Monthly Archives: July 2024

Top Tens – Philosophy & Science: Top 10 Books

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The Thinker or Le Penseur sculpture by Auguste Rodin (1904) in the Musee Rodin in Paris – photographed by CrisNYCa for Wikipedia “The Thinker” under license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

 

I think therefore I am – and I have compiled my Top 10 Philosophy & Science Books.

That first sentence is of course one of the most famous and popular quotations of philosophy – from the French philosopher and mathematician Descartes.(Note to self – compile top 10 quotations of philosophy). On a related noted, my feature image is one of the most famous and popular (as well as imitated and reproduced) sculptures – The Thinker or Le Penseur by Auguste Rodin, a suitably philosophical statue. (Note to self- compile top 10 sculptures).

To be honest, most of these books are perhaps more philosophical than philosophy as such, at least in the formal academic sense. And to be blunt, I use the term philosophy here as something of a general catch-all for non-fiction that is not otherwise mythology or history, albeit usually at least philosophical in contemplating ideas and theories.

On the other hand, my favorite science books tend to cleave closer to science as such, particularly for my favorite science – biology. Even if I do tend to agree with the quotation that the only real science is physics while the rest is stamp collecting. That said, while I tend to be dismissive of the ‘soft’ sciences as opposed to the ‘hard’, I often consider the former among my philosophical or philosophy books.

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Empires (Special Mention) (2) Russian & Soviet Empires

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Russian Empire by Milenioscuro for Wikipedia “Russian Empire” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

 

(2) RUSSIAN & SOVIET EMPIRES

 

Bizarro European empire and third largest empire by size in history, such that even the residual state of Russia remains the largest nation in the world.

Why bizarro European empire? Well, for one thing, as J.M. Roberts pointed out in Triumph of the West, it’s always been unclear where the West ends going east – and in particular on which side of the line of Western civilization the Russian state falls.

For another, the Russian Empire was distinct from other European empires, but ironically its closest parallel is with the United States, albeit still weirdly so, as Alexis de Tocqueville observed when he presciently predicted them – in 1835! – as the future global powers on parallel but opposing paths:

“There are at the present time two great nations in the world, which started from different points, but seem to tend towards the same end. I allude to the Russians and the Americans. Both of them have grown up unnoticed; and whilst the attention of mankind was directed elsewhere, they have suddenly placed themselves in the front rank among the nations, and the world learned their existence and their greatness at almost the same time.

All other nations seem to have nearly reached their natural limits, and they have only to maintain their power; but these are still in the act of growth. All the others have stopped, or continue to advance with extreme difficulty; these alone are proceeding with ease and celerity along a path to which no limit can be perceived. The American struggles against the obstacles which nature opposes to him; the adversaries of the Russian are men. The former combats the wilderness and savage life; the latter, civilization with all its arms. The conquests of the American are therefore gained with the ploughshare; those of the Russian by the sword. The Anglo-American relies upon personal interest to accomplish his ends, and gives free scope to the unguided strength and common sense of the people; the Russian centres all the authority of society in a single arm. The principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude. Their starting-point is different, and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.”

The primary distinction with other European empires was that, with one notable exception, the Russian Empire was not a maritime empire. Indeed, it was famously landlocked, with an equally famous strategic policy of seeking unobstructed warm-water ports.

Instead, it was a good old-fashioned territorial empire, expanding eastwards from European Russia across Siberia and central Asia, hence its parallel with the United States and its westward ‘manifest destiny’ or territorial expansion (in both cases to the Pacific).

Unlike the United States, it had more arguable justification in terms of its security against historical invasions of nomadic tribe from the steppes, most famously the Mongols – but like the United States (and unlike European maritime empires), it absorbed and retained its territorial conquests or expansion into itself as a nation.

Ultimately, the Russian empire’s eastward expansion brought it to the Pacific Ocean but more fundamentally, to the borders of an Asian state armed with firearms and robust enough to resist it – Qing China, in its prime and powerful enough to defeat Russia in the Sino-Russian border conflicts of the seventeenth century.

Of course, Qing China famously waned in the nineteenth century, while Russia had grown stronger such that it was again able to make encroachments eastwards, but was confronted by Britain and the new rising power in north-east Asia – Japan.

However the Pacific saw that one notable exception for Russia’s maritime empire – as a latecomer in the first phase of European imperialism in the Americas, most famously claiming Alaska (equally famously bought from them by the United States in 1867) but also extending to California and even Hawaii before receding back.

