World War Two
Published 30 Apr 2022The Allies launch a deception operation to hide their intent of soon attacking Sicily, but first, they’ll actually have to secure Tunisia, and it is slow going. A German offensive in the Caucasus grinds to a halt, and German U-boats are suddenly finding themselves unable to destroy Allied shipping in the Atlantic.
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May 1, 2022
The race for Tunisia turns into a crawl – WW2 – 192 – April 30, 1943
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Sinking of the General Belgrano – Falklands War Documentary
Historigraph
Published 30 Apr 2022Go to https://squarespace.com/historigraph to get a free trial and 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.
Falklands War series:
[1] Invasion of the Falklands https://youtu.be/BUYp3Wqz00A
[2] Recapture of South Georgia https://youtu.be/4mCZBpX4pxsTo help support the creation of more videos, consider supporting on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/historigraph#FalklandsWar #Historigraph #Belgrano
Come join the historigraph discord: https://discord.gg/ygypfs3BEB
Buy Historigraph Posters here! historigraph.creator-spring.com
This video was sponsored by Squarespace.
► Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/historigraph
► Second Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpIj…
► Twitter: https://twitter.com/historigraph
► Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/historigraphSources for the Falklands War Series (so far):
Max Hastings & Simon Jenkins, Battle for the Falklands
https://archive.org/details/battlefor…
Martin Middlebrook, Operation Corporate
Martin Middlebrook, Battle for the Malvinas
Mike Norman, The Falklands War There and Back Again: The Story of Naval Party 8901
Kenneth Privratsky, Logistics in the Falklands War
Sandy Woodward, One Hundred Days
Paul Brown, Abandon Ship
Julian Thompson, No Picnic
John Shields, Air Power in the Falklands Conflict
Edward Hampshire, The Falklands Naval Campaign 1982
Hugh McManners, Forgotten Voices of the Falklands
Cedric Delves, Across an Angry Sea: The SAS in the Falklands War
Rowland White, Vulcan 607
Vernon Bogdanor, “The Falklands War 1982” lecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9bWw…
Arthur Gavshon, The sinking of the Belgrano https://archive.org/details/sinkingof…
Gordon Smith, Battle Atlas of the Falklands War 1982 by Land, Sea and Air
http://www.naval-history.net/NAVAL198…
Hansard- https://api.parliament.uk/historic-ha…
Recording of Thatcher’s statement to the Commons is from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvbhV…Music Credits:
“Rynos Theme” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b…“Crypto” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b…“Stay the Course” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b…Other music and SFX from Epidemic Sound
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The Victorian-era “guarantee fund” model for risky enterprises
In the latest Age of Inventions newsletter, Anton Howes wonders why we don’t have a modern equivalent to the funding mechanism that helped create the Great Exhibition of 1851 and other events that provided benefits to the public without government backing:
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 via Wikimedia Commons.
As I’ve mentioned before, exhibitions of industry were not just celebrations of technological progress, but could become engines for progress as well. For the inventors, artists, and engineers who exhibited, the events were a direct inducement to improvement. And for the public who visited, the events exposed them to what was possible, encouraging them to raise their demands as both consumers and citizens, ideally inspiring them to become future innovators too.
But how was it all paid for? Unlike its national-level precursors in France, the Great Exhibition was not a state-run event. Even more remarkably, its organisers also failed to raise anywhere near enough private subscriptions to cover their costs. Instead, they used something that called a “guarantee fund”.
Instead of asking for donations from supporters up-front, the organisers asked them to commit to covering the exhibitions potential losses up to certain amounts — to be paid only if the money was required. Based on the security provided by this crowdsourced guarantee fund, the organisers then raised an ordinary bank loan in order to get the cash they needed to actually hold the event. Crucially, the guarantors didn’t actually have to spend anything unless the event made a loss, and if the event broke even or even made a surplus thanks to ticket fees, then they would never spend a penny at all. (Luckily for them, that’s exactly what happened in 1851, and for many later exhibitions too.)
What’s interesting to me about the guarantee fund is that I can’t quite think of anything quite like it today. There are perhaps more individualised versions of it, like when a neighbour or friend acts as a guarantor for a mortgage. And governments sometimes provide guarantees for certain sectors or industries too. There have also been a few profit-making versions of it in certain industries, where the guarantors potentially get some share of the upside too (“Names” at the Lloyds of London insurance and reinsurance market sounds similar, though even these are disappearing). But I’ve not seen anything like what the Victorians did, essentially using a guarantee fund to leverage philanthropy.
