Security empires come and go. While they serve a purpose, their citizens are willing to pay the cost. When they become too expensive to maintain, they simply fold, or get ground under. They work to purpose, or stop.
Conquest empires rarely outlive their founders, or only last a few generations. Alexander’s generals, or Charlemagne’s children and grandchildren, dividing and subdividing into smaller and smaller units, is the norm for such empires. (If not straight collapse when the dictator holding it all together vanishes.)
The only “conquest” empires that have held up are those that send settlers into the lands of hunter-gatherers or nomads. The United States, Russia and Australia being good examples. (But the only reason they can hold up is if the captured territory can be converted into a functional part of the state and society … something the US and Australia have largely managed … Russia’s attempts to enforce this unity by repression of its more developed conquered peoples have not been so successful over the last few centuries, and it is unlikely that China will do much better long-term no matter how much repression it introduces into its recent conquests of established societies like Tibet and the Uyghurs.)
Which leaves only trade empires as potentially successful long term options. And only because their success is not measured by sustaining the political unity of the “empire”, but by sustaining its economic goals.
The most successful empire in world history is the British empire, which could delightedly declare itself obsolete in the 1920s, and again (after having to work mostly co-operatively to fight World War Two) in the 1950s. Both times it encouraged the member states to go look after themselves (some successfully and some less so), and yet it still managed to leave an almost completely secure legacy for its existence … relatively safe international free trade routes. (The almost complete elimination of both piracy and slavery worldwide just being minor side benefits of the British Empire.)
For an empire developed “in a fit of absent mindedness”, and as a byproduct of trying to develop free trade around the world: the measure of success has to be the Commonwealth of Nations – comprising 54 nations with about 1/3 of the world’s population, getting together to play cricket every year and hold a Commonwealth Games every 4 years.
This is not an empire that copllapsed, or was destroyed. This is an empire that over a century or so (from granting independent Dominion status to Canada in 1886 [Canadians stoutly maintain it was 1867], Australia 1901, New Zealand and South Africa pre-Great War, Ireland and Egypt interwar, India and Pakistan post war, large parts of Asia and Africa in the 60s and 70s etc.); nonetheless developed and secured the international free trade system that the world has embraced. (Including a re-integration by an early exit-er from the empire … the 13 out of 35 British north American colonies that became the United States … and who finally inherited the title of world policeman when the rest of the Commonwealth nations had got sick of the whole thing.)
Nigel Davies, “Types of Empires: Security, Conquest, and Trade”, rethinking history, 2020-05-02.
August 8, 2020
QotD: The British Empire
August 7, 2020
A Career Anti-Fascist – George Orwell – WW2 Biography Special
World War Two
Published 6 Aug 2020George Orwell is one of the most famous English writers in the modern age. But how did he become the man who would coin so many of the words we still use in our political debates?
Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tvFollow WW2 day by day on Instagram @World_war_two_realtime https://www.instagram.com/world_war_two_realtime
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sourcesHosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Rune Væver Hartvig
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Rune Væver Hartvig
Edited by: Mikołaj Cackowski
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)Colorizations by:
Cassowary https://www.flickr.com/photos/cassowa…
Klimbim https://www.flickr.com/photos/2215569…Sources:
Wellcome Images V0014461
Bundesarchiv
Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
From the Noun Project: Pig by supalerk laipawat, Horse by supalerk laipawat, Goat by Laymik, Sheep by Laymik, Cow by supalerk laipawat, Chicken by supalerk laipawat, Farmer by Symbolon, Podium by Focus LabSoundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
Howard Harper-Barnes – “London”
Johannes Bornlof – “Deviation In Time”
Johannes Bornlof – “The Inspector 4”
Skrya – “First Responders”
Jo Wandrini – “Puzzle Of Complexity”Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
From Medieval Letters Patent to our modern patents, by way of Venice
In the latest Age of Invention newsletter, Anton Howes traces the lines of descent from the Letters patent of the Middle Ages, through Venetian legal innovations, to what began to resemble our modern patent system:
Letters Patent Issued by Queen Victoria, 1839
On 15 June 1839 Captain William Hobson was officially appointed by Queen Victoria to be Lieutenant Governor General of New Zealand. Hobson (1792 – 1842) was thus the first Governor of New Zealand. This position was renamed in 1907 as “Governor General”. Hobson arrived in New Zealand in late January 1840, and oversaw the signing of te Tiriti o Waitangi only a few days later. By the end of 1840, New Zealand became a colony in its own right and Hobson moved the capital of the colony from the Bay of Islands to Auckland. He served as Governor until his death in 1842 after he suffered a stroke at the age of 49.
