Tag Archives: History

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Books (1) H.P. Willmott – The Great Crusade

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Raising the flag over the Reichstag – one of the most iconic images of WW2 (as photographed by Yevgeny Khaldei and in public domain), used for the cover of the first edition of the book (and also for its own article on Wikipedia “Raising a flag over the Reichstag”)

 

(1) HP WILLMOTT –

THE GREAT CRUSADE: A NEW COMPLETE HISTORY OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR (1989)

 

The best single “volume history of the Second World War in its coverage of all the major themes and all the fronts”.

And for that matter, as you can tell by my placement of it in first place, my favorite volume of history for any subject – the one most firmly embedded in my psyche and the one to which I return the most, particularly on the subject of WW2, with insights or nuggets on almost every page.

For example, comparing the Pacific War to the American Civil War, with the former having uncanny parallels to the latter, even down to the two main American (or Union) offensive directions of each, with Imperial Japan similarly doomed to defeat as the Confederacy and for much the same reasons.

Or the transposition between Germany and the Soviet Union in military proficiency, such that by 1944-1945 the latter arguably equalled or surpassed the former at its peak, while Germany matched many of the same failings for the Soviets back in 1941.

Indeed, most of my own views of the Second World War originate in this book. Much of that is due to the style of Willmott, a strangely neglected or overlooked military historian – to quote excerpts from an Amazon review:

“Interesting, insightful, revelatory…Willmott is Willmott: never less than lucid and coherent, even when his work descends into the “mere chronicle” of army, corps and divisional movements that more properly belong to purely military history…magisterial is no more than an appropriate term with which to describe Willmott’s informative – indeed, transformative – and succinctly and clearly expressed synthesis of the knowledge on such a wide subject.”

Above all, my view of the Second World War originates in Willmott’s main theme or thesis of the book, which he was nice enough to state at the outset – debunking the myth of German military excellence. Indeed, he cheekily adapts Oscar Wilde’s famous quote from The Importance of Being Earnest – to lose one world war may be regarded as misfortune, to lose both looks like carelessness

This might seem paradoxical given the extent of Germany’s initial victories – and the Allied effort required to reverse those victories and defeat Germany – but almost as paradoxically, Willmott argues this just illustrates his theme, that Germany could succeed to that extent but still lose.

However, the paradox is resolved by Willmott’s argument, which he repeatedly demonstrates throughout the book, that “the German military genius was in fighting not in war, and along with her Japanese ally Germany was the only great power that did not understand the nature of war.”

One might add that this is the converse of the art of war, at least according to Sun Tzu – and of the Allies in general and the United States in particular. As Willmott observes, in terms of actually waging war, Germany was hopelessly outclassed by the Allies, matched only by the similar hopelessness of their ally Japan.

Willmott has yet another striking insight in his speculation about the reason for this – that the very success of Bismarck, the one German leader who had understood war, that is the limits of military and national power, “blinded successive generations of Germans to these realities because they saw only his military victories”.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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Top Tens – History: Top 10 Empires (2) Mongol Empire

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The Mongol Empire map by Astrokey 44 as part of an animated map sequence for Wikipedia “Mongol Empire” under licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/

 

(2) MONGOL EMPIRE (1206 – 1502)

 

“With Heaven’s aid I have conquered for you a huge empire. But my life was too short to achieve the conquest of the world”

Only just though – as the Mongols were a horse blitzkrieg across Eurasia, conquering the second largest empire in history (second only to the British Empire) and the largest contiguous land empire.

The founder of the Mongol Empire – Temujin, better known as Genghis Khan – was the best military and political leader of his era, or arguably any era. He succeeded in unifying the Mongol tribes as the nucleus of his empire, which at his death stretched from northern China through Central Asia to Iran and the outskirts of European Russia. In doing so, the Mongols conquered glittering states along the Silk Road in central Asia that barely anyone remembers because the Mongols wiped them out so thoroughly – the Khwaraziman Empire of Iran and the Qara Khitai.

His successors extended the Mongol Empire to almost every corner of Eurasia – “the 13th-century section in the history books of all countries in the region can be summed up as Mongols paid a visit and wiped us out”.

In the Middle East, they besieged and sacked Baghdad, the center of Islamic power for half a millennium, occupying as far as parts of Syria and Turkey, with raids advancing as far as Gaza in Palestine, where they were stopped in the battle of Ain Jalut by the Mamluks of Egypt.

In East Asia, Genghis had largely defeated the Jin Empire in northern China – his successors finished it off and conquered the southern Sung Empire as well. The latter was most famously by Kublai Khan – and in Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree. They also invaded Korea, Burma and Vietnam – the last did not go so well, as neither did their naval invasions of Java and Japan.

And of course they also conquered Russia and invaded central Europe, defeating Poland and Hungary, and raiding the Balkans and Holy Roman Empire.

The Mongol Empire was too big to last as a unified polity, fragmenting much like the Macedonian Empire – although unlike the latter, it endured for about half a century in real terms (or a century in nominal terms) after the death of its founder before it was divided up into four khanates among his dynastic successors.

 

 

DECLINE & FALL

The empire of Genghis and his successors somewhat resembles that of Alexander and his successors, albeit more enduring and formidable as a single empire, outlasting the death of Genghis until his grandsons fell out among themselves.