This is surprising to me. It seems like it has a lot of major advantages, especially for those who might want to replicate the exhibitions of industry today, or indeed for any kind of capital-intensive philanthropic endeavour that could eventually be expected in some measure to pay for itself. (I can’t help but think it would be useful in efforts to speed up the de-carbonisation of the economy, for example — a potential application that I’ve been exploring in my conversations with the people at Carbon Upcycling.)
Consider that with a guarantee fund anyone able to afford the risk could considerably increase the philanthropic value of their assets. Say that you could afford to donate £100 right away, but could donate three times that amount at a pinch (e.g. by having to liquidate some funds in shares). You could thus guarantee £100 each to three different causes, potentially without ever actually having to donate it, and knowing that in the worst case scenario you would never have to spend more than the £300 you can afford.
After all, those signing up to the guarantee fund essentially chose what their maximum liability would be if the event were to make a loss. If they were confident in the event’s success, then they probably believed that they would not have to pay anything at all. And if not, they had at least named the maximum donation they might eventually be asked to give.
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Various Guns – Bren Gun (1940)
British Pathé
Published 13 Apr 2014Various guns – Bren gun.
Item on the Bren Gun. L/S parachutists falling to earth. After seeing various machine guns of the recent past, including the Browning BAR and French Chauchat machine gun, we see the manufacture and firing of the Bren gun. There is also a diagrammatic sequence showing the workings of the gas operated machine gun.
FILM ID:1292.13A VIDEO FROM BRITISH PATHÉ. EXPLORE OUR ONLINE CHANNEL, BRITISH PATHÉ TV. IT’S FULL OF GREAT DOCUMENTARIES, FASCINATING INTERVIEWS, AND CLASSIC MOVIES. http://www.britishpathe.tv/
FOR LICENSING ENQUIRIES VISIT http://www.britishpathe.com/
British Pathé also represents the Reuters historical collection, which includes more than 136,000 items from the news agencies Gaumont Graphic (1910-1932), Empire News Bulletin (1926-1930), British Paramount (1931-1957), and Gaumont British (1934-1959), as well as Visnews content from 1957 to the end of 1984. All footage can be viewed on the British Pathé website. https://www.britishpathe.com/
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April 30, 2022
God Help These British Agents – WW2 – Spies & Ties 16
World War Two
Published 28 Apr 2022We’ve seen it time and time again in this war. Supposed Allies arguing with each other instead of fighting the enemy. But when SOE and MI6 begin vying for leadership of Britain’s secret war, it’s more than cross words. Now there are lives at stake.
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“The NFL Draft is not socialism. It’s capitalism on steroids”
Peter Jacobsen refutes the claim that the NFL Draft is like socialism:
Once we recognize that teams aren’t really business competitors, and insofar as there is athletic competition it’s tempered to maximize profit, the claim that the draft is socialism rings pretty hollow.
But, as if this weren’t enough, history also debunks the claim that the draft is a socialist institution.
In 1934, Minnesota Gophers’ senior running back, Stan Kostka, led his team to an undefeated season and made himself the top prospect for professional teams. As a result, teams engaged in a bidding war which ended in Stan going to the (no longer existing) Brooklyn Dodgers.
As a result of the bidding war, Kostka became the highest paid player in the NFL (with a $5,000 contract).
The owner of the Philadelphia Eagles was so mad about losing the bidding war that he proposed the idea of the draft to the NFL the following year.
So, in other words, the NFL draft started as a way for team owners to cooperate to keep player wages below where they would be if bidding wars were allowed.
To be fair, I haven’t read everything Marx wrote. But something tells me a system where capital owners cooperate to keep employer bidding wars from occurring isn’t praised in some obscure work he and Engels published. In fact, this is about as opposite to Marx as you can get.
In the modern day, players have formed unions to combat owner cooperation, but the point remains the same. The NFL is a highly sophisticated organizational structure that allows athletic competitors to cooperate in the goal of making money.
