To the contrary, say the Turks. They argue that while 600,000 Armenians may have died, it was simply the consequence of war, not an attempt to wipe out an a entire people. (The United Nations defines genocide as ''acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.'')

Newspaper editors around the country -- not to mention would-be presidents and Washington politicians -- have, like it or not, been drawn into the debate. The Boston Globe, like other papers, had to pick sides.

For 15 years the Globe has, to the dismay of its large Armenian-American readership, shunned the use of ''genocide'' unless it's used in quotes. The paper prefers ''massacre,'' and routinely includes Turkey's version of events.

Several other papers with large Armenian-American readership use ''genocide'' more freely. For example, the Los Angeles Times's main headline on its story about the April 24 anniversary read, ''Thousands march to denounce genocide.''

The Providence Journal routinely refers to Armenian genocide in both text and headlines. (California and Rhode Island are the states with the largest share of the population reporting Armenian ancestry. Massachusetts is third.) The list goes on....

The Globe is reviewing its 15-year practice of avoiding the word ''genocide'' next to Armenian. It is possible, although not a given, that sometime soon it will be used more freely.

The review is wise and timely.

A book describing the genocide -- Samantha Power's ''A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide'' -- just won the Pulitzer Prize. In Washington, members of Congress grow more willing to acknowledge the genocide, although they are still wary of a resolution saying so for fear of angering Turkey, a NATO ally. (That concern may fade since Turkey's parliament refused to let the United States use bases there in the war against Iraq.)

Going back a few years, there are other signs of change: France officially acknowledged the genocide. George W. Bush as a candidate, although not as president, used the g-word.

''A combination of new and better scholarship, along with a wider recognition of a fuller definition of genocide that grew out of the debate over the Balkans, have combined to lead most knowledgable historians of the period to conclude what happened to the Armenians was genocide,'' says Paul Glastris, senior fellow at the Western Policy Center in Washington and editor of The Washington Monthly, who has studied the Armenian genocide.

Not being a historian, I can not claim personal knowledge of what happened to Armenians, or why. But I find it telling that 126 Holocaust scholars have signed a petition calling the Armenian genocide ''an incontestable historical fact.''

McCarthy subversion hearings to go public(posted 5-4-03)

Joanne Kenan, writing for The Reuters News Service (May 3rd, 2003):

WASHINGTON - Fifty years after Sen. Joe McCarthy conducted some of the most infamous hearings in Senate history, thousands of pages of his secret investigations into alleged Communist subversion will finally be made public.

Some 5,000 pages of 1953-1954 closed-door hearings from McCarthy's Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will be released Monday by Sens. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, and Susan Collins, a Maine Republican. Levin and Collins have both chaired McCarthy's former committee during the past two years as the documents were prepared for release.

They plan to issue them in the same Senate hearing room where McCarthy himself once held court.

Historians believe the five volumes of transcripts will shed light on what many regard as one of the most shameful episodes in Senate history - a time when Cold War anxiety about the Soviet Union, Communist China and a perceived domestic Communist threat led to political witch hunts at home.

"This is the first time historians have had access to raw documentation," said Donald Ritchie, the associate Senate historian."I think it will really stimulate scholarship. They'll have much more substantive information to go on."

Most of the people who took part in the hearings are now dead.

McCarthy himself, a Wisconsin Republican who catapulted himself to fame with his headline-grabbing but ultimately fabricated allegations of vast Communist conspiracies tainting the State Department, the Government Printing Office and parts of the U.S. military, died in 1957. He was censured by the Senate in 1954.

McCarthy's most notorious hearings, the Army-McCarthy hearings, were held in public and the secret portions of that investigation were released long ago.

Reparations for Victims of the Tulsa Race Riot? (posted 5-1-03)

Adrian Brune, writing in the Village Voice (April 30-May 6, 2003):

Otis Clark is a man who doesn't expect much. In fact, he is grateful for everything he gets, whether it's a small apartment in Tulsa public housing—where he has lived since coming home from Los Angeles 10 years ago at the age of 90—or a medal from the state of Oklahoma signifying him as a survivor of the Tulsa race riot of 1921.

When asked what he would do with money from a reparations lawsuit filed last month on his behalf by Johnnie Cochran and Charles Ogletree Jr., Clark says he would write a book based on what he calls his "good, long life," in which he served as a butler for the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, and Stepin Fetchit.

Given his good health, even at 100 he might get his chance despite the length of the legal process. The complaint filed by Ogletree and Cochran in federal court in the Northern District of Oklahoma basically alleges that in 2001, the Oklahoma State Legislature, through the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot, admitted city and county officials failed to take actions to calm or contain the riot and, in some cases, became participants in the violence, which took place on May 31 and June 1, 1921. These officials, according to the complaint, even deputized and armed many whites who were part of a mob that killed 300 African Americans, looted, and burned down the black-owned Greenwood area, leaving 3,000 people homeless. There are now fewer than 100 known survivors.

"Almost two years have elapsed since the commission's report was filed. Nonetheless, the state of Oklahoma and the city of Tulsa have failed to compensate the victims of the riot," Ogletree says. "We are asking the court to require the state and the city to honor their admitted obligations as detailed in the commission's report."

On April 14, the court agreed to give Ogletree's team 120 days to determine whether or not the state and city misled or otherwise prevented riot victims from filing lawsuits in 1921. The complaint charges that both governmental bodies did so. ...

Between the late 19th century and World War I, tens of thousands of former slaves left the South for better lives in the industrial economies of northern cities. A nationwide recession gripped the country just before WW I and blacks and immigrants competed for jobs. As the newspapers of the times attest, many blacks bore the brunt of the poverty and the blame for the tight job market.

While lynchings and massacres became the weapons used against African Americans, one element makes what happened to them fall into the arena of a holocaust—the participation of militias and law officers sanctioned by state and city governments. Starting in the 1890s, these riots suppressed rising black political power and destroyed whole communities.

60th Anniversary of the Katyn Polish Massacre(posted 4-30-03)

Kevin Myers, writing in the Sunday Telegraph (London) (April 27, 2003):

Today Poles all over the world will commemorate the 60th anniversary of the discovery of the war crime which didn't occur. And the non-existence of this atrocity constituted democracy's most sordid exercise in realpolitik of the entire 20th century. The Soviet Union captured 180,000 Polish soldiers during its invasion of Poland in 1939. Most were herded off to slave-camps in Siberia, but 22,000 officers were not. In April 1940, on Stalin's orders, each was bound with barbed wire and executed with a single shot to the head.

This was a colossal undertaking: the death toll was greater than that on the most calamitous day in British military history - the Somme, July 1, 1916. More importantly, the massacres occurred before the German invasions of France and the Low Countries. And although hundreds of Jews in Poland had been murdered, these were improvised butcheries, essentially unrelated to The Final Solution, which had not yet begun.

So the first systematic mass murder of defenceless innocents in the Second World War was not by the Nazis, but by the Soviet Union, just over a year before the USSR became Britain's official best friend. This shouldn't surprise us: after all, it had been the Soviets, and not the Nazis, who invented industrialised murder. From the revolution on, they freely used the word "exterminate" of their enemies. Hitler listened; and Hitler learned, as dictators do. Moreover, the careful murder of so many officers from a single narrow stratum of Polish society was truly proto-genocide: its intent was to eliminate Polish identity by the extermination of all its perceived guardians.

In 1943, via two sources - through a population census within the exiled Polish community living in the USSR, and from the Germans, who had discovered the site of one of the massacres, in the woods of Katyn, outside Smolensk - the British discovered the fate of the Polish officers. A devastating report from the British ambassador to the Polish government-in-exile, Owen O'Malley, left no doubt about the matter.

The British Government's public response was to dismiss the Nazi discoveries as propaganda and tell the Polish government-in-exile to forget Katyn and to proceed with beating the real enemy, Germany....

That is what happened when the three leaders - Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin - met at Teheran in November 1943. Far from berating the Soviet Leader for the massacres, the two democratic leaders propitiated him, awarding him the Polish land he had stolen even as he seized his future murder victims. And when Stalin jested that they should settle the German problem once and for all by killing 50,000 German officers, Churchill merely protested sulkily, and Roosevelt light-heartedly suggested killing only 49,000.

But nobody mentioned Katyn. How was this possible? For the massacre of the Poles was surely the secret subtext to this grisly exchange, and one by which Stalin was taking the measure of his two confreres. All three knew of the murders, and the bodyguard of lies around them: and silently, all three - two of them abjectly, the third triumphantly - assented to those lies.

