A Pack of Dogs

We have been foster parents with a group called Planned Pethood for some time now, and we received calls twice this week for dogs. Pictured are the five dogs who will be inhabiting our house for at least the next few days, and for one very brief moment in time they stood still for a group picture.

Temporarily joining our household are Chachi, who is the white dog at twelve o'clock, and Percy, the rust-colored dachshund to Chachi's left. Chachi was abandoned by a breeder, while Percy was a lost dog who was picked up by the Fulton County dog warden.

Both dogs are well-behaved, good-tempered companions who are looking for a good home. We will be bringing them to the Planned Pethood Adoptathon tomorrow, which will take place at the Rossford PetSmart: 27161 Crossroads Parkway.

For more information on adopting rescue dogs, see the Planned Pethood website.

On Episodic Memory and Empty Spaces

A friend from long ago contacted me today, having located me through this website. In the course of our emails my friend brought up a philosophical discussion that occurred some twenty-plus years ago.

The topic was Bobby Sands, the IRA activist who died in a 1981 hunger strike. My friend recounted the debate in which we once engaged, specifically referring to a political science professor I quoted as making the argument that "only extreme suffering can justify suicide."

Unfortunately, I can remember none of what must have been a lively debate. There is an empty space where this episodic memory ought to be stored.

Now, I might chalk this incident up as evidence of my own latent senilty were it not for the fact that a similar incident occurred with another friend, only I was the person in possession of the clear memory.

We were sitting around one day listening to music and engaging in spirited discussion over bands that contributed to the genre of swamp rock. I scoffed when my friend suggested The Hollies on the basis of the song "Long Cool Woman."

Several decades went by, and I heard the song on the radio a few years back. As I listened, I recalled the 1985 swamp rock debate, and sure enough I heard the song in a new light. While The Hollies themselves might not have been swamp rockers, "Long Cool Woman" was clearly a song that could be tagged as swamp rock.

My friend, however, was completely oblivious to such a debate.

Thus, I am musing about the exact determinants to what gets saved and what gets chucked in the human memory. Neither of these anecdotes was particularly life-changing, or even noteworthy, yet in each case one participant remembered the event clearly, while the memory of the event had long since been discarded by the other party.

Why should my brain retain a clear memory of some youthful conversation about swamp rock, while at the same time being seemingly incapable of recalling a similar debate about Bobby Sands? Better still, where did I put my car keys?

:-}

Department of Legal-but-Stupid

Left: Might be legal, but it sure ain't bright

You get ready to make a left turn at a stop light, and there is a car ahead of you with its left turn signal on. Both of you begin your turn, and then SCREECH! The idiot in front of you hits the brakes and decides to make an immediate right turn into a gas station or convenience store.

This happens far too often for my liking, and I put forth the proposition that such vehicular stooges are self-absorbed, Neanderthalic twits who cause quite a few preventable accidents with their impulsivity and lack of awareness of traffic flow.

And invariably there is a second or third driveway to the business that suddenly catches our subject's attention. The likelihood of a rearend collision would be significantly reduced if these dweebs would simply put on a right turn signal and use the next entrance.

But these nitwits drive around unaware of their fellow motorists, often with a cellular phone glued to their heads, seemingly itching for an accident with their oblivious manner. And the worst part? The person who will eventually smite one of these passive-aggressive dolts will probably be the recipient of the failure-to-yield ticket in such an accident.

Book Review: The Portuguese Empire, 1415-1808

Russell-Wood, A.J.R.

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998, 290 pages

Russell-Wood is the Herbert Baxter Adams Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, specializing in pre-Columbian and colonial Latin America and the Portuguese seaborne empire. The Portuguese Empire, 1415-1808 reflects the author’s desire to create a synthesis of the history of Portugal’s imperial rise and decline that captures the global nature of the Lusophonic empire, avoiding the historiographical tendency to examine narrow geographical segments or short temporal pieces of an empire that at one time nearly circled the planet. The book’s subtitle - "A World on the Move" - illustrates a theme that Russell-Wood skillfully weaves throughout the text, as the Portuguese seaborne empire was indeed a world in which people, merchandise, conveyances, flora, fauna, and cultures moved across oceans and - through the process of exchange – created new structures in their wakes.

One of the problems historians face in explaining the unparalleled success of Portugal as an early modern imperial power lies in the fact that the population of the Iberian nation was only about one million people by the end of the fifteenth century. Russell-Wood argued that a number of factors explain this meteoric rise, and chief among these was the ability of the Portuguese to identify “strategic and key points” in commerce and geopolitics that coincided with imperial interests. In addition, argued the author, the Portuguese exhibited a knack for determining the precise military strength needed for a particular engagement, rarely finding themselves overstaffed or undermanned for a battle. Finally, Russell-Wood maintained that the success of the Portuguese as imperialists owed much to their ability to readily adapt to the needs of a given commercial or military situation; Portuguese officials might opt for outright territorial possession, or they might instead settle for alternatives such as forts, feitorias (merchant warehouses), or strategic alliances in lieu of acquiring extensive territorial holdings.

Left: Map of the Portuguese empire at its height (click for larger image)

Rather than a chronological approach to the topic, Russell-Wood chose to develop thematic chapters that focus on specific topics in the history of the Portuguese empire. A chapter on transportation illustrates how the Portuguese were able to develop innovative, hybrid ship designs that combined European and Arabic features in vessels like the nau and the caravel. Russell-Wood composed a lengthy chapter that described the wide range of people who left Portugal to serve the empire – including migrants, settlers, Crown officials, soldiers, missionaries, and traders – as well as the reciprocal “reflux” of indigenous peoples emigrating to Portugal. This two-way exchange of peoples, noted Russell-Wood, also led to the exchange of diseases between continents, and the arrival of Eurasian diseases in the Americas and sub-Saharan Africa were matched by the spread of tropical diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, and yaws among Europeans. Moreover, argued the author, the mutual exchange of goods, plants, animals, and ideas changed the Portuguese as well as their imperial subjects, allies, and enemies. Whether they landed in “Africa, India, or Brazil,” argued Russell-Wood, “the Portuguese put an indelible urban imprint on those places they settled.”

Scholars, the learned general public, and non-specialist historians will find Russell-Wood’s work to be a thorough overview of imperial Portugal. Accompanying the text are several sections of paintings and photographs that provide readers with visual representations of the textual analysis. The author provided detailed – though somewhat limited - endnotes, as well as a 21-page bibliography, a cross-referenced index, a six-page chronology, and a number of useful maps to help readers unfamiliar with the history of the Portuguese empire. The Portuguese Empire, 1415-1808 could best be described, though, as an essential starting point for understanding the rise of the Portuguese as an imperial power, as well as a text that helps explain the period in which Europeans became dominant players in globalization.

Molecules with Bizarre Names

Left: chemical structure of munchnones

For those of you with waaaaaay too much time on your hands, I came across a website that collects and describes molecules with silly or unusual names.

On this site you can learn about such compounds as arsole, bastardane, and cummingtonite.

I am not sure, though, that simply knowing the chemistry behind these compounds will prevent teachers, bosses, or spouses from being offended by your use of these terms.

The Quote Shelf

A frequent feature on this site; feel free to comment on the quote or to supply a competing quote.

Don't gamble; take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don't go up, don't buy it. -- Will Rogers

On Home Sales, Consumer Confidence, and the Credit Crunch

News that U.S. home prices fell 3.2 percent in the second quarter of 2007 - the steepest rate of decline in the nationwide housing index since 1987 - could not have arrived at a worse time for the American economy. Coupled with record foreclosures, a tightening of the credit market, and worries over the continued viability of major credit lenders, the plummeting housing market could be the bellwether of even worse economic conditions to unfold in the U.S.