Initially, it was divided up into four khanates, three of which were formidable imperial states of themselves – the Golden Horde essentially ruling over Russia, the Ilkhanate essentially ruling over Persia, and the Yuan Dynasty essentially ruling over China and Mongolia itself. The Chagatai Khanate was still pretty formidable, ruling over central Asia, but just seems the runt of the litter in comparison.

From there, it’s an increasingly bewildering array of various successors to rival those of the Macedonian Empire, with all but the Yuan Dynasty quietly merging with local Islamic or Turkic dynasties.

The Ilkhanate endured least well, disintegrating with the reign and death of its last khan from 1316.

The Yuan Dynasty probably fared next best – its glittering height under Kublai Khan ended with his death in 1294, but it endured under his successors until it was defeated and ejected from China by the Ming in 1368, although they then ruled over their Mongolian homeland for almost three centuries as the Northern Yuan Dynasty.

The Chagatai Khanate proved to be quiet achievers, or at least those that claimed to be its successors did – Timur, founder of the Timurid Empire, saw himself as the restorer of Genghis’ empire and took a damn good swing at it, with one of his successors founding the Mughal Empire in India. The Chagatai Khanate itself continued as the Eastern Chagatai Khanate, before breaking up further and being conquered in turn, with the last khan deposed in 1705.

The Golden Horde was the most enduring, albeit in states ever more distant from Genghis’ empire or dynasty, remaining a powerful state until about 1396 – when invasion and defeat by the Timurid Empire saw it demoted from Golden to merely Great, before falling in 1502 and being succeeded by various Turkic khanates. The two most notable states, the Crimean Tatars and Kazakh Khanate, survived until 1783 and 1847 respectively, when they were conquered by Russia, although I’m going with the fall of the Golden or Great Horde as the end date of empire.

 

THE MONGOL EMPIRE NEVER FELL

On the other hand, the Mongol Empire never fell! Mongol states – not least Mongolia – survive to the present day. Unleash the Horde!

Genghis himself survives in the disproportionate population of the world that can be traced to him. And then there are those that claimed to be his spiritual successors – with the last aspiring Khan as the eccentric Baron Ungern-Sternberg, who deserves a top 10 list of his own for his wildly insane ambitions.

A more serious argument might be made for Russia (and the Soviet Union) as their true spiritual successors, with many of its distinctive political features originating from the Mongol yoke.

 

THE SUN NEVER SETS

From Danube to the Pacific, the Mongol Empire deserves its title for global empire, as well as world empire for its enduring influence – we live in a Mongol-made world.

 

EVIL EMPIRE

And how!

Perhaps not surprisingly, our top three empires would also be among the leading contenders people would advance for an entry if one were to compile a Top 10 Evil Empires – probably even the top three there as well.

History has tended to overlook the positive or even progressive aspects of the Mongol Empire and its Pax Mongolica, but it would rank high as evil empire for the sheer scale of destruction they wrought, which can only aptly be described as apocalyptic, exceeding even the Second World War relative to world population.

As examples, the Iranian plateau didn’t fully recover its population until the 20th century, while some areas in central Asia remained disproportionately populated. The depopulation was such that wild animal species exploded in population and the regrowth of forests caused a noticeable change in climate.

And particularly since we mentioned it for the Spanish Empire, the horseman of the apocalypse that loomed largest was pestilence – the Black Death, spread both inadvertently by trade within the Mongol Empire and deliberately within its warfare, wiping out anywhere from 30% to 60% of the European population.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (2) Cold War

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NATO vs Warsaw Pact 1949-1990 by Discombobulates for Wikipedia “Cold War” under licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

 

(2) COLD WAR (1945-1991)

 

Cold War? Can I get a Cool War instead?

The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union that defined much of the twentieth century, where the logic of avoiding directly fighting each other was reinforced by the mutually assured destruction of nuclear weapons.

Cold wars are a recurring theme in history. Even before modern firepower or nuclear weapons, states often sought to avoid outright war with other states, particularly where they were evenly matched. Wars are costly and destructive, especially big or long wars of attrition, and even when you win, you often still lose. There’s a reason Pyrrhic victory is a term.

Of course, the majority of wars in history have been hot wars, in which states have actively fought each other, but even those have often been preceded or punctuated by periods of cold war, albeit where the participants often maneuvered against each other for advantage.

The period from 1933 to 1939 might be regarded as a three-sided cold war before the biggest hot war in history, in which Nazi Germany and other fascist states, the western democracies, and the Soviet Union all maneuvered with or against each other.

The Great Game between the British and Russian empires in the nineteenth to twentieth centuries might be regarded as another cold war. Indeed, in many ways the Cold War replayed much of the same territory, literally and metaphorically.

The Roman-Persian Wars obviously did not persist for six centuries entirely as active fighting or hot war, but were punctuated by cold war. Indeed, the Romans and Persians might well have paid more heed to cold war logic of avoiding directly fighting each other, since their exhaustion from war led to their defeat or conquest by the new antagonist of the Arabs under the banner of Islam.

The Greek-Persian Wars offer a better example of cold war, although there the cold war logic for the Persians arose from their costly defeats at the hands of the Greeks. Indeed, the Persians arguably did much better in their cold war strategy of supporting the Greek city states fighting each other.

Of course, that might be said of cold war strategies in general, with states doing better than they would directly fighting their antagonists. Imperial Germany would have done better if it had waged cold war rather than world war, as would have any successor that showed more restraint or strategy than the Nazi regime.

