Quotulatiousness

May 28, 2020

Why Halftracks? Why limited to WW2 only? (Featuring Tank Fest 2018)

Filed under: Germany, History, Military, USA, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Military History not Visualized
Published 6 Jul 2018

Disclaimer: I was invited to Tank Fest by the Tank Museum.

Why were half-tracks used in the first place? Why not trucks, fully-tracked vehicles or something else? Also, why after the Second World War did the half-track disappear? Why were there no new types produced by major powers?

Big thank you to green_goblin_z for sending me 2 books from my amazon wishlist!

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Military History not Visualized is a support channel to Military History Visualized with a focus personal accounts, answering questions that arose on the main channel and showcasing events like visiting museums, using equipment or military hardware.

» SOURCES «

Spielberger, Walter; Doyle, Hilary Lous, Jentz, Thomas L.: Halbkettenfahrzeuge des deutschen Heeres
Spielberger: Halftracked Vehicles of the German Army 1909-1945 (Spielberger German Armor and Military Vehicle)

Zaloga, Steven J.: M3 Infantry Half-Track. 1940-73. Osprey Publishing: Oxford, UK (1992 / 2002).

Citino, Robert M.: The German Way of War. From the Thirty Years’ War to the Third Reich. University Press of Kansas: USA, 2005.

Krapke, Paul-Werner: Armor, in: Margiotta, Franklin D. (Executive Editor): Brassey’s Encyclopedia of Land Forces and Warfare. Brassey’s: Washington, USA (1996), p. 42-53

Pöhlmann, Markus: Der Panzer und die Mechanisierung des Krieges: Eine deutsche Geschichte 1890 bis 1945 (Zeitalter der Weltkriege)

Munzel, Oskar: Die deutschen gepanzerten Truppen bis 1945

Fleischer, Wolfgang: Die motorisierten Schützen und Panzergrenadiere des deutschen Heeres: 1935-1945 – Waffen, Fahrzeuge, Gliederung, Einsätze

Felberbauer, Franz: Waffentechnik I – Band 2: Geschütze, Waffen in Entwicklung, Nichttödliche Waffensysteme, Ballistik, Physikalische Grundlagen (Truppendienst)
https://www.truppendienst.com/td-buec…

QotD: The decline and fall of the British aristocracy

Filed under: Britain, History, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Therein you have a microcosm of modern British aristocracy. A class system that used to distribute power and responsibility has collapsed into a source of therapeutic validation for the fragile individualism of its members. False merit thrives between narrow horizons — and few are narrower than the blue bloods of England. Enabling these delusions are the hangers-on who crowd Britain’s husks of aristocracy. It takes celebrities, journalists, and photographers to clothe their naked imperium and validate their feelings of uniqueness. And what does the intelligentsia get in return for this courtship? The answer, of course, is nothing. Because if Britain’s nobs know one thing, it is that they owe the world nothing. They have kept their noblesse but eschewed their oblige. In its place has come venality and codependence: rugged individualism without the actual ruggedness.

The historical way-markers to this implosion are well-documented. The First World War delivered a demographic and psychological blow of unprecedented proportion. Yet the next generation laughed into the void. The Roaring Twenties were a whirl of parties and bankruptcies. Only with the aid of married American fortunes did a carapace of their old values remain intact. The ’60s dissolved what remained of those values in a fug of dope and good tail. Those who didn’t succumb to the new addictions succumbed to old ones they could no longer afford. Titans of the British military like Sir David Stirling — cofounder of the SAS and a descendant of Charles II — gambled away their estates at the hands of unscrupulous Mayfair casino-owners who pretended to be their friends. The aristos were co-opted for their charm — read: money — by a new milieu that promoted the glamour of sexual and social transgression. Blinded by their inherited feelings of self-worth, they never realized they were being used by people who despised them. As a result, nowhere was Britain’s postwar political direction — dubbed “The Management of Decline” — internalized as effectively as among the people who had once driven its ascent.

[…]

How could a species that once steered Britain to greatness now claim the Darwin Award in every passing decade? The simple reason is that British aristocrats are the only people on earth among whom stupidity is not only accepted but prized. As the ultimate proof against meritocracy, it is the ultimate badge of honor. As Stendhal wrote in Le Rouge et Le Noir, “It is not doing something well or badly that is the crime: but doing it at all.”