Constitutional Records group of Archives NZ via Wikimedia Commons.
Patents for invention — temporary monopolies on the use of new technologies — are frequently cited as a key contributor to the British Industrial Revolution. But where did they come from? We typically talk about them as formal institutions, imposed from above by supposedly wise rulers. But their origins, or at least their introduction to England, tell a very different story.
England’s monarchs had long used their prerogative powers to grant special dispensations by letters patent — that is, orders from the monarch that were open for all the public to see (think of the word patently, from the same root, which means openly or clearly). For the most part, such public proclamations had been used to grant titles of nobility, or to appoint people to positions in various official hierarchies — legal, religious, and governmental. And, of course, letters patent could be used to promote the introduction of new technologies.
[…]
Monopolies in general, of course, over particular trades or industries had been granted for centuries, by rulers all across Europe. They granted such privileges to groups of merchants, artisans, and city-dwellers, giving them rights to organise and regulate their own activities as guilds or as city corporations. Inherent to all such charters was the ability of the in-group to restrict competition from outsiders, at least within the confines of their city. And the ruler, in exchange for granting such privileges, typically received a share of the guild’s or corporation’s revenues. But such monopolies were very rarely given to individuals. When they were, it was often so unpopular as to be almost immediately overturned. And they were rarely used to encourage innovation.
With one exception: Italy. Throughout the fifteenth century, some Italian city guilds had begun to forbid their members from copying newly-invented patterns for silk and woollen cloth, effectively granting a monopoly over those patterns to the individual inventors. In Venice, a 50-year monopoly was granted in 1416 to one Franciscus Petri, of Rhodes, to introduce superior fulling mills. In Florence, the famous architect and engineer Filippo Brunelleschi was granted a monopoly in 1421 for a vessel he designed for transporting heavy loads of marble, in exchange for revealing the secrets of his design. The printing press was also introduced to Venice using such a privilege, with a 5-year monopoly granted in 1469 to Johannes of Speyer, though he died only a few months after receiving it. And these ad hoc grants were made with increasing frequency, such that in 1474 Venice legislated to make them more systematic, declaring that 10-year monopolies could be obtained for all new technologies, either invented or imported (though it continued to also grant ad hoc patents, with the terms and durations decided on a case-by-case basis as before). Under the 1474 law, Venice was soon granting patent monopolies to the introducers of various mills, pumps, dredges, textile machines, printing techniques, and even special kinds of lasagna. It granted over a hundred patents in the first half of the sixteenth century, with many more thereafter.
From Venice, the use of patent monopolies as an instrument of policy spread abroad, with the initiative coming from the would-be introducers of novelties themselves. In the mid-fifteenth century, for example, a French inventor who had acquired patents in Venice was also successfully lobbying for similar privileges from the archbishop of Salzburg, the duke of Ferrara, and the Hapsburg Holy Roman Emperor. The use of patent monopolies thus soon diffused to the rest of Italy, to Germany, and to the various dominions of the Spanish emperor — including Spain itself, its American colonies, and the Low Countries.