Add to this the report just out showing that consumer confidence fell in July to its lowest level in a year, and you have all the markings of a recession in the making. Even worse, July 2007 home sales were down 9% from July 2006, suggesting that the fallout from the credit crunch is starting to take a deep toll.

Historically a decline in new home sales has been associated with a coming recession. This was the case in the 12 months prior to the start of the 1991 recession, and it does not take an Ivy League economist to figure out that people will cut back on their largest purchases - especially a new home - when they sense that economic conditions are deteriorating. While July 2007 showed a slight increase in new home sales, the trend over the past year has been sharply downward.

Left: New home sales, 1989-1991

My wife and I are fortunate in that we refinanced our mortgage at a favorable fixed rate last year, and that we should have enough of a cushion in equity should prices continue to fall. Many over-leveraged borrowers are getting in trouble when the value of their house drops, which triggers lenders to call in mortgages that exceed established debt ratios.

Other borrowers, of course, have used attractive rates and low-fee offers to refinance their homes while continuing to spend beyond their means. These folks will likely contribute to escalating rates of bankruptcy filings in the coming years. Business and consumer bankruptcy filings are up almost 50 percent over comparable periods in 2006, and show no signs of lessening.

For those of you with high debt loads: this is the time to get a second (or third) job, start paying down debt, and cutting your expenses. I see too many friends and acquaintances running up credit card debt, buying flashy new cars, and pursuing the acquisition of expensive consumer goods like Skagen watches through variable rate charge accounts.

Despite the fact that my income has dropped in the last few years after I took the graduate student vow of poverty several years ago, our efforts to eliminate consumer debt have paid off. We now have little debt beyond our mortgage and some student loans - no car loans, no credit card balances, and no outstanding balances. Life is much easier when you can miss a few paychecks and not have to worry about the imminent collapse of a financial house of cards.

Profit, Providence, and Politics: Explanations for the Rise of European Imperialism

American cartoon (1888) depicting John Bull (England) as the "octopus of imperialism;" click for larger image


Traditional Explanations for Imperialism

The traditional historiography of colonialism and imperialism focused on providential and Euro-supremacist explanations for European hegemony, and it was largely centered on noteworthy Europeans and military exploits. Traditional historians believed imperialism to be a divinely-inspired mission for Europeans to bring technology, Christianity, capitalism, and European political systems to foreign lands. In short, the traditional historiography tended to support European beliefs in the need to bring civilization to peoples considered inferior by Europeans. Typical of the Victorian-era historians who upheld these ideals was Richard S. Whiteway.

Whiteway was a British citizen who entered the Bengal Civil Service in 1866, after graduating from the University of London. He served in a variety of roles in the northwest Indian provinces, from tax collector to magistrate. He retired in 1893 and began to write, completing this work in 1899. His decades in India provided him the opportunity to understand the subcontinent by experiencing it first-hand. His 1899 book The Rise of Portuguese Power in India 1497-1550 contained rhetoric typical of the Eurocentric cultural superiority that passed for historical writing in the 19th century. Whiteway wrote at the height of British imperialism, when the Empire spanned the globe and colonized every continent. He managed to disparage and stereotype, in a proper British fashion, nearly every group that he mentions in the text. One can almost envision Whiteway sitting in a velvet-covered wingback chair, sipping a glass of 40-year vintage port, and twirling his waxed moustache as he intones in a pompous voice not unlike that of the late Winston Churchill:

Arabs: “They had a large admixture of Semitic blood in their veins, and had at least one peculiarity of that race very strongly marked- they were not producers, but traders.”
Africans: “On the African Coast, [the Arabs] had to deal with savages with no fixed form of government…an invading horde of negroes would at times sweep away their settlement.” “On the African coast the natives were mere savages…”
Catholics: “In an age, however, in which the spiritual head of the Christian Church, the Pope himself, was in treaty with the Sultan of Turkey…could not have been one in which religious aims took a very prominent position.”
Non-aristocracy as leaders: “There is nothing to show that the waste of such a body [non-elite civil servant] in an adventurous career could be made good from a lower stratum of the people.”
Portuguese: “Whatever the Portuguese were in Europe, once in the East there was nothing to improve their character or soften their defects... Among the causes [of Portuguese decline in Asia] partly moral, was the deterioration of the Portuguese race caused by intermarriage with native races. From this intermarriage… a loss of vigour and a loss of prestige."
Multiracial peoples: "This mixed breed [Portuguese and subcontinental Indians] the result of these unions, never invigorated by contact with the sterner race, some of whose blood was in its veins, approximated more and more to the type of the country where it originated. That it should have been unable to hold its own with hardier races is quite consonant with experience."

Thus, to historians of Whiteway’s ilk, the admonition by Kipling to “take up the white man’s burden” was the highest honor that elite Europeans could undertake. Langer argued that the literature of adventure itself was a driving force in the rise of the high imperialism, and he noted that books “on the accomplishments of British rule in the far corners of the earth rivaled stories of adventure and war in popularity.” The “cult of the sea,” as Langer termed this urge, was a primary force in the development of modern forms of imperialism.

Left: Map detailing European partitioning of Africa; click for larger image

Economic Interpretations of European Imperialism

The first challenges to the orthodox Eurocentrism of Victorian-era imperialism apologists came from historians and economists influenced by Karl Marx. J.A. Hobson, in his landmark 1902 book Imperialism, argued that “the modern foreign policy of Great Britain has been primarily a struggle for profitable markets of investment.” This foreign investment, according to Hobson, benefited a select wealthy few in British society, and this elite class used its power to influence foreign policy so as to maintain the influx of profits from abroad. Any altruistic justifications for imperialism, argued Hobson, should not be recognized as anything other than primarily self-serving, for businessmen “are primarily engaged in business, and they are not unaware of the utility of the more unselfish forces in serving their ends.”

Hobson’s "Little Englander" approach seemed to spark a new generation of thinkers who saw fit to dissect the modern forms of European imperialism that spread across the globe in the late 19th century. One of the theorists who joined this vanguard was Lenin, who expanded on the writings of Marx, especially Das Kapital. Lenin argued that imperialism was the manifestation of capitalism in its highest form, and that the unique feature of imperialism – as contrasted with other capitalist systems – was that it took advantage of “the export of capital.” Thus, by expanding the sphere of influence, the financial elite were able to control larger and larger portions of the globe.

One of Lenin’s most blistering critiques involved the financial elites, which he characterized as the “stratum of rentiers…who take no part in any enterprise whatever, whose profession is idleness.” He noted the irony that the nation (at the time) richest in capital – Britain – also exhibited signs of decay. Imperialism, according to Lenin, exacerbated the contradictions of capitalism, and represented the dying gasps of an obsolete organization. Lenin’s intense focus on economic forces to explain European imperialism, while groundbreaking, is unfortunately an exercise in tunnel vision, as the work ignores social, political, and sociological aspects of European hegemony.

Left: Immanuel Wallerstein

Immanuel Wallerstein argued that there were four different categories to describe a region’s relative position in the emerging transnational world economy: core, semi-periphery, periphery and external. These categories also described particular characteristics within the region itself, particularly as they related to labor. Wallerstein’s work is broader in scope than that of Marx and Lenin, although he is usually categorized in the Neo-Marxist camp.

Wallerstein developed the category of “the core” to describe the regions that most profited from the rise of capitalism; the first core, according to the author, consisted of England, France, and Holland. These states developed strong central governments, bureaucratic machinery, and mercenary armies with which to exert control over their interests. The switch from feudal obligations to money rents in the aftermath of the feudal crisis encouraged the rise of yeoman farmers, but forced many other peasants off the land. With few rural opportunities, these impoverished peasants often moved to urban areas, which provided a ready source of inexpensive labor necessary for the growth of manufacturing.

