In our current age of apps, able to tell us exactly where we are in the world at any time, it’s hard to imagine an era in which most people would never have seen a map. The average English person of the mid-sixteenth century would have had little idea of the overall shape of their own country, let alone a foreign one. And even the merchants and elites who did have access to maps did not have an entirely accurate picture. Before the systematic adoption of trigonometric surveying, as well as the ability to accurately calculate longitude by observing Jupiter’s moons using telescopes, the process involved a lot of guesstimation. When the new techniques were introduced towards the end of the seventeenth century, the results could come as quite a shock. Louis XIV, when shown a revised map of his country, allegedly remarked that he had lost more land to his astronomers than to his enemies. France was a lot thinner than everyone had supposed.
Anton Howes, “The House of Trade”, Age of Invention, 2019-11-13.
January 15, 2020
QotD: Louis XIV and the first accurate maps of France
January 11, 2020
The bubbly 1720s
In the latest Age of Invention newsletter, Anton Howes looks at Britain’s volatile financial scene in the 1720s:
William Hogarth – The South Sea Scheme, 1721. In the bottom left corner are Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish figures gambling, while in the middle there is a huge machine, like a merry-go-round, which people are boarding. At the top is a goat, written below which is “Who’l Ride”. The people are scattered around the picture with a sense of disorder, while the progress of the well-dressed people towards the ride in the middle represents the foolishness of the crowd in buying stock in the South Sea Company, which spent more time issuing stock than anything else.
Scanned from The genius of William Hogarth or Hogarth’s Graphical Works via Wikimedia Commons.
Over in France, a Scottish banker named John Law had in the late 1710s overseen an ambitious scheme to reorganise the government’s finances. He ran the Mississippi Company, one of the many companies with monopolies on France’s international trade. His scheme was for the company to acquire all of the other similar monopolies, so that it could have a monopoly on all of the country’s intercontinental trade routes. By 1719, the Mississippi Company had swelled into a Company of the Indies, which in turn had purchased the right to collect French taxes, from which it took took its own cut. In exchange for acquiring these monopolies, Law’s new super-monopoly would buy up the French government’s accumulated war debts, allowing repayment on more generous terms. By allowing the state to borrow more cheaply, the scheme was to be a key plank in improving French military might.
Meanwhile, in Britain, a very similar project was afoot. Following the War of the Spanish Succession, one of the things Britain won from France was the asiento – the monopoly on supplying African slaves to Spain’s colonies in America. The asiento was given to the South Sea Company, which had the monopoly on British trade with South America, and which in 1720 began to follow a scheme similar to Law’s. Given developments in France, it would not do for the British state to be left behind in terms of its capacity to take on more debt for war. Thus, with political support, the South Sea Company began to buy up the government’s debt, persuading its creditors to exchange that debt for increasingly valuable company shares.
In 1720, both schemes came crashing down. In the case of Law’s scheme, he had printed paper currency with which people could buy his company’s shares, but in 1720 discovered he had printed too much. When he prudently tried to devalue the company’s shares to match the quantity of paper notes, the devaluation spun out of control. In the case of the South Sea Company, the causes of the crash were a little more mysterious, perhaps even verging on the mundane. One explanation is that too many wealthy investors simply tried to sell their shares so that they would have ready cash to spend on holidaying in Europe, precipitating a minor fall in the share price which then led to a more widespread panic. Regardless, it did not end well. The company itself continued for many years thereafter — it even got involved with whaling off the coast of Greenland — but the collapse of its share price ended its chance to restructure the government’s debts.
January 9, 2020
QotD: National music
James Lileks, Screedblog, 2005-07-08.
January 8, 2020
Chauchat: Shooting, History, and Tactics
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 14 Sep 2015http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
Hammer price: $13,500The M1915 CSRG, commonly called the Chauchat after its primary designer, has a reputation as the worst gun ever put into military service. That reputation, however, is not deserved. It was not a great weapon, but it was a very serviceable gun for its day. The French needed a light automatic rifle *right now*, and needed it in large numbers. The Chauchat answered that call, and was used to great effect by many French soldiers.