And, eventually, to England. But not in the way we might expect. In 1496, the Venetian explorer Zuan Chabotto (aka John Cabot) acquired a patent monopoly from Henry VII over the trade and products of any lands he was to discover — a legal procedure unlike anything that earlier English explorers had attempted (they had merely been granted licenses). Cabot’s grant even differed from the agreements made by Christopher Columbus with the Spanish crown, or by earlier explorers for the Portuguese. Columbus, for example, was effectively granted a patent of nobility — the hereditary titles of viceroy, admiral, and governor. He and the Portuguese explorers were direct agents of the crown, with military and justice-dispensing responsibilities over any newly conquered lands — a model derived from the Christian conquests of Muslim Iberia. Columbus effectively became a marcher lord, a custodian and defender of Spain’s new borderlands.
“40:1” Pt. 2 – Another Polish Last Stand – Sabaton History 079 [Official]
Sabaton History
Published 6 Aug 2020At the end of September 1939, Poland was burning. Trapped in an ever shrinking corridor between the Wehrmacht and the Red Army, the last remaining Polish forces were still holding out. Isolated, short of ammunition and supplies, and without hope for relief. The last Polish Army, the SGO Polesie, was making its way towards the Vistula, as it was cut off by German motorcycle troops. Determined to sell their lives dearly, the SGO Polesie dug in and prepared for a last stand.
Support Sabaton History on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sabatonhistory
Listen to “40:1” from the album The Art Of War:
https://music.sabaton.net/TheArtOfWarWatch the Official Music Video of “40:1” here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epeQw…Listen to Sabaton on Spotify: http://smarturl.it/SabatonSpotify
Official Sabaton Merchandise Shop: http://bit.ly/SabatonOfficialShopHosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Markus Linke and Indy Neidell
Directed by: Astrid Deinhard and Wieke Kapteijns
Produced by: Pär Sundström, Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Community Manager: Maria Kyhle
Executive Producers: Pär Sundström, Joakim Broden, Tomas Sunmo, Indy Neidell, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Edited by: Karolina Dołęga
Sound Editing by: Marek Kaminski
Maps by: Eastory – https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory
Archive by: Reuters/Screenocean https://www.screenocean.com
Music by Sabaton.Sources:
Paul Otto courtesy Glenn Jewison
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries
Bundesarchiv
Imperial War Museums: HU106375
Museum of Warsaw
Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
Centralne Archiwum WojskoweAn OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.
© Raging Beaver Publishing AB, 2019 – all rights reserved.
From the comments:
Sabaton History
2 days ago (edited)
Once again the time has come for the Polish people to show what they’re made of.This time they’re facing a gargantuan two-headed monster of an enemy and are outnumbered many many times over.
They may not win, they may not even live to see another day — but The Polish will not give up without giving their all.
Spirit of Spartans
Death and glory
Soldiers of Poland
Second to noneSo come, bring on all that you’ve got
Come hell, come high water — never stop!With the help of Indy and the TimeGhost team you can learn more about the Soviet invasion of Poland and the last days of The Polish Defensive War in these two episodes of the “World War Two In Real Time” series:
“The Russians are Coming! – The Soviet Invasion of Poland” – WW2 – 004 – September 22, 1939
https://youtu.be/8vjBp-qyNVE“Poland is Crushed” – WW2 – 005 – 29 September, 1939
https://youtu.be/OOPiUaakSXM
August 6, 2020
Rhodes: A Short History
History Time
Published 2 Mar 2017*****This was one of the first videos I ever made.
******Subscribe for much better narration on the newer videos and tons more historical awesomeness*****Situated at a crossroads between East and West, in a strategic location between the Aegean and the Mediterranean, Rhodes has long been fought over by the surrounding powers. As a result, Rhodes is one of the most historic sites on Earth.
If you liked this video and have as little as a dollar to spare then please consider supporting me on Patreon for more and better content in the future:- http://www.patreon.com/historytimeUK
Are you a budding artist, illustrator, cartographer, or music producer? Send me a message! No matter how professional you are or even if you’re just starting out, I can always use new music and images in my videos. Get in touch! I’d love to hear from you.
