this subject, and may be we should do so.

 

Well, unlike some of the political topics we may have touched upon, it is relevant to Edwardian West Norfolk. I seem to recall there's a retired Indian Army officer and he daughter in the vicinity?

 

One should not overlook British commercial colonialism in South America.

[Edwardian]

We must not overlook the fact that it was religiously motivated Christian non-comformists who were a major driver in HMG's first abolishing and then suppressing the slave trade. Thus, to argue that the do-gooders always did harm is too simplistic. 

 

I am, I'm afraid, largely unapologetic for colonialism, mainly because it is not my place to apologise for it. I do not believe in collective guilt and nor do I believe that the sins of the fathers etc. If I did, I would blame my German contemporaries for the Third Reich.  Also, because the condemnation of the past for its failure to conform to the standards of today strikes me as particularly futile. What happens now is what should be judged by our evolving contemporary standards, as we have the opportunity and obligation to effect change. Thus, I will condemn, for instance, those who encourage or fail to resist the rise of neo-fascism in today's Germany, just as I think we must condemn and eradicate racism in our own back yard.  Yet the extrapolations I hear being made from recent statue-toppling is that I should eschew the whole Nineteenth and much of the Twentieth Century and everything and everyone in it.  It is becoming absurd; one may as well rail against the moon, or anything else that one cannot actually alter.

 

Bottom line: For a while the British had something of the upper hand in certain places in the world.  What they did with with that was within the general parameters of what anyone, regardless of race, nationality, colour or creed does when they have the upper hand, and certainly it was generally unremarkable by the standards of the day. That's not to say everyone should feel happy about that, but it should remind us that there is nothing uniquely bad about the British, or about their history.  Yes, we should not think of ourselves as better than everyone else, but I can see no reason why we should indulge in ex post facto condemnation of Britain as worse. So, learn about it, explain it, draw lessons from it, but accept that it was what it was; both good and bad, it is a shared history for much of the world. Then, perhaps, move on. 

 

This leads me to wonder how useful this continued and morbid w@nking over our past is, I'm not so sure.  

 

As a trained historian, one of my greatest difficulties is people's need to judge the past by the standards of the present.  I find this profoundly unsatisfactory, indeed, futile. I query the value of making any moral judgments concerning the past so far as understanding history is concerned.  It's like the popular need to know whether Richard III was "a good king".  Post Shakespeare, the popular meaning is "was he a morally good King?".  The historian, who doesn't see it as his or her or their job to pass moral judgment, understands the question as "was he an effective King?".  The moral dimension only becomes relevant if, as seems to have been the case with R3, his deeds offended contemporary mores, thus engendering opposition that had an impact on his ability to be a good, i.e. effective, monarch.

 

That said, I accept that today's generation needs to look at the past for examples of what not to do these days, but I think the current yearning to do a Taliban on our history goes beyond that.

 

That is not to say that symbols from the past are unimportant, or that some symbols have not become unpalatable. Edward Colston very much kicked off this debate here in the UK. He was active in the late Seventeenth and very early Eighteenth Centuries.  It was this period that the English sugar islands were turning from white indentured labour (which would be considered slavery by modern definitions, one suspects), to black slavery.  Other nations started  the importation of black slaves a little earlier; IIRC, it started with the Portuguese in Brazil. and the English planters seized on it as a great plan, and one that might keep them competitive.  No one seems to have stopped and asked whether it was a moral thing to do. African slavery was chattel slavery, which, as an idea, was, of course, even worse than indentured servitude, and I daresay crueller in its execution. The journey across the Atlantic certainly seems to have been particularly horrific. Yet, I struggle to identify contemporary English voices raised against it. These only surface much later in the Eighteenth Century. That does not mean we should accept that chattel slavery was ever anything other than wrong, but to understand the actors of the past, you have to understand what was and what was not considered acceptable in their day. 

 

This brings me to why Colston was commemorated. He was simply not remarkable for being engaged in the slave trade, or indirectly profiting from it. His source of wealth would have been the most unremarkable thing about him in his day, and for a good while afterwards. What struck contemporaries and successive generations as remarkable was the extent of his public spirited generosity.  That is what got him a statue.  One might even go so far as to suggest that he would have been a philanthropist had his wealth come from some other, less tainted to modern eyes, source. So, that is why the worthy Victorian burghers of Bristol thought he should be memorialised.  It was not their intention to glorify slavery, so, one could argue that the statue should not, even now, be construed as doing so; that is a modern imposition. However, the meanings of things change and the Colston statue has come to represent something unpalatable.  The indifference to slavery and the preparedness to overlook it in favour of his philanthropy has become increasingly problematic. A decision to retain the statue, thus, becomes a decision to sustain that indifference and that is offensive to many and arguably should be to all. So off it should have gone to a museum with "context" provided.  

 

I think I tend to favour a greater plurality of views and voices. There are more stories to tell and people to celebrate than formed part of my diet of Whig history.  We have hardly started redressing the balance where women are concerned, let alone other "others". I think that would be more productive and instructive and, indeed, unifying, than the culture of condemnation where anything less than the unqualified condemnation of the past for its failure to conform to evolving contemporary standards leads to the violent paroxysm of social media frenzy; today's mob with stones.

 

We should remember that the world in some ways changes very quickly.  We live in a world that is a lot different post the Me-Too movement, a prime example of how past attitudes of acceptance and complicit indifference are now, quite suddenly and recently, rejected.  I happen to think that is a positive change, but it leaves the world before the change as something that worked to different standards that we cannot, and no doubt, should not, now accept.  What hope, then, does anyone who died in the 1720s have of being judged to have possessed any virtue? 

 

I suppose that, as an historian by training and preference, I have a sense of care for the souls of the past. I choose to tread but lightly upon them.

