Studies British Parliamentary government, setting aside theory for normative analysis of function and drawing favorable contrasts with the American presidential system. Constitutions have dignified and efficient parts, the latter often more important than formal allocation of power. These gain stature through passage of time, even though yesterday’s conventions are not necessarily best suited for today’s affairs. The efficient secret of the British constitution is close union of the legislature (i.e., Commons) and the executive (the prime minister and responsible cabinet). Relations between the PM and Parliament are incessant, unlike the needlessly divided president and congress, and cabinet ministers further are better supervisors of the bureaucracy because they provide fresh views while being accountable to Commons. That is, English party government exposes the leadership both to functionaries and the requirement of maintaining a working majority. The USA’s splitting of sovereignty, by contrast, is particularly troublesome in times of crisis; Bagehot observes it’s well the Americas are law abiding. There are also valuable takes on political affairs: so long as there’s an uneasy class which lacks just power, the agitators will rashly believe all should have equal power; gross appearances are great realities; bureaucracy conflates substance of government with process, thereby overdoing quantity at expense of quality; in early societies more important for law to be fixed than good. A surprisingly resilient analysis.
Month: August 2021
9. Bagehot, Physics and Politics (8 Jun 2019)
A sociological study of characteristics which distinguish prehistoric (‘savage’), stationary, and progressive states, observing that ‘government by discussion’ combined with deliberation before acting produces the ideal nation. Lawfulness is the prime need of early societies: it’s more important elites know the application of custom than to achieve equality or fairness. Revolutionary principles don’t advance societies which don’t yet know their own nature, and it’s well that prehistoric races mixed little, for it would have produced a ‘general carelessness and skepticism … encourag(ing) the nation that right and wrong had no real existence, but were mere creatures of human opinion’ (p. 43) Custom binds age to age: an initial act of will leads to unconscious habit. But custom becomes a trap, a state of arrested development; further to oppose custom stifles innovation and invites opprobrium where there’s belief in collective guilt. Accumulated custom, pace Rousseau and Strauss, is thus significantly different than prehistory. Only government which encourages the discussion of significant, and more and more, matters makes the transition. Classical Athens was first to do so, followed by early modern Europe (after the interlude of medieval Christendom). Ultimately, order and choice are equally necessary for social progress: the energy of progressive nationals grows by coalescence and competition. Victorian England is a leading exemplar. In the course, Bagehot elaborates that military prowess (war) is the most obvious form of competition, of bringing social advantage to bear; the Jewish race is the sole exception of a nation achieving ‘variability’ without losing legality, probably because it’s skewed to the law; unconscious imitation is the main conduit of social catalytics, for disbelief often needs more reason than acquiescence. Though susceptible to charge of discredited social Darwinism, the problem Bagehot set to address cannot be explained away, and his effort has not been superseded by postmodern thought.