Wallerstein envisioned the category of “periphery” to describe regions that lacked strong central governments (or were controlled by imperial states), exported raw materials to the core, purchased manufactured products from the core, and relied on coercive practices for their labor needs. Wallerstein argued that Eastern Europe and Latin America fell into the earliest manifestation of periphery in early modern Europe.

Labor systems in peripheral areas differed from earlier modes in feudal Europe because they were established to produce goods for a capitalist world economy and not merely for internal consumption. In addition, the peripheral aristocracy grew wealthy from their relationship with the world economy, and could draw on the strength of the central core region to keep the population under control. The term “semi-periphery” described regions that, according to Wallerstein, were either in decline from or ascension to the core. Wallerstein argued that these regions served as buffer zones between the core and the periphery.

Wallerstein postulated that Spain and Portugal were examples of declining core states, since they lost their position of preeminence during the sixteenth century. These states, while participating in the emerging world economy, nonetheless did not benefit as much as core states from capitalism. Finally, “external” states - such as Russia and Japan - were those nations that did not directly participate in the emerging world economy.

Wallerstein ignored the role of individuals to effect the directions in which history unfolds, and his model does not explain the cases where European nations engaged in colonial activity that was highly unprofitable. Moreover, world systems theory considers the missionary impulse only in the context of supporting larger economic aims. The category of “external nations” seems to be a convenient way to account for nations that do not fit Wallerstein’s model. As a stand-alone paradigm, Wallerstein’s work is inadequate to explain the complex web of causal and prolongational factors that influenced European imperialism. Wallerstein, the sociologist-turned-economist, can be contrasted with another multi-disciplinarian: Joseph Schumpeter.

Left: Joseph Schumpeter

Sociological Explanations for the Imperial Impulse

While ostensibly an economist, Schumpeter incorporated an interdisciplinary approach to his 1918 work The Sociology of Imperialism. On one level Schumpeter challenged Marxist interpretations of imperialism, arguing that “it is a basic fallacy to describe imperialism as a necessary phase of capitalism, or even to speak of the development of capitalism into imperialism.” The capitalist age, argued Schumpeter, “has seen the development of methods for preventing war, for the peaceful settlement of disputes among states.” Schumpeter believed that the version of capitalism that evolved in the United States possessed fewer of the “precapitalist elements” that fueled the imperialist drive; one wonders how Schumpeter might rethink his assessment of American imperialistic tendencies in light of the current growth of US military bases around the globe.

Schumpeter argued that one of the precapitalist elements that lurked in the psychosocial memory of Europeans was the vestige of the medieval feudal aristocracy, which he described as the “war-oriented nobility.” The rise of merchant capitalism failed to displace the ruling elites of Europe, and these warrior-nobles still yearned for power and prestige; Schumpeter claimed that this “atavistic” impulse manifested itself in the form of imperialism.

Max Weber argued that expansionism possessed two characteristics that may or may not be in confluence. The “pacifist” tendency toward expansion is exhibited in the classical liberal desire for free trade, while the “imperialist” tendency seeks monopoly conditions that produce a maximum profit. For Weber, the struggle between groups in a particular society determined whether imperialist or pacifist expansion would occur in a capitalist system. Weber also believed that he lived in an era in which imperialist expansion had triumphed over pacifist expansion:

The universal revival of imperialist capitalism, which has always been the normal form in which capitalist interests have influenced politics, and the revival of political drives for expansion are thus not accidental. For the predictable future, the prognosis will have to be made in their favour.

Weber also believed in the power of state bureaucracies to help perpetuate the imperialist drive. The colonial administrative machinery, in Weber’s view, was an organization unto itself, with its own evolving collective sense of self-preservation. This argument predated that of a pair of British historians, whose controversial work turned upside down the world of the historiography of imperialism.

“The Official Mind” and Imperialism: Robinson and Gallagher

Robinson and Gallagher (along with Alice Denny) created a firestorm of controversy with Africa and the Victorians, a book that created a new model for understanding European imperialism, which broke from tradition by adopting a more Afrocentric perspective. The authors discounted the idea of a “high imperialism,” arguing that European imperial designs possessed continuity throughout the 19th century; that the “official mind” and strategic concerns were more important than economic forces in the rise of imperialism; and that indigenous peoples played crucial roles in the ability of Europeans to exert informal and formal control over colonial territories.

Robinson and Gallagher argued against the traditional historiographical focus on formal empires, which ignored informal means of asserting imperial will. Gallagher believed that this was akin to “judging the size and character of icebergs solely on the parts above the waterline.” Ignoring informal empire, contended Gallagher, was a failure in recognizing that “the difference between formal and informal empire has not been one of fundamental nature but of degree.” Gallagher and Robinson also argued that the partition of Africa in the late 19th century had more to do with African politics than a rise in European imperialist mentalité, and that “what drove it on was the Suez crisis and the repercussions of that crisis.”

One of the primary objections to the Robinson and Gallagher model revolves around their theory of a mid-Victorian “Imperialism of Free Trade.” Platt, for example, argued that Robinson and Gallagher relied too heavily on the writings of colonial administrators to support the concept of the primacy of the “official mind.” Shepperson, while acknowledging the value of the model for its fresh insights, nonetheless argued that Robinson and Gallagher understated the importance of scheming entrepreneurs such as George Goldie and Cecil Rhodes in the partition of Africa. Stokes and Rostow took issue with the authors’ seeming lack of credence given to the effects of falling prices and the European economic depression that arrived in 1872 and lingered for two decades. Brunschwig argued that the continuity of imperialism claimed by the authors did not recognize the political drive among the European powers to develop spheres of influence, which he likened to a horserace among the imperialists.

Left: British colonialist Cecil Rhodes stands astride Africa in an 1892 cartoon from Punch

Though not without its faults, Africa and the Victorians is a book that forced historians to reexamine long-held beliefs about the nature, manifestation, and causes of European imperialism. The authors moved colonial and imperial discourse into a new, Afrocentric direction, and opened the way for later generations of historians.

Political Fragmentation as a Cause of Imperialism

Woodruff Smith argued that the dominant causal factor in the rise of high imperialism was the phenomenon of political fragmentation, which he defined as a nation’s inability to “achieve consensus about national politics and to undertake consistent political action.” Smith argued that the late 19th century was a time of social upheaval and economic unpredictability, and these conditions created a wide range of problems that required political solutions. Such solutions, however, required political factions in Western European nations to pay heavy prices no matter which course of action they chose.

One area of political commonality, argued Smith, for Victorian-era politicians was the expansion of colonial and imperial activity. He provided numerous examples of European political factions that, on the surface, might be expected to disagree about their respective nations’ roles as participants in imperial schemes. Smith argued that British conservatives, such as Disraeli, embraced imperialism as a way to unite disparate groups. The working class would be attracted to the possibility of increased employment through imperial overseas commerce, financial leaders would embrace colonialism as a tool to secure foreign investments, and industrialists would welcome both the new markets and the possible economic stability that imperialism might bring. For British liberals, imperialism represented the “next stage” in human social organization, and they embraced imperial activity as a sign of progress.

Smith’s argument, however, places far too much weight on the role of the politician in the imperialist drive. Political leaders react to, and can enact policies that influence larger forces, but they have little ability to stop or control the powerful social and economic forces that swirl around them. Very often the results of their policies have effects that are quite different from their intentions, much like the flapping wings of the proverbial butterfly that set in motion a chain of events leading to a hurricane half a world away.

Left: Advertisement for Pears' Soap entitled "Lightening the White Man's Burden." (McClure's Magazine, Oct. 1899); click for larger image

Another View

The late-19th century phenomenon known as “high imperialism” - despite the respective pet theories of an esteemed group of historians, economists, and sociologists – was the confluence of a wide variety of factors. In addition, the disparate European nations had different motivations at given points in this artificial periodization; thus, the development of explanatory models must rely on assumptions about the uniformity of imperial European nations.