 

 

Edited June 26, 2020 by Edwardian

[Compound2632]

This woman was commemorated in bronze, in a prime location, at the height of Britain's Imperial age, for her armed and ruthless resistance (including war crimes by most standards) to colonialists imposing their ideas of higher civilisation. The best source we have for her history was written by the nephew of one of those colonists and he had serious doubts about the ethics of colonisation.

 

 

[Photograph Paul Walter, via Wikimedia Commons.]

Edited June 26, 2020 by Compound2632

[Edwardian]

12 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

This woman was commemorated in bronze, in a prime location, at the height of Britain's Imperial age, for her armed and ruthless resistance (including war crimes by most standards) to colonialists imposing their ideas of higher civilisation.

 

 

[Photograph Paul Walter, via Wikimedia Commons.]

 

She rebelled because a particular Roman crossed the line in the treatment of her family, not because in principle the idea of their governance of Britain was an issue for the Iceni.

 

Generally colonial administrations have been a mix of blessings and banes.  Again, the British Empire overall not particularly bad in that regard.  There comes a time, however, when a people want to become independent and free as they see it.  The Austrians could never understand why the Italians kept trying to throw them out, after all, reasoned the Austrians, Italy used to be run by the Italians and, so, nothing ever worked, we, on the other hand, have the place organised ....

 

For a Roman example ...    

 

 

Edited June 26, 2020 by Edwardian

[Compound2632]

34 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

She rebelled because a particular Roman crossed the line in the treatment of her family, not because in principle the idea of their governance of Britain was an issue for the Iceni.

 

True enough - bad example. Her relevance is to Me Too not colonialism. But what did the Edwardians think they were doing when they put the statue there?

 

What I really had in mind was Tacitus' ambiguous attitude to the Roman annexation of Britannia as expressed in the speech he put in the mouth of Calgacus, which would have been familiar to many a classically-educated subaltern.

 

 

Edited June 26, 2020 by Compound2632

[Nearholmer]

When history gets deployed in political discourse/argument, it’s always being used as a tool/weapon/proxy in a current debate, and for no other reason.

 

The current bringing-to-the-surface of questions of slavery and colonialism isn’t really about those things at all, it’s about some important issues in the here and now. If there were no issues in the here and now that it could serve, you can bet that it would get left to academics, quickly-forgotten corners of 0-level history syllabuses, and geekily -interested amateurs.
 

My gut feel is that these subjects won’t become as boring to the people on the Clapham Omnibus as the The Corn Laws are until current conditions make them feel Just as irrelevant (of course, no history is irrelevant, but a lot of it does feel that way).

[Edwardian]

37 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

True enough - bad example. Her relevance is to Me Too not colonialism. But what did the Edwardians think they were doing when they put the statue there?

 

What I really had in mind was Tacitus' ambiguous attitude to the Roman annexation of Britannia as expressed in the speech he put in the mouth of Calgacus, which would have been familiar to many a classically-educated subaltern.

 

 

 

ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant, which, I think, in the context best translates a "desolation" rather than "solitude" is a favourite line of mine.

 

It came, unbidden, to mind when seeing TV images of the aftermath of the US 'liberation' of Iraq in the Second Gulf War.   

 

They make a desolation and call it peace.

[Compound2632]

20 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

When history gets deployed in political discourse/argument, it’s always being used as a tool/weapon/proxy in a current debate, and for no other reason.

 

Surely that has always been its primary purpose, since Herodotus?

 

21 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

If there were no issues in the here and now that it could serve, you can bet that it would get left to academics, quickly-forgotten corners of 0-level history syllabuses, and geekily -interested amateurs.

 

That would be us, apropos of Castle Aching.

 

22 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

My gut feel is that these subjects won’t become as boring to the people on the Clapham Omnibus as the The Corn Laws are until current conditions make them feel Just as irrelevant (of course, no history is irrelevant, but a lot of it does feel that way).

 

I have a feeling that the corn laws could become relevant...

[drmditch]

Re: The colonial era and judgmental history.

 

Just a few points to make before the thunder comes and I can cool down a bit.

 

I think I agree with Mr Edwardian (well nearly) in that it is dangerous to judge past centuries by the standards of our own time - but we must also realise that in judging our forbears we must also judge ourselves.

We would regard with horror those Quaker families who in the first half of the 18th Century sent out ships on the Atlantic triangular (and quadrilateral) passage. After 1761 (or so) many of their co-religionists did regard such trade as very wrong. So, what are we doing now that our descendants  will regard with equivalent horror?

 

Has 'the rich world' ceased to simultaneously exploit and neglect 'the poor world' ?

Was the clothing that I am wearing on this summer day made by people who received a proper reward for their labours? 

(Or perhaps it would disrupt the world economy too much to do so?

 

That argument was also used to argue both the continuance of the Atlantic slave trade and for North and South American slavery.

You may have heard it recently!

 

One point of correction. English involvement in that trade started in 1562 by that good son of Devon John Hawkins, assisted in 1567 by his young cousin one Francis Drake.

One shouldn't attempt to  'cherry pick' what we know of history, good or bad. The recent panic about W S Churchill's statue seems to have missed the unpleasant aspects of one O Cromwell, who I think stands near him.

 

I an interested in Mr Edwardian's training and preferences. When I read Modern History in the University of Durham (please note the title), which at that time covered material from the year 312 up to 1939, I understood that I was studying history not being trained in it! 

 

Some fifty years on my basic discipline remains that of historical analysis. What happened and/or is happening, how did it develop, and what might happen next.  This can be a nuisance sometimes!

 

Please excuse me, now I must revert to dealing with complex double-hipped roof construction.