10. Ferguson, Empire (16 Jun 2019)
Sketches the trajectory of the British Empire 1550-1950, at times suggesting the economic, cultural, and political benefits outweigh the unintended consequences, more often lamenting illogical ideology or failure to impart democracy. The principal mechanisms of transferring goods, capital, labor, and Western civics were language, land tenure, banking, common law, Protestantism, team sports, the ‘night watchman’ state, representative assemblies, and political liberty – the last the most distinct from Continental tradition. British imperialism originated in pirating Spanish shipping. The Glorious Revolution imported Dutch banking acumen: surpassing France in North America and India depended on credit. Immigration, which began with the Cromwellian settlement in Ireland, turned on indentured servitude, which accounted for over half of newcomers to North American over 1650-1780 (not forgetting more moved to the West Indies). In the Victorian era, the ‘subtext’ of the Canadian Durham report regretted liberty had not been sooner extended; the abolition of slavery was notable because it was still profitable; evangelicalism was remarkable for its admixture with economic and political ends, and was ultimately seen as subversive especially in India. Education provided unprecedented civil opportunities on the subcontinent. However, the ‘White Mutiny’, which asserted the right to jury trial by one’s own race, exposed prejudice that launched Indian nationalism, fueled not by poverty of masses but alienation of the privileged. In Africa, trading monopolies often converted to protectorates. Imperial Britain spent only 2.5% of its GDP on defense; over 1870-1914 the terms of trade appreciated 10%, bolstered by shipping and insurance revenue, enabling more imports to the UK. Empire was a source of pride; however, the Boer War made the public uneasy, World War I profoundly doubtful of the value of international power. By the end of World War II, as rival economies undermined Britain’s economic advantages and her balance of payments turned negative, political commitment evaporated and the Empire was ‘for sale’ – save that it was liquidated by US-led internationalism, exemplified by Suez. Despite the rising living standard of Victorian England, the principal beneficiaries of Empire were ultimately emigrants to the White Dominions, where team games fostered ‘greater Britain’. The source of Empire’s redemption lies not in political economy, however, but comparison with European rivals which made no attempt to impart liberty: Britain’s failure reveals its goodwill. Normatively, British imperialism fared best in the wastelands of Virginia and New England and least well in urban India, where the temptation to plunder superseded the impulse to build and transfer. The back-and-forth of Ferguson’s account founders on the reality that civic projects are steered less by countries, centuries at a time, but individuals whose concerns are often competing and changing. Criticizing a country’s intent often slips into hindsight.
17. Mitchell, Democracy’s Beginning (10 Sep 2020)
Describes the birth and evolution of democratic Athens, circa 500-325 BC, the world’s first experiment in radical self-government. In the Archaic Age (~ 750-500 BC), aristocrats lost exclusive hold on power owing to the changing nature of warfare (i.e., greater value of hoplites), trade, and cultural exchange foster by colonization. Solon’s 6th-century reforms abolishing lending against personage and slavery for debt, and establishing equality before the law (but not land redistribution), and particularly Cleisthenes’ moves to provide political power to the demos and the use of ostracism to reign in factions prefigured the transition. The conversion may be traced to 503 BC, and passed the test of the Persian War, which nonetheless demonstrated democratic government requires leadership and decision making. By the Periclean era, as a matter of course selections for (minor) office were by lot and the demos voted for its generals. It was a libertarian era: individual freedom (Isaiah Berlin’s ‘freedom to’) was seen to originate in human nature (versus modern rights), and husbandry was the state’s obligation. Even as the Athenian empire grew, all the member states including oligarchies most valued freedom to set their own rules. The rise of democracy and empire coincided with flourishing arts, public building, public rhetoric: elegance crowned eminence. But the Peloponnesian War revealed the public’s incapacity for strategic decisions (as well as the persistent failures of aristocratic elites). Further, rhetoric and specifically sophism worked to sever faith in the laws as divinely inspired; might makes right evidenced itself in demagogic leadership and imperial ambition. The war was lost, oligarchic coups toppled the demos; but democratic loyalties, always strong among the hoplites) recovered power in 404. Chastened, Athens enacted reforms such as separating laws from decrees, to distinguish between the Assembly’s decision making and officeholders’’ administration, ultimately extending democracy another 80 years. So to test the appellation, the author outlines the processes of voting, administration (financial offices holding much formal power in the 4th century), justice and the courts, and so on. About 6,000 attended the Assembly or the courts, particularly after the introduction of payment for participation. While women were admittedly excluded, he finds slavery was not the basis the city’s economy. Despite its shortcomings – notably the will to power of the 5th-century demos, social excesses such as the Herms affair, imperialism, and susceptibility to demagogues – democratic Athens marked an unprecedented commitment to individual freedom and equality before the law. For Aristotle, too much so: extreme freedom and equality undermine merit and telos. The bigger question is whether such conditions promote or undermine loyalty to the constitution?