The Russian Empire also expanded southwards through central Asia, but was again blocked by Britain in the so-called Great Game, as well as more regional empires such as the Ottoman Empire. That saw the southernmost extent of the Russian Empire, which did not scramble for Africa like other European empires and was constrained by its naval limitations from extending elsewhere in Asia.

It also expanded westwards into Europe itself, taking Finland from a waning Sweden and partitioning territory (with Prussia and Austria) from the waning Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Despite all this, the Russian imperial state came crashing down like the three other great imperial states of Europe brought down by the First World War – Imperial Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire – but more dramatically or spectacularly as it was succeeded by the world’s first communist state, the Soviet Union.

As a communist state, the Soviet Union styled itself as anti-imperialist, but ironically closely emulated or even exceeded the imperialism of its predecessor – arguably in the tradition of two other states that styled themselves as anti-imperialist as they created empires of their own, the United States and Japan.

Initially Soviet imperialism was limited within the former Russian empire itself, but with its rise to superpower escalated to reclaiming its predecessor’s lost territory and then to extending further than the Russian empire ever did, except across the Pacific to the Americas – starting westward to the heart of Europe with its subject satellite states after the Second World War, opposed by the United States in the Cold War, fulfilling de Tocqueville’s prediction.

It also renewed the Russian sphere of influence in north-east Asia, although that fell afoul of a resurgent China, ironically a rival communist state originally within (and a product of) that influence.

The most dramatic success of Soviet imperialism was when it graduated from the traditional territorial empire of its predecessor to the maritime empire of European empires, ironically as those empires were scrambling out of Africa and elsewhere – indeed expanding its influence under its continued anti-imperial guise of supporting decolonization or ‘liberation’ movements from those empires, with overlapping successes in Cuba, south-east Asia and Africa.

Despite all this – and accelerated by one imperial expedition too many into Afghanistan – the Soviet state came crashing down in the end of the Cold War, but not before President Reagan had famously characterized it as the “evil empire”, an epithet much relished by its east European subjects who in turn revolted against it in its death throes.

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER)

Top Tens – History (Rome): Top 10 Roman Empires

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A Roman Legion (from Trajan’s Column), from “Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae” (The Mirror of Roman Magnificence) – public domain image, Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Roma Eterna!

At the time of writing this, a meme from social media has come to the attention of mainstream media that men think about the Roman Empire a lot (from the viral trend of asking how often they did).

It reminds me of that old anecdote (of dubious authenticity) that the average male thinks of sex one in every seven seconds, which always begged the question to me of what all those other males were thinking about in those other seconds. Well, I guess we know the answer now.

So given its enduring topicality, I thought I’d compile my Top 10 Roman Empires.

Wait – what? Top 10 Roman…Empires? Plural?! Wasn’t there only the one Roman Empire?

Well, yes – except perhaps when there wasn’t.

My tongue is (mostly) in my cheek, but there has been a tendency to demarcate the Roman Empire into different parts, even while maintaining the fundamental continuity between those parts.

The foremost demarcation is the division of the Roman Empire into its western and eastern halves, reflecting the empire’s own division of imperial administration, with the latter enduring for a millennium after the fall of the former but which was named retrospectively by historiographical convention as the Byzantine Empire to distinguish it from being the direct continuation of the Roman Empire.

For that matter, the ‘classical’ Roman Empire is sometimes demarcated into two parts, the Principate to describe the empire instituted by Augustus in 27 BC, and the Dominate to describe the empire as reformed under Diocletian in 284 AD – the latter ultimately overlapping with the division of imperial administration into western and eastern halves.

The eastern Roman Empire is similarly often demarcated into two parts – its original ‘Latin’ empire (literally by its official imperial language) and its transition to its ‘Greek’ empire from the seventh century or so.

One could also parse either the ‘classical’ Roman empire or eastern Roman Empire further by imperial dynasty (or periods when there was no dynasty).

This top ten mostly won’t be concerned with such academic divisions, but don’t be surprised if those eastern and western divisions feature prominently. Rather, it will be concerned with the exceptions to the rule of the Roman Empire – the various breakaway or vestigial states that were either substantial claimants to the Roman Empire or usurping it. Indeed, you could think of it as my Roman Empire iceberg meme – in this case my iceberg of Roman Empire continuity.