The Chauchat’s poor reputation comes from a couple places, some justified and some not. First off, many US troops trained on M1918 Chauchats built in .30-06, which were poorly made and pretty darn bad guns. They were replaced by 8mm Lebel guns before going into combat, but the bad experiences of training stuck with many Americans. The biggest mechanical flaw in the Chauchat was its magazine. All automatic weapons are heavily dependent on good magazines, and the Chauchat used a magazine that was made of thin metal, easily damaged, and open on the sides for dirt and mud to enter. If the magazines were not treated well, the gun would become hopelessly useless.
In addition, many of the Chauchat guns in the United States today were deactivated at one time, and often badly reactivated. This has nothing to do with their original reliability, but it does a lot to perpetuate their reputation. This particular example is an original gun that does not appear to have ever been deactivated, and it ran flawlessly for me. It will be an excellent example for someone who can appreciate it!
January 3, 2020
The Battle of Alesia (52 B.C.E.)
Historia Civilis
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December 19, 2019
Vive la Résistance! well, not really… French Resistance 1940 – WW2 – War Against Humanity 007
World War Two
Published 18 Dec 2019Immediately after France is occupied by the Nazis in 1940, the French are divided about what to do; resist for collaborate? To put it mildly, it’s complicated.
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Creative Producer: Joram Appel
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Research by: Spartacus Olsson and Francis van Berkel
Edited by: Wieke Kapteijns
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)Colorizations by: Julius Jääskeläinen – https://www.facebook.com/JJcolorization/
Sources: Bundesarchiv, Mémorial de la Shoah
Icons via the Noun Project: collaboration by Pause08, protester by Blaise Sewell, Dove by Luis Prado, confused by LlisoleArchive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
From the comments:
Spartacus Olsson
16 hours ago
In the aftermath of WW2, everyone was probably pretty tired of the whole tragedy, and ready to just move on. Many of the people that I have met that lived through the war didn’t like talking about the war much. But somehow I had the privilege of getting many of the them that I met to open up and talk about it to me. Maybe not so much because of any personal quality I have other than being very persistent and curious — a pain in the neck is another way of putting it.Anyway, we talked about many things, terrible things, great things, sad, and happy stories. But there was one thing I never heard anybody talk about, and that was indecision. Fear and regret, yes — everyone spoke of that, but not indecision. There was always an undertone of manifest destiny or complete meaninglessness.
But, when you think about it, how could you not be indecisive when faced with this kind of calamity? How can you not wonder if this is destiny, or just bad luck? How can you not be shocked into a stupor, at least at first? And even if you’re an ideologically convinced partisan or combatant, how do you know for sure what the right thing to do is? Well, when you start looking into it all, those questions were pretty much what gripped France in 1940 after the sudden, tragic loss of independence.
I think that indecision is not something we want to remember, perhaps we shouldn’t if we want to stay our course, perhaps we’re wired not to, so that we can focus better on what we finally decide. But for others who want to learn from our mistakes, and our successes — it is in the moment of indecision that we display our thinking, our reasoning, the true origin of our cause.
I should also tell you that I grew up in France, so this is in many ways the story of the adults around me when I was a child.
December 18, 2019
History Summarized: Pope Fights
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 24 Aug 2018The Medieval Catholic Church was … an interesting place, to put it lightly. Sometimes there was more than one Pope at a time, and sometimes they fought each other for power. Ladies and Gentleman, I present to you Pope Fights! The most absurd chapter in all of Catholicism.
Pope Francis’ Rock Album, if you’re still not convinced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW3az…
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December 13, 2019
Martyr of Verdun: Émile Driant’s Command Post
Forgotten Weapons
Published 22 Oct 2019http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
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Émile Driant was a French army officer who served originally as an aide to General Boulanger (and married his daughter). This connection would tarnish his career when politics forced Boulanger to resign (and shortly afterward commit suicide). It became clear that he would never rise much in rank, and in 1905 he resigned his commission. In 1910 he was elected to the French National Assembly, where he was still serving when war erupted in 1914. Driant was focused on French military readiness his entire life, and wrote extensively about potential future wars.