11. Macintyre, Concise History of Australia (26 Jun 2019)
Exemplifies the black armband school of Australia history, lamenting race, sex, and class in a Whiggish, frequently polemical narrative of illegitimacy and ignorance. Major topics such as Australian geography and continental exploration or the particulars of sport are dismissed as ‘colonial history’ or ignored. Though tainted by willful ideology, as well as tendentious glosses of world history, these points emerge:
Founding to circa 1850
- There are two ways to interpret Australia’s founding, as a convict colony succeeding North America, or a as supply of naval stores
- Aboriginals were found to be in a ‘state of nature’ and therefore lacking title to land
- Australia attained self-sufficiency in food more quickly than North America, and began to supplant North America in attracting British migrants with the revision of land grants in the 1830s
- Sealing and whaling led the economy to 1830. Pastoralists (‘squatters’) employed many on the fast-growing sheep stations. Following the introduction of merino, Australia captured half of the British market for fleece by 1850
- As the early social divisions between convicts, freeborn, and natives faded, social order grew egalitarian
Circa 1850-90
- Following the discovery of gold in Victoria, surplus wealth lifted Australia’s intake to 15 percent of all British exports, and the country began attracting private British capital. The first railways, telegraphs, and steamships from Europe reduced the tyranny of distance. However, all of the major cities were 800 kilometers from one another: inter-colonial travel was by ship
- The debate over the low-cost availability of land for settlers was intertwined with the first colonial (i.e., state) constitutions. Macintyre laments the nature of upper houses in some states, overlooking democracy’s contemporaneous rarity
- The character of Australian democracy is attributable to the Chartists: universal suffrage, the secret (‘Australian’) ballot, rough equality of electorates, no property qualification
- Government powers were highly centralized, emanating from capital cities via courthouses and schools (the colony having replaced the church in 1850). The economic effect of towns was to create specialists in the professions and trades
- The recession of 1891, kicked off by a miner’s strike, ended the midcentury ‘bargain’ between employers and labor, growth in exchange for job security. The economy contracted by 30 percent, demonstrating (according to the author) Australia had outstripped the land’s capacity, goaded by London capital
Circa 1890-1945
- The economy remained geared to the Britain: 3/5 of exports to the UK, 1/2 of imports from there. The government promoted migration when labor was scarce and vice versa. Jobs were safeguarded by tariffs on goods competing with Australian manufactures – but protection only extended to employers meeting wage standards. The tactic effectively coopted the labor movement
- Australian identity appropriated the socioeconomic mythos of the swagman: independent, anti-authoritarian, egalitarian. (Why was this a poor, unjust outcome?) The ANZAC represented unobtainable sacrifice and redemption of the convict stain.
- Australian nationalism was a response to protest-minded socialist and feminists, both of which are ‘universal’ and international. The author expresses surprise that political leaders persuaded the electorate to unify, as he glosses the details of state formation
- Despite fin-de-siècle setbacks, unions sidelined doctrinaire socialism. By 1914, electoral success made Australia’s Labor Party a world leader. This prompted the consolidation of protectionists and free traders into the rival Liberal Party. However, the push for conscription, which failed, split Labor and sideline the party for most years until 1941
- The racially homogenous ‘south’ was urban, polarized by class, and an export-led economy. The harsher climate of the north required cheap labor, meaning jobs for Aborigines, Chinese and islander immigrants, and so society downplayed racism. Race, in the authors view, is not genetic but cultural; prevailing sociocultural norms are inherently hegemonic and oppressive. In the interwar years, rural development failed to halt migration to the cities.
Postwar
- That social insurance wasn’t extended in the 1930s is attributable to inter-state rivalries. John Curtin traded wartime sacrifice for government power to pursue full employment, social welfare and pensions, and labor representation in management. His colleague Herbert Evatt was Australia’s first great statesman, a liberal international prominent in founding the United Nations
- Robert Menzies stood for ‘forgotten Australia’, neither management nor tribal labor; he was dedicated to the British Commonwealth. But Aussie foreign policy moved into the orbit of the USA’s ‘informal imperialism’, which was not to be relied on any more than the UK… which country’s integration into the nascent European Union hurt the Australian economy.
