The absence of footnote references from the pages of this book may aggrieve some readers but will, I hope, please a larger number, who do not care for the untidy and irritating modern fashion of treating any historical study as a card-index rather than a book to be read. Footnote references are an inevitable distraction to the reader’s eye and mind. The justification for omitting them is not, however, merely one of narrative smoothness and page cleanlinness. Such references are only of value to a small proportion of readers — as a means to personal research or composition. By direction the student’s attention to an isolated quotation or piece of evidence, such footnote references are apt to give this a flase value; and can also be the means of conveying a false impression. They may enable the student to find out whether the author’s use of a quotation is textually correct, but they do not enable him to find out whether it gives a correct impression. For the true worth of any quotation can only be told by comparison with the whole of the evidence on the subject. Further, the practice of littering the pages with references is not even a proof that the author has consulted the sources. It is easy to copy a quotation — complete with footnote references! — from some previous writer, and a study of books on the Civil War, especially, suggests that this labour-saving device is not uncommon.
B.H. Liddell Hart, Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American, 1928.
October 21, 2018
QotD: Footnotes
September 6, 2018
Feature History – Chinese Civil War
Feature History
Published on 25 Jul 2017Hello and welcome to Feature History, featuring a civil war that done happened in China.
Help me recognise Taiwan (or not)
https://www.paypal.me/FeatureHistory
Patreon
https://www.patreon.com/FeatureHistory
Discord
https://discord.gg/Zbk4CvR
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I do the research, writing, narration, art, and animation. Yes, it is very lonely
August 19, 2018
Poor whites in the pre-Civil War South
Colby Cosh retweeted this fascinating thread by Keri Leigh Merritt (embed through the ThreadReaderApp):
July 24, 2018
The Amazing Life of Ulysses S. Grant
PragerU
Published on 2 Jul 2018No American led a more eventful life than Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th President of the United States and the Union Army’s most celebrated general. Garry Adelman, director of history and education at the Civil War Trust, tells Grant’s amazing story in this inspiring video.
Donate today to PragerU! http://l.prageru.com/2eB2p0hThis video was made in partnership with the American Battlefield Trust. Learn more about the Civil War and America’s Battlefields at: https://goo.gl/mmJMPk
July 22, 2018
Debunking the “King Cotton” school of history
In the current issue of Reason, Dierdre McCloskey discusses the claim that America became rich only or primarily due to exploitation of slave labour in the south:
Map showing which areas of the United States did and did not allow slavery between January 1861 to February 4 1861. On February 4 1861, the Confederate States of America was created. Territories and states which had not specifically banned slavery are colored red/pink.
Map by Golbez, via Wikimedia Commons.
In his second inaugural, Abraham Lincoln declared that “if God wills that [the Civil War] continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk…as was said 3,000 years ago, so still it must be said, ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'”
It is a noble sentiment. Yet the economic idea implied — that exploitation made us rich — is mistaken. Slavery made a few Southerners rich; a few Northerners, too. But it was ingenuity and innovation that enriched Americans generally, including at last the descendants of the slaves.
It’s hard to dispel the idea embedded in Lincoln’s poetry. TeachUSHistory.org assumes “that northern finance made the Cotton Kingdom possible” because “northern factories required that cotton.” The idea underlies recent books of a new King Cotton school of history: Walter Johnson’s River of Dark Dreams (Harvard University Press), Sven Beckert’s Empire of Cotton: A Global History (Knopf), and Edward Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (Basic Books).
The rise of capitalism depended, the King Cottoners claim, on the making of cotton cloth in Manchester, England, and Manchester, New Hampshire. The raw cotton, they say, could come only from the South. The growing of cotton, in turn, is said to have depended on slavery. The conclusion — just as our good friends on the left have been saying all these years — is that capitalism was conceived in sin, the sin of slavery.
Yet each step in the logic of the King Cotton historians is mistaken. The enrichment of the modern world did not depend on cotton textiles. Cotton mills, true, were pioneers of some industrial techniques, techniques applied to wool and linen as well. And many other techniques, in iron making and engineering and mining and farming, had nothing to do with cotton. Britain in 1790 and the U.S. in 1860 were not nation-sized cotton mills.
Nor is it true that if a supply chain is interrupted there are no possible substitutes. Such is the theory behind strategic bombing, as of the Ho Chi Minh trail. Yet only in the short run is it “necessary” for a good to come from a particular region by a particular route. A missing link can be replaced, as in fact it was during the blockade of raw cotton from the South during the war. British and other European manufacturers turned to Egypt to provide some of what the South could not.
