… it should not be thought for one second that Gandhi’s finally full-blown desire to detach India from the British empire gave him the slightest sympathy with other colonial peoples pursuing similar objectives. Throughout his entire life Gandhi displayed the most spectacular inability to understand or even really take in people unlike himself — a trait which V.S. Naipaul considers specifically Hindu, and I am inclined to agree. Just as Gandhi had been totally unconcerned with the situation of South Africa’s blacks (he hardly noticed they were there until they rebelled), so now he was totally unconcerned with other Asians or Africans. In fact, he was adamantly opposed to certain Arab movements within the Ottoman empire for reasons of internal Indian politics.
At the close of World War I, the Muslims of India were deeply absorbed in what they called the “Khilafat” movement — “Khilafat” being their corruption of “Caliphate,” the Caliph in question being the Ottoman Sultan. In addition to his temporal powers, the Sultan of the Ottoman empire held the spiritual position of Caliph, supreme leader of the world’s Muslims and successor to the Prophet Muhammad. At the defeat of the Central Powers (Germany, Austria, Turkey), the Sultan was a prisoner in his palace in Constantinople, shorn of his religious as well as his political authority, and the Muslims of India were incensed. It so happened that the former subject peoples of the Ottoman empire, principally Arabs, were perfectly happy to be rid of this Caliph, and even the Turks were glad to be rid of him, but this made no impression at all on the Muslims of India, for whom the issue was essentially a club with which to beat the British. Until this odd historical moment, Indian Muslims had felt little real allegiance to the Ottoman Sultan either, but now that he had fallen, the British had done it! The British had taken away their Khilafat! And one of the most ardent supporters of this Indian Muslim movement was the new Hindu leader, Gandhi.
Richard Grenier, “The Gandhi Nobody Knows”, Commentary, 1983-03-01.
November 7, 2018
QotD: Gandhi and the fall of the Caliphate
November 6, 2018
George Patton & Douglas MacArthur In World War 1 I WHO DID WHAT IN WW1?
The Great War
Published on 5 Nov 2018Check out Dessert Operations: http://bit.ly/TheGreatWar_DO
George S. Patton and Douglas MacArthur both served as senior officers in the First World War 1, a conflict that shaped their understanding of military strategy and tactics and formed them into the men that would become legends 20 years later.
Viking Expansion – Rollo the Walker – Extra History – #2
Extra Credits
Published on 3 Nov 2018Rollo the Walker led the Great Heathen Army and had his sights set on sacking Paris, in a time when relations between the Vikings and the Franks had become, essentially, getting paid to raid. Eventually his sights would turn to stability — and he became the founder of Normandy.
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An alternative explanation for the population explosion of the “land whales”
Tim Worstall suggests that the real reason for our collective expanding waistlines isn’t evil capitalist exploiters pushing us to eat unhealthy fast food:
We don’t, for example, eat more than our forefathers did. Sure, we can all play games with how much people lie on those self-reported surveys about calorie intake. True, to make sense of it being lies we’d have to assume that people lie more now than they used to. So, instead, let’s look at official guidance. In WW1 the aim was, for the Army, to stuff some 4,300 calories a day into each frontline soldier out there in the trenches. Something they largely achieved too. In WWII rationing peeps started to worry that diets of less than 2,900 calories a day would lead to weight loss. Today official guidance is that 2,500 a day for men, 2,000 for women. Well, that’s the last one I recall at least.
I suspect that people actually do lie more on self-reporting surveys of that kind than they once did, if only because we’ve had several decades of prissy lecturing about what we should consume … the temptation to shade the answers in the “right” direction I’m sure plays some part, but not enough to explain the obesity crisis. If you doubt that this happens, remember that a significant number of people vote for the party they expect to win rather than the party that best represents their interests or desires. Sucking up to teacher is a very common psychological trait.
However, back to the swelling obesity numbers:
Actually, 40 years ago is about when central heating became a commonplace in Britain. Anyone of my maturity in years – which includes G. Monbiot – and even those from thoroughly upper middle class backgrounds – both me and G. Monbiot – will recall ice on the inside of bedroom windows in winter. Houses simply were not fully heated throughout. Actually, pretty much the entire country was in what we’d now call fuel poverty. That fuel poverty that we have standards for these days, you should be able to heat the entire house to such and such a temperature on less than 10% of income. A standard which just about no one pre-1950 reached, few pre-1970 did.