I’ve also compiled a reading list of my favourite history books via the Amazon influencer program. If you do choose to purchase any of these incredible sources of information, many of which form the basis of my videos, then Amazon will send me a tiny fraction of the earnings (as long as you do it through the link) (this means more and better content in the future) I’ll keep adding to and updating the list as time goes on:-
https://www.amazon.com/shop/historytimeI try to use copyright free images at all times. However if I have used any of your artwork or maps then please don’t hesitate to contact me and I’ll be more than happy to give the appropriate credit.
—Join the History Time community on social media:-
Instagram:-
https://www.instagram.com/historytime…
Twitter:-
https://twitter.com/HistoryTimePete
Post WWII United Kingdom – Cold War Documentary
The Cold War
Published 11 Apr 2020Our historical documentary series on the history of the Cold War continues with a video on the post-World War II situation in the United Kingdom
Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thecoldwar or Paypal: http://paypal.me/TheColdWar
✔ Merch store ► https://teespring.com/stores/thecoldwar
✔ Instagram ► http://www.instagram.com/thecoldwartv#ColdWar #UK #WorldWar
August 5, 2020
Driver Experience @ Pecorama 2020
PECO
Published 4 Aug 2020A look at the new driver experience courses on the Beer Heights Light Railway at Pecorama — summer 2020
Generalplan Ost, the Nazi plan to kill the Slavs – War Against Humanity 015 – July 1941, Part 02
World War Two
Published 4 Aug 2020In China, and the Soviet Union, all sides are causing widespread death to the local civilians. The defending forces are scorching the earth and plundering their own civilians, the attacking armed forces of Japan and Germany are executing planned genocide and mass destruction.
Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tvFollow WW2 day by day on Instagram @World_war_two_realtime https://www.instagram.com/world_war_two_realtime
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sourcesWritten and Hosted by: Spartacus Olsson
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Spartacus Olsson and Joram Appel
Edited by: Mikołaj Cackowski
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)Colorizations by:
Dememorabilia – https://www.instagram.com/dememorabilia/
Jaris Almazani (Artistic Man) – https://instagram.com/artistic.man?ig…
Julius Jääskeläinen – https://www.facebook.com/JJcolorization/
Daniel Weiss
Spartacus Olsson
Klimbim – https://www.flickr.com/photos/2215569…
Mikolaj UchmanSources:
Eesti Kirjandusmuuseum KM EKLA, A-3:107
Yad Vashem 55AO6, 74FO7,
Consiliul National pentru Studierea Arhivelor Securitatii (CNSAS)
USHMM
IWM NA 15129, N 530
from the Noun Project: Skull by Muhamad Ulum
Picture of a victim of starvation during the siege of Leningrad, courtesy George Shuklin
Portrait of Nikolai Moskvin, courtesy goskatalog.ruSoundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
Johan Hynynen – “Dark Beginning”
Yi Nantiro – “Watchmen”
Yi Nantiro – “A Single Grain Of Rice”
Farell Wooten – “Blunt Object”
Reynard Seidel – “Deflection”
Andreas Jamsheree – “Guilty Shadows 4”
Philip Ayers – “Trapped in a Maze”
Skrya – “First Responders”
Philip Ayers – “Under the Dome”Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
From the comments:
World War Two
3 hours ago (edited)
So here we are — it’s the end of July and the Nazi plan to ethnically cleanse Eastern Europe by genocide and forced migration is now in play, while the deliberate genocide of the Chinese has been in motion for more than three years. It’s easy to write off the massive death in both regions as collateral damage, the millions of PoWs that died as callous carelessness, the overall death toll as part of a desperate defense strategies. But that belies how planned, meticulous and specific both the genocides by Imperial Japan and by Nazi Germany were.The sources detailing the execution and opposition to these plans in the Soviet Union are relatively easy to access. Already during the war the Allied intelligence services were intercepting most of the communication that outlined death tolls, policies, and events. After the war the comprehensive documentation by the Germans themselves was captured and compiled for the Nuremberg Trials. Although Russia under the current regime choose to obfuscate, and distort their side of the story, the decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union saw the release of enough classified material for us to know the big picture.