“Bunky Mortimer III”, “Class Rejects: A Guide to the British Aristocracy”, Taki’s Magazine, 2018-03-02.

May 27, 2020

The Battle to Crack Enigma – The real story of ‘The Imitation Game’ – WW2 Special

Filed under: Britain, Germany, History, Military, Technology, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 26 May 2020

For the British, breaking the Germans’ seemingly unbreakable codes is one of the most vital battles of the war. If they fail, there is litte to stop the German U-Boats hunting down Allied shipping in the Atlantic.

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Hosted by: Indy Neidell
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Research by: Francis van Berkel
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Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)

Colorizations by:
Jaris Almazani (Artistic Man), https://instagram.com/artistic.man?ig…
Norman Stewart, https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/
Carlos Ortega Pereira, BlauColorizations, https://www.instagram.com/blaucoloriz…

Sources:
Bundesarchiv
Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
IWM D 23310, A 13709, A 23513
Picture of Enigma G model, courtesy Austin Mills https://flic.kr/p/2bQ9Q
reconstructed bombe machine at Bletchley Park, courtesy Gerald Massey
Picture of Enigma M4 model displayed at Bletchley Park, courtesy Magnus Manske
Picture of John Herivel, courtesy GCHQ
From the Noun Project: Letter by Mochammad Kafi, Desk by monkik, Phone by libertetstudio, person by Adrien Coquet, Letter by Bonegolem, Table by Creative Stall, documents by Johannes Hirsekorn, sitting at desk by IYIKON, Paper by James Kopina

Soundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
Reynard Seidel – “Deflection”
Johannes Bornlof – “The Inspector 4”
Phoenix Tail – “At the Front”
Johannes Bornlof – “Deviation In Time”
Gunnar Johnsen – “Not Safe Yet”
Hakan Eriksson – “Epic Adventure Theme 3”
Howard Harper-Barnes – “London”

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A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

World War Two
4 hours ago (edited)
Hopefully you’re all staying safe in these difficult times. We’re still marching on so that we can keep all of you entertained when you’re stuck at home. But we can only continue doing so thanks to your ongoing support. Ad revenue has dropped significantly because of COVID, and we rely on your support now more than ever. If you can, please support us on www.patreon.com/timeghosthistory or https://timeghost.tv.

Please let us know what other specials you’d like to see. And if you would like to know something about a smaller topic, make sure to submit that as a question for our Q&A series, Out of the Foxholes. You can do that right here: https://community.timeghost.tv/c/Out-of-the-Foxholes-Qs.

Cheers,
Francis

Webley 1913 Semiauto Pistol: History and Disassembly

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, Weapons, WW1 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 25 May 2017

William Whiting and the Webley company had high hopes for their self-loading pistols being adopted by the British military — but they never got the success they were hoping for.

After the poor performance of the Webley 1904 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hT38…) at trials, William Whiting decided to make sure his next attempt would be fully developed before he put it in the hands of the military. He did very well at that too, as the gun which would become the Model 1913 Webley did very well from its very first military tests. The Royal Navy was, in fact, quite enthusiastic about it, although the Army was not. The Navy would ultimately adopt the gun and purchase about 8,000 of them during World War One, while the Army acquired just a couple hundred and preferred to stick to its revolvers.

Thanks to Mike Carrick of Arms Heritage magazine for loaning me these pistols to bring to you!

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QotD: “Hate speech” is the new secular heresy

Filed under: Britain, Liberty, Media, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The cynical category of “hate speech” is openly used to police the parameters of acceptable thought and to punish those who are considered to hold heretical views that the guardians of moral correctness oppose. So not only are critics of Islam denounced as “hate speakers” — so are feminists who question the cult of transgenderism, Christians who disapprove of same-sex marriage, right-wing people who want stricter immigration controls, etc. These are all entirely legitimate political or moral opinions. The branding of them as “hate speech” — and therefore undeserving of the protections of freedom of speech — is really a way of calling these views heresy. And of course heretics must be cast out. Feminists, Catholics, critics of Islam — hound them off campus, get them off the airwaves, report them to the police for their crimes of hatred. This is an intolerant assault on heresy of the kind that has appeared many times throughout history. Those who say “It isn’t censorship” protest far too much. Deep down they know it is. Deep down they know they are to the 2020s what Joe McCarthy was to the 1950s.