But of course, there’s no cold war like the Cold War.

 

ART OF WAR

Ironically, cold war strategy is the essence of the art of war of winning without fighting. Which the Americans and their allies did, although not without some lapses on their part – most notably land wars in Asia. Indeed, it might be said the Second World War and Cold War were the peak of the American art of war.

Although I’m not sure what Sun Tzu would have thought of his art of war being applied from the logic of nuclear weapons and mutually assured destruction.

 

WORLD WAR

Not least in how pervasive it was, both in the forms of its conflict, including hot wars by proxy, and its extent (as well as its stakes, that threatened the world itself). The Cold War extended through more of the world than the Second World War, which had largely left sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America unaffected, although ironically not so much Europe, despite the masses of military force the opposing sides gathered there

 

STILL FIGHTING THE WAR

We’re all Cold Warriors now. Not against the Soviet Union of course but pundits always seem to be declaring the new or next cold war.

Also the same logic of avoiding direct fighting has persisted even after the end of the Cold War, such that it might be regarded as the default standard of modern conflict. Of course it looms largest between nuclear-armed states, but also arises from just how costly it is to deploy modern firepower, or even to engage in low-level conflicts against insurgencies or guerilla combatants.

 

GOOD GUYS VS BAD GUYS

I’ve always been a Cold Warrior – as in believing in the morality of its cause and the necessity of its purpose as a war that needed to be fought, although not necessarily in all aspects of the way that it was fought.

So…USA! USA! USA!

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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Top Tens – History: Top 10 Books (2) John Keegan – A History of Warfare

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(2) JOHN KEEGAN –

A HISTORY OF WARFARE (1993)

 

The magnum opus of one of the foremost military historians of our time – a global history of war from prehistory to nuclear weapons. (Although one might also argue his magnum opus was his trilogy of The Face of Battle, The Mask of Command, and The Price of Admiralty).

 

After an introductory section “War in Human History”, Keegan organizes his history in broad thematic sections invoking the four classical elements but as the four elements of war, albeit also more or less in chronological sequence – “Stone”, “Flesh”, “Iron” and “Fire”.

 

Between each section is an “interlude”, not so much in chronological sequence but with a focus on recurring aspects – or problems – throughout the history of warfare, respectively limitations on warmaking, fortification, armies, and logistics and supply. For example, the interlude on ärmies dealt with the basic problem of – and limited number of means for – actually raising armies.

 

The titles of those elemental sections speak for themselves – with fire obviously corresponding to the defining characteristic of modern warfare increasingly relying on forms of combustion or energy, from gunpower through the internal combustion engine to nuclear weapons.

 

A personal highlight was the book’s examination of the conquests of the various “horse peoples”, the high point of which were the Mongols, always a subject of fascination for me. Something that has always resonated in my mind ever since is Keegan’s opinion that much of the mobile tactical skill of the horse peoples originated in the same techniques they used on their herds except on their adversaries instead.

 

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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Top Tens – History: Top 10 Empires (3) British Empire

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Map or areas of the world that were part of the British Empire (current British Overseas Territories underlined in red with Mandates and protected states in a lighter shade) by Redstorm1368 for Wikipedia “British Empire” and licensed for use under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

 

(3) BRITISH EMPIRE (1707 – 1997)

 

Pax Britannica.

Rule, Britannia! Britannia rule the waves!

To many – and certainly to modern history – THE Empire.

The largest empire of history – with a quarter of the earth’s land area, with a reach extending well beyond that to virtually every corner of the globe, including a command of the seas that effectively made them a British lake.

Essentially, the British made the world their pink bits – not a lewd innuendo (as it might be for the United States as part of its ‘soft’ influence – heh), but a reference to the tradition of mapmakers marking the British Empire in pink on maps.

Also the most populous empire of history, with a quarter of the world’s population (although not the most populous empire by relative proportion of the world’s population).

And above all the empire that more or less made the modern world – “to which we owe the development of transport and communication, the spread of science and technology, and the spread of the English language as a global lingua franca” – a global influence enduring in its American successor, not surprisingly as a former British colony and the subsequent “special relationship” between them.

“The British Empire is credited, even by its critics, for contributing to general economic development as it enforced a free-trade area over a quarter of the globe”, albeit lopsided in places – and the British as agents of industrialization and modernization. Even Karl Marx noted, with the sardonic wit that was his best stylistic feature, that the British were “conservatives at home and revolutionaries abroad”, tending to displace traditional and aristocratic elites for developing middle classes.

Politically, it was a forum for “the Enlightenment and its ideas of human rights”, the rule of law, social contract and political liberty – which of course would eventually be applied against the empire itself. That included such things as the abolition of the slave trade and slavery, or suttee in India.

The British Empire is often classified into the First and Second British Empires, although they are essentially continuous but for the loss of the American colonies in the American Revolution, which is the demarcation between them. However, it was the Second British Empire that took Britain truly to the glittering heights of world empire for which it is remembered, driven by its victory in the Napoleonic Wars, naval supremacy and the powerhouse – economic, financial and technological – of the Industrial Revolution.

By many metrics the British Empire would rank as top empire, so why only third here? Well, to be honest, I just find the top two entries more intriguing – with the top entry as more enduring and influential in its template for subsequent empires, including the British Empire. Also, as a modern empire, the wounds it inflicted are still too recent and raw.