So, insofar as Americans enjoy the exciting games created by the draft system, they don’t have socialism to thank. Instead they should thank the cooperation facilitated by self-interest channeled through the free market.
The NFL Draft is not socialism. It’s capitalism on steroids.
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Tank Chats #145 Conqueror | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 14 Jan 2022► JOIN OUR PATREON: Our Patreons have already enjoyed Early Access and AD free viewing of our weekly YouTube video! Consider becoming a Patreon Supporter today: https://www.patreon.com/tankmuseum
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QotD: The position of helots in Spartan society
… helots made up not only a simple majority of the human beings living under the Spartan state, but in fact a huge super-majority. For comparison, about a third of the population of the American South in 1860 was held in slavery and we rightly call that a “slave society”. Societies where an absolute majority of persons are held in slavery are extremely rare, but Sparta’s massive super-majority of enslaved persons is – to my knowledge – unique in human history.
We are very poorly informed about the helots. Our snobbish sources … are, for the most part, singularly uninterested in them, so we’re left putting together a patchwork of information. That in turn leads into situations where students of ancient Greece can can up with the wrong impression if they don’t have all of the sources in mind (we’ll see this is a common trend with Sparta – reading just Xenophon or just Plutarch can be deeply misleading).
First, let us dispense with the argument, sometimes offered, that the helots were more like medieval serfs than slaves as we understand the ideas and thus not really slaves – this is nonsense. Helots seem to have been able to own moveable property (money, clothing etc), but in fact this is true of many ancient slaves, including Roman ones (the Romans called this quasi-property peculium, which also applied to the property of children and even many women who were under the legal power (potestas) of another). Owning small amounts of moveable property was not rare among ancient non-free individuals (or, for that matter, other forms of slavery).
No, what legally separated helots from douloi (chattel slaves in most Greek societies) was that they were slaves of the Spartan state rather than of individual Spartans – this had nothing to do with any sense of greater freedom they might have had. Indeed, Plutarch relates the saying that “in Sparta the free man is more free than anywhere else in the world, and the slave more a slave” (Plut. Lyc. 28.5). He can only be referring to the helots here. Indeed, Plutarch’s statement is telling – the helots were treated poorly by the standards of ancient chattel slavery, which is, I must stress, an incredibly low bar. Ancient societies treated enslaved people absolutely horribly and yet somehow the helot lot was commonly thought worse.
But the final word on if we should consider the helots fully non-free is in their sanctity of person: they had none, at all, whatsoever. Every year, in autumn by ritual, the five Spartan magistrates known as the ephors declared war between Sparta and the helots – Sparta essentially declares war on part of itself – so that any spartiate might kill any helot without legal or religious repercussions (Plut. Lyc. 28.4; note also Hdt. 4.146.2). Isocrates – admittedly a decidedly anti-Spartan voice – notes that it was a religious, if not legal, infraction to kill slaves everywhere in Greece except Sparta (Isoc. 12.181). As a matter of Athenian law, killing a slave was still murder (the same is true in Roman law). One assumes these rules were often ignored by slave-holders of course – we know that many such laws in the American South were routinely flouted. Slavery is, after all, a brutal and inhuman institution by its very nature. The absence of any taboo – legal or religious – against the killing of helots marks the institution as uncommonly brutal not merely by Greek standards, but by world-historical standards.
We may safely conclude that the helots were not only enslaved persons, but that of all slaves, they had some of the fewest protections – effectively none, not even protections in-name-only.
But what do the helots do?
The answer is mostly “they farm” but getting more specific than that get sticky fast. But we may try to keep this brief: helots were enslaved agricultural laborers. Helots were owned not by individual spartiates, but by the Spartan state, where they were assigned – through whatever method we do not know – to work the plots of land (kleroi, see above) assigned to the spartiates who, as noted above, were forbidden from engaging in any kind of productive labor. The helots seem to have lived in their own villages and settlements – no great surprise, as the Messenian helots seem to have been far more numerous than the Laconian ones and the spartiates themselves did not live in Messenia in any great numbers. It does seem that the Messenian helots were gathered in a smaller number of nucleated villages rather than split up as farmsteads, probably to make it easier for the small number of spartiates stationed there to keep watch on them. And they seemed to have produced not only simple cereal staples, but the full range of agricultural products: wheat (Xen Lac. 5.3 – we’ll come back to this), barley, grapes and wine, figs, olives and olive oil, cheese, textiles (wool) and animal products, including meat and fish.
