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Cliopatria

  • Aug 29, 2011

    Hot Mess (Part 2 of Let's Go Ahead and Say 3)

    by Cliopatria

    At the Huffington Post this weekend, Robert L. Cavnar rearranges large portions of the human past to rebuke extremist "anti-government forces" of the kind that criticize FEMA, an agency we finally realize we need just as an "unprecedented" hurricane barrels toward the East Coast of the... Wait, did that already happen?

    Cavnar builds his argument on a foundational narrative of history that sees a long string of (triumphant) dead people stacking each brick of progress on top of the last, building toward a perfected condition that can only be impeded by voting Republican; sometimes we move forward in time, sometimes we pull the wrong lever and move back. Tuesday? Better than Monday, 'cause of it happened later. Unless that asshole Bush is still around.

    But the details get a little strange: "Many anti-government forces have successfully staked out territory that asserts that the 'free market' cures all ills, which it doesn't. They declare that the government can't do anything right (except for winning 2 World Wars and going to the Moon in less than 10 years), and that it should be shrunk down to the size that it can be 'drowned in the bathtub.'"

  • Aug 29, 2011

    Military History Carnival #28

    by Cliopatria

    Welcome to the August 29, 2011 edition of the military history carnival. It's been three months of solid military history on the Internet, and this carnival is the best of reader-nominated entries. Special thanks to Jonathan Beard, for substantial contributions to this carnival.

     

  • Aug 28, 2011

    Hot Mess (Part 1 of 2)

    by Cliopatria

    In February of 1804, a court of inquiry met in Boston to consider the complaint of a group of field officers in the Massachusetts militia against their commander, Brig. Gen. John Winslow. The complaint was a great damp pile of butthurt, charging Winslow with behavior unbecoming a gentleman and spooling out a list of fourteen specifications that Tina Fey could have worked into Mean Girls pretty effortlessly, if she'd only known about them in time. Article 11 was that, at a brigade dinner, Winslow had identified one particular captain as the best officer in the line, "to the great injury of the feelings of the Gentmn present." The complainants demanded that Winslow be brought before a court martial. Predictably, the court of inquiry appointed to look into the matter yawned itself half to death, and then went to lunch. Curtain falls.

    In March, though, Winslow struck back: he filed a complaint against his accusers, charging them with the ungentlemanly defamation of a superior officer; their "groundless and false" complaint, he argued, "has been highly injurious to the harmony and discipline of the Brigade." Let it not be said that nineteenth-century gentlemen didn't have lots of time on their hands.

  • Aug 27, 2011

    Weak Endnotes

    by Cliopatria

    Pure Medievalry will host Carnivalesque LXXVII, an ancient/medieval edition of the festival, on 28 August. Use the form to nominate the best in ancient and medieval history blogging since 19 June.
    David Silbey hosts the next Military History Carnival here at Cliopatria on 29 August. Use the form to nominate the best in military history blogging since late May.

  • Aug 25, 2011

    Congress and Libya

    by Cliopatria

     

    Working in a field long dominated by the 30-year rule (in which key documents don’t become available in the Foreign Relations of the United States series until 30, or often more, years after the fact), it’s remarkable to see how the internet has increased access to more recent foreign policy documents.

    On some occasions, it’s through established sites, such as the National Security Archive or the Cold War International History Project. But in other instances, it’s more haphazard, as in two documents released in the past few days regarding Congress and U.S. foreign policy toward Libya.

  • Aug 25, 2011

    Fallingwater

    by Cliopatria

    Lynda Waggoner, ed., et al., Fallingwater, and Witold Rybczynski, "Falling for Fallingwater," Slate, 24 August, celebrate the 75th anniversary of the remarkable house Frank Lloyd Wright designed for its landscape.

  • Aug 24, 2011

    Midweek Notes

    by Cliopatria

    Caroline O'Donovan, "Back to Utopia," The Book, 24 August, reviews Brook Wilensky-Lanford's Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden.

    Dava Sobel, "The World's Waistband," Literary Review, August, reviews Larrie D Ferreiro's Measure of the Earth: The Enlightenment Expedition that Reshaped Our World.