The sources on what happened in China are, on the other hand, harder to come by. Unlike Germany, Japan has not been forced to, and has been unwilling to reconcile with what their forefathers did. Historians unearthing these stories face massive opposition by interests that still try to maintain Japanese exceptionalism. In China, the Communist regime never collapsed, and continues to promote a propagandist historiography that distorts the events within a narrative of unilateral heroic struggle by the People’s Red Army against Imperialism. Therefore it’s all the more important that we try to see these events for what they were: a massive tragedy of human suffering caused by ideological chauvinism – there is nothing heroic here, only the sad reality of war, and the terror of hatred to the level of mass murder.
Berserkers! The facts and the fictions
Lindybeige
Published 16 Jul 2015Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Lindybeige
This one has been a long time coming, but now I’m glad that I’ve said it. It may disappoint many die-easy fans of unnecessary carnage, but the truth about berserkers is that they may have been a great deal more sensible and human than the rage-fuelled psychos so beloved by the world’s male teenagers.
Here’s a link to Roderick Dale’s new Viking book (although Amazon inaccurately describes it as an audiobook and abridged): http://www.amazon.co.uk/Viking-Experi…
For those wanting the full 100,000-word thesis, try here: http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/28819/
Lindybeige: a channel of archaeology, ancient and medieval warfare, rants, swing dance, travelogues, evolution, and whatever else occurs to me to make.
▼ Follow me…
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Lindybeige I may have some drivel to contribute to the Twittersphere, plus you get notice of uploads.
QotD: Responsibility
The sort of thing I mean is when a British Conservative Party politician says, perhaps to a room full of people who, like me, take the idea of personal liberty very seriously: Yes, I believe, passionately, in personal liberty. The politician maybe then expands upon this idea, often with regard to how commercial life works far better if people engaged in commerce are able to make their own decisions about which projects they will undertake and which risks they will walk towards and which risks they will avoid. If business is all coerced, it won’t be nearly so beneficial. We will all get poorer. Yay freedom.
But.
But … “responsibility”. We should all have freedom, yes, but we also have, or should have, “responsibility”. Sometimes there then follows a list of things that we should do or should refrain from doing, for each of which alleged responsibility there is a law which he favours and which we must obey. At other times, such a list is merely implied. So, freedom, but not freedom.
The problem with politicians talking about responsibility is that their particular concern is and should be the law, law being organised compulsion. And too often, their talk of responsibility serves only to drag into prominence yet more laws about what people must and must not do with their lives. But because the word “responsibility” sounds so virtuous, this list of anti-freedom laws becomes hard to argue against, even inside one’s own head. Am I opposed to “responsibility”? Increasingly, I have found myself saying: To hell with it. Yes.
I have often been similarly resistant to the language of Christianity, of the sort that dominates what is being said in churches around the world today. How many times in history have acts of tyranny been justified by the tyrant saying something like: We must all bear our crosses in life, and here, this cross is yours. “God is on my side. Obey my orders.” The truth about the potential of life to inflict pain becomes the excuse to inflict further pain.
Brian Micklethwait, “Jordan Peterson on responsibility – and on why it is important that he is not a politician”, Samizdata, 2018-03-30.
August 4, 2020
Nationalism DOESN’T explain WHY Austria-Hungary collapsed
TIK
Published 3 Aug 2020The go-to answer is that national or ethnic divisions caused the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But is this really the case? Using multiple sources, it’s time to provide YouTube with a narrative which doesn’t confirm nationalist beliefs. The Habsburgs survived the collapse, with Emperor Karl / Charles trying to reclaim his throne later on before being exiled. However, by about mid-November 1918, he had lost all power. The fact that there is no specific date when Austria-Hungary collapsed, and the fact that the “national revolutions” were met with relatively little opposition, speaks volumes. As does the fact that the new states were all multinational, which undermines the narrative that nationalism was the reason why Austria-Hungary collapsed. Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
⏲️ Videos EVERY Monday at 5pm GMT (depending on season, check for British Summer Time).