America had that heating rather earlier than we did. Americans also became land whales that little bit earlier than we did. Anecdata I know but a move to the US in 1981 was marked with an observation of how warm Americans kept their houses in winter.
We do actually spend quite a lot on all this public health stuff these days. It might be worth someone doing a little study of correlations. Different nations became lardbuckets at different times. Different nations adopted central heating as a commonplace at different times. Why don’t we go see what the correlation between those two is?
After all, the idea that mammals use some significant portion of their energy intake for body temperature regulation isn’t exactly fringe science, is it?
Strange History: A Remington Rolling Block From the USS Niagara
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 16 Oct 2018https://www.forgottenweapons.com/stra…
http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
The story of the USS Niagara is quite an odd little corner of history. It was a ship built in 1877 and acquired by the US Navy in 1898, fitted out as a water distillery and supply ship. That fitting out was not actually done by the Navy, though, but rather by a group of wealth private citizens in New York, headed by William Randolph Hearst. As an outburst of (allegedly) grassroots support for the US war effort against Spain, these men outfitted and donated the Niagara to the Navy. And the fitted it out like a private yacht, with porcelain china and silver flatware for all the officers and sailors, and much more. The arms and accouterments purchased were all finely stamped or engraved with the name of the ship, including 35 brand new Remington Rolling Block rifles in 7mm Mauser, with “NIAGARA” engraved in bold letters across the top of the receiver.
Once the outfitting was complete and the ship was in Navy service, she sailed down to Cuba, stayed on station for about two months without participating in any action of note, and then sailed back to New York to be decommissioned and sold for scrap. Francis Bannerman was on hand at the scrap auction, and bought most of the small items form the ship (including the rifles). Bannerman’s catalog would list Niagara items until 1927…
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QotD: Architectural modernism
In this scholarly, learned but also enjoyably polemical book, Professor Curl recounts both the history and devastating effects of architectural modernism. In no field of human endeavour has the idea that history imposes a way to create been more destructive, or more importantly destructive: for while we can take avoiding action against bad art or literature, we cannot avoid the scouring of our eyes by bad architecture. It is imposed on us willy-nilly and we are impotent in the face of it. Modern capitalism, it has been said, progresses by creative destruction; modern architecture imposes itself by destructive creation.
As Professor Curl makes clear, the holy trinity of architectural modernism — Gropius, Mies and Corbusier — were human beings so flawed that between them they were an encyclopaedia of human vice. They spoke of morality and behaved like whores; they talked of the masses and were utter egotists; they claimed to be principled and were without scruple, either moral, intellectual, aesthetic or financial. Their two undoubted talents were those of self-promotion and survival, combined with an overweening thirst for power.
Their intellectual dishonesty was startling and would have been laughable had it not been more destructive than the Luftwaffe. When they claimed to have no style because their designs were imposed on them by history, technology, social necessity, functionality, economy etc., and like Luther proclaimed they could do no other (which soon became the demand that others could do no other also), they remind me of the logical positivists who claimed to have no metaphysic. But if no given style or metaphysic is beyond the choice of he who has it, to possess a style or a metaphysic is inescapable in the activity of artistic creation or thought itself. And even my handwriting has a style, albeit a bad one.
In like fashion, as this book makes beautifully clear, the modernists were adept at claiming both that their architecture was a logical development to and aesthetic successor of classical Greek architecture and utterly new and unprecedented. The latter, of course, was nearer the mark: they created buildings that, not only in theory but in actual practice, were incompatible with all that had gone before, and intentionally so. Any single one of their buildings could, and often did, lay waste a townscape, with devastating consequences. What had previously been a source of pride for inhabitants became a source of impotent despair. Corbusier’s books are littered with references to the Parthenon and other great monuments of architectural genius: but how anybody can see anything in common between the Parthenon and the Unité d’habitation (an appellation that surely by itself ought to tell us everything we need to know about Corbusier), other than that both are the product of human labour, defeats me.
Theodore Dalrymple, “Architectural Dystopia: A Book Review”, New English Review, 2018-10-04.