Western-style capitalist nations (which now include nearly every sovereign entity in this emerging globalized economy) have become components in what I call an evolving hierarchy of states. This system relies on the competition inherent in capitalist economic structures, but hierarchical competitiveness is also manifest in political, military, and cultural spheres. In short, nations want to avoid lower rungs on the metaphorical ladder of state hierarchy, and act out of a sense of national self-interest, which changes in response to the individuals, factions, and corporate interests that control the machinery of state at a given moment. States possess a degree of hierarchical inertia, and require the imposition of internal and/or external forces to change positionality.

The leaders of individual nations, no matter what their size, can be likened to captains of ships. In the manner of skippers, their crafts are subject to a wide variety of forces beyond their ability to control, and even the most capable of leaders cannot avoid the element of chance. Imperialism, though, offers our hypothetical captain a degree of self-determination; if he chooses the path of empire, he may gain the title of “pirate,” but he nonetheless secures for his crew and vessel a greater share of resources and security. One may decry the fact that the laws of the seas have been broken, or pontificate on the immorality of imperialism, but I believe that the desires to maintain and improve hierarchical positionality in an era of global competition were as deep-seated in the late-19th century as they are today.

Quick Blog Note

I am behind with my correspondence, in both emailed and post comment form. I apologize for those of you who have written and/or commented, only to be faced with silence.

I have accepted a few adjunct teaching positions that have cut into my free time as I prepare to educate tomorrow's leaders on the finer points of history. The courses I am teaching are new to me in terms of lecture prep, and I have been up to my eyeballs reading texts and planning lectures, and not spending time browsing through Scottsdale real estate brochures.

At any rate, I should be back to my semi-reliable self in the coming weeks, and I promise to get caught up on your emails in the next week, assuming, of course, that your letter was not of the "DEAR BELOVED FRIEND I AM BARRISTER JAMES P. OGLIVIE AND I AM TRUSTING TO SPEAK WITH YOU ABOUT 17.25 MILLION DOLLAR U.S. I DESIRE TO REMOVE OUT OF IRAQ WHICH WAS THE LATE SADDAM HUSSEIN"S HIDDEN TREASURE" variety.

:-}

The Quote Shelf

A frequent feature on this site; feel free to comment on the quote or to supply a competing quote.

The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in its value. -- Charles Dudley Warner

My Fantasy Football Addiction

Left: fantasy football draft board

I have long been an afficianado of the game known as fantasy football. For those of you unfamiliar with this addictive activity, participants act as team owners and draft NFL players, and points are awarded on the basis of the player's performance in real games.

When I was a retail business owner I joined one of these leagues that was created by one of my key employees, and there has been a core group of guys from my old business that still gets together each year at this time for the draft.

I have an annoying tendency to assemble solid teams that implode at playoff time. Over the past three years my teams have posted a .608 winning percentage, second best in the league over that span, but I have never won the fantasy Super Bowl in my league.

This year I drafted in eighth place in the 10-team league, and I luckily snagged San Francisco running back Frank Gore, who has been getting snagged somewhere around the third or fourth overall pick in mock drafts. Here is the 2007 version of the Brooks Bombers:

Starters
QB Philip Rivers, San Diego Chargers
RB Frank Gore, San Francisco 49ers
RB Brandon Jacobs, NY Giants
WR Chad Johnson, Cincinnati Bengals
WR Javon Walker, Denver Broncos
TE Alge Crumpler, Atlanta Falcons
K Nate Kaeding, San Diego Chargers
Team Defense - San Diego Chargers

Bench
QB Eli Manning, NY Giants
QB Tarvaris Jackson, Minnesota Vikings
RB Jamal Lewis, Cleveland Browns
RB Dominic Rhodes, Oakland Raiders
RB Chris Brown, Tennessee Titans
WR Santana Moss, Washington Redskins
WR Mark Clayton, Baltimore Ravens
WR Devery Henderson, NO Saints
TE Greg Olsen, Chicago Bears
Team Defense - Seattle Seahawks

Hope springs eternal on fantasy football draft day, and I look forward to feeding my addiction on these upcoming Sunday afternoons. Perhaps this will be the year that I take home the trophy and cash for winning the championship, but the league comraderie and the excitement of the game are certainly benefits that accompany this compulsion.

Book Review: Nationality and the War

Toynbee, Arnold J.
London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1919 (1915)

Arnold J. Toynbee was a prolific historian and philosopher best known for his 12-volume opus A Study of History, released over the course of three decades. Nationality and the War was the second book Toynbee wrote, and the first edition was published just after the outbreak of the First World War. For Toynbee, nationalism was “the dominant political factor in Europe,” and he argued that the key to preventing future wars was to “purge” the concept of nationality of the “evil elements in nationalism under its many names, ‘Chauvinism,’ ‘Jingoism,’ [and] ‘Prussianism.’”

Toynbee followed a thematic approach in this text, examining nationalism within the context of individual European nations as they existed at the start of World War I. Footnotes are provided on the pages in which the reference occurs, and the author developed a useful cross-referenced index for the book. Also included in the 1919 edtion were a series of fold-out maps that offer readers greater understanding of the material discussed. Interestingly, Toynbee’s map of “The Nationalities of Europe” depicts a minute territory for Poles, roughly between the Oder and the Vistula Rivers (with no Baltic Sea access), while groups such as the Cossacks and Ukrainians are lumped together under the category of “Little Russians.” Toynbee also included a group he referred to as “Nestorians” near present-day Azerbaijan, while all Balkan groups carried the designation of “Southern Slavs.”

Toynbee’s writing exhibits some decided biases and prejudices on the part of the author of which twenty-first century readers should be aware. There is a strong streak of anti-Semitism in Nationality and the War that – while not uncommon for an early twentieth century European intellectual – still manages to shock this review. A Jew, he believed, was a person whose cultural and religious heritage meant that he “cannot be assimilated” into a European national group. Yet despite Toynbee’s acknowledgement of the existence of millions of Jews in Europe, the author did not include suggestions for how Jews should be incorporated into post-war Europe, nor did he reckon in this book with the growing Zionist movement in Palestine that would play a role in the eventual creation of the state of Israel.

Left: 1911 map of Europe; click to enlarge

Similarly, Toynbee expressed thinly-veiled disdain for a number of other ethnic groups in Europe. Poles, he argued, constituted a particularly inferior category of ethnicity that did not merit consideration as an independent nation. In the following passage, Toynbee speculated on the relative merits of placing minority populations under majority governments in places such as East Prussia:

We shall probably receive the impression that the German would suffer greater disadvantage by being annexed to a community of Poles, whose standards would be lower than his own, than the Pole would suffer by enrolment as a German citizen, which would be a kind of compulsory initiation into a superior civilization.

Yet Toynbee’s anti-Polish bias might be forgiven were he better versed in the history of East Central Europe. The author argued that the Napoleonic creation of the short-lived Grand Duchy of Warsaw resulted in the Polish population being “rescued from the foreign yoke” and that “for the first time it [Poland] experienced the benefits of self-government.” This statement seems to indicate that Toybee was unaware of the long history of Polish self-rule, that the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was arguably the most powerful state in Europe in the sixteenth century, or that the parliamentary innovations of the Polish Sejm were on par with the constitutional monarchism that so enamored Toynbee in his native England.