– – – – –
📚 BIBLIOGRAPHY / SOURCES 📚
Judson, P. The Habsburg Empire: A New History. Belknap Press, Kindle 2016.
Kiste, J. The End of the Habsburgs: The Decline and Fall of the Austrian Monarchy. Kindle 2019.
Macgregor, J. & Docherty, G. Prolonging the Agony: How the Anglo-American Establishment Deliberately Extended WW1 by Three-and-a-Half Years. Trine Day LLC, 2018.
Marx, K. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy: Volume III. PDF, English edition, 2010. (Originally written 1894)
Mises, L. Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis. Liberty Fund, 1981. 1969 edition (roots back to 1922).
Oxford Dictionary of English, Oxford University Press, Third Edition 2010.
Rady, M. The Habsburgs: The Rise and Fall of a World Power. Perseus Books, Kindle 2020.
Watson, A. Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary at War, 1914-1918. Penguin Books, 2015.Cornwall, M. “Propaganda at Home (Austria-Hungary).” 1919. https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online….
Online Latin-Dictionary http://www.latin-dictionary.net/defin…
Online Etymology Dictionary https://www.etymonline.com/word/publicFull list of all my sources – https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/…
– – – – –
⭐ SUPPORT TIK ⭐
Want to ask a question? Please consider supporting me on either Patreon or SubscribeStar and help make more videos like this possible. For $5 or more you can ask questions which I will answer in future Q&A videos. Thank you to my current Patrons! You’re AWESOME! https://www.patreon.com/TIKhistory or https://www.subscribestar.com/tikhistory
– – – – –
ABOUT TIK 📝
History isn’t as boring as some people think, and my goal is to get people talking about it. I also want to dispel the myths and distortions that ruin our perception of the past by asking a simple question – “But is this really the case?” I have a 2:1 Degree in History and a passion for early 20th Century conflicts (mainly WW2). I’m therefore approaching this like I would an academic essay. Lots of sources, quotes, references and so on. Only the truth will do.
This video is discussing events or concepts that are academic, educational and historical in nature. This video is for informational purposes and was created so we may better understand the past and learn from the mistakes others have made.
Sturmtruppen Firepower: The Artillery Luger
Forgotten Weapons
Published 4 Apr 2020https://www.instagram.com/rockislanda…
https://www.youtube.com/user/RockIsla…
This is lot #3569 in the upcoming RIA Premier Auction. It was scheduled for April, but has been postponed — check their web site for upcoming Online Only auctions every month, though!
The lP08 (Lange pistole 08) was formally adopted in 1913 to replace the Reichsrevolver for the field artillery. These were the German light artillery troops, who were specifically given a pistol caliber carbine to provide maximum firepower in a very compact package. They were made by the Erfurt Arsenal in 1914, and by DWM throughout the war, with a total of about 180,000 made.
What is most interesting to me is the evolution of the use of the “artillery Luger” throughout the course of World War One. Starting as simply a compact weapon for artillery, it was quickly recognized by aviators as an ideal weapon for aircraft before the mass introduction of aerial machine guns. The stock allowed more accurate fire, and the semiautomatic operation minimized the handling movements required to fire. More substantially, it was adopted by the German Sturmtruppen for maximizing the striking power of small and flexible units. It is for these men that the 32-round drum magazine was developed in 1916. This represents one of the very few formal military uses of a pistol-caliber semiautomatic carbine, as it was superseded by the advent of the submachine gun in 1918.