Brendan O’Neill, “Why we must win the fight for free speech”, Spiked, 2020-02-26.

May 26, 2020

“No more pencils, no more books…”

Filed under: Britain, Education, History — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the latest edition of the Libertarian Enterprise, Sean Gabb considers the demands from the British government to quickly re-open the schools over the concerns of the educational unions and administrations:

The latest turn in an increasingly dull coverage of the Coronavirus panic is a proposed reopening of the schools. The Government wants them open as soon as possible for at least some of their students. The teaching unions are bleating that no one should go back until their members can be sure of not catching anything. The headmasters are worried about compliance with the social distancing rules. As a conservative of sorts, I think I am supposed to side with the Government and the pro-Conservative journalists — denouncing the teachers as a pack of idlers where not cowards, and insisting that those factories of essential skills must be set back in full production before the summer holidays. Of course, my settled view as a libertarian is that the teaching unions deserve all the support I have never so far given them. The schools must remain closed until no one is in any danger of so much as an attack of hay fever. The schools have been largely closed since the end of March. The longer they stay largely closed, the better. Best of all if they never reopen — or never reopen as they have been since attendance was made compulsory at the end of the nineteenth century.

I quote John Stuart Mill on compulsory schooling:

    A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body.
    (On Liberty, 1859, Chapter 5, “Applications.”)

This has always been the case in some degree. The spread of state schooling in England after 1870, and particularly after it was made compulsory in 1880, and then extended in 1902, is probably inseparable from the nationalist hysteria that drove our participation in the Great War. It also may explain the perverse belief, general until the 1970s, in the unique goodness and honesty of our ruling class. This being said, reasonable patriotism is to be encouraged; and, compared with others, our ruling class was not until recently so bad. A further point is that compulsory state schooling used to be reasonably effective at giving the mass of people a basic education. By 1960, most people were literate and numerate. They could spell and write grammatical prose. They had some exposure to the English classics, and the means of exploring these to greater depth if they wished. They had some understanding of history and the sciences. You can tell much about the quality of a people by examining what is read and watched. Looking at the popular arts in England during much of the twentieth century explains why this passage in On Liberty was less often discussed than his arguments for freedom of speech. Mill was right in the abstract. He could be shown to be right in certain particulars. But the evils of compulsory state schooling were mostly potential.

All this, however, is in the past. Since about 1980, schooling of all kinds has been made into a concerted means of indoctrination. The cultural leftists have captured both the classrooms and the curriculum. I will not elaborate on this claim. Some will argue over terminology, some over the merits of the capture, but hardly anyone denies the broad fact. One of the main functions of modern schooling is to bring about and to protect a radical departure from the old intellectual culture of this country.

Much of this departure has been achieved by preaching in the classroom. But it is supplemented by a growing bureaucracy of surveillance. The teachers themselves are watched, and they can be punished for dissenting from the established discourse. There is, for example, the Government’s Prevent strategy, which applies to the whole state machinery. Its purpose is to identify and root out anyone defined as a “political extremist.” Anyone identified as such is effectively banned from working with children and young people, and probably in the state sector as a whole.

May 24, 2020

Invasion of Crete: a Bloody Mess – WW2 – 091 – May 23 1941

Filed under: Australia, Britain, China, Europe, Germany, History, Japan, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 23 May 2020

Operation Mercury commences as fallschirmjäger airborne troops land on the Greek island of Crete. A bloody and messy battle follows as it turns out to be costly in more ways than one.

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Written and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
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
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)

Colorizations by:
– Julius Jääskeläinen – https://www.facebook.com/JJcolorization/
– Dememorabilia – https://www.instagram.com/dememorabilia/
– Norman Stewart – https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/
– Jaris Almazani (Artistic Man), https://instagram.com/artistic.man?ig…
– Carlos Ortega Pereira, BlauColorizations, https://www.instagram.com/blaucoloriz…

Sources:
– Imperial War Museum: A 28473, E 3064E, A 4154, A 4153, A 4149, A 4144, E 3066E, E 3023E, A 4156, E 6066
– Archives municipales de Brest
– Museums Victoria
– Bundesarchiv, CC-BY-SA 3.0: Bild_141-0816, Bild_183-L04232, Bild_101I-166-0527-10A, Bild 101I-166-0527-22 / Weixler, Franz Peter, Bild_183-L19019, Bild 146-1977-115-04, Bild 141-0823, Bild_101I-166-0512-39, Bild_146-1981-159-22, Bild_146-1980-090-34, E 3022E

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A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

May 23, 2020

Failed Assassinations — History Hijinks

Filed under: Britain, Europe, History, Humour, Middle East, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 22 May 2020

If videogames have taught me anything, it’s that an assassin can solve a lot of problems. But sometimes plans fall apart, and sometimes it’s for the absolute DUMBEST reasons.