Those wounds tend to be the focus of contemporary observers. However, such observations overlook the extent to which the British Empire was based on collaboration with their subjects, not least their uncanny ability to co-opt defeated warrior tribes – from the Scottish Highlands to the Gurkhas – for imperial service. It had to be – it is surprising just how limited British military forces were, apart of course from their prized naval supremacy, and how much of a shoestring they operated on, for a global empire.

Of course, the British were quite prepared to use brute force when they had to – “there would not have been a British Empire in the first place if its constituent peoples were free, or possessed agency in any meaningful capacity, to leave it whenever they were so inclined”. The British just preferred to use other more subtle means of influence and coercion when they could.

Of course, in their colonial wars, the British also relied on that classic art of war, picking curb stomp battles, through superiority of firepower. In the words of Hillaire Belloc – “Whatever happens, we have got – the Maxim gun, and they have not”. Or in the words of Edmund Blackadder – “back in the old days when the prerequisite of a British campaign was that the enemy should under no circumstances carry guns — even spears made us think twice”.

Ultimately however, such brutality, initially limited to small minorities of their subjects involved in active rebellions, “became harder to conceal and make palatable as time went on, and the British lost their grip on the levers of mass media and propaganda which played an immense role in justifying and enabling their regime to its own citizens as well as international observers”.

And so the empire declined and fell, amidst other powers that rose to challenge it, or in the case of the United States, replace it. However, there are no definitive endpoints for it – even today, Britain retains overseas territories – although many are nominated. Singapore in 1942 and Suez in 1956 are two common nominations. The independence of India and cession of Hong Kong (back) to China are others, and I’ve gone with the last here.

In the end, I tend to agree with the assessment of TV Tropes, that the British were neither the first, the worst or the most damaging of the imperialists, but merely the most successful.

 

 

DECLINE & FALL

Again – and how!

It may not have been as long as other classical declines I could name but then modern history tends to move faster. The British Empire reached its vaunted territorial height after the First World War, when it even managed to gain some more territory. In reality, the cracks were there from that war, but it took the Second World War for them to fall apart.

Still, the British can claim that they staked and gave up their empire on their finest hour – an apocalyptic struggle against the most destructive and predatory empires in history – with some fairness on one hand, but excluding such things as the Bengal Famine on the other. Ironically, it gained its true territorial height in the Second World War, with the occupation of former Italian or French colonies and other territory, but which soon evaporated.

 

THE BRITISH EMPIRE NEVER FELL

On the other hand, the British Empire never fell – as Britain still retains overseas territories. That and we still live in the world they made, literally speaking their language.

 

THE SUN NEVER SETS

The British Empire was THE empire on which the sun never sets. Still is, in fact, technically through its overseas territories. Looking at you, Pitcairn Islands.

 

EVIL EMPIRE

And how!

The British often like to imagine themselves as ‘nice’ and their empire as the ‘nice’ one, as if they just went around the world playing cricket and sipping tea. In the words of TV Tropes, “home of men in red coats and pith helmets, being served lots and lots of tea by the locals…the great white Hunter, the adventure archaeologist”.

Or in the (ironic) words of D.H. Lawrence, “the English are so nice”.

Spoiler alert – although like all empires, the legacy of the British Empire is more complex than a mere matter of vindication or vilification, they were not and their Empire was not…nice. You don’t win and run global empires by being nice. And indeed there is a whole publishing industry, traditional and online, devoted to the British Empire as evil empire, including one hilariously over the top book “The Evil Empire: 101 Ways That England Ruined the World”.

It has some fairness to it – one could easily compile a Top 10 (or Top 101) list for the British Empire as evil empire. Perhaps the most insidious evil of the British Empire was its indifference to famine, which some historians equate to holocausts, particularly in Ireland and India – those punching bags of the British Empire, from which one could well compile that Top 10 British Evil Empire list all of themselves.

And this time, it’s personal. Yes, I married the evil empire, when I was colonized by my British ex-wife – which lent itself to my theory of the British Empire as a relentless creeping doom, starting with just helping the British with their luggage when they arrived, but ending with your complete submission, as they expect everything else from you as well.

“And what’s more, they’re very nice about being nice

about your being nice as well!

If you’re not nice they soon make you feel it”.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (3) Vietnam War

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Excerpt from Apocalypse Now, one of the most iconic Vietnam War films – with the ubiquitous helicopters that were one of the most iconic visual images of the war itself

 

(3) VIETNAM WAR (1954-1975)

 

The iconic twentieth century war after 1945 – as visual image in popular culture or imagination, and as metaphor and archetype in history or politics.

In terms of visual image in popular culture or imagination, Vietnam is a war most people can see in their mind’s eye, whether accurate or not. I have a theory that we all have a mythic or psychic geography of cities and landmarks we can see in our mind’s eye or psyche – and so too we each have a mythic or psychic history. And Vietnam looms large in our modern mythology.

It originates from the modern proliferation of visual images that inform our mythic or psychic geography and history – predominantly on screen in film or television. For Vietnam, there was the prevalence of images from the war itself, often stylized as the first war fought on television, which was a substantial part of why the American civilian population and government turned against it, as well as fictional depictions of it in American mass media and popular culture.

The imagery from the war itself endured beyond the defeat of the Americans or of South Vietnam in those fictional depictions, including my favorite film of all time, Apocalypse Now. As such, Vietnam lent itself to the most enduring iconic images of war in the twentieth century – the ubiquitous choppers or helicopters, the Viet Cong or Charlie, napalm, fragging, My Lai, Tet, the fall of Saigon, and so on.