Teheran was the true nadir of international diplomacy, morally far more ignoble and strategically far more catastrophic than either Munich five years before or Yalta a year later. And the key to Teheran was Katyn: once Stalin had got away with that, he realised he could get away with almost anything.

The New Debate Over Empire (posted 4-30-03)

Matthew Price, writing in the Boston Globe (April 27, 2003):

The British empire is undergoing something of a rehabilitation, these days. In America, neoconservative pundits like Max Boot promote the benefits of British-style imperialism. In Britain itself, several leading historians, among them Linda Colley, David Cannadine, and Niall Ferguson, have recently published revisionary books that contest, in different ways, the dim version of empire as a squalid tale of racism, arrogance, and dispossession that reigns in many a postcolonial studies seminar.

Of course, not all Englishmen look back fondly on their imperial past. In the pages of the London Review of Books, the journalist Richard Gott suggested last year that the empire's real legacy is "the construction of military dictatorship thorough martial law; the violent seizure and settlement of land [and] the genocidal destruction of indigenous peoples." Indeed, such is the squeamishness in some liberal circles that the director of the progressive London-based think tank Demos recently proposed a bold initiative for Queen Elizabeth: a world tour in which she would apologize for the ills of the British empire.

If Ferguson had his way, however, Queen Elizabeth's tour would be a celebration of the British empire as the global harbinger of free trade and prosperity. This is the argument of his robust defense of British imperialism, "Empire: How Britain made the Modern World," which appeared in the UK earlier this year as a companion to a five-part Channel 4 TV series, and which has just been published by Basic Books on these shores, with the pointed subtitle "The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power."

Ferguson is not shy about drawing British-American analogies. He believes the United States is currently an "empire in denial" and would do well to follow what he sees as the British example, promoting-by force, if necessary-open markets, liberal ideals, and global stability. And he is eager to convert Washington's policy elite to this mission.

Now a professor at NYU's Stern School of Business, the 38-year-old Scotsman is among the brashest and most prolific historians of his generation. The author of well-received (and boat-rocking) books on the history of global finance and World War I, Ferguson often parades his generally right-of-center politics on the opinion pages of leading British and American newspapers. "Empire" itself is an unabashedly didactic book: part Op-ed, part tour d'horizon. While Ferguson does note some of the British empire's uglier aspects-its origins in a 16th-century "maelstrom of seaborne theft and violence," the genocidal inclinations of settler populations in Australia and North America-he argues that it was ultimately a beneficent phenomenon, especially at its height around the end of the 19th century. Its institutional genius, he claims, was a "triumph of minimalism" that depended as much on the use of indigenous elites as of British administrators....

Ferguson's bold claims have met with some stiff criticism. In The Guardian, Jon E. Wilson, a historian at King's College, London, pounced on Ferguson, calling him the "Leni Riefenstahl of George Bush's new imperial order," and a shill for "the acceptable face of imperial brutality." Wilson derided his economic interpretations as flatly incorrect, adding that the British empire was "run on the cheap," did little to enrich its colonies, and upheld the rule of law only when convenient-looking the other way, for example, when Indian landlords used violence against their tenants. British imperialism, he argued, merely advanced the short-term interests of a few, and impoverished the world in the long run.

White's claims have a century-long lineage. In 1902, the radical British journalist J.A. Hobson argued that the British empire wasn't even beneficial to the British: It was, among its many other sins, a waste of the taxpayer's money. Indeed, one historian recently suggested that Britain could have reaped a substantial "decolonization dividend" had it wound down its empire in 1850. As for the colonies themselves, many historians, like Wilson, contend that Britain's legacy in places like India was pauperization, or worse. One need only consult the American historian and social critic Mike Davis's 2001 book "Late Victorian Holocausts," which argues that the shiny new infrastructure Ferguson champions led to the deaths of millions of Indians during a series of late 19th-century famines, when merchants used trains to ship grain away from drought-stricken areas.

But Ferguson strenuously defends both his data and his political intentions. The postcolonial-studies crowd, he says, "can't put the frighteners on me." ...

Anthony Pagden, a historian at UCLA and the author of the 2001 book "Peoples and Empires," also stresses the British rulers' relative lack of coercion. British conquests in India and around the Great Lakes of North America in the 17th century, Pagden points out, often involved a series of protracted negotiations with indigenous elites. And while British rule was hardly democratic in its northern African outposts, the British often governed indirectly, by relying on a fusion of local custom, British law, and tribal proxies. He concludes: "You cannot build an empire on might alone."

But David Arnold, a professor at London's School of Oriental and African Studies, believes Ferguson's thesis is badly blinkered. He contends that Ferguson's emphasis on the exploits of white men represents an outmoded view of an empire that was, after all, as "much about black guys and white women doing things" as it was about regal men in ostrich-plumed hats. Contemporary Britons, says Arnold, have multiple imperial legacies: West Indians whose ancestors were slaves, whites whose ancestors were plantation owners. "Are we on the side of the oppressed or the oppressors?" he wonders pointedly. "If you're talking about empire from the perspective of England, right now we're both."

The work that perhaps best captures this sense of contemporary ambivalence is Linda Colley's 2002 book "Captives," an inventive history of the British empire's early years. In a dazzling series of psychodramas based on captivity narratives, the London School of Economics historian depicts the early empire as a vulnerable beast whose flanks were always exposed. In India, for example, the British were outmanned and outgunned-hardly a match for the ferocious Mughal warriors....

Colley believes that "empires are the oldest and most durable political system in history." But she also considers herself a critic of American power and imperialism and remains skeptical about Ferguson's politicized scholarship, bristling at his balance-sheet-style approach to the question of empire. "So much time has been spent debating whether the empire was good or bad," she notes, "that people have failed to investigate just what a complex beast it was."

But for a leftist critic like Edward Said, the works of Ferguson and Colley are together part of a larger reaction against postcolonial regimes. In a recent essay, Said argued that focusing on the traumas of imperialists, as Colley does, is "unhelpful." He worried that Ferguson's "perplexingly affirmative" work trivializes "the suffering and dispossession brought by empire to its victims."

Was Reagan Always Honest? (posted 4-30-03)

Rick Perlstein, in a post on Richard Jensen's conservative net list (April 30, 2003):

One thing that always stuns us liberals about Reagan is the high level of deceptiveness in his rhetoric, even compared to the normal run of politicians (I honor RR's intelligence in calling it deceptiveness, not stupid mistakes). For instance he would say:"The $5 you saved 20 years [ago] will only buy you $1.85 in groceries today"--as if that $5 saved in 1946 hadn't grown to probably three times that in 1966! Or he would repeat that you could receive welfare in California after only 24 hour residence in the state long, long after he was informed that for all programs except aid to the blind the residency requirements were 1-5 years.

Allowing that this is an emotional matter--obscured, fairly so, in conservatives' minds by the profound unfairness and patronization with which Reagan was treated in the media beginning with the 1966 gubernatorial race--how do conservatives acknowledge this dissonance in their vision of Reagan's purity? By ignoring it? By a Machiavellian divided consciousness, willfully ignoring it for the sake of the cause? With shame? With indifference? With a Watergate-ish"everyone does it"?

In response to Perlstein's post, David Horowitz wrote:

In the first place, no conservative would regard any politician as"pure" -- that's a delusion reserved for the social redemption crowd. Secondly, any liberal who claims to be"stunned" by the"high level of deceptiveness" described here -- given Clinton's and Gore's and Hillary's brazen public lying is either a hypocrite or needs a strong adjustment for whatever lenses he's using to view these matters.

Burning Books in Hitler's Germany (posted 4-30-03)

Jacqueline Trescott, writing in MSNBC (April 30, 2003):

On May 10, 1933, German students held a series of torchlight parades. At the end of their march, these newly minted Nazis stood around raging bonfires and threw thousands of books into the flames. At a fire in Munich, as many as 70,000 people watched volumes of history, fiction and science go up in flames.

THE BONFIRES energized the youthful followers of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, which had taken over as Germany’s ruling party in March 1933. The fires were also a step in an official purge of intellectuals and suppression of freedom of the press and speech. But the fires were denounced quickly by American activists, writers and scholars.

The chilling history of the book burnings is the subject of a new exhibition at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Fighting the Fires of Hate: America and the Nazi Book Burnings” shows how the bonfires foreshadowed the Nazi atrocities against humans. Opening today, the show is part of a series of activities marking the museum’s 10th anniversary. Stephen Goodell, the museum’s director of exhibitions, and Guy Stern, a professor at Wayne State University and a refugee from Nazi Germany, did the research for the show. The exhibit they produced tells the story mainly through the memos, posters and news dispatches that capture the urgency of the Nazis’ campaign.