The author also mocked the national ambitions of the Lithuanians, who he described as “the most backward race in Europe” and a group that “have drawn their civilisation at second hand, instead of creating a national tradition of their own.” As evidence for this claim, the author noted that the Lithuanians did not convert from their “primitive paganism till the fourteenth century;” this is clear evidence of Toynbee’s avowed attitude toward the supposed superiority of Christianity - especially Protestantism - as a civilizing and foundational force. Toynbee argued that the Lithuanians were incapanle of self-government, and in post-war Europe should only be granted a limited amount of autonomy while remaining firmly within the subjugation of the Russian Empire.

Left: 1856 map of Persia and Afghanistan; click to enlarge

Toynbee, throughout the text, struggled to restrain his contempt for Islamic peoples in Europe and the Near East, and the book is filled with passages brimming over with disdain for the Islamic world. Toynbee called for the complete dismantling of the former Ottoman Empire, and he argued that Islamic groups in the Balkans and elsewhere would welcome new Christian rules, as “the Turk has found by experience that good government by the foreigner and the infidel is a happier lot than the Dark Age of his native regime.” Persia, he argued, should be considered “outcast from the legitimate family of Islam,” and intervention by the Russians and the British in the late nineteenth century “have already done more for strong government in Persia… than the Persian nation has accomplished for itself.” In Toynbee’s eyes, Persia’s vast petroleum reserves justified British oversight, as the “backward” Persians were incapable of exploiting this increasingly important natural resource.

Beyond its prejudice and racism, it is with his poor understanding of Russia that Toynbee’s work most suffers, as the author exhibited an almost shocking ignorance of basic Russian history. In Toynbee’s eyes, Russian history “began little more than two hundred years ago,” as if the thousand-year tradition of Muscovite monarchy were a mere myth. Seemingly unaware of the strong tradition of radical factions in Russian politics, the author wrote that Russian liberalism “is in the ascendant, and will prevail.” This was written a mere two years before the Bolshevik Revolution, and while one can forgive Toynbee for a lack of clairvoyance, his unabashed trumpeting of the virtues of Western liberalism blinded the author from considering other post-war possibilities for Russia.

Left: British historian Arnold J. Toynbee

Yet despite the limitations of this text, Toynbee foresaw the dangers in a defeated Germany being forced to pay onerous reparations after the World War I, and the author argued that the best strategy for the Allies would be to “beat her [Germany] badly and then treat her well.” Toynbee believed that the dominance of the Prussian military would continue in post-war Germany if the Allies pursued a policy of retribution against the Germans in the peace settlements:

If we humiliate her [Germnay], we shall stengthen the obsolete ideas in her consciousness more than ever – perhaps no longer the idea of “Plunder,” but certainly that of “Revenge,” which is much worse… Germany was led to pursue the policy which has culminated in this war, by the oppressive sense that her development was being cramped by the actions of her neighbours… One thing is clear: whether Germany’s feeling of constriction has good grounds or not, we must avoid deliberately furnishing it with further justification than it has already.

Toynbee’s text, despite its aforementioned flaws, also provides modern historians with insight in a number of other areas. As a work with considerable Whiggishness, Nationality and the War is exemplary of the sort of imperial apologia produced by late nineteenth and early twentieth century British historians. Setting aside the author’s ethnic and racial biases, the book delves deep into a root cause of the First World War – nationalism – that gets less attention from modern historiography, which focuses more on economic, diplomatic, and militaristic explanations for the Great War. Finally, Toynbee’s forward-looking methodology offered some prescient glimpses into the future, as evidenced by his prediction that the “fundamental factor in world politics during the next century will be the competition between China and the new commonwealths” (the United States, Canada, and Australia). One might convincingly argue that modern historians could follow Toynbee’s example and better benefit society by spending some time pondering the paths upon which humanity currently wanders.

Book Review: Nikolai Bukharin - The Last Years

Medvedev, Roi Aleksandrovich (Roy).
New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1983, 176 pages

Medvedev’s book, as the title indicates, is a biography of the last nine years of the life of Nikolai Bukharin, a Bolshevik revolutionary, Marxist intellectual, and Soviet politician. From a life of great acclaim as a theorist of socialism, Bukharin eventually wound up as victim of Stalin’s Great Purge; he was a defendant in the Trial of the Twenty One, was convicted, and shot to death by the NKVD. The author argued that Bukharin was not deserving of the fate of being branded a traitor to the Revolution, and that the “murder” (Medvedev’s term) of Bukharin was a crime influenced by Stalin’s paranoid fear of political rivals that ended the life of one of the most brilliant Bolshevik thinkers.

Medvedev was a prominent historian during the Soviet era who criticized Stalinism, and was purged from the Party after the publication of his book Let History Judge. The author’s writing presents a highly unfavorable view of the Soviet dictator, and this book is an especially critical condemnation of the excesses of the Great Purge. Using archival materials, personal interviews, and heretofore unpublished government documents, Medvedev skillfully wove a well-documented narrative that highlighted the nefarious campaign to discredit and destroy a much-loved leader of the Bolshevik Revolution.

The author argued that, whatever his deviations from the general Party line, Bukharin remained a loyal Bolshevik to the very end. Originally a member of the Left Opposition that opposed the Brest-Livotsk treaty in 1918, Bukharin later supported the moderate and right wings of the party in the post-Lenin debate over the NEP. Medvedev traced the growing hostility that Stalin demonstrated toward Bukharin to the period following Stalin’s political victories over the Left Opposition in 1925. The author argued that, in particular, Bukharin’s opposition in 1928 to Stalin’s plans for the collectivization of agriculture set the Soviet leader on a course to destroy Bukharin. Despite his loyalty to the Party and public support for Stalin, Bukharin increasingly found himself marginalized by Stalin’s public attacks on his purported anti-Revolutionary positions.

Left: Marshal of the Soviet Union Kliment Voroshilov

The author’s account of Bukharin’s last few months is especially harrowing, and reads like scenes from Orwell’s 1984. Bukharin’s friends disappeared, both literally and figuratively; those not imprisoned went to great pains to distance themselves from the Bolshevik outcast. One such ally was Kliment Voroshilov, later to have a less-than-distinguished career as a Marshal commanding Soviet forces in the 1940 Finnish campaign. The author quoted a passage from a tersely worded letter that Voroshilov wrote in reply to a desperate Bukharin, in which the former friend siad: “’I beg you, Comrade Bukharin, never to approach me again with questions of any kind.’” Clearly conditions were such in the Purge-era Soviet Union that longtime confidants were forced to humiliating acts of self-preservation.

Medvedev’s book is written in accessible language, although the frequent references to obscure Bolshevik figures necessitates either prior knowledge of the period or access to suplemetary texts. The author’s research was groundbreaking, as Medvedev brought new material to Western historians. Medvedev, in his zeal to push for the rehabilitation of Bukharin, occasionally overstated his arguments.

One such example involves Medvedev’s examination of a document that Bukharin wrote, which had a decidedly pro-Stalinist viepoint. The author dismissed the writing as “clearly quite wrong,” instead of considering that Bukharin may have simply composed the article as a means to get back in the good graces of Stalin. In a passage describing the recollections of Ilya Ehrenburg, an associate of Bukharin, the author described the account as “clearly wrong testimony.” Nonetheless, these minor criticisms do not take away from the power of Medvedev’s narrative, and this book is an essential read for a microhistory of the Great Purge.

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I never cease being dumbfounded by the unbelievable things people believe. -- Leo Rosten

Dodging the Thunderstorm

(Toledo, OH) A powerful line of thunderstorms ripped through Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan this evening, setting off tornado sirens and turning the skies above into an eerie blend of black, green, and grey.

I was northbound on Secor near Dorr when I heard the sirens, and a National Weather Service bulletin came on the radio. I called my kids and told them to head to the basement. Unfortunately, every idiot on northbound Secor had his head out the window gawking at the arriving storm, and I found the trip home harrowing due to my moronic fellow travelers.