And the endurance of the Vietnam War in history is also in large part because of its historical significance, not least because it continues as an enduring historical Rorschach test or metaphor. President Kennedy famously quipped that while victory has a thousand fathers, defeat is an orphan. Ironically, however, that quip doesn’t apply to Vietnam, where almost everyone seems to claim it as vindication for their own ideas or ideologies – although the only ones who might do so unequivocally would be the Vietnamese themselves.

Our entry here is for the Vietnam War involving the United States in varying levels of engagement from about 1954, with the height of its military engagement from about 1965 to 1972. However, that war was also the Second Indochina War, following almost directly from the First Indochina War 1945-1954 against the French colonial regime – and in turn followed by the Third Indochina War 1975-1991, primarily between Vietnam and Cambodia but also the brief Sino-Vietnamese War against Vietnam’s former Chinese ally. And arguably these are part of a long line of Vietnam Wars, dating back to Vietnamese resistance to Imperial China and the Mongols.

American historiography of the war often poses the questions of whether the war was justifiable or moral, and whether it was winnable – with a tendency to answer both questions in the negative, although that is clouded by the historical reality of defeat on one hand and parallels with the Korean War on the other. It’s as much a part of that historical Rorschach test as the rest of the war.

At very least, the Americans should have queried how they could improve upon the French defeat, let alone double down on it. In this, ironically, they lapsed into similar errors of military judgement as Germany in both world wars in their failure to understand the nature of war, which involved understanding the limitations of military force in war and limitations of national power in the world.

I’ve seen arguments, with various degrees of persuasive force although I have yet to be persuaded by them, as to how the United States might have “won” – interestingly, these seem to cluster either near its starting point or its finishing point, with the former being more persuasive for obvious reasons, although with the obvious counterpoint that not starting it at all may have been better yet.

Finally, as a historical archetype, Vietnam seems to combine most of the predominant threads of war in the twentieth century – anti-colonial war or war of independence, civil war, proxy war, and most famously above all, guerrilla war or insurgency, perhaps the definitive type of war in the twentieth century (and beyond).

 

ART OF WAR

It’s been famously said that the Americans won all the battles but lost the war. However, almost as famous is the Vietnamese rejoinder (to Col. Harry Summers Jr) – “That may be so. But it is also irrelevant.” And so it was, as for the Vietnamese, the Vietnam War was not about battles but winning the war – which was a matter of endurance or outlasting their adversary.

It, along with other successful modern insurgencies, has often led to observations of guerrilla warfare as synonymous with, or even definitive of the art of war. Not so much in pre-modern history – although it did occur in the right circumstances, you don’t tend to hear too much of successful guerrilla warfare, because states were prepared to wipe out or displace entire populations to eliminate resistance.

However, counter-insurgency in modern warfare is notoriously tricky. There is arguably a modern, smart way of winning against insurgency, or there remains the more brutal way, but few modern states have demonstrated the means or above all patience to achieve the former without invariably lapsing into the latter or something resembling it. Just ask the Americans about the coup against Diem, My Lai, the bombing, napalm, Agent Orange or the Phoenix program.

Of course, insurgency can be tricky as well. After all, what do you do with all your forces while you are avoiding all those battles – but at the same time hoping to expand your political control? Insurgencies often default to a brutal answer – killing civilians. You know, those civilian collaborators or representatives of your enemy. Even those insurgencies seen as the “good” ones. Just ask the city of Hue during the Tet Offensive.

 

WORLD WAR

Vietnam as world war? Surely not? Although even in strict terms of combat, Vietnam was not that localized as a battlefield. It was after all the Indochina War – expanding to Laos and Cambodia, while also involving China and Thailand at its borders.

Beyond that, it evolved from being part of one world war to another. The Vietnamese resistance to French colonialism was caught up in the Second World War – involving Americans, Chinese, Japanese and British one way or another in Indochina. And after the Second World War, the Americans sponsored the French in the First Indochina War, before becoming involved more directly in the Second Indochina War after France was defeated. And that was part of the larger cold war – with the Soviet Union and China provided substantial aid or forces to North Vietnam, while Australia, South Korea and the Philippines all provided combat forces to support the Americans and South Vietnam.

 

STILL FIGHTING THE VIETNAM WAR

The stereotypical Vietnam veteran is or was often depicted as “”still fighting the Vietnam War” – I’m not sure to what extent that stereotype is accurate, such as whether they may have had disproportionately high rates of PTSD. Beyond that, the Vietnam War cast a long shadow, particularly with refugees and persistent allegations of MIAs or prisoners retained by Vietnam.

For the actual Vietnam War, we’re not still fighting it. If anything, Vietnam is probably more positive or even a potential ally towards the United States than it is to its former ally, China.

But for the Vietnam War as enduring imagery, metaphor and archetype, we’re still fighting the Vietnam War – with new wars constantly being compared to it.

 

GOOD GUYS AND BAD GUYS

Defeat may be more an orphan – and never more so than in terms of morality for the defeated. Not many people these days tend to argue for the Americans as the good guys, although that begs the question of how one distinguishes it from, say, the Korean War, which tends not to be seen in the same terms.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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Top Tens – History: Top 10 Books (3) Azar Gat – War in Human Civilization

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Oxford University Press, 1st edition (paperback) cover 2008

 

(3) AZAR GAT –

WAR IN HUMAN CIVILIZATION (2006)

 

 

“War, huh, yeah

What is it good for?”