SOURCES & Further Reading: A History of Venice by Norwich, Rebellion by Ackroyd, The Poison King by Mayor.

This video was edited by Sophia Ricciardi AKA “Indigo”. https://www.sophiakricci.com/
Our content is intended for teenage audiences and up.

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“System Mauser” – The Very First C96 Pistols

Filed under: Germany, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 12 Feb 2020

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https://www.floatplane.com/channel/Fo…

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The very first group of C96 pistols made — about 200 in total — are called “System Mauser” pistols. They have this hand-engraved on the top of the barrel, and have a number of other very early features that would quickly change. Most of these changes involve lightening the gun, but they also have a distinctive stepped barrel and a holster/stock that opened to the left; the opposite of all the later standard holsters.

Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle #36270
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May 22, 2020

Wehrmacht Wages, Argentina in WW2, and Otto von Habsburg – WW2 – OOTF 012

Filed under: Americas, Europe, Germany, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

World War Two
Published 21 May 2020

You’re just an average German doing your work when suddenly you’re called up for service and asked to put your life on the line for your country. But how does your country repay you? Find out today as we take a look at the regular German soldier’s salary, the political turmoil in Argentina during the war and the former powerhouse of Europe: the mighty Habsburg dynasty.

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Follow WW2 day by day on Instagram @World_war_two_realtime https://www.instagram.com/world_war_t…
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Isabel Wilson and Sietse Kenter
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: Isabel Wilson and Sietse Kenter
Edited by: Mikołaj Cackowski
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)

Colorizations by:
Carlos Ortega Pereira, BlauColorizations – https://www.instagram.com/blaucoloriz…
Norman Stewart – https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/
Adrien Fillon – https://www.instagram.com/adrien.colo…

Sources:
Bundesarchiv
IWM CH 11432
Wehrmacht Private, Sergeant and Colonel insignia, courtesy Skjolbro, Wikimedia Commons
Wehrmacht General and Gefreiter insignia, courtesy F l a n k e r, Wikimedia Commons
Otto von Habsburg with his son Georg in European Parliament , courtesy Ferenc Csomafáy
Portrait of Otto von Habsburg, courtesy Oliver Mark

Soundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
Max Anson – “Ancient Saga”
Johannes Bornlof – “Deviation In Time”
Johannes Bornlof – “The Inspector 4”

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

“Angels Calling” Pt. 2 – Guns, Gas and Steel – Sabaton History 068 [Official]

Filed under: Britain, Europe, France, Germany, History, Media, Military, WW1 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Sabaton History
Published 21 May 2020

The shadow of trench warfare is a long one. In fact the soldiers at the front did not just rely on their guns and grenades alone, but on a wartime industry to keep them fighting. Everything had to be produced in the millions. Not only rifles, cartridges and shells, but boots, helmets, spades and everything else that was used on a daily basis. The Great War was a war that thrived on a nation-wide war-economy, the likes of which had never been seen or tried before.

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Watch the Official Video of “Angels Calling” here:
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Hosted 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
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:
Imperial War Museum: (E(AUS) 1497),(Q 87945), (HU_91107), (Q 109611), (IWM Q 3001), (Q 69229), (Q 14945), (Q 5855), (Q 110355), (Q30009), (Q 9340), (Q 10450), (Q 70680)
Bundesarchive
National Archives NARA
Library of Scotland
Internet Archive Book Images
Bulgarian Archive State Agency
The icons from Noun Project by: Creative Mania, Chanut is Industries, Ben Davis, Vichanon Chaimsuk, Assyifa Art, chiccabubble, Nociconist, Vectors Marke, lastspark, faisal, Nun, Setyo Ari Wibowo, Mohamad Arif Prasetyo, Nibras@design,Creative Stall, Bruno Bosse, ghufronagustian, Karla Design,Gan Khoon Lay, Eucalyp, Anton, Marta Botter, Iconic, Daniel Turner, Naufal Hudallah, Phạm Thanh Lộc, Ruben Vh, Vectorstall, Icon Lauk, Mahmure Alp, Luke Anthony, Deemak Daksina, Sergey Krivoy, Andrejs Kirma, Rflor, Andrejs Kirma, Shovel by David, ProSymbols, Jake Dunham, noSimon Child, Wonmo Kang, Nubaia Karim Barsha, Nikita Kozin, Dolly Holmes, Collicon, Made by Made & Graphic Enginer
Flag of Spain recreated by HansenBCN and SanchoPanzaXXI

An OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.