Bret Devereaux, “Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part II: Spartan Equality”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2019-08-23.
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April 29, 2022
Setting the Stage for Borodino – The Battle of Shevardino Redoubt
Real Time History
Published 28 Apr 2022Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/realtimehistory
Napoleon’s advancing army had finally spotted the entire Russian Army before them, the stage was set for the deciding clash of the Russian campaign at the small village of Borodino. Before the armies could duke it out, Napoleon wanted to eliminate a forward defensive position on the Russian left flank: The Shevardino Redoubt.
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Boudon, Jacques-Olivier. Napoléon et la campagne de Russie en 1812. 2021.
Lieven, Dominic. Russia Against Napoleon. 2010.
Mikaberidze, Alexander. The Battle of Borodino: Napoleon against Kutuzov. 2007.
Rey, Marie-Pierre. L’effroyable tragédie: une nouvelle histoire de la campagne de Russie. 2012.
Zamoyski, Adam. 1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow. 2005.» OUR STORE
Website: https://realtimehistory.net»CREDITS
Presented by: Jesse Alexander
Written by: Jesse Alexander
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Kalevala – The most epic national epic
Mandelin
Published 2 Feb 2021Kalevala is the national epic of Finland. But if you have no time to read through all the 22,795 verses, but still want to learn more about this epic Finnish epic, this video contains most of the important things you need to know about.
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April 28, 2022
Britain’s Incredible Recapture of South Georgia – Falklands War Documentary
Historigraph
Published 27 Apr 2022Go to https://squarespace.com/historigraph to get a free trial and 10% off your first purchase of
a website or domain.In just three weeks after the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland islands, Britain threw together a task force out of thin air, sailed it 8000 miles around the world and started taking its territory back. This is how it happened.
Made with thanks to the Fleet Air Arm Musuem in Yeovilton, Somerset. https://www.fleetairarm.com/
To help support the creation of the rest of the Falklands series, consider supporting on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/historigraph#Falklands40 #Historigraph
Come join the historigraph discord: https://discord.gg/ygypfs3BEB
Buy Historigraph Posters here! historigraph.creator-spring.com
► Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/historigraph
► Second Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpIj…
► Twitter: https://twitter.com/historigraph
► Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/historigraph
Thumbnail credit Daniel Behennec: https://www.naval-history.net/FxDBMis…Sources for the Falklands War Series (so far):
Max Hastings & Simon Jenkins, Battle for the Falklands
https://archive.org/details/battlefor…
Martin Middlebrook, Operation Corporate
Martin Middlebrook, Battle for the Malvinas
Mike Norman, The Falklands War There and Back Again: The Story of Naval Party 8901
Kenneth Privratsky, Logistics in the Falklands War
Sandy Woodward, One Hundred Days
Paul Brown, Abandon Ship
Julian Thompson, No Picnic
John Shields, Air Power in the Falklands Conflict
Edward Hampshire, The Falklands Naval Campaign 1982
Hugh McManners, Forgotten Voices of the Falklands
Cedric Delves, Across an Angry Sea: The SAS in the Falklands War
Rowland White, Vulcan 607
Vernon Bogdanor, “The Falklands War, 1982” lecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9bWw…
Arthur Gavshon, “The sinking of the Belgrano” https://archive.org/details/sinkingof…
Gordon Smith, Battle Atlas of the Falklands War 1982 by Land, Sea and Air
http://www.naval-history.net/NAVAL198…
Hansard- https://api.parliament.uk/historic-ha…
Recording of Thatcher’s statement to the Commons is from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvbhV…Music Credits:
“Rynos Theme” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b…“Crypto” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b…“Stay the Course” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b…Other music and SFX from Epidemic Sound
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April 27, 2022
Why It Sucked To Be on a Merchant Ship in World War Two – WW2 Special
World War Two
Published 26 Apr 2022Serving on board a merchant ship during the Second World War was a hazardous endeavor. Stalked by submarines, attacked by surface raiders, and hunted by bombers, the convoys and individual cargo ships faced constant danger on their routes across the seas. And that is in addition to the job’s typical hazards. But what was life like for a regular sailor on board these ships? And what motivates a man to sign up for such a dangerous job?