The researchers found there were approximately 34 book burnings, most during the spring and summer of 1933. “The book burnings were an escalation of the Nazis’ putting into effect a cleansing of German culture,” says Stern. He remembers those days well. Stern describes how Nazi functionaries walked into his classroom in Hildesheim and handed the teachers razor blades. The students were ordered to cut out sections of their history books and replace them with new interpretations more in line with Nazi propaganda.

Using computer-generated imagery pioneered in Walking With Dinosaurs, the programme tells the story of how Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt after a series of plagues had devastated the country. But it also uses new scientific research to argue that many of the events surrounding the exodus could have been triggered by the eruption, which would have been a thousand times more powerful than a nuclear bomb.

Dr Daniel Stanley, an oceanographer who has found volcanic shards in Egypt that he believes are linked to the explosion, tells the programme: "I think it would have been a frightening experience. It would have been heard. The blast ash would have been felt."

Computer simulations by Mike Rampino, a climate modeller from New York University, show that the resulting ash cloud could have plunged the area into darkness, as well as generating lightning and hail, two of the 10 plagues.

The cloud could have also reduced the rainfall, causing a drought. If the Nile had then been poisoned by the effects of the eruption, pollution could have turned it red, as happened in a recent environmental disaster in America.

The same pollution could have driven millions of frogs on to the land, the second plague. On land the frogs would die, removing the only obstacle to an explosion of flies and lice - the third and fourth plagues.

The flies could have transmitted fatal diseases to cattle (the fifth plague) and boils and blisters to humans (the sixth plague).

If it's possible to imagine, the subject of desegregation was becoming more inflamed by the day. In March 1970, President Richard M. Nixon decided to take action. He declared Brown to be "right in both constitutional and human terms" and expressed his intention to enforce the law. He also put in place a process to carry out the court's mandate. Vice President Spiro T. Agnew and I (then secretary of labor) were asked to lead a cabinet committee to manage the transition to desegregated schools.

The vice president said he wanted no part of this effort. So I became its de facto chairman, with help from Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then a counselor to the president, and Leonard Garment, one of the president's lawyers. With the president's support, we formed biracial committees in each of the seven states. The idea was to reach out to key leaders. Many were reluctant to serve, the whites fearing too close an association with desegregation, the blacks concerned that the committee might be a sham....

In the end, the school openings were peaceful, to the amazement of almost everyone. I was not the only one impressed.

In "One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream," Tom Wicker, a former columnist for The Times, assessed the president's efforts. "There's no doubt about it — the Nixon administration accomplished more in 1970 to desegregate Southern school systems than had been done in the 16 previous years, or probably since," he wrote. "There's no doubt either that it was Richard Nixon personally who conceived, orchestrated and led the administration's desegregation effort. Halting and uncertain before he finally asserted strong control, that effort resulted in probably the outstanding domestic achievement of his administration."

I believe he was absolutely right.

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• Historians Discover the Five Senses

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• When Books Are Destroyed

• McNamara's Deceptions in The Fog of War

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• When Did Homosexuality Come to be Regarded in the West as Abhorrent?

• The Smithsonian Is Being Disingenuous About the New Enola Gay Exhibit

• Bellesiles Admits Errors, but Not Fraud

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• Spare Us the Dreary Science Behind Art

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• Where the Gestapo Headquarters Once Stood

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• What Newly Declassified Documents Reveal About the U.S. Role in Undermining Chile's Allende

• Canadians Remember One of the Most Tragic Events in Their History: The Deportation of Acadians

• Alexander Graham Bell Saw a Working Telephone One Year Before He Invented His Own Version

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• How the Wright Brothers Did It

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• Did FDR Make Things Worse in the 1930s?

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NYT Reports on Vietnam Atrocities (postd 12-28-03)

John Kifner, writing in the NYT (Dec. 28, 2003):

Quang Ngai and Quang Nam are provinces in central Vietnam, between the mountains and the sea. Ken Kerney, William Doyle and Rion Causey tell horrific stories about what they saw and did there as soldiers in 1967.

That spring and fall, American troops conducted operations there to engage the enemy and drive peasants out of villages and into heavily guarded"strategic hamlets." The goal was to deny the Viet Cong support, shelter and food.

The fighting was intense and the results, the former soldiers say, were especially brutal. Villages were bombed, burned and destroyed. As the ground troops swept through, in many cases they gunned down men, women and children, sometimes mutilating bodies — cutting off ears to wear on necklaces.

They threw hand grenades into dugout shelters, often killing entire families.

"Can you imagine Dodge City without a sheriff?" Mr. Kerney asked."It's just nuts. You never had a safe zone. It's shoot too quick or get shot. You're scared all the time, you're humping all the time. You're scared. These things happen."

Mr. Doyle said he lost count of the people he killed:"You had to have a strong will to survive. I wanted to live at all costs. That was my primary thing, and I developed it to an instinct."

The two are among a handful of soldiers at the heart of a series of investigative articles by The Toledo Blade that has once again raised questions about the conduct of American troops in Vietnam.

The report, published in October and titled"Rogue G.I.'s Unleashed Wave of Terror in Central Highlands," said that in 1967, an elite unit, a reconnaissance platoon in the 101st Airborne Division, went on a rampage that the newspaper described as"the longest series of atrocities in the Vietnam War."

"For seven months, Tiger Force soldiers moved across the Central Highlands, killing scores of unarmed civilians — in some cases torturing and mutilating them — in a spate of violence never revealed to the American public," the newspaper said, at other points describing the killing of hundreds of unarmed civilians.

"Women and children were intentionally blown up in underground bunkers," The Blade said."Elderly farmers were shot as they toiled in the fields. Prisoners were tortured and executed — their ears and scalps severed for souvenirs. One soldier kicked out the teeth of executed civilians for their gold fillings."

In 1971, the newspaper said, the Army began a criminal investigation that lasted four and a half years. Ultimately, the investigators forwarded conclusions that 18 men might face charges, but no courts-martial were brought.

In recent telephone interviews with The New York Times, three of the former soldiers quoted by The Blade confirmed that the articles had accurately described their unit's actions.

But they wanted to make another point: that Tiger Force had not been a"rogue" unit. Its members had done only what they were told, and their superiors knew what they were doing.

"The story that I'm not sure is getting out," said Mr. Causey, then a medic with the unit,"is that while they're saying this was a ruthless band ravaging the countryside, we were under orders to do it."

Burning huts and villages, shooting civilians and throwing grenades into protective shelters were common tactics for American ground forces throughout Vietnam, they said. That contention is backed up by accounts of journalists, historians and disillusioned troops.

The tactics — particularly in"free-fire zones," where anyone was regarded as fair game — arose from the frustrating nature of the guerrilla war and, above all, from the military's reliance on the body count as a measure of success and a reason officers were promoted, according to many accounts.

Nicholas Turse, a doctoral candidate at Columbia University, has been studying government archives and said they were filled with accounts of similar atrocities.

"I stumbled across the incidents The Blade reported," Mr. Turse said by telephone."I read through that case a year, year and a half ago, and it really didn't stand out. There was nothing that made it stand out from anything else. That's the scary thing. It was just one of hundreds."

Yet there were few prosecutions.

Besides the My Lai massacre of Vietnamese civilians in 1968, only 36 cases involving possible war crimes from Vietnam went to Army court-martial proceedings, with 20 convictions, according to the Army judge advocate general's office.

Guent]]> Fri, 26 Apr 2024 05:35:53 +0000 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/866 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/866 0

The Empire that Dare Not Speak Its Name (posted April 10, 2003)

John O'Sullivan, editor in chief of United Press International, reviewing Nial Ferguson's new book on the British Empire; in the Wall Street Journal (April 10, 2003):

If a Martian historian with Methuselah's life span devoted himself to observing from afar the broad patterns of human activity over the past millennium, he would see an explosion of energy in the British Isles from the 16th century onward. In particular, between the early 1600s and the 1950s more than 20 million people emigrated from Britain and settled in other lands. The British also developed dense patterns of trade with such faraway areas as India and Africa. Only a few of them emigrated to those countries, yet they reshaped them in line with their own practices.

From the standpoint of Mars, 1776 hardly registers. Eighty percent of British emigrants ended up in America, before and after independence. "Manifest Destiny" looks like a local instance of the emigration that was fueling Britain's imperialism. In any case, the same liberal principles -- free trade, the rule of law, representative institutions -- shaped both the U.S. and Britain's possessions.

Altogether this Anglo-American network of emigration, trade and rule amounted to the first global order. What might puzzle our Martian was why this order broke down in 1914 -- and why, when it reappeared in 1989, its center had moved from London to Washington.