- Most of the final chapters are polemics. Gough Whitlam is treated favorably, Malcolm Fraser praised to the extent he was tolerant of social democracy. Paul Keating’s ‘bargain’ limiting wages in exchange for job creation evinces the author’s belief that the role of Australian business is to provide employment
- Deregulation, exemplified by the floating currency, betrays the suspect role foreign capital and ‘neoliberalism’, i.e., participating in the world economy. As above, Macintyre complains of Australia’s dependency on exporting natural resources, but does not suggest an alternate approach for a country of 25 million; and is favorable to engagement with Asian economies, but fails to notice they are most interested in minerals and often totalitarian
Macintyre seeks both equality of opportunity and outcomes. His hindsight is splendid but historiographical method more wanting. Evidence is poorly presented in unnumbered endnotes, making it the more difficult to assess whether more contemporary evidence has been cherrypicked.
12. Blainey, Shorter History of Australia (4 Jul 2019)
Technology, the conquering of distance, and British capital have been more important to Australian history than political decisions, while sport not labor is an unusually accurate mirror of society’s elite. As at 1789, Australia was the world’s largest surviving zone of hunter-gatherer society; Aboriginal tribes continued fighting one another more than the invading British. When later denied civil rights, it was because Aboriginals had shunned European ways. Aussie winters are sufficiently warm for hay to grow all year, so sheep farming prospered and wool became the leading export most years from 1835-1975, until commodities took over; Australia had long since become an export-led economy. In developing society, urbanization was strong than in North American because land was more expensive; half of land revenues were spent to bring out settlers who tended to stay in cities; more than half of first-time new farms failed. Steam engines changed men’s working conditions after 1860, 50 years before domestic products (e.g., stoves, refrigerators, washing machines) revolutionized women’s conditions. Railways, which expanded by a factor of 9 over 1871-91, began to link cities to the outback towns; most inter-city travel was by ship. Universal suffrage (including the secret or ‘Australian’ ballot) came very early in world society. Unions, which got started during the Victorian gold rush of the 1850s, preferred shorter working hours to higher wages, because most men were single. Owing to leisure time and mild winters supporting the grass fields, sport prospered. The football clubs of Melbourne and Geelong are older than any in the in English (soccer) Premiership, and playing grounds grew large so people could watch. Australia, from 1850, was the first country to value spectator sports because they demonstrated determination, stamina, courage, and the will to succeed. In some ways, the author notes, Australia has first-rate sports and second-rate work culture because the latter been protected from competition. By 1891, most Aussies were literate.
In 1889, English General J.B. Edwards published an influential report noting each state had its own railways, post offices, immigration laws, import duties, and (most of all) military units. The report captured Henry Parkes’ imagination, who called a convention in Sydney in 1891 to promote federation; John Quick championed a constituent delegated to write a constitution. The Australian Natives Association (ANA) was the leading force in the push for independence, which progressed in an environment conscious of defending the continent from invasion, the recession of 1893, and comparisons with America. Sydney, confident of regaining supremacy from Melbourne, saw federation as a Victorian conspiracy. Changes were to require a majority of population; but this does not make Australia inherently conservative; rather, during the 20th century would-be reformers marshalled their forces too narrowly. The movement was slowed by the economic slump of 1893, which was deeper than in Europe: 13 of 22 banks which issued notes closed. Amid the campaigning, Aussie politics were reshaping: Labor, a unionist but not socialist party, ascended in New South Wales and Queensland, Radical-Liberals held power in preeminent Victoria and South Australia.