Hence I won’t be doing my usual top ten countdown but just counting them out, mostly in chronological order albeit with some exceptions. The top three entries are all within the fundamental continuity of the Roman Empire as the iceberg above the surface, with the subsequent entries as the iceberg beneath the surface becoming more remote or wild breakaway or vestigial states. Don’t worry – I’ll have even wilder entries in my special mentions as we follow the iceberg all the way down claimants to the succession of the Roman Empire.

Note that reference to substantial – arguably the various breakaway states or claimants might extend to any territory controlled by any rivals or usurpers to the imperial throne but let’s not go crazy here. It’s not like we’re just any with delusions of imperial grandeur in the Crisis of Third Century or something. This top ten must have some standards beyond the local barracks emperor.

So that said, these are my Top 10 Roman Empires…

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Empires (Special Mention) (1) European Empires

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Diachronic map of the main empires of the modern era (1492-1945) – by Nagihuan for Wikipedia “Colonial Empires” under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Declaration

 

(1) EUROPEAN EMPIRES

The definitive imperialism for most of the world – not least because it was the imperialism that defined the modern world, the first truly global imperialism that transformed the world from regional to global.

Indeed, so much so that imperialism is often defined exclusively as European imperialism, particularly when you throw in my next three special mentions as offshoots of it to broaden it to Western imperialism.

This ignores that empires predated European imperialism throughout the world, well before the existence or even the concept of the European nations behind it. A substantial part of the impact of European imperialism lies in how recent it is, eclipsing any predecessors, and the wounds it inflicted are still raw. No one seeks reparations from Roman or Mongolian imperialism.

It’s striking to think that decolonization or independence is within living memory for many of the subjects of European imperialism, particularly in Africa, with some empires clinging on into the 1970s (looking at you, Portugal ) or even beyond in legacy or some residual colonies (looking at you, Hong Kong).

Equally it ignores that many of the states that fought or fell to European imperialism were themselves empires, often aggressively or belligerently so. Indeed, I’d say all of them, at least for any polities that comprised more than one ethnic group or beyond tribes and tribal confederations. Even more homogenous or tribal polities tended to be imperial in nature over their own members, in the absence of any concept of participatory representation, where they were not actually imperial to or over their neighbors.

Ironically, it was European political concepts that undermined the default imperial state settings that applied elsewhere or prior to them, as they would the European empires themselves.

However, European imperialism was distinctive in a number of ways so as to distinguish it as the modern definition of imperialism. One is that very factor – that it is recent or modern. Another is that it consisted almost entirely of maritime empires, as opposed to the more usual territorial empires conquering adjoining or neighboring territories by land. Of course, they are not the only maritime empires in history, but those other empires either tended to be more mixed between maritime and territorial conquests or lacked the same reach (or both).

And that last point brings us to the most distinctive feature of European imperialism – its unprecedented scope, scale, and transformative force, particularly when viewed collectively, as it tends to be outside Europe.

In terms of scale and scope, it reached to every metaphorical corner of the globe, including an unparalleled command of the seas (and even skies), and to every continent, including Antarctica. Only a few countries remained independent of one European empire or another – and even then independence was often only nominal or more a balance of power between competing European nations or spheres of influence. It is not for nothing that of the top ten empires in history by land area or size, four of them are European.

And in terms of transformative force, we are living in the world it made – “to which we owe the development of transport and communication” as well as “the spread of science and technology”, industry and trade, and European culture and political ideologies. Not to mention the spread of European languages as global lingua franca – English above all, but also French and Spanish.

And yes – that transformative force had its negative aspects, which indeed tend to be the focus of contemporary perspectives on European imperialism to the exclusion of anything else. Although history is not a balance sheet, all European powers were quite prepared to resort to brutality when they had to, albeit some more so than others, or else they wouldn’t have had any empires.

Although the rest of the world tends to see European imperialism collectively – with some justice – that does conceal that there was not one European imperial power but several, as a general rule fiercely competitive with each other. Indeed, the fierce competition between European nations is often identified as a reason for European imperialism in the first place, as European technological and other advancement owed itself to European nations competing – and warring – with each other.

It also conceals that there was more than one European imperialism within what was, after all, a span of over at least half a millennium. A common historical classification is to divide European imperialism into two broad phases, albeit overlapping – as for example with the classification of the British and French Empires into their First and Second Empires which largely reflects those phases (although the Spanish and Portuguese Empires might arguably be divided into three phases).

