Nov 092008
 

Today is Remembrance Sunday; a day to remember those killed in war. It should perhaps be on the 11th November (this year on a Tuesday), but the British government is too cheap to give us all a day off for remembrance.

As this is the 90th anniversary of the armistance of world war i, it is perhaps understandable that some concentrate on the dead of that war. As a general rule one of the things we remember when we remember the dead of the wars, is that they died for our freedom. For the wars since that is definitely on the true side, but perhaps not for WWI …

After all WWI started when the Austrian-Hungarian “dual monarchy” declared war on Serbia after Serbian military intelligence had been involved in assisting the assassination of a Grand-Duke. Russia was pulled in to support Serbia, and the rest of the European ‘powers’ were similarly pulled into the war.

But that is over simplistic – historians are still arguing over the causes of WWI. But what is clear is that there was initially no great villain that needed bringing down although many of the men who volunteered to fight were led to believe (in the case of Britain) that Germany was some sort of great villain.

To those who survived WWI, Rememberance Day was less a day for remembering those who died for our freedom, than just remembering the dead. It is difficult to appreciate the level of casualties today, but one clue is on the lists of the dead given on memorials in almost every little village. Probably just about everyone living in Britain in the 1920s would have been close to someone who had died in WWI.

To put it into statistical terms, Britain lost 2.1% of its population in WWI compared to 0.93% in WWII.

Some of the blame for the horrendous level of casualties can be placed at the door at the incompetant military leadership who took far too long to adjust to 20th century warfare from their 19th century mindsets. Or in the words of more than a few, the British army were “Lions led by donkeys”.

Jun 222008
 

I’ve always been interested in the origins of landscape words … Rithe, Bourne, etc. In Britain, there are a fair number of rivers called the “Avon” and I used to idly spend some time wondering where that name came from. The origins are quite amusing for someone like me.

It so happens that the Welsh word for river is “Afon” and I used to wonder if the similarity to “Avon” was due to some sort of miscommunication between the native Brythonic population and incoming Saxons. It turns out that I was not the only one to think so.

So all the rivers called Avon are really named “River River”. One can imaging how this might occur :-

Saxon: “So, native what is this river called ?” (in Old English)

Native: “It’s a river you dumb Saxon ox” (in proto-Welsh)

Saxon: “Avon? That’s a funny name, but I guess I can remember it” (OE)

Native: “Yes, a river with water in it”

Of course the real reason may have been that the Brythonic population didn’t want to give too much information away that would help the Saxons militarily. And of course the misunderstanding (or misleading answers) means we have lost the original names for the rivers in question.

Jul 222007
 

One thing on the news recently that caught my eye was a complaint about how modern history at school concentrates in detail on a few periods in history but presents no grand overview of events throughout history. Well assuming this is true (the media does not always get things right) then it’s a shame there is no ‘grand overview’. However the pundits commenting on this and suggesting that a grand overview should be part of the course did immediately jump on the old rote memorisation of dates bandwagon.

There’s a large number of people who seem to think you don’t know history if you cannot reel off a huge list of dates of significant events. Mistaking a list of dates for ‘history’ is one of the dumbest mistakes anyone can make … to everyone other than the dedicated rote learner, a history lesson of long lists of dates is excruciatingly boring, doesn’t teach you anything interesting, and has very little to do with history. Those who campaign for children to spend hours memorising dates are doing nothing more than trying to re-introduce a style of teaching that gave a big advantage to those with good memories (and I happen to be one) and a huge disadvantage to those whose memory was less capable but perhaps could understand history more.

There is very little need for people to memorise lists of dates when there are so many reference works available. Does someone who thinks the battle of Hastings was in 1066 have a greater understanding of history than someone who thinks the battle of Hastings happened sometime in the 11th century but also knows it occurred just after the battle of Stamford Bridge ?

May 032007
 

The UVF made a little announcement today, saying that they’ve put violence behind them and their arms are “out of reach” … whatever that phrase is supposed to mean. This is of course great news after all the UVF is one of the organisations that began with the “troubles” in Northern Ireland/6 counties. And from the beginning they were one of the most violent … the first killing of a policeman was them, and they gloried in sectarian killings far more than most paramilitary organisations.