    Jan Morris, "In Potemkin's Steps," Literary Review, August, reviews Charles King's Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams.

  • Aug 23, 2011

    Boston College (Cont.): Fishing Harder

    by Cliopatria

    A brief and inelegant update: Boston College received new federal subpoenas, earlier this month, for oral history materials relating to the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The August 2 subpoenas, filed under seal on behalf of the Police Service of Northern Ireland and revealed a few days ago by BC's public filing of a motion to quash, demand "any and all interviews containing information about the abduction and death of Mrs. Jean McConville" (see this post for background). McConville's murder has been in the background of the DOJ's efforts all along; this new set of subpoenas makes explicit an investigative effort that was both unstated and pretty clear.

    More remarkably, these new subpoenas threaten to expose oral history sources that have so far been protected. While the original subpoenas served on BC in May demanded interview materials from two people already publicly known to have spoken to researchers, the new subpoenas would expose up to two dozen other interviewees whose identities have never been revealed.

  • Aug 19, 2011

    David Starkey on Newsnight

    by Cliopatria

    David Starkey, a popular historian of Tudor history and a radio and TV academic celebrity, has come under severe fire for his comments on the London riots, which include the following extraordinary assertion:

    What has happened is that the substantial section of the chavs...have become black. The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion. Black and white, boy and girl operate in this language together. This language, which is wholly false, which is this Jamaican patois that has intruded in England. This is why so many of us have this sense of literally a foreign country.

  • Aug 18, 2011

    Political Science, History, and 2012

    by Cliopatria

    Commentary on the 2012 election has featured unusually prominent (and intelligent) perspectives from political science—most notably from Brendan Nyhan and in Ezra Klein’s Washington Post blog. The political science approach has stressed the relationship between the economy and presidential outcomes, while downplaying the significance of tactical political decisions, campaign rhetoric, or other types of horse-race coverage. And, given the likely economic data for 2012, theories from political science suggest that the President’s re-election chances aren’t all that good.

    In the last few weeks, we’ve seen more attempts to apply a historical lens to 2012. Virtually the only positive historical example for Obama comes from 1948, in a scenario outlined by Norman Ornstein in the New Republic.

  • Aug 17, 2011

    Military History Digest #163

    by Cliopatria

    Contents

    19th Century

    1. The War List: Overrated Civil War Officers by Gary Gallagher

    "Gary W. Gallagher, a professor of history at the University of Virginia, is the author of The Confederate War (1997), Lee and His Army in Confederate History (2001), and The Union War (2011). "

    2. Barry and the Artillery Organization of the Aop: Part 8, Siege Train by Craig Swain

    "Continuing with the examination of the initial organization of the artillery in the Army of the Potomac, I turn now to William Barry’s recommendation for a siege train to accompany the army. Barry intended for the siege train to operate … Continue reading →..."

    3. Back Into Port by Craig Swain

    "The photo from the boat ride back from Fort Sumter captures my mood today. End of a long, event-filled vacation. Now back towards home and to the routine. Blogging was understandably light in weight during the vacation. The paragraph-by-paragraph examination … Continue reading →..."

  • Aug 17, 2011

    Midweek Notes

    by Cliopatria

    Rebekah Higgit hosts the history of science carnival, The Giant's Shoulders #38 -- A Georgian Special, at the Board of Longitude project.
    Pure Medievalry will host Carnivalesque LXXVII, an ancient/medieval edition of the festival, on 28 August. Use the form to nominate the best in ancient and medieval history blogging since 19 June.
    David Silbey hosts the next Military History Carnival here at Cliopatria on 29 August. Use the form to nominate the best in military history blogging since late May.

  • Aug 12, 2011

    The Mysteries of Lam Qua

    by Cliopatria

    Cross-posted at AHC.

    "The Mysteries of Lam Qua" is a gallery of nineteenth century oil portraits by a Chinese artist known as Lam Qua (林官) (1801-1860). His paintings are beautiful, grotesque physiological studies of patients with extreme tumour growths. Lam Qua's paintings were specially commissioned by Reverend Dr Peter Parker, who established the first American hospital in Guangzhou in 1835 and who successfully introduced several Western surgical techniques to China: amputation, anesthesia and reconstructive surgery.