"$%!%$# !!" I hollered at the slow-moving vehicles. "$&!$&!$! !!"

I did manage to beat the storm to my house, but there were a few moments as the front edge of the storm arrived that I thought I would end up a storm statistic. Some early wind gusts had to be over 40 MPH, and there were already quite a few downed branches in my neighborhood.

Postmodern Essay Generator

One of the strangest (and subversively brilliant) websites that I have stumbled across in recent years is what is known as the Postmodern Essay Generator, which produces scholarly-looking essays that are entirely without meaning.

Anyone who has struggled through a text that is weighed down by the author's postmodern discourse will chuckle at this idea. The Essay Generator uses an application known as the Dada Engine, which generates random text from legitimate academic materials.

The Generator was inspired by a hoax perpetrated by physicist Alan Sokal, who submitted a completely meaningless paper in 1996 to the journal Social Text. Entitled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity," the psudoscientific essay was accepted and published by the editors, sparking a fierce debate over the ethics of the hoax and adding fuel to the fire of those who dismiss postmodernism as a methodological approach.

Rapid Rhetoric: TEBBAD

This is an irregular feature - both in frequency and oddness - dedicated to a word I came across that I have never previously used.

tebbad (teh-BAHD) n. a cyclonic dust storm of Central Asia.

Derived from the Persian words for "fever wind," a tebbad is a frightful combination of high winds, low humidity, and high heat that can be lethal to humans and animals unless they seek shelter.

In the Arab world this meteorological phenomenon is known as a simoom, which translates roughly as "poison wind." Temperatures during these storms can exceed 130°F, and the humidity can dip below 10 percent.

On President Bush, Vietnam, and Doublethinkery

The announcement yesterday by President Bush that the Iraq War is similar to the Vietnam War is one of the most shameful examples of a politician doing a volte-face on an issue that I can ever recall.

This is the President who assured us prior to the start of the Iraq War that his administration had a plan for regime change, and that the "lessons of Vietnam" had been absorbed by the American military and his staff.

This is the President who consistently denied that Iraq was becoming another Vietnam in April 2004, as post-invasion Iraq began to sink into a sectarian civil war, telling us that the "analogy is false."

But now President Bush wants us to forget everything he has said in the past, arguing that post-invasion Iraq is, indeed, much like the Vietnam of the 1960s and 1970s. The text of President Bush's speech to the VFW is an exercise in selective history; he somehow believes that Vietnam would have benefited from a longer U.S. presence, and then tries to blame the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia on a pullout of U.S. troops from Vietnam.

This is a President who wants to doublethink his way out of the bloody debacle he foisted upon the American and Iraqi peoples, and who hopes that short memories will help him cover up his earlier dismissals of the specter of Vietnam.

Mr. President: there is still time for you to admit that you made a grievous error and end this travesty known as the Iraq War. Unfortunately, I suspect that your demonstrated recalcitrance will continue, and you will leave your term of office with even more blood of innocent Iraqi civilians and American soldiers on your hands.

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I do not read advertisements. I would spend all of my time wanting things. -- Franz Kafka

On Dog Fighting and Michael Vick's Disgrace

He was once an inspirational role model for underprivileged youth, and an example of what hard work and a little luck could bring to a person who grows up in poverty. To Michael Dwayne Vick, though, financial and professional success could not provide enough excitement, and the result is the destruction of nearly everything he accomplished in his too-brief career with the Atlanta Falcons.

The young man from the projects in Newport News, Virginia began to associate with some unsavory characters after becoming a multi-millionaire following the signing of a contract with the Atlanta Falcons in 2001. Some like to repeat insipid aphorisms like "you can take the kid out of the ghetto, but you can't take the ghetto out of the kid," but I think Vick's troubles really began after he became a celebrity.

I have always felt that young sports stars and big money are an especially volaitile combination; while working for many years at Joe Louis Arena, I watched up close the self-destructive Bob Probert on his long odyssey of struggles with cocaine and alcohol. Michael Vick is just the latest young man with wads of cash to whom lowlifes are attracted.

Yet it is not my intent to paint Vick as some sort of victim, for the dog fighting operation known as "Bad Newz Kennels" had Vick's complete participation, even to the point of his killing poor-performing dogs. Vick's decision to accept a plea bargain - along with his half-hearted apology - are admission enough of his role as a player in the barbaric world of dog-fighting.

Facing a federal sentence of up to five years, plus the possibility of state charges of animal cruelty, Vick will now be relegated to the status of "has been," or perhaps "never was." At 27 years of age, the Falcons quarterback should have been entering his prime playing years. Instead, he will be spending time in a federal prison, and will likely face a post-release suspension from the NFL. By the time Michael Vick is eligible to play again - if ever - he will likely be well into his thirties, having wasted what should have been the best years of his career as a football player.

I am disgusted with Vick's behavior and complicity as a participant in the cruel torture and killing of canines, but I am equally saddened at the self-destructive personality traits that led to Michael Vick's downfall. Here was a young man with seemingly unlimited athletic potential who threw everything away on the debased thrills associated with betting on dogs who are trained to rip out each other's throats.

And in housing projects across the country, there are little kids wearing black-and-red jerseys with the number 7, passing footballs and wondering what happened to their hero. Michael Vick let down millions of fans with his shameful actions, and his rehabilitation should begin with by publicly apologizing for his disgraceful behavior.

An Accident Story

My oldest daughter, who is 19, finally got her license last week after a few delays, most of which involved a year of living at BGSU in which a car is not a necessary accoutrement. As the vehicle she was driving needed some work, she was not able to really get onto the road on her own until yesterday.

This afternoon, a mere 24 hours after driving, she had her first accident.

Now, such stories are not uncommon, as young drivers will make mistakes. But how many drivers can make the claim that their first accident was with one of their parents' cars?

Me, to be exact. I saw her driving on the University of Toledo campus today, and I followed her for a minute to say hello. She was about to pull into a parking place when she began to back up to give herself a better angle.

WHAM! She smited my rusty-but-trusty 1994 Hyundai, no doubt loosening some chunks of corroded frame, but otherwise not leaving a visible scratch. She was mortified, but I couldn't help but laugh at the scene: of all the people into which she could have backed, she nailed her dad in his clunker.

Thus, my daughter learned an important lesson about knowing what is happening around her as she drives, and I gained a humorous annecdote that I will be sure to drag out for the next few years at family functions as we sit around the teak outdoor furniture.

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Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity. -- Herman Melville

Creepy Wikipedia Word Verification

I am generally a person who maintains a level of skepticism as I go through my day, and I usually find conspiracy theories to be laughable.

Still, I could not help but get a bit creeped out by the textual verification I came across this morning as I logged into Wikipedia. Staring at me were the words: "serve atoms," which triggered a old memory of the Twilight Zone episode To Serve Man.

Now, assuming that this is indeed a not-so-subliminal message: am I supposed to now be a slave in the service of atoms, or is this a demand that I participate in some form of nuclear terrorism? Are there reception desks staffed with physicists who can expedite the process of atom service?


:-}

Or could it be...SATAN?

On Days With Rain

A glance at the weather forecast indicated that the next seven days will be wet ones in Northwest Ohio. I am a person who looks forward to rainy days, and not just for the importance of precipitation for my gardens.

I take a guilty pleasure in waking up and seeing gray skies, lstening to the sound of raindrops on the roof above my bed. Rainy days mean that I am under no obligation to do any yard work, auto repairs, or anything of an outdoor nature. Moreover, if I choose to spend the day writing, reading, and meditating on such a day, my hangup that people will view me as lazy for such intellectual pursuits does not creep into my thoughts.

There is something liberating, then, on a rainy day: a freedom from the routine and a sense that one can putz about the house without concern for pressing obligations. Tomorrow will arrive soon enough, and the rain acts almost like free pass, or a gift to the weary.