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“We’re healthy from the bottom up, and sick from the top down.”
Chris Bray has a bit of fun at David French’s expense:
In the 1830s, British merchants with trade routes from India had forced open an enormous market for opium in China, and were pouring the product into the country, producing a lucrative addiction crisis. (Queen Victoria, the first Sackler.) But the Qing Dynasty had run China with a firm hand since the first half of the 17th century, and the emperors of the dynasty had long regarded themselves as, to use an academic term from the field of political science, The Shit. In 1839, Commissioner Lin Zexu sent a huffy letter to the British monarch, warning her that her tedious little pissant country over there in Nowhereville was trifling with a vast and dangerous power:
Our celestial empire rules over ten thousand kingdoms! Most surely do we possess a measure of godlike majesty which ye cannot fathom! Still we cannot bear to slay or exterminate without previous warning …
The British responded with naval artillery, and the limits of the Qing Dynasty’s power were revealed with the greatest possible clarity. Commissioner Lin had an image of himself, an understanding of his place in the world and the meaning of his nation’s power, that couldn’t survive an encounter with reality.
So: David French. In his own version of Commissioner Lin’s letter, French warns this week that American institutions most surely do possess a measure of godlike majesty which ye cannot fathom, yet ye weak and depraved subjects of these potent institutions offer not thine gratitude. It’s insane. He doesn’t see the world he’s describing, so his description doesn’t have anything to do with the people he’s talking to, and he has no idea.
Before I say anything else, though, I have to point out that I recently described the American crisis like this: “We’re healthy from the bottom up, and sick from the top down.” French does the opposite, describing institutions that are undermined by the dreadful human material beneath them: “Our government is imperfect, but if this republic fractures, its people will be to blame.” Wreckers and saboteurs have undermined the otherwise successful five year plan, you see. The problem is bottom-up.
This is exactly the same beat patrolled by “real conservatives” like Max Boot and Tom Nichols, who endlessly warn that the fat dumb peasants lack the sense to lick the hands of their capable superiors. These are very strange men.
Here, watch French do his thing:
The people disproportionately driving polarization in the United States are not oppressed minorities, but rather some of the most powerful, most privileged, wealthiest people who’ve ever lived. They enjoy more freedom and opportunity than virtually any prior generation of humans, all while living under the protective umbrella of the most powerful military in the history of the planet.
It’s simply an astonishing level of discontent in the midst of astonishing wealth and power.
Tell me the comparison to Commissioner Lin isn’t perfect. Does not our wealth and power astonish you!?!?
As French writes about the privileged creatures who live “under the protective umbrella of the most powerful military in the history of the planet,” the Taliban rules Afghanistan. A reminder: The Taliban controlled about half of that country in September of 2001; then the most powerful military in the history of the planet invaded, and fought the Taliban for two full decades, at the cost of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars, the result of which is that the Taliban now controls … all of the country. The implosion of the American effort in Afghanistan happened last fucking year, and we’ve somehow already taken care to forget the details of that goat rodeo. What was the plan?
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April 26, 2022
The Crusades: Part 1 – The Long Prehistory
seangabb
Published 23 Jan 2021The Crusades are the defining event of the Middle Ages. They brought the very different civilisations of Western Europe, Byzantium and Islam into an extended period of both conflict and peaceful co-existence. Between January and March 2021, Sean Gabb explored this long encounter with his students. Here is one of his lectures. All student contributions have been removed.
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History of Rome in 15 Buildings 06. The Pantheon
toldinstone
Published 27 Sep 2018The sixth building in our History of Rome, the Pantheon, epitomizes the most stable Roman building material and the most restless Roman emperor – concrete and Hadrian, respectively. This episode discusses the peculiarities of both in some detail.
If you enjoyed this video, you might be interested in my book Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants: Frequently Asked Questions about the Ancient Greeks and Romans. You can find a preview of the book here:
https://toldinstone.com/naked-statues…
If you’re so inclined, you can follow me elsewhere on the web:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorian…
https://www.instagram.com/toldinstone/To see the story and photo essay associated with this video, go to:
https://toldinstone.com/the-pantheon/Thanks for watching!
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