July 7, 2018
History Buffs: Gettysburg
History Buffs
Published on 19 Feb 2018
June 18, 2018
Feature History – Meiji Restoration
Feature History
Published on 21 May 2017Hello and welcome to Feature History, featuring Meiji Restoration, a fancy schmancy collab, and most likely too many bill wurtz references in the comments.
Rackam’s Life & Times of Tokugawa Ieyasu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6fR8oDewdg
Patreon
https://www.patreon.com/FeatureHistory
https://twitter.com/Feature_History
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I do the research, writing, narration, art, and animation. Yes, it is very lonely
Music
Jeff Van Dyck – The Shoto
Jeff Van Dyck – Ona Hei
Jeff Van Dyck – Sonaiyo
Jeff Van Dyck – Now and Zen
Jeff Van Dyck – Fudo Myo March
Jeff Van Dyck – Rock and a Hard Place
Jeff Van Dyck – Winds of Fate
Jeff Van Dyck – Duty Calls
Jeff Van Dyck – Battle of Shinobue
Jeff Van Dyck – The Harvest
Jeff Van Dyck – Death Cures a Fool
Jeff Van Dyck – The Fall of the Samurai
Jeff Van Dyck – Stalemate
June 4, 2018
QotD: Pushing the Confederacy down the memory hole
Lately, I have been mightily irritated by the politically-correct campaign to permanently banish the old Confederate flag, and all music associated with the Southern cause, or any symbol that it once existed, before it was comprehensively defeated a century-and-a-half ago. Memorials of Robert E. Lee are being treated as memorials of Adolf Q. Hitler.
It strikes me that even under the old lamentable cotton-plantation slave system of the South, people mixed and got to smell one another — rich and poor, black and white, genteel and grotesque. That, the most forgotten slogan of the Dixie Land was her war cry: “Down with the Eagle, and up with the Cross!” That, it is the Cross of Saint Andrew astride the old Confederate flag that is most galling to the hyper-secular, liberal mind. That, the greatest triumph of the Union propaganda was to tar all those flag-bearers in the way our contemporary media demean all dissenters from the current party line as “racists,” “sexists,” “phobes,” and nothing more. That, the principal crime of the South was to stand by the wording of the U.S. Constitution, and from the beginning, to get in the way of a grand national scheme for social engineering, which triumphed with Lincoln (though hardly a liberal by the standards of today). That, in the Southern view, the eagle swooped down on them, with claws.
Something similar is now happening in the division of “Red States” and “Blue”: in an America from which the Christian conception of the “common man” is being systematically expunged. All who resist the categories to which they have been assigned are instinctively rebelling; “victim” and “oppressor” alike. This is what “common men” will do, when tarred and pressed, often without fully understanding why they rebel. They remember, however obliquely, whose sons and daughters they are. That, no matter how low in social station, they are Christ’s, and not the segregated chattels of some malicious and incompetent — and intentionally divisive — Washington Nanny.
The recovery of USA, and more largely, the recovery of Christendom, turns on the recovery of this conception of the “common man” — as Man, not as member of a client group. This has nought to do with “equality,” for it is none of a government’s business to help one group get even with another. Rather it is to serve man as man. This is a matter that goes deeper even than slavery, as Saint Paul explained. It is an unarguable, even mystical point. Where that conception survives, of the common in man, Christendom persists, and can potentially flourish.
David Warren, “The common man”, Essays in Idleness, 2016-08-29.
May 21, 2018
“Civil War Uniforms of Blue & Grey – The Evolution” Volume 2
LionHeart FilmWorks
Published on 29 Apr 2018http://www.lionheart-filmworks.com
Volume 2 of 4… A display of some of the more unique and important uniforms to represent the evolution of the American Civil War “Blue and Grey” from just before the spark of the war in 1861 to Union victory and occupation in 1865.
This project is meant to honor men from both the north and the south — now together forever in eternity — who served their countries, their states and their comrades while wearing these uniforms, weapons, and accouterments — during some of the most brutal battles Americans have ever faced. Shot in 4K and featuring nine of the best Living Historians in the country.
As accurately as we possibly could, and one uniform at a time.… telling the story of the 2.75 Million soldiers who once wore these sacks coats, shell jackets and kepis with pride — each soldier earning a debt we should all be duty-bound to continue to honor.