Or has it? Niall Ferguson believes so. The neologism he coins to describe the British Empire is "Anglobalization." He concludes "Empire" (Basic Books, 392 pages, $35), his brilliant survey of its rise and fall, with an appeal to the U.S. to overcome its anti-imperialism and accept the responsibilities that the end of the Cold War has thrust upon it. So he must rescue British imperialism from the obloquy that descended upon it in the age of de-colonization.

Mr. Ferguson's main defense is an economic one. He notes that the British Empire, by establishing a world order based on free trade and free capital movement, assisted the development of poorer countries and raised living standards in its far-flung colonies. Imperial rule also spread institutions and practices favorable to good government, such as secure private property, personal liberty and impartial law. These often took root. Seymour Martin Lipset points to a marked correlation between being a former British colony and enjoying liberal democratic government today. ...

[W]hen the balance sheet is added up, one wonders why someone as sympathetic to imperialism as Mr. Ferguson scorns Curzon's judgment that "the British empire is under Providence the greatest instrument for good that the world has ever seen." Given the record of other human institutions, Curzon had a point.

It is a point that Americans are reluctant to grasp even when the empire is their own "informal" one -- and even when U.S. troops intervene to remove threats to international stability, as in Afghanistan and Iraq. The more forthright Mr. Ferguson believes that the U.S. should sustain networks of trade, aid, investment and defense that will mimic the British world order. Rogue states will be curbed, failed nations healed and brushfire wars smothered -- by aid and investment where possible, by arms where necessary.

It will, of course, be an imperialism that dare not speak its name. Some of the imperialists in progressive NGOs will even believe that they are anti-imperialist. And the logos under which they operate will be derived from the United Nations or the IMF rather than from the U.S. itself. But the underlying networks of cooperation that sustain this shy imperialism are likely to link the U.S. with such "Anglosphere" nations as Britain and Australia and perhaps, in due course, India and South Africa, which share the liberal world outlook.

Vietnam Might-Have-Beens (posted April 9, 2003)

Eric Alterman, writing on his blog (April 8, 2003):

Here’s a post from H-DDiplo from the historian David Kaiser outlining the reasons why Vietnam, the United States and the world would all be better places had Lyndon Johnson had the good sense to take Richard Russell’s advice and stay the heck outta that quicksand quagmire. He makes an important point to remember with regard to Iraq and the rest of the imperial wars Bush and company have planned for us: intentions are not deeds; comparing what is with what you’d like it to be is almost always a pointless and ultimately counter-productive exercise when it comes to the use of war as an instrument of policy, rather than a matter of self-defense. Kaiser writes:

I would agree that what the United States wanted for South Vietnam was better than what South Vietnam eventually got. However, 'wants' and 'wishes' do not necessarily pay off for anybody. I find it dubious to compare the present state of Vietnam to what would have happened had the United States 'triumphed' in the absence of any proof that the United States could have done so. What we are comparing, I thought, are two alternatives, one of which occurred (we fought and lost), and one of which certainly might have occurred (we didn’t fight, and lose.) I’m going to suggest some best case scenarios for the latter option. 1. A coalition government led by Buddhists and General Khanh, formed early in 1965, might have survived. (Doubtful, I agree, but possible.) 2. The neutral governments in Cambodia and Laos would have survived. (Extremely possible, in my opinion, especially with respect to Cambodia, where Sihanouk was politically strong.) 3. Ho Chi Minh would immediately have sought a relationship with the US (Almost certain: the falling out with Mao was, I believe very likely.) 4. In any case, without American intervention, the North Vietnamese Army would never have become the massively armed conventional force that it did, with Soviet help. 5. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Vietnamese lives would have been saved. 6. American prestige in the Third World would have been much higher. 7. With the United States not distracted, there would have been no Six Day War, with all its consequences. (Anyone who doubts that is referred to Judith Klinghoffer’s excellent book on the subject.) 8. The Democratic Party would have remained the majority party. (In my view, a good thing.) 9. The student revolt at home would not have become nearly so destructive. Now if someone looks at this list, I think, roughly, that it proceeds from the merely speculative (1) to the almost certainly true. And since so many people are still so willing to speculate freely on the benefits of American victory (and to blame liberals for the American defeat, as I heard William Kristol do the other day), it seems only fair to assess, realistically, the benefits of American non-intervention.

Deborah Lipstadt: The Danger of Holocaust Denial Will Grow in the Future (posted April 4, 2003)

Linda Comins, writing in the Wheeling News Register (April 2, 2003):

A prominent Jewish scholar and author believes the biggest threat posed by those who deny the Holocaust is a future danger - when few Holocaust survivors remain to speak the truth.

Deborah Lipstadt, an Emory University professor, spoke at St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in Wheeling Tuesday night about researching the Holocaust denial movement and defending her written conclusions in a British courtroom.

After a six-and-a-half-year legal fight and a three-month trial in London, Lipstadt won a libel case brought by an author whom she had labeled as a Holocaust denier.

She visited Wheeling as part of the Holocaust Remembrance Series of West Liberty State College's Hughes Lecture Series. The West Virginia Humanities Council provided financial support for the program.

"Denial is a form of anti-Semitism. Many of the deniers are also virulent racists," she charged.

When deniers claim that the Holocaust is a myth,"it is not a clear and present danger; it is a clear and future danger," she commented.

"The ability of people to deny it becomes stronger as there are fewer people around to give first-hand accounts."

Offering a composite portrait, she said Holocaust deniers are anti-Semites and"many are racists; many are supporters of national socialism (Nazism)." She said the Holocaust stands out"because it was state-sponsored terrorism. It was state-sponsored genocide in which virtually every aspect of government was involved."

The Secret History of Black People in New York City (posted March 28, 2003)

Christine Stansell, professor of history at Princeton, writing in the New Republic (March 24, 2003):

Not so long ago, the history of New York in the nineteenth century was the province of sensationalizing journalists. For years, professional historians did little to supplant old potboilers such as Herbert Asbury's Gangs of New York, weirdly exhumed this year by Martin Scorsese. Graduate students were warned away. New York was too big, too weird, too complicated (and too Jewish? ) to fit into approved models of the urban "case" provided by the tidier cities of Boston and Philadelphia, where WASP elites dominated and it was possible to imagine the Irish as the sole placeholders for ethnicity. Few wanted to muck about in New York's polyglot mix. There were important exceptions, such as Moses Rischin and Irving Howe, but their dense and delectable books about the Lower East Side elicited more public interest than academic respect.

It was not until the late 1970s, in fact, that students looking for dissertation topics ventured into the New York City archives with any frequency. The books that they eventually wrote--some of them monographs, others crossovers for general readers--broke through the disinterest of the earlier generations of scholars. New York was undoubtedly atypical, they frankly acknowledged. But it was the great American exception, more properly compared to Paris or London than to Boston or Philadelphia. And this was all the more reason to study it.

In American history as it is taught today, three decades of scholarship, culminating in Edwin Burrows and Michael Wallace's grand synthesis in Gotham, have pushed New York to center stage. Aside from Scorsese's historically preposterous film, which turns the ragtag Victorian gangs into warriors out of a biblical epic of the 1950s, sensationalism has given way to nuanced historical work that takes on the city's peculiar combinations of hauteur and hustling, snobbery and democracy, preening and poverty. The interpretations are rich, and the research is ambitious and near archaeological in the delicacy and the assiduity given to excavating the sources. There are marvelous books on the 1800s--books about artists and intellectuals; writers and actors; politicians, criminals, and prostitutes; the Jews, the Irish, and the Chinese; workers and women. There are studies of real estate, museums, crowds, high society, vaudeville, the opera.

Except for a few monographs, though, there is almost nothing on African Americans. African Americanists have looked elsewhere: the tininess of the free black community in the antebellum period--16,358 people at its peak in 1840, about 5 percent of the population, shrinking to 1 percent in 1860--made it seem like an ancillary phenomenon, both to the city and to the system in which millions of black Americans lived in bondage. So the historians' narrative of black New York has only begun full throttle with the Great Migration from the South, when thousands of black people packed into Harlem. From this vantage point in time, New York seems a haven for African American freedom, however compromised it was by Northern racism. The city was far from emancipated, but it still wasn't Dixie.

Still, it turns out that New York in 1800 was a slave city no less than Charleston. The largest slave city outside the South, its ties to the slave system and the Southern states remained strong in the nineteenth century. Even after emancipation, "the shadow of slavery" lay long across New York's African American residents. In finance and trade, its mercantile and financial elites were heavily dependent on Southern cotton; and Manhattan merchants, bankers, and retailers made sure that the city was a hospitable place to visiting planters, their commercial agents, and their slave catchers.