A few small batches were made in the 1920s and 1930s, but it would not see significant use in World War Two – leaving it a weapon specifically iconic to the Great War.
http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
https://www.floatplane.com/channel/Fo…
Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…
Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle #36270
Tucson, AZ 85740
August 3, 2020
Romanticizing the past
Sarah Hoyt points out that the past really is a foreign country and they do things very differently there … and for good reasons:
An image of coal pits in the Black Country from Griffiths’ Guide to the iron trade of Great Britain, 1873.
Image digitized by the Robarts Library of the University of Toronto via Wikimedia Commons.
So, quickly: The industrial revolution was not a disaster to your average peasant. It was a disaster for landowners.
Yes, yes, the conditions in the factories were terrible. By our standards. The lifespan was very short. By our standards. The anomie of the big cities, yadda yadda. When compared to what? Small villages? Ask those of us raised in them. Yes, there was child labor. As compared to what at that time? Other than the life of the upper classes?
Look, we don’t have to guess about this stuff. In India, in China, in other places that came to the industrial revolution very late, we’ve seen peasants leave the land where their ancestors had labored, to flock to the big cities, to take work we find horrible and exploitative at wages we find ridiculous.
And even if China has added “labor camp” and prisoner wrinkles to it, note that’s because China is a shitty communist country, not because the migration wasn’t there before. Also the labor camp aspects, as much as one can tell (and it’s hard to tell, due to the raging insanity of the regime) seem to have grown as the people grew more prosperous, as a result of the industrial revolution and thereby demanded higher wages, which positioned China more poorly as the “factory of the world.”
In fact, idealizing “living off the land” has been in place since at least the Roman empire, and probably before. It’s also been MISERABLE at least since then and probably before.
Because pre-industrial revolution farming sucked. It sucked horribly. And it kept you on the edge of subsistence. It double sucked when you were subjected to a Lord. Look, systems of serfdom, etc. didn’t come about because living in a Lord’s domain was so great, and everyone wove wreaths and danced around maypoles all the time, okay?
The bucolic paradise of a farmer’s life was mostly a creation of city dwellers, often noblemen, who saw it from the outside.
There are estimations that most people had trouble rearing even one child, and most of one generation’s peasants were people fallen from higher status. I don’t know. That might be exaggerated. Or it might not.
Even during the industrial revolution, it was normal for ladies bountiful to take baskets of food to tenant farmers because … they couldn’t make it on their own.
And btw, the more the industrial revolution pulled people to the cities, the more the Lords and “elites” talked about how great the countryside was and how terrible the factories/cities/new way of living were.
A lot of artists and pseudo bohemians jumped in on this bandwagon and so did Marx, who was both a pseudo bohemian, by birth “elite” (Well, his family had a virtual slave attached to him. He impregnated her too, as was his privilege), and by self-flattery intellectual.
Therefore the factories were the worst thing ever, the men who owned them, aka capitalists were terrible, terrible people — mostly because Marx wasn’t one, and probably because they laughed at him — and the proletariat they exploited horribly would rise up and —
All bullshit of course. Later on his fiction needed retconning by Anthony Gramsci who, having the sense to realize the “workers” weren’t rising up, just getting wealthier and escaping the clutches of the “elites” more made the “proletariat” a sort of “world proletariat” centered on poorer/more dysfunctional countries. This had the advantage of making the exploited masses always be elsewhere (or the supposed exploiters) and therefore made it easier to pitch group against group to the eternal profit of rather corrupt “elites.” Mostly political classes which are descended from “the best people.”
The Magic of Terry Pratchett by Marc Burrows
Rachel Cunliffe looks at a recent biography of the great science fiction/fantasy author Terry Pratchett by Marc Burrows:
A satirical sci-fi/fantasy writer might not seem the obvious choice to dissect the world-changing magnitude of an unforeseen pandemic — or so you might think if you’ve never read any of his books. But anyone familiar with the Pratchett’s oeuvre will know that the scouring wit and the unflinching grasp of humanity at its best and worst found within his pages would be the only true way to understand what has happened to our world since the start of the year.