For those who must head back to work today, and for whom the rain only means a longer commute and wet clothing, I hope that you are rewarded with a rainy day soon.

Unless, of course, you would prefer that your day of freedom be one with clear skies.

Video Promotes Shooting Mexicans to Stop Illegal Immigration

A video clip has recently surfaced on YouTube that reportedly features a member of the Mountain Minutemen training a gunsight on Mexicans standing near the US-Mexico border. During the clip, there are clear sounds of a shotgun shell being chambered and the discharge of the same weapon.

While watching the group of Mexicans in his sight, the unnamed vigilante mutters menacing words for the video's soundtrack:

“All right, come on across, motherfuckers. Yeah, go that way. I dare you to go that way. That’s my fucking trail, bitch!”

A virtual hat tip to Dave Neiwert at Orcinus for this disturbing video (warning - graphic language is present throughout):


While the producers of this film - which may or may not be a staged event - should not be classified as "typical" of the anti-immigration movement, the film does demonstrate the level of extreme nativism and racism creeping into the debates over illegal immigration.

In broken Spanish, the narrator warns away the Mexicans, who remain well beyond both shotgun range and the U.S. border:

"No entrada, puto...Estados Unidos es cerrado!" ("No entering, f**got. The United States is closed!")

Returning to his base camp, the anonymous narrator clearly enjoys his night of vigilante videography.

"And that's how you get rid of Mexicans," the knuckle-dragging redneck laughs to himself.

And yet many Americans simply shrug off the antics of mentally unstable buffoons like the narrator of this video, preferring to hold fast to the notion that anti-illegal immigration activist groups are really akin to neighborhood watches. My true fear, of course, is that these border vigilantes are a phenomenon similar to the rise of fascist political gangs like the SA that contributed to the fall of Weimar Germany.

But, hey - what do I know? I spend all of my time in historical texts, so it is no surprise that I see these parallels, right? Now go back to your blissful Sunday afternoon and watch a pleasant movie, and forget about all of this crazy talk, folks.

On Cooking Large Meals, Setting Extra Places, and Opening Hearts

Ours has long been the sort of home that our children's friends sort of gravitated toward. When the kids were younger, it was items like the trampoline and eagle's nest that made our house fun. As my children are now seventeen and older, though, our house still remains a place where we have "extra" kids who hang around.

And I'm fine with that. While at times the chaos of our busy house makes it hard to write (let alone think), I know that there is a reason why particular kids spend more time at our house than their own.

Yes, this means our food bills are a little higher, or that the television is running almost 24 hours a day, but I suppose this is our lot in life. We have long been foster and adoptive parents, and I think ours is a home that appears "safe" to kids who have problems at their own homes.

We don't ask questions of our extra guests (usually!), and we tend to cook for 8-10 people every meal. If that many show up, great. If not, you can bet that someone will be eating the leftovers late night, the uneaten food no doubt acting as nutritional supplements to the steady diet of fast food most kids consume.


And I think we are blessed in one sense: our children, despite their occasional teenaged crankiness, spend a lot of time around the house. By welcoming their friends and feeding those who show up unannounced, we have created something much more important than a kitchen sink that fills up 2-3 times a day.

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If they were right, I'd agree,
But it's them they know, not me.
Now there's a way, and I know that I have to go away,
I know I have to go.
-- Cat Stevens , "Father and Son"

On Unexpected Treasures and Bibliophilia

Left: My library grows, as my bookshelves look on with trepidation

A regular reader of this site, who shall remain anonymous, emailed me to let me know about an opportunity to peruse through some books in the basement of her mother's home. As someone who is dedicated to addressing the plight of unloved books, I was eager to learn more after reading the message:

When Toledo went through its flooding last year, the basement at my mom's house took in enough water to ruin the floors and make it very musty. Unfortunately, the basement houses thousands of books and the moisture is doing them no good.

Now, I get quite a few unusual emails, and I was at first skeptical of the use of the word "thousands" to describe the literary cache. The words "free" and "books" always catch my eyes, though, especially when they are paired together: "free books."

What I saw in the basement of this home is beyond description.

This was a multi-roomed basement filled from floor to ceiling with books on every possible topic. I was awestruck at the endless rows of shelves of texts, and regretted that I only allotted myself two hours for the task.

I found such historical gems as the 3-volume set of Napoleon's Memoirs, and a 2-volume biography on William Pitt the Younger. I took home Bulgarian, Hungarian, Hawaiian, and Polish language dictionaries, as well as quite a few local history narratives with which I was unfamiliar. All told, five shopping bags helped me transport over 90 books to add to my already burgeoning shelves.

There were books in this basement that likely have significant resale value, but I have never approached the written word with an eye toward profit. In fact, it is rare that I even part with a book, unless I give one away to a person I think is "destined" to have it.

Two books come to mind that I find myself giving away repeatedly: John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces and Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I occasionally run into people I feel must have one of these books for a particular reason, and I think I have given away each of these texts three times.

And yet another joy of coming into a trove of old books can be found in reading the inscriptions and bookplates that often accompany a nineteenth century or early twentieth century book. One book had the following pre-ZIP code address sticker:

Mrs. David F. Kalish
The Commodore Perry
Toledo 3, Ohio
For those of you too young to remember the introduction of the ZIP code, "Toledo 3" was what was known as a postal zone, and these postal zones were all the rage from 1943 until the late 1960s.

Pictured on the left is a character known as "Mr. Zip," who was supposed to help Americans feel better about switiching to the 5-digit ZIP code, and yes - I had a sudden pang of nostalgia when I saw this illustration.

But I digress, once again.

What started out as another busy-but-typical day has ended on a high note, thanks to my anonymous friend who so generously allowed me the opportunity to sift through the many thousands of books in a basement filled with textual wonder and limitless knowledge.

Once again, many thanks, friend. May your unselfish spirit bring forth equivalent karmic returns.

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Prediction is very difficult, especially of the future.
-- Niels Bohr

Comment Word Verification Back On

As much as I despise the goofy word verification feature of Blogger, I have turned it on for the moment. In the past 24 hours this site has been overrun with at least 60 spam comments, pushing products from Levitra to Phentermine, and I have spent an annoying amount of time removing the spam from posts up to two years old. I am assuming that this is a spambot, since the poster hits the site and departs in milliseconds.

I'll probably remove the word verification in a day or two when the spambot moves on to another site. It was either that, or start using a pulse oximeter and blood pressure cuff to monitor my physical reactions to the spam attack.

:-}

On Sexual Offenders, Collective Paranoia, and Debts to Society

Left: Some guy who committed a despicable crime that I am supposed to demonize and watch closely

Occasionally I use the search functions on the Ohio sex offender registration and notification (eSORN) website to see what types of deviants have moved into my neighborhood. I never actively go out of my way to keep virtual tabs on known sexual offenders and predators, but if I stumble across one of the links to these sites, my curiosity gets piqued.

So I see that a new sexual offender has moved in a block away from my home, and this particular piece of work is a 58-year-old white male convicted of sexual battery (ORC 2907.03) against a female child. As a parent, knowing this individual lives in the neighborhood makes my skin crawl.

Yet I cannot find out any particulars beyond the fact that the crime occurred in 1994. No newspaper articles show up in databases, since the crime occurred before the rise of the Internet as an information tool par excellence, and I am too cheap to pay for an archive search. I do know that this individual has been classified as a "Sexually Oriented Offender," the lowest rung on the ladder of sick SOBs, so I suppose I should take some comfort from that fact, right?