In the first half of the 20th century, Labor’s success exemplified the country’s egalitarian spirit: government should regulate work and ‘tall poppies’ were to be cut down. Post Federation, Labor tended to be (British) immigrants, and Liberals natives. The ‘White Australia’ policy, much like those pertaining in the USA, Canada, or New Zealand, is most notable because it persisted longer. At the turn of the century most immigrants were actually Italians, Greeks, or Russian Jews. The policy hurt Queensland economy, dependent on Polynesians as well as a law requiring shipping to be owned by natives. 1907 saw the introduction of a basic wage standard. Simultaneously, the emergence of oil transformed Australian coal self-sufficiency to import dependency. World War I, particularly the travails of Gallipoli and the Somme, sealed Australia’s nationhood in ways statutes could not (but Western Australia voted to secede in 1933!). In 1921 Labor reversed course by adopting a socialist platform, while Irish Catholics became moderates and city manufacturers more dependent on protection than farmers. World War II brought the country closer to America. Moderate John Curtin reformed the economy and brought Canberra (i.e., national government) into national life. In the postwar years, English immigrants were outnumbered 3:1 by Europeans, the start of a significant cultural change. Everyone had a job due to autarchic manufacturing policy (as well as Europe’s need for its own goods); in sum, manufacturing was now more important than agriculture. Over 1945-70, though the era is strongly associated with Menzies, the economy reshaped Australia more than politics; the autarchic policy sought to avoid the perils of World War 2. Australia was self-sufficient during the 1973 energy crisis, for in the 1970s mining replaced agriculture and capital was attracted to a stable country, which found a new client in Japan. Menzies distanced the Liberals, based in Victoria, from corporate business while enticing suburban women and returned servicemen. Anti-communist feeling hurt Labor, spawning a breakaway Catholic party which tended to side with the Liberals. Hawke began ending protectionism, Keating financial regulation, but labor itself was not exposed to competition. At century’s end, the Mabo decision inventing Aborigine claims to land was judge-made law, badly done and so drawing the courts into a legislative role. Post 1990, social and cultural matters separated the parties more than politics proper. While it was fashionable to declare Australia an Asian county, in fact it was sui generis, Paris being closer to Asia than Canberra and the closest reaches of Australia being a desert. In this way, distance remains a pivotal force; but the country, now one of the world’s four oldest democracies, feeds itself plus 80 million overseas, justifying white settlement.
Clark (Cathcart, ed.), History of Australia (3 Aug 2019)
A colorful polemic ranging from 1787 to approximately 1935, increasingly lamenting the Australian citizenry’s failure to adopt an egalitarian social democracy. The country’s first political issue was whether the rights of convicts revived with manumission or were forever forfeit. By 1835, there were two methods of seeding European civilization: 1) a leveling, seen in early New South Wales and lastingly in Western Australia, due to high price of labor which produced social regression, and 2) slave labor in New South Wales, Tasmania, and Queensland. Through the end of the transport to NSW in 1840, civic officials and pastoralists were supported by forced labor; the 1818 arrival of surplus convicts enabled Macquarie to initiate Sydney’s public works. Emancipists looked past judicial rulings to affirm civic restoration, and notwithstanding Lord Bathurst’s 1823 pronouncements (e.g., no land grants to ex cons but only those with capital for improvement), eventually settlers concluded reform could occur without forced labor. By 1828, ¼ of the population over 12 was native: taller, hardier, irascible but not vindictive. However, bushranging carried elements of Irish vengeance on Anglo society, and settler-Aboriginal relations were conquest. Governors such as Macquarie and Bourke, aware of the skills shortage, tolerated emancipists whereas Tories favored ‘exclusive’ legislatures, the contest playing out in the writing of provincial constitutions. Only South Australia was different because of its balance of sexes, no penal labor, and orderly German population.