Alas, we will never know how Sir Terry would have woven the government’s dysfunctional pandemic response, the etiquette of social distancing, mask and anti-mask culture or the mass shift to remote working into the realm of the Discworld (although we can be fairly confident that he would have done). But glimpses can be found in The Magic Of Terry Pratchett, a new biography by writer and comedian Marc Burrows.
This is the first full biography of the great man, from his upbringing in the quintessentially English hamlet of Forty Green, Buckinghamshire, to his battle with Alzheimer’s (which Pratchett dubbed “the Embuggerance”) and ferocious campaign for a law change to allow assisted dying — and featuring a whistle-stop tour of his 60-odd books.
It is, as Burrows admits from the start, the project of a committed fanboy. The author never actually got to speak to his literary hero (“This book is my chance to meet Terry Pratchett. It’s yours as well,” he explains early on), and has instead pieced together his life story through old interviews, archives, and conversations with friends and contemporaries.
The result is an engaging quest to get to know the man that both explores and adds to the mythology surrounding him. Pratchett was, as Burrows makes clear, a storyteller first and foremost, and some of his oft-repeated anecdotes — such as encountering a dead body age 17 on his first day as a junior reporter, or filing his copy from a shed on the roof — may have been based more on fantasy than reality. Where he cannot verify, Burrows sticks to the strategy taken by Tony Wilson in the film 24 Hour Party People: “When you have to choose between the truth and the legend, print the legend”.
As such, while this book will no doubt be of greatest interest to Pratchett fans, even those who have never opened a Discworld novel will find themselves entertained by its numerous detours — encompassing the educational apartheid of the 1950s, a surreal stint doing PR for Britain’s nuclear industry, and the once vibrant, now sadly endangered local journalism ecosystem.
QotD: History or “Her” story?
In my last year in college, I had American Literature taught by a Fullbright exchange professor. I will never forget the moment the poor man — talking to a class of 36, all women as such classes often are — let slip the innocent word “him” to mean an indeterminate gender. He paused, went white, his eyes widened, and he said, “I mean, I mean, he or she.”
Meanwhile, the class of 36 was staring at him in puzzlement. It took us a while to take it all apart and realize he thought we’d be offended by the use of “he” to mean someone generic, of indeterminate gender.
I think we patted him kindly on the shoulder and told him that no, really, we weren’t offended. The usage was the same in Portuguese and we’d been told it was the same in most Indo-European languages. And who on Earth would get offended over semantics? The language was the language. It meant nothing about us personally.
This was of course before I married, came to the U.S. and found that for the American woman circa 1985, the language was not just personal, it was personally offensive.
I remember standing in horror underneath a bookstore section proudly labeled Herstory.
Of course the etymology of the word history is not his + story, the sort of pseudo-clever deduction about language that I was used to from the near-illiterate elderly people in the village. (It would be too complex and involve Portuguese, but there was this old farmer who had somehow deduced from the Portuguese word for farmer that farmers were the only ones who would be saved at the end of time.)
History, of course, is not originally an English word. It comes from the Latin historia — meaning a relation of events — by way of the French estoire, meaning story. Note please that in neither of those languages does “his” mean “belonging to him.” And that making the same sort of illiterate assumptions about the French word, we’d get “It is oire.”
I thought that the store must have hired an illiterate employee, but no, over the next ten years, in various circumstances, and possibly still except for the fact that I’ve learned to silence such fools with a death glare, I’ve come across the same smug-idiot assumption and “corrections” of the English word, so as to “fight against the patriarchy.”
That this is done by people who paid more money than I make in a couple of years for a college degree, and who, doubtlessly, think that etymology is a dish made with onions, or perhaps a conspiracy of the patriarchy fills me with a sort of dull rage that has no outlet.
Sarah Hoyt, “The Semantic Whoredom of the Left”, PJ Media, 2018-05-11.