This made New York the most dangerous place in the North for fugitive slaves, since someone from home might recognize them on the streets. Slave catchers not only apprehended runaways; they aggressively kidnapped free people, trumping up evidence that they were fugitives. Fights, melees, and scuffles between slave catchers and their victims often broke out on the streets. Unlike Boston, where anti-slavery sentiment made it hard for slave catchers to operate, the police and the courts in New York helped them. Merchants cautioned that any other attitude toward the representatives of Southern "property" interests would "embarrass trade."

Churchill: Where He Stands Now (posted March 28, 2003)

Edward Rothstein, writing in the NYT (March 29, 2003):

In the public imagination, the heroic image has long been the dominant one. Churchill himself joked that he would ensure his place in history by writing that history himself — as he did in the six volumes of "The Second World War," which helped win him the Nobel Prize in literature in 1953. The stentorian prose of William Manchester's first two volumes of his Churchill biography ("The Last Lion") reinforced that stature for the lay reader. And the eight volumes of the "authorized" biography by Martin Gilbert testified to its subject's monumental importance.

But beginning in the 1960's, Churchillian scholarship also began to focus on Churchill's military and political mistakes. The historian Robert Rhodes James subtitled his 1970 book about Churchill "A Study in Failure." (Mr. Lukacs considers it one of the best written about Churchill.) Mr. James argued that Churchill's warnings about Germany may have fallen on deaf ears partly because Churchill was so widely distrusted after a long career of party-switching, posturing and political misjudgments. In fact, as he was fulminating against Germany, Churchill was also opposing constitutional changes in the government of India and said it was "nauseating" to see a "fakir" like Gandhi being met on equal terms. Historians attacked Churchill from the political left for such imperial sentiments as well as for his admiration of political personalities like Mussolini (whom Churchill called a "really great man" in 1935 — before he changed his mind).

Historians also attacked Churchill from the right. John Charmley's 1993 book, "Churchill: The End of Glory," argued that Churchill was wrong even when most triumphant. Mr. Charmley suggested that an agreement might well have been reached with Hitler in the 1930's, thus preventing war, but that instead Churchill's war strategy doomed the empire to dissolution and put Britain in America's pocket.

At the same time, Churchill's own histories — including his multi-volume accounts of the first and second world wars, his epic "History of the English-speaking Peoples" and his study of his ancestor Lord Marlborough — came to seem academically quaint. J. H. Plumb criticized them for philistinism and their author for showing no mastery of Marx and Freud.

In this critical context, some essays in a new book by the British historian David Cannadine, "In Churchill's Shadow" (Oxford), even provide a bit of reprieve, for while Mr. Cannadine says that Churchill was often "a bombastic and histrionic vulgarian, out of touch, out of tune and out of temper," he also believes that Churchill brought to British life "a breadth of vision, a poetry of expression and a splendor of utterances" unlikely to be heard again — a political poet of sorts, comforting, in Mr. Cannadine's view, a "nation in decline."

Churchill poses a challenge because there is no simple way of accounting both for the scope of his achievements and for the range of his failures. Roy Jenkins's large-scale 2001 biography of Churchill (Farrar Straus & Giroux) sometimes risks reducing Churchill to a mere politician, but Mr. Jenkins — himself a veteran of the Parliament and the Cabinet — is still seduced into awe. The military historian John Keegan recounts in his recent brief biography of Churchill (published by Viking) that as a young man in the 1950's, Mr. Keegan, like many of his generation, found Churchill to be simply irrelevant — an aging conservative leader, a relic of a passing imperial age. But recordings of Churchill's speeches changed his mind.

Stephen Kotkin:"Hitler Started the Cold War" (posted March 28, 2003)

Stephen Kotkin, Princeton historian, writing in the New Republic (March 22, 2003)

Hitler started the Cold War. Let us remember, he decisively won World War II. By 1941, through conquests, annexations, and alliances, Nazi Germany controlled all of Europe from the English Channel to the Soviet border. The defiant British, an irritant, posed no threat, and the compliant Soviets were obediently fulfilling a nonaggression pact and a trade pact with their Nazi comrades. But Hitler unilaterally broke his deal with Stalin and invaded the one country that had the power to defeat the Nazi land army, calling forth an epochal defensive war that unexpectedly implanted the Soviets in Berlin. The crusade that Hitler thrust upon the Soviets afforded them the transcendent purpose and the geopolitical aggrandizement that Communist ideology professed but that had largely eluded the Soviets outside their factory towns. The war integrated the huge village population into the revolution, extended state borders in all directions, and brought a bonus European buffer empire. The Vozhd, as Stalin liked to be called, never had a greater partner than the Fuhrer, not even Lenin.

And Stalin, in turn, conjured up today's Pax Americana. Flush with victory in the great war, not only did he stubbornly refuse to accept change, or to bring his devastated domestic order even minimally in line with the more powerful liberal ascendancy being imposed on defeated Germany and Japan, but he also force-cloned Soviet regimes in the windfall lands that Hitler's racist megalomania had perversely bestowed. In the years after the war, Stalin appears to have expected a capitalist crisis still greater than the Great Depression, as well as divisions among the capitalist powers even deeper than those of the interwar period. Mistake! He and his heirs came smack up against the capitalist world's greatest economic boom, while his ideologically inflected opportunism in Eastern Europe, and then in Korea, united the highly fractious Western powers and decisively mobilized the internationally circumspect United States for a sustained global campaign. Stalin is long dead and the Cold War won (except, of course, on the Korean peninsula). But the world that the Soviet menace induced, with a huge initial hand from the Nazis (and a lesser one from the Japanese), lives on: an American superpower engaged and deployed across the entire planet, not to mention outer space.

Dred Scott Wasn't the Only Slave to Sue for His Freedom (posted 3-26-03)

Stephanie Simon, writing in the LA Times (March 18, 2003):

The creamy linen pages are creased and torn, smudged with grease or sweat. The ink has faded to sepia. A squashed fly is smeared on the edge of one sheet.

Through these tattered documents, the unheard voices of America's slaves call out for justice.

Tempe complains in 1818 that her master has failed "to supply her with clothing necessary for comfort and decency." Ralph, in 1830, expresses "fear that James and Coleman Duncan will take me by force from this place and sell me." Daniel, in 1835, states simply that he is "entitled to his freedom."

Winny speaks, and Celeste, and Milly, Arch and Anson and Matilda, Charlotte and Julia, Jerry, Rachel. These were men and women who had no last names, who could not read or write, who were bought and sold like livestock. Yet, in a remarkable display of courage and desperation, they and hundreds of others sued for their freedom in the white man's court.

Their stories, their voices, are emerging now as Missouri state archivists sort through 4 million court documents that had been stashed away in metal cabinets, untouched since the Civil War.

Among heaps of musty affidavits about contract disputes and unpaid debts, the archivists have uncovered 283 "freedom suits" filed in St. Louis from 1806 to 1865.

Decades before Dred Scott became the most famous slave to sue for freedom, the imposing, domed courthouse here echoed with the defiant voices of Tempe, of Ralph, of so many others who refused to accept their bondage. They dictated their petitions to lawyers or clerks and signed them with faltering Xs in black ink. "He has frequently abused and beaten her, particularly yesterday." "Unlawfully an assault he did make in and upon her."

Before this cache of documents was discovered, historians had no idea how many slaves had put their faith, and their fates, in the courts. They thought Dred Scott was an anomaly. Now, they are uncovering evidence of an underground grapevine that passed word about the freedom suits from slave to slave, emboldening men and women and even teenage children to sue.

Leo Lovelace, a professor at the University of Southern California, commenting on H-Diplo about the Truman administration's belief that North Korea decided to invade the South in 1950 at the behest of Joseph Stalin (March 25, 2003):

The most authoritative source on this matter now, on the basis of declassified documents from the Soviet archives, is now at the National Security Archives, and may be found at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/CWIHP/BULLETINS/b3a2.htm.

These documents show Kim Il Sung's attack plan was deliberate in its attempt to gain control of a unified Korea, and that Stalin supported it. According to Kathryin Weathersby, of the National Security Archive, this proves the revisionist thesis is incorrect.

The revisionist thesis proves to be correct, however, to the extent that, contrary to the Truman's administration absolute assumption--pivotal for the consolidation of the Cold War mindset and strategic framework--the Soviet declassified materials show the plan was not a Stalin's initiative, but Kim's own design.