By the mid-19th century, the population had doubled, convicts become numerically insignificant, wool exports grew by a factor of seven, and Catholics rose to one-quarter the population. The problem of transitioning from a penal to a working-class society was evident in the lack of an enforceable penal code, native social institutions, and persistent labor shortages. The economy’s dependence of commodities (including wool) promoted reliance on British capital, draining the settlers’ creative energies and entrenching metropolitan social institutions (e.g., education and law). The exclusives-emancipists rivalry changed into a contest between oligopolistic pastoralists and urban egalitarians (who notably eschewed American-style democracy). The first NSW constitution combined requirement for land ownership to vote with government appointments and concessions to bourgeois merchants, but raised the price of land, thus discouraging immigration to the ‘workman’s paradise’. 1852’s gold rush prompted Britain to hasten the provincial charters (and also the independence of Victoria). NSW aimed at a landed, hereditary Whig society to stave off socialized masses, Victoria following suit. In SA, worker aspirations for land were acceptable and manhood suffrage granted. But the proto-governments of the goldfields showed indigenous Aussie political views and even practical outcomes such as the eight-hour workday. The Selection Acts of 1860, intended to promote agriculture and closer settlement while responding to diggers’ dream of landownership, created conflict with pastoralists as well as squatters. Only SA had achieved a stable class of wheat farmers; in WA dependence on convicts made the state most fragile; failed farmers turned to crime. Aussies learned to sympathize with failure without becoming cynical. Clark considers that the aspirations of petty bourgeois for respectability and the working class for land ownership held back the country.
Between 1870-90 both Melbourne, which was protectionist, and Sydney, favoring free trade, reached population of 300,000; manufacturing grew notably in clothing, printing, iron works, furniture, and foodstuffs so as to reach 10 percent of GDP; women worked in the putting-out system. Simultaneously, wool sent to English mills increased another five times. Unionism sprang up in shearing and spread to shipping. In VIC and SA, the working class was immigrant, seen as deserving of the vote; in NSW and QLD, it was convict on the way to socialist; TAS and WA remained ‘feudal’, Europeans aligned against Aboriginals. The 1891 retirement of NSW premier Henry Parkes was the end of the chance to build a middle class from bushrangers and city labor. It was also contemporaneous with the start of the economic downturn, in which era legislatures blocked social reform. Liberals saw Federation as a way to circumvent revolution but the white Australia policy ended the country’s working-class reputation(!). Further, independent Australia remained dependent on Britain for defense. Clark laments conscription’s dividing labor and contends Gallipoli and World War I failed to liberate the country from is colonial history.
Postwar electrification promoted bourgeois values, while government plans such as national insurance undermined labor’s polemics. The national mythology touted liberty and freedom from poverty. Jack Lang exemplified Labor’s role as its social conscience. During the Depression, the NSW premier sought to suspend payments of British credit, but a centrist faction led by Joe Lyons accepted the recommendations of the Bank of England’s Otto Niemeyer that Australia was living beyond its means. Lyons would subsequently help found a party of the non-communist left; the 1932 controversy over England’s ‘bodyline’ cricket was fueled by the debt argument. Wrapping up in the middle of the Depression, Clark’s postwar coda accuses Menzies of cultural cringe and hails Whitlam as a liberator.
Even as abridged, Clark’s telling is full of poignant anecdotes, effectively showing the author’s sociopolitical views but also revealing his lack of dispassionate inquiry. Ever watchful for egalitarian ideals and social revolution, Clark never articulates those foundational concepts which make these inevitable: tellingly, Herzen comes closest in theorizing the petty bourgeois’ transformation is the final work in any society based on property. Why should vast Australia not permit its citizens to own land?
14. Kagan, On the Origins of War (14 Aug 2019)
To identify elements that commonly cause global conflicts, studies the Peloponnesian and Punic wars, World Wars 1 and 2, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Despite the modern taste for social-science explanations such as irrational behavior or systemic competition (e.g., Kennedy’s belief miscalculation launched the Great War), Thucydides’ precept holds: wars commence from honor, fear, or interest. The historian of war ought to hold out hopes of statesmanship surmounting avoidable conflict: some wars are just and must be resolved, but many can be put off, sometimes through concession but more often by deterrence. There is a typology of treaties (e.g., victor’s peace, punishment without destruction, and mutual agreement that continuing costs surmount the gains) which are the starting point for defense of peace.
