Things Noted Here and There

by Cliopatria

Jeremy Boggs will host History Carnival #15 on Thursday 1 September at ClioWeb. Send nominations of posts appearing since 15 August to: jboggs*at*gmu.edu.

At Disability Studies, Penny L. Richards points out San Francisco State University's Disability History Dateline, a chronology 5500 years of history focused on people with disabilities of various kinds. It is searchable and intended as a teaching resource. Thanks to Jonathan Dresner for the tip.

Timothy Garton Ash,"Stagger On, Weary Titan," The Guardian, 25 August, suggests that Iraq is the United States' Boer War.

Our colleague, KC Johnson, continues the discussion of intellectual diversity in academe in"Proving the Critics' Case," Inside Higher Ed, 26 August.

Three months ago, Tim Burke invited us to discuss the tropes considered in his"Image of Africa" course at Swarthmore. The rethinking that he was doing then takes form in the new syllabus that he's come up with for this term. ...

"Slavery in America: Black and White – and Red All Over," The Economist, 25 August, reviews Simon Schama's new book, Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution. After King George promised freedom to slaves who joined the British forces in resisting American independence, the English took responsibility for those who responded by shipping a portion of them off to the newly founded colony, Sierra Leone. Schama has apparently done it again, with a brilliant account of a tragic story.

Finally, Pat Robertson's outburst about Venezuela's Hugo Chavez allowed many of us to register our sanity by rebuking him. Bill Maher's New Rules puts it this way:"Devout of His Mind: New Rule, Pat Robertson is insane. Just because he smiles and wears a nice suit doesn't mean he's any less of a whack job than all those wild-eyed, urine-stained nut bags who babble on street corners about Jesus through a bull horn...." But our colleague, Caleb McDaniel, puts it differently: Is our repudiation of Robertson's madness an avoidance of our responsibility for the madness that official action does condone?

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David Silbey - 8/27/2005

"True, I guess, although the Indian army did perform creditable (and costly) service in both world wars."

We're getting into the "True, although" part of the discussion. The Indian Army that fought in the First World War was a different one then existed in 1899-1902, largely because of Kitchener's reforms of the first decade of the 20th Century. I'm not as familiar with the interwar evolution of the Indian Army.

I think your rewrite of Garton Ash's statement is spot-on. What his misstatement is doing is to overemphasize resemblences between the Boer War and Iraq and obscure the degree to which Great Britain's empire was built on the cheap (ie low metropolitan military spending, a small 'home' military and reliance on colonial forces) and _how well_ that had worked for the British up to that point. Part of the shock of the Boer War was the fact that that model had not worked.

Alan Allport - 8/27/2005

And given the Indian Army's previous generation weaponry, even including it wouldn't cause shivers up the spine of any member of the German General Staff.

True, I guess, although the Indian army did perform creditable (and costly) service in both world wars.

The problem with Garton Ash's original statement, I think, is that he's using the wrong term to describe what he really means. What he's really getting at, I imagine, is that in 1899 Britain was still (just about) the mightiest industrial power in the world, and that it a shocking blow when a couple of bucolic republics on the fringe of civilization managed to give the empire such a rough time - even though, as you rightly point out, the British army was not (before the Haldane reforms anyway) any great shakes to begin with.

David Silbey - 8/27/2005

And given the Indian Army's previous generation weaponry, even including it wouldn't cause shivers up the spine of any member of the German General Staff.

David Silbey - 8/27/2005

"Well, to be fair David, most of the empire east of Suez was garrisoned by the Indian army, and that was certainly not small."

That is true. I don't believe any Indian Army units served in the Boer War, though?

Alan Allport - 8/27/2005

The British Army in 1899 was a tiny, inefficient, stagnant force that was dwarfed by just about every continental European Army then in existence.

Well, to be fair David, most of the empire east of Suez was garrisoned by the Indian army, and that was certainly not small.

Ralph E. Luker - 8/27/2005

You know a lot more about it than I do, David, but what you say accords with what I know. It may be the kind of statement that slips out when a person is pre-occupied with his analogy, rather than accuracy. I'd say it's a bit enough error, though, that it's worth a letter to the editor at The Guardian.

David Silbey - 8/26/2005

This line from the Garton Ash piece caught my eye:

"which a small group of foreign insurgents defied the mightiest military the world had seen"

Uh, pardon? The British Army in 1899 was a tiny, inefficient, stagnant force that was dwarfed by just about every continental European Army then in existence.

Unless Garton Ash thinks that the Navy's battleships were somehow going to sail up the veldt and chase down the Boer commandos, that's a remarkably inaccurate thing to say.

Louis N Proyect - 8/26/2005

A few far-sighted people in Washington are beginning to formulate a long-term American strategy of trying to create an international order that would protect the interests of *liberal democracies* even when American hyperpower has faded; and to encourage rising powers such as *India* and *China* to sign up to such an order.

Alan Allport - 8/26/2005

One of the consequences of the Boer War was agitation for welfare reform at home, triggered by the alarmingly high percentage of urban working-class army volunteers who were rejected as physically unfit. The result was Lloyd-George's National Insurance revolution of a decade later. I wonder if American proponents of, say, universal health-care will be able to use security crises in a similar way in the future?