Tag Archives: History

If we don’t learn from it, we are doomed to repeat it

BOOK REVIEW: Crooked

Crooked: The Roaring ‘20s Tale of a Corrupt Attorney General, a Crusading Senator, and the Birth of the American Political Scandal
Nathan Masters
Hachette Books}
Copyright 2023 by the author

When most people think of Warren Harding’s presidency, one of the first things that will come to mind is the “Teapot Dome” scandal, where federal oil reserves were sold off to oil companies to the benefit of people in the Harding administration. Less well-known to us today, but even more outrageous was the contemporary scandal at the Veterans’ Bureau. The Bureau was purchasing goods for far more than market price, surplus goods were sold off for much less than they should have been, and millions of dollars were flat out unaccounted for.

Senate committees were investigating all this. But the biggest scandal was, quite simply, that the US Attorney General and the Justice Department weren’t doing anything at all to help the investigations.

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BOOK REVIEW: Empire of Ice and Stone

Empire of Ice and Stone: The Disastrous and Heroic Voyage of the Karluk
Buddy Levy
St. Martin’s Press
Copyright 2022 by the author

It’s the explorers going for “firsts” that get all the press. First to the South Pole, first to summit Everest, etc. The ones doing the actual science and cartography, filling in the blank spaces on the map, are the ones who get forgotten – even if their travels and travails are far more interesting and exciting.

In 1913, Vilhjalmur Stefansson decided to lead an expedition to the “High Arctic”, setting out from Alaska and moving up into the Canadian north. The “Canadian Arctic Expedition” would map the territory and do assorted scientific explorations, looking for sea life and recording the weather – and staking claim to any new lands. Stefansson, meanwhile, knew where the real profit was; he arranged for exclusive publication rights to pretty much everything produced by the expedition. There would be two ships to take all the scientists; Stefansson would captain the Alaska; Robert Bartlett would head the Karluk. Continue reading →

BOOK REVIEW: The Last Campaign

The Last Campaign: Sherman, Geronimo and the War for America
H.W. Brands
Doubleday Books
Copyright 2022 by the author

A while back I got involved in a discussion on what movies or TV series could not be made today. The 60s comedy F Troop immediately came to mind. Even in what was clearly a comedy, there’s not a chance in heck that you’d be able to get away with stereotyping the natives in such a manner today.

The contrarian in me started wondering what you’d have to do if you wanted to have your “pitch” for a reboot taken seriously. Obviously, the natives would have to be the only sane, decent, honorable, and intelligent characters. And you’d want them played by Native American actors (assuming you could get enough willing to take the roles).

Then you’d want to get a decent enough grasp on the history of the “Indian Wars”. That’s where H.W. Brands comes in.


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Let’s Kill Hitler!

The opening scene of the Doctor Who episode “Let’s Kill Hitler” (Series 6, Episode 8) ends with a secondary character (Melody Pond) holding a handgun and saying to The Doctor, “I’ve got a gun, you’ve got a time machine. What the hell, let’s kill Hitler!”

Aaaaand instead of some serious contemplation of the ethics of killing a person – even someone like Hitler – or The Doctor lecturing on how “You can’t rewrite history! Not one line! Believe me, I know!”, they wind up converting the episode into “Let’s Quickly Shove Hitler Into a Closet, and Spend the Rest of the Episode Doing Character Development”.

It was a real disappointment.

One of the most popular “alternate histories” is that where Germany / The Nazis win the Second World War. It’s justifiable to remind us of the evils of Nazism / fascism, but it’s at the point of being so overdone it’s boring.

What would be more interesting to see would be how WWII or even the rise of Nazism could be avoided in the first place.

What if you could go back in time, and stop Hitler? Continue reading →

Book Review: The Vortex

The Vortex: A True Story of History’s Deadliest Storm, an Unspeakable War, and Liberation
Scott Carney and Jason Miklian
HarperCollins
Copyright 2022 by the authors

In November, 1970, a cyclone slammed into East Pakistan. It was the deadliest storm in history, leaving some half a million dead in its wake. Fifteen months later, after a brutal and genocidal war, the nation of Bangladesh was born. As Carney and Miklian show, the events were not unconnected.

Through a mass of documentation and interviews with people who were there, Carney and Miklian have recreated the setting and placed you right in the action.

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Forty Acres and a Mule

General William Sherman had a problem. As the military commander in charge of large areas of the South in the late stages of the Civil War, he had many thousands of Black refugees that he had to provide with food and shelter. A delegation of Black leaders had approached Sherman and offered a solution: give them some land they can settle on and work as their own.

On January 16, 1865, Sherman issued Special Field Orders No. 15, which designated a large amount of unclaimed and abandoned land in his remit to be divided into lots of roughly forty acres each to be given to the refugees for homesteading (Spare mules that the Army no longer needed were given out later).

There was a bit of a catch in the order, though.

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Book Review: Conquistadores

Conquistadores: A New History of Spanish Discovery and Conquest
Fernando Cervantes
Viking Books
Copyright 2020 by the author

There seems to be a trend in the study of history these days to reexamine and reframe the past to highlight the evils that have been painted over in our “standard narrative”. Winston Churchill, for example, was not the brilliant leader who kept Britain fighting throughout World War II; instead he was the brutal colonialist whose policies led to the deaths of millions when famine hit India in the 1940s.

Some will claim they’re just trying to present a more nuanced approach, but to me it seems like they’re just being petty and vindictive, blaming the Past for all the ills of the Present that they feel powerless to deal with. Or perhaps they just enjoy being contrarian.

For if they were truly trying for a more nuanced history, surely they would be willing to accept a reexamination of what the “standard narrative” states was Bad and Evil – right? Would it be acceptable, for example, to show that the Spanish conquest of the Americas wasn’t one huge mess of rape, plunder, and murder by the white European males? Continue reading →

BOOK REVIEW: Checkmate in Berlin

Checkmate in Berlin: The Cold War Showdown that Shaped the Modern World
Giles Milton
Henry Holt and Company
Copyright 2021 by the author

In the waning days of the Second World War, the allies – Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union – were all on reasonably good terms when it came to defeating Nazi Germany. Sure, there were a few rough spots, but “the enemy of my enemy” and all that saw to it that any differences were papered over for the common cause.

Four years later, the Soviets tried – and failed – to blockade western Berlin into submission, and NATO had been founded to counter the Communist threat.

How did it all happen?

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Book Review: God’s Shadow

God’s Shadow: Sultan Selim, His Ottoman Empire, and the Making of the Modern World
Alan Mikhail
Liveright Publishing Corporation
Copyright 2020 by the author

Mikhail opens with a note of curiosity. On the Mexican side of the mouth of the Rio Grande, there’s a town called Matamoros. In Spanish, that means “Slayer of Moors”. What is this reference to the Reconquista doing in the New World?

He goes on to explain that Spain’s system of colonizing the Americas involved land grants to that war’s veterans, and that encomendia system was a direct carryover from how Moslem lands were distributed back in Spain. He also notes that the major driver for Spain’s exploration was to find a way to outflank Moslem domination of the eastern Mediterranean, which had monopolized control of the trade routes to the Orient.

That’s his launching point for a look at the rise of the Ottoman Empire – and the sultan responsible.

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A Close Run Thing

When thinking on the American Revolution, it’s generally a matter of national pride to see that the outcome was inevitable. A plucky militia, with Right on its side, handily defeated an Evil Empire who couldn’t be bothered to listen to the concerns of the rebels.

It’s always nice to have a happy origin story – or at least one that couldn’t have gone any other way.

Too bad that’s nowhere close to the reality of the American Revolution. It was one close call after another.

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