Peloponnesian War: The Spartans’ honor required defending its coalition and discouraging defections to Athens. Archidamus failed to stem his fractious allies, who were more like NATO than the common analogy of the Soviet bloc. Pericles sought to demonstrate Athens was a sated power, and through defensive strategy to show traditional Spartan warfare could not prevail, but lacked a credible offensive deterrent (such as encouraging slave rebellion).
World War 1: Germany undid Bismarck’s attempt to demonstrate its satisfaction through the belligerence of Kaiser Wilhelm and his cabinet. The pursuit of naval power and colonies was a point of honor (not interest) which threatened Britain’s traditional objectives to control the seas and the Low countries and well as to preserve a continental balance of power.
2d Punic War: Rome struck a poor peace, its Senate failing to ratify the first treaty and seeking a larger indemnity, both of which served to inflame Carthage. Additionally, Rome carelessly conceded vital interests, such as the security of Saguntum or defending the Ebro border.
World War 2: Versailles was not unduly harsh, but the Germans didn’t believe they’d lost, and the UK didn’t see itself as responsible for enforcement. Its economic power flagging, Britain was persuaded by traumatized, rationalist intellectuals to trust in the League of Nations. Well before Hitler’s rise, the Germans had shaken off occupation of the Rhineland, renegotiated reparations, and begun rearming (in cooperation with Soviet Russia). Subsequently, Chamberlain replaced moral disarmament with military unpreparedness as a reason for appeasement. France too, cowering behind the Maginot Line, lacked the will to defend Eastern Europe.
Cuban Missile Crisis: Geoffrey Blainey observes wars start when rivals can’t agree the allotment of power. Both sides agreed the US was stronger but Khrushchev perceived Kennedy wouldn’t act on it. The Bay of Pigs, disastrous Vienna summit, and erection of the Berlin Wall as well as Soviet premier’s skill at strategic deception and bluster shook the American president. In belatedly exposing the Soviet missile gap, Kennedy pushed his rival into a corner without intending to keep him there. Similarly, the warning against deployment was too late for prevention, too precise to explain away their discovery. Khrushchev underestimated the pressure on Kennedy to act, just as Chamberlain had been forced by opinion to confront Hitler. (The US cabinet saw Cuba as a domestic matter not a military problem, ruing that a less precise warning would have allowed the administration to eventually explain the missiles were no threat.) Kennedy contemplated trading missiles in Turkey for Cuba very early and volunteered the terms. Khrushchev accepted the concession, taking advantage of a weak player.
16. MacMillan, Paris 1919 (10 Sep 2019)
World War II was caused not by the shortcomings of World War I’s Versailles peace treaties, but inconsistent enforcement by Western democracies and Hitler’s desire to conquer the Soviet Union. The agreement with Germany was less punitive than the Franco-German treaty of 1870, but sufficient to irritate Germany.
All of the victors thought Germany started the war. Because they were quickly demobilizing and also threatened by Soviet-inspired unrest in Eastern Europe and Berlin, where the Bolsheviks were old-fashioned Russian imperialists in socialist rhetoric, the peacemakers had to rush to terms but also to attend to deferred domestic issues. Allied goals were inchoate, the French keen for revenge and the US and UK wary of one another; the Americans under Wilson favored self-determination while the British were concerned to husband their empire and navy. Wilson, who saw himself as tribune of the people, left unresolved the way to adjudge competing nationalist claims for self-determination; he brought no Republicans to Rome and so couldn’t persuade the Senate to ratify the League of Nations. (The League was innovative, MacMillan says, and predictably trusting of experts while lacking a constituency.) Clemenceau won more than expected, preserving a postwar UK alliance, getting (in 1920) 52 percent of Germany’s eventual payment of $4.5 billion, and a 15-year occupation of the demilitarized Rhineland (having proposed a joint customs union). David Lloyd George decided only that he should decide, albeit reparations were handled adroitly.