In 1914, he was recalled to military service, although he retained his Assembly position. He was given command of a reserve unit of Chausseurs (infantry) in the quiet backwater Verdun sector, where he couldn’t cause too much trouble to the military establishment. Through 1915 he watched Joffre remove men and guns from the forts around Verdun to reinforce more active areas of the front. He was intensely concerned that this was leaving Verdun a weak point ripe for German attack. As an officer, there was not much he could do about this except complain to his own commander — but as an active member of the National Assembly, he was able to bypass the military chain of command and take his concerns directly to the civilian government. This did nothing to endear him to Joffre, but the attention he brought did result in more defensive preparations being made in and around Verdun.
On February 21st, 1916 Driant’s warnings were proven true when the Germans launched the Battle of Verdun, which would become one of the most significant operations of the war for France. Driant and his 1200 Chausseurs were stationed in the Bois de Caures forest, right in the middle of the German offensive. His men fought valiantly to hold back the attack in their sector, but were reduced to less than 200 men combat-effective by the 22nd. Driant ordered a withdrawal that morning, and was killed by a gunshot while aiding a wounded trooper.
He was buried with military honors by the Germans, but later re-interred by the French where he had fallen. Today his command post remains just a few hundred yards from his gravesite, and a memorial marks the spot. Driant quickly became recognized as one of the heroes of Verdun, for his efforts before the battle and his front-line leadership during the initial attack.
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December 11, 2019
Franco-Prussian War | Animated History
The Armchair Historian
Published 4 Feb 2018What was the Franco Prussian War?
Our Website: https://www.thearmchairhistorian.com/
Our Twitter:
@ArmchairHistOur Discord:
https://discord.gg/Ppb2cUdSources:
https://www.britannica.com/event/Fran…
http://francoprussianwar.com/
http://history-world.org/franco_pruss…
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/e…
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/hist…
http://geacron.com/home-en/?v=m&lang=…Music: Music: Antonio Salieri: “Twenty six variations on La Folia de Spagna“
December 10, 2019
“NATO [reminds] me of the pre-reformation medieval church. Their stated objectives sound Godly and noble but their true purpose is to keep a bloated priesthood in luxury”
NATO still exists, decades after the threat it was designed to counter dissolved. Tom Paine wonders why this is so:
The dismal science teaches us to distinguish between peoples’ stated preferences (often virtue-signalling lies) and their revealed preferences (how they spend their money). All NATO members say they believe in the alliance. Only four — the USA, the UK, Poland and Greece — meet their obligation to contribute more than 2% of their GDP. If you’re wondering, Greece has only accidentally met that target because of the catastrophic fall in its GDP.
Opinion polls and my own experience of the bitter, sneering anti-Americanism of my otherwise delightful continental chums suggest that as usual the revealed preference is the truth. The Germans and French would not go to war in defence of America or Britain if we were attacked. Britain was attacked, when the Falklands were invaded, and our “allies” and “friends” sold arms to our enemies and gave them all kinds of moral support. Remember the Welsh Guards (my grandfather’s old regiment) massacred by Exocets fired from Mirages? The USA has often gone to war since the alliance was formed and mostly only British warriors fought, died or were injured alongside theirs.
Germany, France and their freeloading friends have quite simply been taking the piss from the outset. They take the Americans (and us Inselaffen and rosbifs) for mugs. They plot to form an EU Army and regret that Brexit means they won’t be able to continue to rely on English-speakers as their cannon-fodder.
The continued existence of NATO has fuelled the epic paranoia of Russia’s military/intelligence apparatus. Desperate not to be decommissioned the generals and chekists have claimed that “the West” they grew up opposing is intrinsically hostile — rather than, in truth, insultingly indifferent — to Mother Russia. Their only “proof” of this nonsense was NATO.