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First War of Scottish Independence | 3 Minute History

Filed under: Britain, France, History, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Jabzy
Published 22 Jun 2015

The First Scottish War of Independence

QotD: “Scientific” racism

Filed under: Education, Germany, History, Quotations, Science — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… the intellectualized racism that infected the West in the 19th century was the brainchild not of science but of the humanities: history, philology, classics, and mythology. In 1853, Arthur de Gobineau, a fiction writer and amateur historian, published his cockamamie theory that a race of virile white men, the Aryans, spilled out of an ancient homeland and spread a heroic warrior civilization across Eurasia, diverging into the Persians, Hittites, Homeric Greeks, and Vedic Hindus, and later into the Vikings, Goths, and other Germanic tribes. (The speck of reality in this story is that these tribes spoke languages that fell into a single family, Indo-European.) Everything went downhill when the Aryans interbred with inferior conquered peoples, diluting their greatness and causing them to degenerate into the effete, decadent, soulless, bourgeois, commercial cultures that the Romantics were always whingeing about. It was a small step to fuse this fairy tale with German Romantic nationalism and anti-Semitism: The Teutonic Volk were the heirs of the Aryans, the Jews a mongrel race of Asiatics. Gobineau’s ideas were eaten up by Richard Wagner (whose operas were held to be re-creations of the original Aryan myths) and by Wagner’s son-in-law Houston Stewart Chamberlain (a philosopher who wrote that Jews polluted Teutonic civilization with capitalism, liberal humanism, and sterile science). From them the ideas reached Hitler, who called Chamberlain his “spiritual father.”

Science played little role in this chain of influence. Pointedly, Gobineau, Chamberlain, and Hitler rejected Darwin’s theory of evolution, particularly the idea that all humans had gradually evolved from apes, which was incompatible with their Romantic theory of race and with the older folk and religious notions from which it had emerged. According to these widespread beliefs, races were separate species; they were fitted to civilizations with different levels of sophistication; and they would degenerate if they mixed. Darwin argued that humans are closely related members of a single species with a common ancestry, that all peoples have “savage” origins, that the mental capacities of all races are virtually the same, and that the races blend into one another with no harm from interbreeding. The University of Chicago historian Robert Richards, who traced Hitler’s influences, ended his book titled Was Hitler a Darwinian? (a common claim among creationists) with “The only reasonable answer to the question … is a very loud and unequivocal No.”

Steven Pinker, “The Intellectual War on Science”, Chronicle of Higher Education, 2018-02-13.

May 21, 2020

1949: Death and Sovereignty | The Indonesian War of Independence Part 5

Filed under: Asia, Europe, History, Military — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

TimeGhost History
Published 20 May 2020

The Dutch reconquered most of the Indonesian cities on Java and Sumatra, but the Indonesian War of Independence continues as the international community grows tired of the Dutch attitude.

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Isabel Wilson and Joram Appel
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: Isabel Wilson and Joram Appel
Edited by: Karolina Dołęga
Maps: Ryan Weatherby
Sound design: Marek Kamiński

Colorizations:
Carlos Ortega Pereira (BlauColorizations) – https://www.instagram.com/blaucoloriz…

Bibliography: https://bit.ly/IndoSources

Image Sources:
Nationaal Archief
Tropenmuseum, part of the National Museum of World Cultures
Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia
Tukangpulas – https://www.instagram.com/tukangpulas…

The icons from The Noun Project by Adrien Coquet

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

TimeGhost History
1 day ago
We have seen two colonial offensives, two peace agreements, civil wars and multiple foreign interventions. And yet, 1949 is the most deadly year of the entire Indonesian War of Independence. And, without spoiling the episode, stuff doesn’t end in 1949. Indonesia will stay the stage of revolts, colonialism, civil war and ideological purges for decades to come. We won’t get to cover that in these series, as these are exclusively about the Indonesian War of Independence from 1945 to 1949. We might revisit the area in the future though. If you want to support that, and share in the decision of what series to make next, you can support us on www.patreon.com/timeghosthistory or https://timeghost.tv.
Cheers, Joram and Izzy