In southern Europe, Yugoslav sentiment was strongest among Croats inside Austria-Hungary, who wished to avoid Germanization or Magyarization. The Serbians were minded for independence. Wilson glibly overlooked Balkan history.
In central Europe, deals were cut to superimpose self-determination on traditional geographies and peoples. In Poland and Czechoslovakia, new resentments were created. The Allies went easier on Austria than Hungary, which lost two thirds of its territory and population (leaving 3.5 million Magyars outside the rump country), paid heavy reparations, and lost access to its core markets. Since the UK and US didn’t want to break up Germany, they prevented a peaceful Anschluss with Catholic Bavaria to counterbalance a Protestant Prussia. Half of world Jewry was living in the Russian pale, modern Belarus, Ukraine, and eastern Poland although 2.75 million emigrated to the United States before 1914.
Versailles’ Sykes-Picot was old-fashioned imperialism. Wilson blocked a racial equality clause favored by Japan, which was hoping for an Asian Monroe doctrine. Venizelos is labeled the greatest Greek statesman since Pericles, but comes off second best versus Ataturk. Turkey had little to lose in resisting Paris because most of the country had been given away. Delays worked in its favor, because Allied forces were weakening. The failure of the Megali idea is treated as the launching point for narrating the author’s view of Versailles’ failures.
Article 231, the famous war guilt clause, also appears in treaties with Austria and Hungary, in order to justify reparations. However, Germany’s fate is compared to a Roman triumph. Yet Germany paid less than French reparations after 1870, and the author asserts its strategic position improved after the war because Poland buffered its eastern border with Russia, while its southern border featured small states instead of the Habsburg empire.
MacMillian, because of her construction, struggles to reconcile the master narrative with the country- or geographically specific chapters and analyses. Many of her early observations labor to relate the events of 1919 to the 21st century, going beyond obvious precedents to Whiggish views.
13. Wood, American Revolution (13 August 2021)
Surveys American society, economy, and politics during the Revolutionary era, 1760-90. Following victory over the French, settlers hurtled into the eastern Mississippi River valley in search of land. Those remaining on the Eastern seaboard resented with British efforts to make the colonies pay for war costs, continuing defense, and government. In 1764 the Sugar Act attempted to curb smuggling while the Currency Act prohibited paper currencies; the following year the Stamp Act levied s transaction tax, setting in motion protests of ‘no taxation without representation’. By that time, some 4,000 British troops (from Ireland) were billeted among Boston’s 15,000 population. By decade’s end, open sedition commenced in Massachusetts, the Boston Massacre occurring in 1770. (The ‘Intolerable Acts’ and the Quebec Act, which seemed to give control of the western trade to French Catholics, followed in 1774.) Colonists had long identified with English ‘country’ sentiments as well as Whiggish views of the overbearing George III. They set to refashioning state constitutions, elevating the legislatures; but the British could not reconcile any challenge to Westminster’s sovereignty. Following military victory, republicanism intensified the country ideology: equality of citizenry (e.g., all could own property, vote, or serve in the legislature) combined with Humean sensibilities (degrading learning in favor of common opinion) and neoclassical cultural spirit overwhelmed established American elites. The shift destabilized views of family (e.g., inheritance or women’s roles) and slavery. Methodists and Baptists caught up to Anglicans and Presbyterians by 1790; elites being deist, upstart religions filled the void. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 was Confederation America’s finest moment, enabling settlers to migrate without losing political rights; the peace treaty a splendid diplomatic accomplishment, persuading both Britain and France to concede more of the West than they might have. The new country took land from Indians by right of conquest. Following independence, internal markets fueled economic gains – Newport, RI, exemplified a port city which fell behind. The new constitution was prompted by economic shortcomings, overbearing state legislatures, and foreign policy problems such as in the Northwest. In contrast with the British view of sovereignty residing in Parliament, the Americans located it in the people, and so hadn’t to recover it from the states. The people could endorse the new charter in super-legislative act which established the two tier (federal and state) system.