 

Azar Gat’s history of war in human civilization is nothing short of magisterial – and at least halfway answers that famous song lyric, telling us what war is for.

 

That is the fundamental question which this book examines – “Why do people go to war?”.

 

Is it part of human nature or a “late cultural invention” of “civilization”, linked to agriculture, the state or something else? In short, who was right – Hobbes or Rousseau?

 

Has war declined in modernity? If so, why?

 

“In this truly global study of war and civilization, Azar Gat sets out to find definitive answers to these questions in an attempt to unravel the ‘riddle of war’ throughout human history, from the early hunter-gatherers right through to the unconventional terrorism of the twenty-first century”.

 

The book is divided into three parts. Part 2 – titled Agriculture, Civilization, and War – is perhaps the most straightforward of the three, although the overarching question of why people go to war is still present throughout, along with the associated question of how they do. Although he gave the game away in Part 1, Gat definitely leans into Hobbes here, with the emergence of strong central states – Hobbes’ Leviathan – being a key reason for less violent societies. Yes – even when those states make a wasteland and call it peace, as with the Roman Empire and their Pax Romana. He indicates as much with the title of his conclusion for this part – War, the Leviathan, and the Pleasures and Miseries of Civilization.

 

However, Parts 1 and 3 were the most fascinating for me. Part 1 and its sweeping title Warfare in the First Two Million Years indicate that its gamut is the whole of human prehistory – and indeed earlier to hominid or primate prehistory. One myth that Gat dispels in Part 1 is that humans are uniquely prolific for intra-species violence. As Gat demonstrates, they are not – and indeed other animal species match or exceed humans for violence within their own species. Where humans differ is with respect to the targets of their violence. Whereas animals avoid more costly violence against evenly matched males and instead target young or females of their own species (as with the infamous example of male lions killing cubs when they take over a pride), humans are the opposite – targeting other males, often with the express motive of taking women and children as prizes. But you might ask – aren’t human males similarly evenly matched as their animal counterparts? Yes, indeed – which is why humans make it less evenly matched by the preferred strategies of the ambush or raid catching antagonists by surprise, ideally asleep, something which is easier to do for humans than for animals.

 

Which brings us to the other myth Gat dispels in this part – Rousseau’s “noble savage” or rather the myth of a peaceful ‘savage’, where the true escalation of violence in war arising with ‘civilization’, whether agriculture, the state, or something else. Indeed, Gat demonstrates that humans in their “state of nature” or indeed in societies not predominated by powerful central states experience much more violence, usually by substantial orders of magnitude.

 

As for Part 3 – Modernity: The Dual Face of Janus – Gat demonstrates that modernity has resulted in, well, more peace and less violence or war, even if that does not seem to be the case because of the destructive power of our technology. More intriguingly, Gat dispels (or at least introduces cause for caution with respect to) any monomythic explanations for this – such as “democratic peace theory” or fear of nuclear weapons.

 

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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Top Tens – History: Top 10 Empires (4) Macedonian Empire

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Alexander the Great’s route and empire at its largest extent in 323 BC – map by Generic Mapping Tools for Wikipedia “Macedonia (ancient kingdom” under license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

 

(4) MACEDONIAN EMPIRE (336 – 30 BC)

“There are no more worlds to conquer”.

The Macedonian empire may have been essentially the empire of one man, but that man was Alexander the Great and his empire changed the world.

“Alexander the Great was the king of Macedon during the 4th century B.C. who saw the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and Asia and decided they would make a really bitchin’ backyard.”

Alexander’s empire was essentially the former Achaemenid Persian Empire, but also with the Macedonian hegemony of Greece – which he had led as a coalition of Greeks in his conquest of the Persian Empire (except the Spartans, because screw them – THIS ISN’T SPARTA!). Of course that was because it involved one of the finest fighting forces in history, honed (like his kingdom and its predominance in Greece) by his father Philip before him, the Macedonian phalanx, and led by Alexander as one of the finest military leaders of history, undefeated, usually against heavy numerical odds. That’s right – I’m an Alexander the Great and Battle of Gaugamela fan.

Alexander was nothing but audacious, as befitting a god among men – as he literally saw himself or came to do so. The feats of his life and conquests became legend. And genuinely funny, worthy of television deadpan snark at times – where is the Alexander sitcom series?! They could even call it Who’s The Greatest? That would be a hoot – as opposed to the unfunny snorefest that was Oliver Stone’s 2004 film.

Unable to untie the legendary insoluble Gordian knot of which it was prophesied that whomever untied it would conquer Asia? No problem – just cut it with your sword and go on to conquer Asia.

Faced with threat of the Persian navy which can strike at Greece behind your lines? No problem – just conquer the coastline of the Persian empire. Where’s your navy now, Persia?

The Persian emperor offers to surrender half his empire to you and your wimpy general Parmenion says you should accept? Sneer at him “I would too, if I were you”, then proceed to demonstrate you’re Alexander the Great by conquering the other half as well, while showing the Persian emperor he can run but he can’t hide.