Was Palestine Filled with Arabs Before the Founding of Israel? (posted 3-24-03)

Harry Mandelbaum, writing in Think-Israel (March 2003):

Unknown to most of the world population, the origin of the"Palestinian" Arabs' claim to the Holy Land spans a period of a meager 30 years - a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands of years of the region's rich history.

At the beginning of the 20th century, there were practically no Arabs in the Holy Land. By contrast, the Jews, despite 2000 years of persecution and forced conversions by various conquerors, have always been the majority population there. When General Allenby, the commander of the British military forces, conquered Palestine in 1917/1918, only about 5000 Arabs resided there. Other Muslims in the area either came from Turkey under the Ottoman Empire, or were the descendents of Jews and Christians who were forcefully converted to Islam by the Muslim conquerors. None of these other Muslims were of Arab origin.

The local inhabitants did not call themselves"Palestinians". The concept of a"Palestinian" to describe the local residents had not yet been invented; neither was there ever in history a"Palestinian Arab" nation. None of today's Arabs have any ancestral relationship to the original Biblical Philistines who are now extinct. Even Arab historians have admitted Palestine never existed.

In 1937, the Arab leader Auni Bey Abdul Hadi told the Peel Commission:"There is no such country as Palestine. Palestine is a term the Zionists invented. Palestine is alien to us."

In 1946, Princeton's Arab professor of Middle East history, Philip Hitti, told the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry:"It's common knowledge, there is no such thing as Palestine in history."

In March 1977, Zahir Muhsein, an executive member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), said in an interview to the Dutch newspaper Trouw:"The 'Palestinian people' does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel."

Mark Twain - Samuel Clemens, the famous author of"Huckleberry Finn" and"Tom Sawyer", took a tour of the Holy Land in 1867. This is how he described that land:"A desolate country whose soil is rich enough but is given over wholly to weeds. A silent, mournful expanse. We never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country."

In 1874, Reverend Samuel Manning wrote:"But where were the inhabitants? This fertile plain, which might support an immense population, is almost a solitude.... Day by day we were to learn afresh the lesson now forced upon us, that the denunciations of ancient prophecy have been fulfilled to the very letter -- `the land is left void and desolate and without inhabitants.'"

Here is a report that the Palestinian Royal Commission, created by the British, made. It quotes an account of the conditions on the coastal plain along the Mediterranean Sea in 1913:"The road leading from Gaza to the north was only a summer track, suitable for transport by camels or carts. No orange groves, orchards or vineyards were to be seen until one reached the [Jewish] Yabna village. Houses were mud. Schools did not exist. The western part toward the sea was almost a desert. The villages in this area were few and thinly populated. Many villages were deserted by their inhabitants."

NEW STUDY: GEOGRAPHY'S IMPORTANT IN SCHOOL (posted 3-21-03)

Chester Finn, writing in Gadfly (March 20, 2003): We learn from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, from surveys by the National Geographic Society, and from a hundred other sources that American students’ knowledge of history and geography is lamentably thin, that their understanding of their nation’s past is weak, and that their comprehension of the world outside U.S. borders is skimpy indeed. Yet there has never been a time when such knowledge mattered more. Geography plays a crucial role in shaping history and the study of history provides an important context for students learning geography. Yet K-12 teachers rarely take advantage of the complementary nature of these two subjects by teaching both in one integrated curriculum. A new report from the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation shows how the study of U.S. history can be enriched by blending geography into the curriculum. The centerpiece of the report is an innovative curricular framework for studying the American past, a course in which each historical period is supplemented and enriched by the introduction of relevant geography. See www.edexcellence.net to download a copy of the report or to order a hard copy.

The Best of Both Worlds, Blending History and Geography in the K-12 Curriculum, by Richard G. Boehm, David Warren Saxe and David J. Rutherford, Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, February 2003, http://www.edexcellence.net/library/GeoHistfinal.pdf

LAMAR ALEXANDER'S HISTORY INITIATIVE (posted 3-21-03)

Chester Finn, writing in Gadfly (March 20, 2003): Rarely does a newly introduced bill deserve comment before it’s even gotten to the stage of hearings, but you should know about this one. Senator Lamar Alexander--former U.S. Secretary of Education, Governor of Tennessee, president of that state’s flagship university, and chairman of the National Governors Association--used the occasion of his “debut” speech on the Senate floor to introduce S. 504, The American History and Civics Education Act of 2003. As he put it, this bill joins “two urgent concerns that will determine our country’s future…: the education of our children and the principles that unite us as Americans.” It authorizes the National Endowment for the Humanities to create a dozen “Presidential Academies for Teachers of American History and Civics” and a like number of “Congressional Academies for Students of American History and Civics.” (It also provides for a new “National Alliance of Teachers of American History and Civics.) Authorized at $25 million, the measure is seen by Alexander and his co-sponsors as a pilot to demonstrate the value and effectiveness of residential summer programs for K-12 teachers specializing in history and/or civics, and for high school students who are accomplished and interested in those subjects. About 300 teachers would attend each 2-week program (i.e. about 3600 per annum) as would a similar number of students (their programs would last a month). Universities and education research organizations would run these projects. If enacted, these would be substantial--as well as highly symbolic--sources of encouragement to K-12 and higher education to pay closer heed to what Alexander terms “better teaching and more learning of the key events, persons and ideas that shape the institutions and democratic heritage of the United States.”

Lamar Alexander's speech.

ULTRAORTHODOX JEWS ARE SPLIT OVER THE WAY TO WRITE HISTORY (posted 3-21-03)

Steven Aftergood, writing in the newsletter for Secrecy News (March 20, 2003):

A new book by ultra-orthodox Rabbi Nathan Kamenetsky, entitled The Making of a Godol [Great Man] has been banned by other ultra-orthodox rabbis, who have burned copies of the book and defamed its author for his respectful but unvarnished description of leading figures in the early 20th century orthodox ]]> Fri, 26 Apr 2024 05:35:53 +0000 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1504 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1504 0 THE KOREAN CRISIS AS NORTH KOREA SEES IT

THE KOREAN CRISIS AS NORTH KOREA SEES IT (posted 2-26-03)

Gavan McCormack, research professor of East Asian history at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia, and co-author of Korea Since 1850; from www.tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the Nation Institute:

From Pyongyang's point of view, the US was in breach of the 1994 Agreed Framework almost from its inception. It had been promised two light-water nuclear reactors (capacity: 2,000 MW) by a target date of 2003, half a million tons of heavy oil per year in the interim for power generation, moves towards"towards full normalization of political and economic relations," and a non-aggression pact. Pyongyang froze its nuclear development plans for a decade, hoping to hold the US to its word and secure its own removal from the American list of terror-supporting states. According to Colin Powell, addressing a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on February 5, 2002, the administration believed that Pyongyang was continuing to" comply with the [missile flight-test] moratorium they placed upon themselves and stay within the KEDO agreement [the Agreed Framework]." Whatever it then knew about the clandestine purchase of centrifuge technology, presumably from Pakistan, some time in the late 1990s, did not seem to affect this judgment, although much was to be made of it later.

After September 11, Pyongyang made every effort to associate itself with the mood of the international community by promptly signing the outstanding international conventions on terrorism and declaring its opposition to terrorism in the UN General Assembly. For all these gestures in the end it got nothing. The new Bush administration arrived in Washington convinced that the Agreed Framework should be a one-sided North Korean commitment to abandon its nuclear program. Even though the Department of State could find no North Korean connections to terror (other than the refuge it still offered to aging Japanese perpetrators of a 1970 hijacking), Bush nevertheless chose to describe it as part of the"axis of evil" and his government named it, along with other non-nuclear countries, a potential nuclear target in the Nuclear Posture Statement submitted to Congress in December 2001. The"2003" reactor pledge was never taken seriously. Delays were chronic and construction on the site, such as it was, only began in 2002, when a few large holes were dug and some foundations laid. Meanwhile, North Korea's energy sector steadily deteriorated. In November 2002, the US stopped the scheduled oil supplies, and in January 2003 canceled the entire deal, saying there would be no nuclear plant of any kind, ever.

As few Americans understand, starting with the Korean War in the early 1950s, when the US went so far as to dispatch solitary B-29 bombers to Pyongyang on simulated nuclear bombing missions designed to cause terror, Pyongyang has always viewed its nuclear program as a response to a perceived US nuclear threat. The North Korean government still takes the view, not unreasonably, that the only defense Washington respects is nuclear weapons -- a point made recently by the IAEA's Mohammad El Baradei who commented that the US seems bent on teaching the world that"if you really want to defend yourself, develop nuclear weapons, because then you get negotiations, and not military action." While Washington wrung its hands over, and vehemently denounced, Pyongyang's outlaw behavior, Congress was being pushed to authorize the development of small nuclear warheads, known as"Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator" weapons, or"bunker busters," specially tailored to attack North Korea's bunkers and underground complexes. Yet Pyongyang, the barbarian, not Washington is always the one accused of"intimidation." ...