Directed/Produced: Kevin R. Hershberger
Cinematography: Hugh Burruss
Costumers & Featuring: Tyler Grecco, Nathan Hoffman, Connor Timony, Brennan Wheatley, Guy Gane, Eric Smallwood… as well as Mark Aaron, Tr’waan Coles & Justin Young.
Grip / Electric: Brian Lyles
Costumes & Props: Historical Wardrobe – Richmond, VA
May 20, 2018
Black Army of Ukraine – Togoland in WW1I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
The Great War
Published on 19 May 2018Chair of Wisdom Time!
May 7, 2018
The Empire of Mali – The Cracks Begin to Show – Extra History – #4
Extra Credits
Published on 5 May 2018After Mansa Musa’s death, the rivers of gold started drying up, and bitterness snaked out from the fringes of the vast Mali Empire. Wars were coming…
EDIT: 7:45 says 1930s. Our scripts have this written down as the 1370s. 🙂
The Chinese Civil War – Blood for Unity l HISTORY OF CHINA
IT’S HISTORY
Published on 5 Sep 2015After the fall of the Qing dynasty China fell apart and both, forces loyal to Chiang Kai-shek’s National Kuomintang Party and as Mao Zedong’s Communist Party of China, fought to rule the country. This bloody struggle would ultimately result in the Chinese Civil War. It would take more than 22 years but would come to a halt during the 2nd Sino-Japanese War. After Japan’s defeat, Mao’s troops grew strong quickly and soon after they were able to force Chiang Kai-shek and his followers out of China. They sought refuge in Taiwan. Shortly after, Mao Zedong called out the People’s Republic of China. Learn all about the Chinese Civil War in this episode of Battlefields with Indy Neidell.
May 2, 2018
“Civil War Uniforms of Blue & Grey – The Evolution” Volume 1
LionHeart FilmWorks
Published on 7 Apr 2018http://www.lionheart-filmworks.com
Volume 1 of 4… A display of some of the more unique and important uniforms to represent the evolution of the American Civil War “Blue and Grey” from just before the spark of the war in 1861 to Union victory and occupation in 1865.
This project is meant to honor men from both the north and the south — now together forever in eternity — who served their countries, their states and their comrades while wearing these uniforms, weapons, and accouterments — during some of the most brutal battles Americans have ever faced. Shot in 4K and featuring nine of the best Living Historians in the country.
As accurately as we possibly could, and one uniform at a time… telling the story of the 2.75 Million soldiers who once wore these sacks coats, shell jackets and kepis with pride — each soldier earning a debt we should all be duty-bound to continue to honor.
Directed/Produced: Kevin R. Hershberger
Cinematography: Hugh Burruss
Costumers & Featuring: Tyler Grecco, Nathan Hoffman, Connor Timony, Brennan Wheatley, Guy Gane, Eric Smallwood… as well as Mark Aaron, Tr’waan Coles & Justin Young.
Grip / Electric: Brian Lyles
Costumes & Props: Historical Wardrobe – Richmond, VA
April 30, 2018
Russian Civil War and Russian Wars I BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1919 Part 2 of 4
TimeGhost History
Published on 29 Apr 2018On what was only recently the Eastern Front of World War One there is no end to war. Russia is at war with itself while it tries to reconquer the former territories of the Russian Empire. These new countries are also at war with themselves and each other, while they fight the Bolshevik Russian armies invading their young borders. Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Romania, wherever you look in Eastern Europe there is war, more war… endless war.
Join the TimeGhost Army at https://timeghost.tv
or on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistoryHosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by Spartacus Olsson and Indy Neidell
Directed by: Spartacus Olsson
Produced by: Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus OlssonA TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH
April 21, 2018
History Buffs: Rome Season One
History Buffs
Published on 18 Aug 2017Rome is a British-American-Italian historical drama television series created by John Milius, William J. MacDonald, and Bruno Heller. The show’s two seasons were broadcast on HBO, BBC Two, and RaiDue between 2005 and 2007. They were later released on DVD and Blu-ray. Rome is set in the 1st century BC, during Ancient Rome’s transition from Republic to Empire.
The series features a sprawling cast of characters, many of whom are based on real figures from historical records, but the lead protagonists are ultimately two soldiers named Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo, who find their lives intertwined with key historical events. Rome was a ratings success for HBO and the BBC. The series received much media attention from the start, and was honored with numerous awards and nominations in its two-series run. The series was filmed in various locations, but most notably in the Cinecittà studios in Italy.