Although my favorite story remains Alexander’s famous meeting with Diogenes – known to history as the Cynic philosopher but to contemporaries as that weird homeless naked guy sleeping in a barrel, although the only man to beat Alexander in an agora slanging match. (No one could beat Alexander in a ‘ýo mama’ slanging contest because his mother was the insanely hot Olympias, member of an orgiastic snake-worshipping cult of Dionysus – Alexander was something of a Dionysian himself). But I digress.

His empire may technically have only lasted as long as his reign, thirteen years from his succession to the throne of Macedonia in 336 BC to his death from fever in 323 BC at only 32 years of age. However, I’m reckoning it by the duration of the dynasties of his generals who succeeded him with their rival claims and Hellenistic kingdoms, until the last of them – Cleopatra, heir to the dynasty founded by Ptolemy in Egypt – fell to the Romans.

 

The “Vergina Sun” (as named after archaeological excavations around the town of Vergina in northern Greece) – tentatively interpreted as historical Macedonian royal symbol

DECLINE & FALL

Yes and no.

Yes – Alexander’s empire fell apart upon his death. It was hardly the only empire to fragment among the successors of its original conqueror, and three of those fragments, roughly corresponding to a third of Alexander’s conquests or the former Persian empire each, were powerful states of themselves – Egypt under the Ptolemaic dynasty of Ptolemy, Anatolia and the Levant under the Antigonid dynasty of Antigonus, and Mesopotamia and Persia under the Seleucid dynasty of Seleucus.

The Ptolemaic dynasty was most content to keep to Egypt, but they all took shots at each other – with the Antigonus and the Seleucids taking their best shots at reclaiming all the empire, the latter at their height coming close to Alexander’s empire.

These states and other successors warred endlessly among themselves in the Macedonian Succession Wars or Wars of the Diadochi, depleting themselves until the Romans – also fans of Alexander – swallowed them up, with the legion displacing the phalanx as the finest fighting force of the classical world. Of course, that’s a massive over-simplification of what is often regarded as the “single most complex and tangled succession crisis in history”.

THE MACEDONIAN EMPIRE NEVER FELL

Apart from the Hellenistic kingdoms and legacy he bequeathed the world, all the way to India, Alexander’s empire also persisted in the twenty cities or so he founded that bore his name, the most famous and enduring of which remains Alexandra in Egypt. Well, not quite the most enduring – that will always be the Alexandria he founded in our hearts. Next year in Alexandria, as we say.

THE SUN NEVER SETS

Alexander’s empire may not have been global, but it was an empire of the known world in Greek eyes. And it can rightly be regarded as one of history’s world empires, a turning point in European and Asian history that spread Greek culture – Hellenization – in its wake.

EVIL EMPIRE

Alexander could be a little, ah, bipolar but his empire tended to avoid the evil tag – except among the Persians – as he tended to be magnanimous in victory and seek to reconcile his conquests rather than simply subdue or destroy them, the key word being tended as he was also prone to bouts of (alcoholic) brutal violence

The kingdoms of his successors…not so much. The Seleucids in particular achieved enduring infamy with the successful Jewish revolt of the Maccabees against them. After all, you need a certain evil chic to go down in the Bible as the abomination of desolation – looking at you, Antiochus IV Epiphanes…

RATING: 4 STARS****
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Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (4) Persian Wars – Greek-Persian Wars

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Spartans fighting against Persians at the Battle of Plataea – illustration in Cassell’s Illustrated Universal History 1882 (public domain image)

 

(4) PERSIAN WARS –
GREEK-PERSIAN WARS (499-449 BC)

The classical Persian Wars – when the Greeks fought for their very existence as independent states against the imperial Persian superpower of the Achaemenid Empire, as an uneasy coalition of Greek city states fighting off two Persian invasions of Greece against the odds in the archetypal battles of classical Greek heroism.

That is not to overlook the Macedonian conquest of the Persian Empire featured in another top ten entry, or the longer Roman-Persian wars – through to the twilight of classical history, for nearly seven centuries from 54 BC to 628 AD, when the Romans fought their relentless slogging match against two successive Persian empires, the Parthians and the Sassanids.

Ultimately, however, the Roman-Persian Wars lack the existential significance of the Persian invasions of Greece, both to the classical Greeks and by extension Western civilization itself. It is difficult to imagine the shape of Western civilization, had the Persians succeeded in their invasions of Greece, particularly their second invasion, but it would have been immeasurably different.

Greek victories in the Persian Wars were certainly a defining moment for Athens and its democracy, as well as the Greeks as a whole – “their victory endowed the Greeks with a faith in their destiny that was to endure for three centuries, during which western culture was born”.

The Persian wars were also among the first wars in history to be written as history – by the creators of history as a genre, foremost among them Herodotus, styled as the father of history. They might also be argued to be the origin of Western military strategy and tactics – or at least the feature that was to recur so decisively as part of Western military superiority, the drilled formation, in this case the hoplite phalanx.

They also featured two of the landmark battles of history, won against the odds – Marathon and the naval battle of Salamis – as well as the heroic last stand of Thermopylae, the Spartan Alamo. Of course, as an Athenian loyalist, I’d point out that Marathon and Salamis were Athenian victories, as opposed to all that pro-Spartan agitprop of the 300 film, in which Leonidas breezily dismissed Athens.

Salamis was a particularly impressive Athenian victory, since they won it from exile after evacuating Athens itself, which was captured and razed by the Persians – choosing to carry on fighting from exile rather than submit to the Persians. This feat might be compared to the scenario if France had not surrendered to Germany in 1940, but had fought on with its fleet from north Africa – and won.