But there is one thing that has always puzzled me about the peace process in NI. Whilst the IRA was still armed, all the pressure on disarmament was directed towards them with only occasional mention of organisations such as the UVF. It seemed very one-sided especially when you consider the origins of the “troubles” where peaceful protests by catholics was met with increasing violence by “loyalists” (I’ve always hated that description). It is easy to forget that British troops were first sent to NI to protect the catholic community.

Anyone who knows the history of the IRA knows that after the border wars of the late 1950s/early 1960s, they had stopped using violence and were interested to see what the independent peaceful protests about the atrocious treatment of the catholic community could achieve. The loyalists claim that these protests were wholly controlled by the IRA … not so! Sure there were IRA members who took part … as (mostly) catholics themselves they had some interest in seeing the aims of the protest movement succeed, but it was never an IRA cover organisation.

So why were the loyalist paramilitaries treated so leniently by the peace process ? Why were the loyalist politicians allowed a voice when the republican politicians gagged ? Well, part of it is because the loyalists politicians managed to maintain a better illusion of distance between themselves and the paramilitaries … I guess you could say they were better politicians. And perhaps the British and Irish governments took the rantings of a certain loud and vile politician too seriously.

The peace process tends to give the impression that the republicans were more responsible for the troubles than the loyalists. They are certainly not without fault, but hopefully history will spread the blame more evenly.

Mar 242007
 

I have written on slavery before in a more general sense, but this time it is more about how media represents slavery at a time when slavery is in the news because Sunday is the 200th anniversary of the British attempting to abolish the slave trade as the first step in abolishing slavery which is something that is still not finished.

Well, actually the campaign for the abolition of slavery in Britain/England is actually quite a bit older than that act in 1807; the first step was allegedly the abolition of serfdom in 1102. There were many steps forward and many shameful steps backwards (such as the start of the transatlantic slave trade). But I’ll stop there before I get carried away and just point you to the Wikipedia article on the history of slavery … [w:History of Slavery]

What this little rant is about, is how the media portray slavery as an institution where only blacks were slaves and only whites were slave owners and traders. Wrong!

Even ignoring the earlier history of slavery, it is clear from various statistics that slaves could be white or black :-

Group Number
Africans in the transatlantic slave trade 11.6 million
Africans in the Eastern slave trade 11-16 million
Europeans in the Eastern slave trade 1-1.5 million

These figures are hardly likely to be accurate … slave traders do not appear to be good record keepers for some reason, but it would appear that from these figures approximately 6% of the slaves in early modern history were European. That seems like a relatively small quantity in comparison to the number of African slaves taken from their homes, but each individual forced into slavery is a crime against humanity, and a tragedy for the individual whether the individual was black, white or any other colour.

These figures probably vastly underestimate the number of slaves throughout history even if we exclude serfs (a serf is a slave owned by the land and not a person … a distinction likely to make a difference to a lawyer but not the serf). The colour of a slave is irrelevant; it is the fact that he is a slave that is important (and important to free him). The colour of a slave owner is irrelevant; it is the fact that she owns slaves and abuses them that is important (no matter how kind a slavemaster is, she is still abusing other humans).

It is easy to overlook the African involvement in the slave trade … we are given the impression that it was solely white Europeans who threw black Africans into chains. There was certainly plenty of that going on, but in the early days at least many black Africans were involved in the slave trade.

The media needs to stop getting carried away with the easy job of portraying the transatlantic slave trade where images are relatively easy to come by, and make it plain that all slavery is wrong and that it was not just black Africans abused in this way. Given how widespread slavery has been in the past, it is almost certain that everyone alive today is descended from someone who was a slave and probable that they are descended from slave owner.

There are those who say we should compensate the descendants of slaves for the crime against their ancestors. If everyone is a descendent of a slave, this could be somewhat expensive to do! However there is some that we must do and that is to do everything we can to stop present day slavery … yes it still goes on. I am sure that many if not all of history’s dead slaves would cry out that any money that could be put into compensation should be first spent on stopping anyone else being subject to slavery in any form … that is the first priority.