The Great Exhibition of 1851 also served (for some) as the 19th century equivalent of the “Missile Gap” controversy

Filed under: Britain, Education, Government, History — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the latest edition of his Age of Invention newsletter, Anton Howes discusses the changing role of the British government and how the Great Exhibition was also useful as subtle domestic propaganda for a more active role for government in the British economy:

The Crystal Palace from the northeast during the Great Exhibition of 1851, image from the 1852 book Dickinsons’ comprehensive pictures of the Great Exhibition of 1851
Wikimedia Commons.

… a whole new opportunity for reform was provided by the Great Exhibition of 1851. As I explained in the previous newsletter, an international exhibition of industry functioned as an audit of the world’s industries. It, and its successors, the world’s fairs, gave some indication of how Britain stood relative to rival nations, especially France, Prussia, and the United States. And whereas some people saw the Great Exhibition as a clear mark of Britain’s superiority, for would-be reformers it was a chance to expose worrying weaknesses. Thus, Henry Cole and the other original organisers of the exhibition at the Society of Arts exacerbated fears of Britain’s impending decline, giving them an excuse to create the systems they desired.

They identified two areas of worry: science and design. Britain of course had many eminent scientists and artists — some of the best in the world — but other countries seemed to have become better at diffusing scientific training and superior taste throughout the workforce as a whole. Design skills were an issue because France appeared to be catching up with Britain when it came to the mechanisation of industry; if it caught up on machinery while maintaining its lead in fashion, then Britain would not be able to compete. And scientific training appeared more useful than ever, with the latest scientific advances “influencing production to an extent never before dreamt of”. Visitors to the Great Exhibition had marvelled at the recent inventions of artificial dyes, a method of processing beetroot sugar, and the latest improvements to photography and the electric telegraph. Thus, for Britain to maintain its lead, it would need to improve the education of its workers.

The reformers’ scare tactics worked. The aftermath of the Great Exhibition saw the creation of a government Department of Science and Art under the direction of Henry Cole, who in turn oversaw the agglomeration of various museums, design schools, and other cultural institutions to what is now the “Museum Mile” in South Kensington. (Curiously, the area was originally called Brompton, but when Cole opened a museum of design and industry there, he named it the South Kensington Museum. Kensington was a much more aristocratic area nearby, though it had no “south” at the time. The museum evolved, rather complicatedly, into what is now the Victoria & Albert Museum. But unlike so many top-down area re-brands, the name South Kensington stuck.)

And that was just the beginning. Cole and his allies then oversaw a dramatic expansion of the state into education, largely through the use of examinations. Although state-funding for education had initially centred on building new schools, getting any more involved was a highly contentious issue. Most schools were controlled and funded by religious organisations, but were split between the established Anglican church and dissenters. When the government first became involved in schools, it was thus bitterly opposed by many dissenters as they feared that their children might become indoctrinated to Anglicanism. And naturally, the government could not teach dissenting religions. Yet the proposed compromise of teaching no religion at all was unacceptable to both sides. Schools were crucial, the groups believed, to keeping religion alive.

So the utilitarians came up with a workaround. Rather than getting the state too involved directly in managing the schools themselves, it would instead influence the curriculum. By holding examinations, and then paying teachers based on the outcomes of the tests, they could incentivise the teaching of certain subjects and leave the schools free to teach whatever religious beliefs they pleased. Indeed, by diverting more and more time towards teaching particular subjects, the reformers saw it as a secularising blow “against parsonic influence”. The tactic was initially applied to adult education. The Society of Arts would first trial out examinations without payments, to test their viability. Then Cole would have his department take over the examinations, first for drawing, and later for science, using his budget to fund payment-by-results. The effects were dramatic. The Society’s relatively popular examinations in chemistry, for example, rarely had more than a hundred candidates a year. But when the department instituted its payments, it soon drew in thousands. By 1862, when the government wanted to improve the teaching of reading, writing, and arithmetic in schools, they adopted Cole’s suggestion that they also use payment-by-results.

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