In terms of historical narrative, the first Persian invasion from 492 BC to 490 BC, under Darius the Great, was inconclusive with their defeat in the battle of Marathon…for the time being. Darius had to postpone a further invasion of Greece to fight strife within his own empire. When he died, his son and successor Xerxes took the second swing at Greece in earnest in an invasion from 480 to 479 BC, which was ultimately defeated at the battles of Plataea and Mycale.

After that, the Greeks were able to go on the offensive against the Persians in the Persian Empire itself, particularly in its formerly Greek fringes, but the Greek-Persian wars largely fizzled out from there with a return to the pre-war status quo by 449 BC, not unlike the persistent stalemate of the subsequent Roman-Persian Wars, although Greece was freed from the threat of Persian invasion. Of course, a lot of that was undone as the Persian Empire then learned to sit back and exploit the Greek city-states fighting among themselves, most notably in the Peloponnesian Wars.

ART OF WAR

The Greeks in the Persian Wars were almost exact contemporaries of Sun Tzu on the other side of the world, as the Persian Wars commenced a few years before the traditional date given to Sun Tzu’s death in 496 BC – and I’m inclined to favor the Greeks over Sun Tzu when it came to demonstrated art of war in actual history. Winning without fighting is all very well, but sometimes you have little choice but to fight – and to fight in desperate defence against numerically superior forces.

Hence the genius of Greek strategy, consistently fighting at geographical bottlenecks or chokepoints, including the straits of Salamis. Beyond that, the Greeks won because “they avoided catastrophic defeats, stuck to their alliance, took advantage of Persian mistakes” and possessed tactical superiority with their hoplite forces.

WORLD WAR

Sadly, I think it would be stretching things too far to call the Greek-Persian Wars a world war, even though the Greeks often styled it as the war of one continent against another or East against West, harking back to the legendary Trojan War as its predecessor – a continental front line that was replayed in the Roman-Persian Wars and beyond, as the Persians were replaced by Arabs and Turks.

STILL FIGHTING THE PERSIAN WARS

Well perhaps not in the style of the Greek or Macedonian Persian Wars, but Americans might feel they’ve been replaying the Roman-Persian Wars since 1979…

GOOD GUYS VS BAD GUYS

Sorry Persia – I know you’re not the weird mutant army featured in the film 300 and indeed one of the great civilizations of ancient history, but the Greeks will always be the good guys to me

RATING: 4 STARS****
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Top Tens – History: Top 10 Books (4) Paul Johnson – Modern Times

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(4) PAUL JOHNSON –

MODERN TIMES: A HISTORY OF THE WORLD FROM THE 1920S TO THE 1980S (1983)

 

“A latter day Mencken, Johnson is witty, gritty, and compulsively readable”.

 

Probably the most divisive entry in my top ten, in part because Johnson is the sole entry without a background as an academic historian (possibly except Ellis for whom I’m unable to find any biographical detail) – except perhaps for undergraduate study.

 

Instead, Johnson was a journalist and popular historian – although it makes you sit up and pay attention when you read that as a journalist he interviewed some of the historical figures in this book, as for example he states in a footnote he did with Kerensky (obviously in the latter’s exile as former leader of the Provisional Government of Russia overthrown by the Bolsheviks).

 

In part that explains the divisive nature of this entry – but perhaps mostly it’s the strength of his opinions and the prose style with which he expressed them, both of which (as well as that divisive nature) were reflected in this book.

.

Yes, yes – I know this book has been updated and reissued with various subtitles to reflect that (such as the one in my feature image) but I’m going with the original title.

 

It was the first book of history that I read from Johnson although afterwards I avidly read others by him as it was a huge influence on me in my youth. Not so much now as I’ve receded somewhat from him as I’ve perceived some of his more idiosyncratic opinions, albeit I still rank him highly enough for this entry.

 

For example, I can agree with his assessment of Eisenhower as the twentieth century’s most successful president (although he also ranks Reagan highly, perhaps even higher in the later editions) but not so much some of the other presidents he ranked highly (or badly). Sorry, I will never see Nixon as anything but crooked, even if he demonstrated a certain amoral competence.

 

From the above one may divine his opinions to be conservative, of a distinctly Catholic and anti-communist kind – interestingly enough as he originally was left-wing before his ideological reversal on the road to Damascus, a metaphor I think he would have particularly liked given his beliefs and name.

 

Whatever one may think of his opinions, the virtuosity of his prose style was undeniable – perhaps the best of any of my top ten entries, with a particular talent for turns of phrase and chapter titles, as illustrated by those for this book:

 

1 – A Relativistic World

2 – The First Despotic Utopias

3 – Waiting for Hitler

4 – Legitimacy in Decadence

5 – An Infernal Theocracy, a Celestial Chaos

6 – The Last Arcadia

7 – Degringolade

8 – The Devils

9 – The High Noon of Aggression

10 – The End of Old Europe

11 – The Watershed Year

12 – Superpower and Genocide

13 – Peace by Terror

14 – The Bandung Generation

15 – Caliban’s Kingdoms

16 – Experimenting with Half Mankind

17 – The European Lazarus

18 – America’s Suicide Attempt

19 – The Collectivist Seventies

20 – The Recovery of Freedom (in later editions – formerly Palimpsests of Freedom)

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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