The situation today on the Korean peninsula bears an uncanny resemblance to the situation of one hundred years ago. Modern Korean nationalism, frustrated by foreign intervention for over a century, remains a powerful force, and beneath the state structures of north and south lies a shared Korean-ness. From the Korean standpoint, whether in Pyongyang or Seoul, the issue is one of sadae (reliance on powerful friends and neighbors) versus juche, self-reliance. One hundred years ago, and at successive moments since, many thought it wisest to look to great and powerful neighbors. That mindset made possible a century of national division and catastrophic, internecine bloodshed. Facing unprecedented crisis now, South and North Korea have to find some way to trust each other more than they trust any of the great powers that surround them. The stakes are even higher than they were a century ago, for this time the peninsula itself, and all of its people, are at risk.

WHY DO SOME CIVIL WARS END IN VIOLENCE AND OTHERS IN PEACE? (posted 2-26-03)

Article carried by Ascribe Newswire about a new book by Barbara F. Walter, Committing to Peace: The Successful Settlement of Civil Wars:

"Why did negotiations in Bosnia bring peace," she asks,"while negotiations in Rwanda brought genocide?"

Walter found that even when the combatants have tired of civil war and can agree on peace terms, it is not enough. Only about half the agreements struck wound up being implemented.

Outside help is needed, she found. The period of demobilization and disarmament can be an especially treacherous time for the warring parties. There are strong incentives for each side to cheat while their foe is lowering its guard. Security guarantees from third parties are essential if the agreements are to stick.

"The clear message to policymakers," wrote a reviewer of the book in Foreign Affairs magazine,"is that settling civil wars cannot be left to the combatants themselves."

THE TEXTBOOK THAT FORGETS TO MENTION JIHAD (posted 2-26-03)

Suzanne Fields, writing in the Washington Times (February 21, 2003):

One man's jihad can be another man's mission of distortion. The Islamist terrorists who attacked America on Sept. 11 cited their murderous rampage as a"jihad." The suicide bombers who terrorize Israeli schools, restaurants and malls called their mission their"jihad." But American school kids might never know anything about it.

A lot has gone missing in our textbooks."Patterns of History," for example, published by Houghton Mifflin and adopted as a world history textbook in high school classes in Texas and many other states, never even mentions the word.

A seventh-grade world history book by Houghton Mifflin, titled"Across the Centuries," defines"jihad" merely as a struggle for a Muslim"to do one's best to resist temptation and overcome evil." There's no mention of the fact that millions of Muslims - not all, but many millions - are taught to regard anything not under Muslim rule or control as"evil".

"Islam and the Textbooks," a 35-page report compiled by the American Textbook Council in New York, analyzes seven history textbooks widely used between the seventh and 12th grades and finds that millions of American schoolchildren are being cheated of accurate history. Politically correct advocacy groups have thoroughly intimidated teachers, administrators and school boards - and in a way that the most fundamentalist of Christians or the most orthodox of Jews never could.

THE STERLIZATION MOVEMENT (posted 2-26-03)

Peter Carlson, writing in the Washington Post (February 25, 2003):

Just for the sake of argument, let's say the government decided that you are an idiot. Does it then have the right to forcibly sterilize you so you can't pass your idiocy on to future generations?

Yes, it does, the Supreme Court ruled in 1927.

"It is better for all the world," Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in the court's decision in Buck v. Bell,"if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes."

The court's ruling -- and the eugenics movement that spawned it -- is the subject of"Race Cleansing in America," Peter Quinn's fascinating and frightening article in the February/March issue of American Heritage magazine. It's the shocking story of how crackpots and bigots used a ludicrous pseudoscience to craft a policy that forcibly sterilized more than 60,000 Americans in the 40 years after the high court's decision.

Eugenics was born in the late 1800s, when a handful of scientists and social reformers theorized that humans inherited a"germ plasm" that predetermined their physical, mental and moral traits. Thus, they concluded, the only way to stamp out disease, stupidity, crime and immorality was to prevent the sick, the stupid, the criminal and the immoral from reproducing.

In the early 1900s, this theory became popular with many white Protestant Americans, who believed they were mentally and morally superior to the hordes of Italians, Jews and Poles who were then swarming into American cities.

Cashing in on this WASP panic was Harry Laughlin, a former Iowa biology teacher who headed an organization called the Eugenics Records Office. Laughlin longed for an America where parenthood would be permitted only to"the best individuals of proven blood" while lesser humans would be"denied the right to perpetuate their own traits in subsequent generations."

Bankrolled by the Carnegie, Harriman and Rockefeller families, Laughlin lobbied, successfully, for stringent restrictions on immigration from southern and eastern Europe. He also crusaded for laws enabling states to sterilize criminals, paupers, the retarded and others of"inferior blood." By 1932, 28 states had enacted laws based on Laughlin's model, and they began forcibly sterilizing between 2,000 and 4,000 people a year.

GODS AND GENERALS IS GOOD HISTORY (posted 2-26-03)

Mackubin Thomas Owens, a teacher at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., writing in National Review (February 25, 2003):

Glory conveys what David W. Blight in his 2001 book Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, called the"emancipationist" view of the Civil War. Arising out of the Emancipation Proclamation and Lincoln's Second Inaugural, the emancipationist view remembered the war as a struggle for freedom, a rebirth of the republic that led to the liberation of blacks and their elevation to citizenship and constitutional equality.

Gods and Generals on the other hand reflects both what Blight called the"Blue-Gray reconciliationist" view and the"Lost Cause" interpretation of the war. The first developed out of the necessity for both sides to deal with the immense human cost of the war. It focused almost exclusively on the sacrifices of the soldiers, avoiding questions of culpability or the right and wrong of the causes. In this view, the war was the nation's test of manhood. There was nobility on both sides. The essence of this view was captured by Lew Wallace, a Union general who wrote Ben Hur:"Remembrance! Of what? Not the cause, but the heroism it evoked."

The second got its name from a book written in 1867 by Edward A. Pollard, who wrote that all the south has left"is the war of ideas." The Lost Cause interpretation was neatly summarized in an 1893 speech by a former Confederate officer, Col. Richard Henry Lee."As a Confederate soldier and as a Virginian, I deny the charge [that the Confederates were rebels] and denounce it as a calumny. We were not rebels, we did not fight to perpetuate human slavery, but for our rights and privileges under a government established over us by our fathers and in defense of our homes."

The Lost Cause thesis comprises two parts. The first was (and remains) that the war was not about slavery, but"states rights." The second was (and remains) that the noblest soldier of the war was Robert E. Lee, ably aided by his"right arm," Stonewall Jackson, until the latter's death at Chancellorsville in May 1863. For three years, Lee and his army provided the backbone of the Confederate cause. But though his adversaries were far less skillful than he, they were able to bring to bear superior resources, which ultimately overwhelmed the Confederacy. In defeat, Lee and his soldiers could look back on a record of selfless regard for duty and magnificent accomplishment.

Almost from the instant the conflict ended, the Lost Cause school towered like a colossus over Civil War historiography. Lost Cause authors such as the former Confederate general Jubal Early were instrumental in shaping perceptions of the war, in the north as well as in the south. Gaining wide currency in the 19th century, the Lost Cause interpretation remains remarkably persistent even today — as Gods and Generals illustrates.

The problem for Gods and Generals as history is that the first part of the Lost Cause argument is demonstrably false. Slavery, not states right, was both the proximate and deep cause of the war. There was no constitutional right to dissolve the Union. Southerners could have invoked the natural right of revolution, but they didn't because of the implications for a slave-holding society, so they were hardly the heirs of the Revolutionary generation.

It was an article of faith among advocates of the Lost Cause school that southern secession was a legitimate constitutional act and that the North had no right to prevent the southern states from leaving the Union. But as Charles B. Dew has shown in his remarkable book, Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War, the seceding states justified their action primarily upon a starkly white supremacist ideology, arguing that Lincoln's election would lead to racial equality, race war, and most importantly,"racial amalgamation."