[…]
NATO is yet another of many examples of the truism that, once a bureaucracy acquires a competence, it will never disband. It continues because it can. The political and economic ills that drove the creation of what is now called the EU have long since faded into history. But the plump parasites of its apparatus have repeatedly repurposed it. Britain is a paradise of social, ethnic and sexual equality compared to the days when the precursors of the Equalities Commission were formed but its staff will find imaginary evils by the thousand before they’ll return to productive labour. Marx would gasp at the generosity of Britain’s welfare state and marvel at the lifestyle of even the poorest Brit and yet trivial micro aggressions are enough to sustain the revolutionary fervour of Marxist academics desperate to live as idly and unproductively as the man himself.
December 7, 2019
QotD: A “democratic” army
Orwell’s press card portrait, 1943
It is probable that the nature of modern war has made “democratic army” a contradiction in terms. The French army, for instance, based on universal service, is hardly more democratic than the British. It is just as much dominated by the professional officer and the long-service N.C.O., and the French officer is probably rather more “Prussian” in outlook than his British equivalent. The Spanish Government militias during the first six months of war — the first year, in Catalonia — were a genuinely democratic army, but they were also a very primitive type of army, capable only of defensive actions. In that particular case a defensive strategy, coupled with propaganda, would probably have had a better chance of victory than the methods casually adopted. But if you want military efficiency in the ordinary sense, there is no escaping from the professional soldier, and so long as the professional soldier is in control he will see to it that the army is not democratised. And what is true within the armed forces is true of the nation as a whole; every increase in the strength of the military machine means more power for the forces of reaction. It is possible that some of our more Left-wing jingoes are acting with their eyes open. If they are, they must be aware that the News-Chronicle version of “defence of democracy” leads directly away from democracy, even in the narrow nineteenth-century sense of political liberty, independence of the trade unions and freedom of speech and the press.
George Orwell, “Democracy in the British Army”, Left, 1939-09.
December 4, 2019
QotD: French anti-Americanism
Guy Sorman, “French Anti-Americanism, Rebooted”, City Journal, 2017-11-27.
December 1, 2019
The German Plan to Destroy French Culture – The Occupation of France – WW2 – 066 – November 30, 1940
World War Two
Published 30 Nov 2019While Hitler consolidates his power in occupied France, Japanese and Italian forces try to get an edge, but fail. The war is not looking too well for anyone at this point.
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Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sourcesWritten and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Produced and Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Mikołaj Cackowski
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)Colorizations by:
– Adrien Fillon (https://www.instagram.com/adrien.colo…)
– Dememorabilia (https://www.instagram.com/dememorabilia/)Sources:
-Archiwum CyfroweArchive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
November 22, 2019
The Far Right French Revolution | BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1934 Part 4 of 4
TimeGhost History
Published 21 Nov 2019In February 1934, France threatens to go down the same political rabbit hole as Germany: anti-Semitic Fascism, but the French extremists are not quite as well organized as the Nazis.
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Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Francis van Berkel & Spartacus Olsson
Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Francis van Berkel
Edited by: Daniel Weiss
Sound design: Marek KamińskiColorizations: Klimbim/Olga Shirnina: https://klimbim2014.wordpress.com
Daniel Weiss, Oleg M, Dememorabilia, Julius Jääskeläinen, Adrien Fillon.A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
From the comments:
TimeGhost History
52 minutes ago
We now get to some fascinating stuff that is less known outside of France. The events in 1934 will not create a new Fascist state, but they will have deep impact on how France deals with WW2. The February crisis influences military policy, the civilian response, and the way both right wing and left wing political parties deal with the German invasion and occupation. In the next couple of weeks we will come out with a War Against Humanity episode on the WW2 channel about the beginning of French collaboration and resistance — this episode provides essential background to how that plays out in 1940.
November 21, 2019
Battle of Sedan: How did Prussia Win The Franco-Prussian War? | Animated History
The Armchair Historian
Published 16 Feb 2018The Battle of Sedan. How did Prussia Win the Franco-Prussian War?
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@ArmchairHistOur Discord:
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http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Q9vpKOSgFHs…
https://www.britannica.com/event/Batt…
https://www.thoughtco.com/franco-prus…
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/hist…
https://www.military-history.us/2011/…100 Decisive Battles by: Paul K. Davis
50 Battles That Changed the World by: William WeirMusic: “Danse Macabre” by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/…)
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