In the first phase, from Columbus’ “discovery” of the Americas in 1492 through to the early nineteenth century or so – often styled as the Age of Discovery – the subject of European imperialism was predominantly the Americas. European imperialism did extend to Africa and Asia but was limited – in Africa as tropical disease limited European encroachment into the continent’s interior (although European penetration of the continent’s coastline and the consequent Atlantic slave trade was damaging enough) and in Asia as its polities were mostly robust enough to resist direct conquest.

This phase was certainly marked by fierce competition between European powers, despite the early lead of Spain and Portugal, which cooperated with each other at least in dividing the world up into their respective spheres of influence, by papal mediation in the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas (although only after Portugal nudged the line further west to party it up in Brazil).

Other European nations disagreed as three others competed with the Spanish and Portuguese to round out the big five imperial powers in this phase – the British (or English prior to 1707), the French, and after they became independent of Spain, the Dutch. The British and French eclipsed the Spanish and Portuguese as they fought in what was no less than an Anglo-French contest for global supremacy, fought particularly in North America and India.

That phase came to end with the first wave of decolonization or wars of independence by their American settler states, although substantial parts of the Americas remained in European empires or spheres of influence.

While the second phase effectively began before the end of the first phase, it acquired its full force after the Napoleonic Wars in what is often styled as the Age of Imperialism or New Imperialism in the 19th and 20th centuries, as the European powers descended on Asia and Africa, the latter styled as the Scramble for Africa.

While they remained competitive to the point of occasional conflict in this phase, the European powers were remarkably cooperative in negotiating their empires or spheres of influence, although a large part of that was necessity from British naval supremacy or Pax Britannica

European imperialism deserves and will get its own top 10 (and special mentions) to do it justice, not least for ranking the individual European imperial powers. The focus of this entry are the classic eight continental European imperial powers and their empires- British (who also rank third in my Top 10 Empires), Spanish (who also rank fifth in my Top 10 Empires), French, Dutch, Portuguese, Belgians, Germans and Italians.

Some might note that this omits a significant European empire, indeed the largest apart from the British – but this was distinctive and separate enough to earn its own special mention entry, as were the two other substantial non-European imperial powers in the Age of Imperialism.

A proper tier ranking of the classic eight will await their own top ten list for European empires, but Britain was obviously top dog in this phase of imperialism. Spain, which had been the British Empire of the first phase, was knocked down to mid-tier when most of its Latin American empire won its independence, then to bottom tier when defeated by the United States in the Spanish-American War.

France, the Netherlands, and Portugal all rank in high or mid-tier, with Belgium ranking in low tier for its abominations in the Congo – and latecomers Germany and Italy bringing up the rear in bottom-tier with the scraps left by other empires. Italy earned the particular humiliation of being defeated by Ethiopia, so that the latter remained the only African state to retain independence (apart from the American founded state of Liberia).

However, the charges of European imperialism don’t stop with the end of formal European empires, as European powers are charged with simply substituting neo-colonialism or neo-imperialism -“which leverages economic power” (or other forms of power and influence) “rather than military force” (or direct means of control) “in an informal empire”.

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER)

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Empires (Special Mention)

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I introduced my Top 10 Wars of History on the basis that I’ve always found wars a fascinating subject of history, so it’s not surprising that I’ve also always found empires a fascinating subject of history, again from the fortunate perspective of being well removed from the sharp end of them – and have similarly ranked my Top 10 Empires of History.

But I don’t just have a top ten. As usual for my top tens, I have a whole host of special mentions. My usual rule is twenty special mentions – where the subject matter is prolific enough, as it is here – which I suppose would usually make each top ten a top thirty. My special mentions are also where I tend to have some fun with the subject category and splash out with some wilder entries.

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (Special Mention)

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Raising the flag on Iwo Jima as memorialized by the west side of the Marine Corps War Memorial, Arlington Ridge Park, Virigina

 

I’ve always found wars a fascinating subject of history, from the comfortable armchair of hindsight and the fortunate perspective of being well removed from any firsthand experience of them. History, particularly military history, has always been something of a hobby of mine. So of course I have ranked my Top 10 Wars.

But I don’t just have a top ten. As usual for my top tens, I have a whole host of special mentions. My usual rule is twenty special mentions – where the subject matter is prolific enough, as it is here – which I suppose would usually make each top ten a top thirty. My special mentions are also where I tend to have some fun with the subject category and splash out with some wilder entries.