ENLIGHTENMENT THINKERS CHASTISED FOR THEIR CONTEMPT FOR JEWS (posted 2-26-03)

Danny Postel, writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education about a new book by Adam Sutcliffe, Judaism and Enlightenment, which is said to be"not only new but startling" (February 26, 2003):

During the early years of the Enlightenment -- in the mid-1600s -- there was an intense fascination with Jewish themes and texts. The Reformation ushered in a renewed emphasis on the Old Testament, a turning to Christianity's Jewish roots. Scholars in the new discipline of Christian Hebraism mastered Hebrew and pored over ancient Jewish texts like the Kabbalah,"scouring" them, Mr. Sutcliffe writes,"for further proofs of the truth of Christianity" and drawing inspiration from the study of Jewish history.

But much of this new focus on Judaism was laced with animosity toward its subject. In what Mr. Sutcliffe describes as a"barbed embrace," early Enlightenment thinkers simultaneously idealized and repudiated Judaism, an attraction-repulsion that surfaced repeatedly. Indeed, Mr. Sutcliffe writes, philo-Semitism and Judeophobia were"frequently intertwined in the same text and even in the same sentence." Paradoxically, however, as Enlightenment thought became increasingly hostile to religion, it focused on Judaism as the source of Christendom. To attack Christianity at its roots, thinkers such as John Toland and Voltaire turned their critical ire on its Jewish foundations.

For the champions of the new Empire of Reason, Judaism came to represent everything they were against.

To them, Judaism embodied tribalism, scripturalism, legalism, and irrational adherence to tradition. Where the Enlightenment upheld reason, Judaism wallowed in myth. The Enlightenment stood for the universal, Judaism for the particular. Enlightenment meant cosmopolitanism, Judaism insularity. The Enlightenment promised progress, Judaism threatened atavism. In short, the Enlightenment came to define itself, Mr. Sutcliffe argues, as the antithesis of all things Jewish.

It was against the backdrop of this self-image, he argues, that the Enlightenment faced a vexing challenge to its own logic. At the deep heart's core of Enlightenment values was the principle of tolerance. Jews, for Enlightenment thinkers, represented the quintessence of intolerance: intellectually closed off and culturally sealed in.

Can an intolerant group of people be tolerated? If Judaism, as Mr. Sutcliffe frames it, was understood as"intrinsically inimical to any notion of individual intellectual freedom, then how can it be encompassed within the bounds of a toleration that is based on the absolute paramountcy of this ethical value?"

TIBETAN MYTH MAY ACTUALLY BE REAL (posted 2-25-03)

Guy Gugliotta, writing in the Washington Post (February 17, 2003):

Sometime around 600 A.D., the legend goes, King Ligmagya of Zhang Zhung married Semokar, sister of ambitious Tibetan leader Songsten Gampo. It was a classic union of state, intended to rid Ligmagya of a potential rival by co-opting him.

Except Semokar did not like living with Ligmagya on the bleak, windblown plateau of northwestern Tibet. She importuned her brother to rescue her, but Songsten Gampo did better than that. His assassins killed Ligmagya, then turned Zhang Zhung into a vassal state -- ushering in a Tibetan empire that lasted 250 years. For much of modern history, the existence of Zhang Zhung was regarded mostly as a fictional prop in the legend of the empire's rise to prominence. Parts of the story may have been true, but it was written ex post facto by Tibetans, probably inflating what was originally a face-off between rival warlords.

Over the past decade, however, research by amateur historian and explorer John Vincent Bellezza has begun to put a historical and archaeological foundation under the legend of Zhang Zhung. Tramping 30,000 miles across an area about the size of Texas and California combined, Bellezza documented 512 sites in northern and western Tibet, indicating that a far-flung civilization preceded the empire. Zhang Zhung was real, perhaps even an empire in its own right.

EDITORIAL: IN FAVOR OF STUDYING HITLER (posted 2-25-03)

Editorial in the Independent (London), February 17, 2003:

IF BRITONS have to be obsessed with a single period of history, or with a single person in history, then 1939-45 should be that period and Adolf Hitler should be that person. Discuss.

Today's exam paper is set by the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), which believes that school history is too skewed towards post-1900 Europe, in particular the Second World War, and even more particularly Hitler.

We disagree. Those are precisely the biases that a nation that seeks to understand itself ought to have in educating its children. We ought to know most about the recent history of our region of the world, which also happens to include the greatest example of evil to have afflicted modern societies. And the themes are vast: the doctrine of the just war; the role of the individual in history; the foundations of European unity. Many are acutely relevant to today's crisis over Iraq. Of course, Ofsted is right on a narrower question. Its inspectors found that, in too many cases, pupils were studying Hitler early on at secondary school, again for GCSE and then again for A-level. Sadly, it must be suspected that in few cases would that reflect the interest and enthusiasm of pupils; mostly it reflects the lack of imagination of teachers.

This lack of imagination means that too many schools take the safe option of simply replicating the national interest in Hitler, Churchill and the Holocaust. Popular history, in books and television, is saturated by these linked themes - although not saturated enough for a new slim volume from the ambitious historian Andrew Roberts, entitled Hitler and Churchill: Secrets of Leadership.

Teachers are justified in recognising the importance of this period, but they have no excuses for returning to it time and again. The national curriculum allows, and the Education Department provides schemes of work for, a huge range of subjects, from the achievement of the Islamic states from 600-1600 to why it has been so hard to achieve peace in Ireland.

Let everyone learn the lessons of the Second World War by all means, but then broaden minds by leading them down some less well-trodden paths of the human story as well.

HITLER TAKING OVER HISTORY (posted 2-25-03)

Cahal Milmo, writing in the Independent (London) (February 18, 2003):

[T]he Government's schools watchdog issued a warning yesterday, reported by The Independent, that pupils' understanding of history was being imperilled by a "Hitlerisation" of teaching of the past in schools. A report by Ofsted, which expressed concern that secondary pupils were repeatedly studying Hitler is part of a wider debate about the nature of Britain's enduring obsession. Those concerned at the ubiquity of the Third Reich in the history classroom - and beyond to the nation's bookshops and living rooms - fear it stunts understanding of other periods and leads to an unhealthy personality cult.

On the opposite side of the argument there are those who point to the monstrosity of the Nazi regime and its leader, arguing that it is difficult to run out of important issues relating to Hitler to highlight to the wider population.

Karen Pollock, director of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said: "There is no harm in revisiting the subject of Hitler in schools and beyond as long as it is revisited from a different angle each time.

"The important thing with Hitler is that you do not demonise him or detach him as a human being - the Nazi regime and the Holocaust was about other individuals and other ordinary people who were capable of extreme deeds. It is an understanding that has many applications in our society."

The battle to turn Hitler from a cartoon villain into a nuanced historical figure is, for many, at the heart of the debate.

Experts in this field of "Hitlerography" point to the early 1990s and German reunification as the beginning of Britain's new interest in Hitler, driven by genuine interest in German history and a more jingoistic fear about nascent Teutonic expansionism.

Certainly, the market and appetite for products has expanded dramatically. A rash of new books, led by the top selling biography written by Ian Kershaw, has helped drive book sales on the Second World War to unprecedented levels.

According to figures published by Nielsen BookScan, a data monitoring company, the number of hardback books on the subject sold between 1998 and 2000 more than doubled to 337,000. The number of paperback sales is estimated at several million. Amazon, the internet bookseller, offers 1,651 titles featuring Hitler in the title - the vast majority are biographies and academic works on the Third Reich.

The right-wing historian Andrew Roberts, who this month publishes a work contrasting the leadership styles of Hitler and Winston Churchill, said that the Nazi leader attracts most interest among an Anglo-American readership.

He said: "It is driven by the fact he lived within the lifetimes of many Britons and remains the purest example of human evil we have in history. People want to understand why the nation that produced Beethoven and Goethe also produced Adolf Hitler."

Running alongside the book sales is a renewed interest from the broadcasting world. The American network CBS announced plans last year for a mini-series on Hitler's early years, based on the first volume of Mr Kershaw's biography.

Filming for the drama, which stars British actor Robert Carlyle as Hitler and Stockard Channing as his mother, is to begin this spring.

The BBC had a similar pounds 10m project with Rupert Murdoch's Fox Studios but dropped the idea after protests from anti-Nazi groups in America.

A vigorous trade also exists in Hitler memorabilia. The trade, distasteful to many, is almost entirely based on the internet, allowing retailers from America to Italy to ply their wares internationally.

ARE HINDU NATIONALISTS REWRITING TEXTBOOKS FOR POLITICAL GAIN? (posted 2-25-03)

Rama Lakshmi, writing in the Washington Post about a controversy in India over new textbooks that claim Hindu history can be traced to settlements along the mythological Sa]]> Fri, 26 Apr 2024 05:35:53 +0000 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1337 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1337 0