November 5, 2018
French Tanks of World War 1 I THE GREAT WAR Special
The Great War
Published on 3 Nov 2018Check Out Supremacy 1914: https://www.supremacy1914.com/index.p…
French tank development started almost simoultaneously with the British. The French tanks were very different in design based on a different understanding of the role of the tank on the battlefield. Arguably, the first modern tank, the Renault FT was a result of this development.
Who Was Guy Fawkes? – Anglophenia Ep 18
Anglophenia
Published on 5 Nov 2014Remember, remember the 5th of November: Guy Fawkes is one of Britain’s most infamous figures. Who’s the man behind the mask made famous by V For Vendetta and the protest group Anonymous? Siobhan Thompson explains.
November 4, 2018
Molotov’s Heel on Finland and Nobody to Fight in the West – WW2 – 010 3 November 1939
World War Two
Published on 3 Nov 2018Ten weeks into World War Two, and the Allied ground forces are bored in France. In North-Eastern Europe, Poland’s suffering has no end and Finland is in the crosshairs of the USSR.
WW2 day by day, every day is now live on our Instagram account @World_war_two_realtime https://www.instagram.com/world_war_t…
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Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tvWritten and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
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A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH
Why did Soldiers Fight in Colorful Uniforms? | Animated History
The Armchair Historian
Published on 12 Oct 2018Sources:
Barnes, Major R. Money, A History of the Regiments and Uniforms of the British Army, London:
Sphere Books Limited, 1972
Carman, W.Y., Richard Simkin’s Uniforms of the British Army; Infantry, Royal Artillery, Royal
Engineers and other corps, Exeter, England: Webb & Bower, 1985
Chandler, David (Gen.Ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of the British Army, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1994
Mollo, John, Military Fashion, New York, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1972
www.warhistoryonline.com
Polybius, Histories, (www.perseus.tufts.edu)
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/hist…
Andrew Knighton
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/napo…
Andrew Knighton
The body of this video runs from 0:22 to 5:15. The rest is an extended ad, should you wish to avoid it.
One argument for the adoption of standardized uniforms in the 17th century was to help reduce straggling while the armies were on the move, and to limit desertion (individuals in their bright uniforms were quite visible if they were separated from the rest of their unit). Both straggling and desertion were significant problems for many armies during this period.
November 3, 2018
Shooting the M14: Full Auto Really Uncontrollable?
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 13 Oct 2018https://www.forgottenweapons.com/shoo…
http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
Today we are out shooting the H&R M14 “Guerrilla Gun” prototype, but fitted with a standard M14 stock and barrel. With these parts, it handles and fires exactly like a standard M14 – so I can answer the most pertinent question:
Is the M14 really so uncontrollable in full auto?
Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
PO Box 87647
Tucson, AZ 85754If you enjoy Forgotten Weapons, check out its sister channel, InRangeTV! http://www.youtube.com/InRangeTVShow
November 2, 2018
Austria-Hungary Disintegrates – The Ottoman Empire Leaves the War I THE GREAT WAR Week 223
The Great War
Published on 1 Nov 2018The Ottoman Empire has been on the retreat in the Middle East since the renewed British offensive in September and now, as the allies are threatening the Turkish heartland and also Constantinople, the Ottoman Empire calls for an armistice. The Armistice of Mudros is signed as the remaining Central Powers also struggle to keep their Empires together.
October 31, 2018
Great Britain Before World War 1 I THE GREAT WAR Special
The Great War
Published on 29 Oct 2018Check out War2Glory: http://bit.ly/TheGreatWar_W2G
Great Britain was the center of a vast colonial empire and a rapidly changing world during the 19th and early 20th century. But what happened in the country in the years leading up to World War 1?
Some Criticism of The Infographics Show – Best World War 2 Battleships and Battlecruisers
iChaseGaming
Published on 10 Oct 2018There is something called Wikipedia. You can find it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
October 30, 2018
Viking Expansion – The Serpent-Riders – Extra History – #1
Extra Credits
Published on 27 Oct 2018The medieval Scandinavians left an impact not just on Greenland and Iceland, but on France, England, Russia, and even briefly North America. But how did Scandinavian society begin, and what incited its voyage across the seas?
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