Why, though, have we collectively decided to stigmatize these particular criminals? I think murderers are just as repulsive to upstanding, caring citizens, but we do not go out of our way to mark this or any other class of criminal in such a manner. No, it is the sexual predators and offenders who must carry with them the state-mandated special categorizations, even after they have served their time.

A new bill before the Ohio Legislature would even create fluorescent green license plates for sex offenders. Will we return to the days of physically marking criminals, like branding them with a giant letter "P" on their foreheads? Admittedly, I get suspicious whenever a government official promotes a law for the benefit of children, but this slippery slope of post-prison punishment seems to be getting slicker.

There is something particularly disturbing in this retributive trend, something that offends me almost as much (albeit in a different fashion) as an adult who would prey upon a child. What is next? Will we start creating categories for burglars, car thieves, and drug addicts? How about tax cheats: why not create a special database of everyone who has screwed the government out of more than $50?

Do not misunderstand me - if I came across an adult attacking one of my children, he or she had better pray that the police arrive before I find my Louisville Slugger, because I would swing the mighty ashen Axe of Justice with wild abandon. But at one point do we stop punishing criminals, even hard-to-love freaks like sexual predators?

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There are 10¹¹ stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.
-- Richard Feynman

Rapid Rhetoric: AEOLIPILE

This is an irregular feature - both in frequency and oddness - dedicated to a word I came across that I have never previously used.

aeolipile (ay-OH-lih-pile) n. first steam engine, described in 1st century CE, featuring a globe made to revolve by pressure from steam jets; an instrument used to determine the force at which heated vapour escapes from a vessel through a narrow opening.

Also spelled aeolipyle or eolipile, the term is derived from the Latin Aeolus ("god of the winds") and pila ("ball"). The aeolipile, believed to have been created in the first century by Hero of Alexandria, is considered to be the first working steam engine.

Left: illustration of Hero's aeolipile

Hero's aeolipile was a hollow sphere mounted in such a way that it could rotate on a pair of hollow tubes that provided steam to the sphere from a heated water kettle. The water vapor escaped from two L-shaped tubes on opposite sides of the sphere that projected from its equator. The escaping gas gave thrust to the sphere, which then caused it to rotate.

If only Hero could have applied this technology to ceiling fans, he might then have been the first inventor of air conditioning.

ANSWP Denies They Ever Planned a Toledo Visit

Left: Cached screen shot of original announcement by ANSWP of a Toledo rally; click for larger image

(Toledo, OH) I try to avoid giving neo-Nazi groups space on this blog, mostly for the mentally unstable riffraff that start trolling my site when I write about American fascism. However, despite an announcement by the American National Socialist Workers' Party (ANSWP) on July 19 that the group planned an August 17 rally in Toledo, ANSWP Commander Bill White now claims:

If you are in Toledo, know that this entire thing, from the beginning, was made up out of whole cloth by the Toledo press. We never announced or intended an event in Toledo, Ohio.

Bill White: as usual, you are a ridiculous liar. I saved the Google cache from the original ANSWP Kentucky announcement, and no amount of backpedaling will get you out of the fact that you are lying through your teeth. Nice try, though, having ANSWP Kentucky leader Michael Burks delete his Blogger sites, but Google Cache sees everything.

Now, perhaps you did not have enough ANSWP jackbooted goons to create a photo-worthy march, but you know damned good and well that your people fully intended to come into Toledo and create some havoc.

Or perhaps, just as likely, you simply wanted to screw with the press and get some free publicity. There you go - goal achieved. However, I will not allow your complete fabrications about the origins of the Toledo ANSWP rally to go unanswered.

You have once again shown that you are a pathetic and pathological liar, and I am sure that Joseph Goebbels is taking a 5-second break from his eternal hellfire to look upward and say: "Yo - that's my boy."

By the way, Bill: I see from your internal ANSWP emails and public forums that ANSWP members are leaving in droves. How is that going for you, anyways, losing unit leaders in Kentucky, Texas, and Maryland?

Have a nice day, you genocide-minded sociopath.

(Mantra to self: "I will stop giving fascist imbeciles space on my blog, I will stop giving fascist imbeciles space on my blog, I will stop giving fascist imbeciles space on my blog")

On Hillary Clinton's "Invisible" Campaign Ad

As an independent voter with a crappy HSA medical insurance plan, I suppose that I am just the sort of person that the Democrats will love to court in 2008. Hillary Clinton just released an ad in Iowa this week that pushes the idea that many Americans feel "invisible" to their government. Here is the campaign ad, courtesy of YouTube:



I am, to say the least, underwhelmed at this first major advertising volley by a Democratic candidate. Senator Clinton mouths some uninspiring words bereft of content as a schlocky, contrived, amber-waves-of-grain musical accompaniment lulls the viewer into a stupor.

Hillary walks with a farmer, shakes hands with a machinist, hugs a pizza worker, reads with a small child, smiles with a single mom, hugs a veteran, talks with some more farmers, hugs an old lady, and brings a smile to a college girl's face. All the while the same background music - which sounds like a rejected score from TV's "Little House on the Prairie" - makes a lame attempt to tug at the heartstrings.

The closest this advertisement gets to passion is when when Hillary, reaching from deep within her well-rehearsed soul, and with as much authenticity as a set of faux wood blinds, declares that "if you're a family that is struggling, and you don't have healthcare, well, you are invisible - to this President."

Hmmm.

The spot ends with Senator Clinton declaring that workers, single moms, and soldiers are "not invisible" to her, and that they will not be invisible to the next President.

Now, admittedly, I will grant that many people feel a sense of detachment from their government representatives, and that quite a few Americans have stopped believing that this is a land of opportunity. However, the entity that is clearly invisible (pun intended) is this campaign ad, or at least what should pass for a message in this era of political soundbites and impression-driven campaign marketing.

Senator Clinton: tell us what you are going to do for us, and do not annoy us with sappy, Hallmark-sounding campaign ads that have less substance than a half-eaten Twinkie with its filling sucked out.

The Quote Shelf

A frequent feature on this site; feel free to comment on the quote or to supply a competing quote.

Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy those are who already possess it.
-- François de La Rochefoucauld

On Getting Published

Eight years ago I was a disillusioned ex-business owner who was trying to figure out what the hell he was going to do for the rest of his life. With some prodding from my wife, I decided to go back to college and finish my BA in some career-oriented field like secondary education.

Along the way a few of my professors noted that I displayed some aptitude for writing, and encouraged me to apply myself toward improving my writing skills. I sought out writing tutors, pestered my instructors for critical feedback on my work, and began reading books on style and grammar.

Within a few short years I began to branch out into different genres of writing, especially journalism. By 2004 I was racking up professional and academic awards, and had over one hundred published articles in a variety of popular and academic periodicals.

Whoop-tee-doo. I have since learned that getting published has less to do with the quality of writing as it does sheer persistence and pluck. There are many thousands of venues for writers to get published, and if a person submits to enough publishers, eventually that writer will get lucky and find an editor who needs to fill some last-minute space.

I am occasionally asked by unpublished writers about the best techniques to getting one's work published. With that in mind, I decided to create a post with some tips on improving the chances of getting one's work published.

1. Know the typical readers of your chosen publications, and make sure your work reflects this. While the term "dumbing down" might seem crass, there is much to be said for matching your writing with the reading levels of the audience. For mass-market publications such as newspapers and popular periodicals, avoid high-fallutin' vocabulary, and keep paragraphs short. Save the rhetorical gymnastics for more highbrow and academic publications.

2. Know the style and format expectations of the publication's editors. Nothing irritates an editor more than a submission that needs a lot of formatting. Read the submission guidelines, which are usually located in or near the masthead. If a publisher wants you to follow, for example, AP style, then take a few minutes to figure out what that means for your work.

3. When you are starting out, take any publishing opportunities that come along. Never turn your nose up to a publication, even those free health newspapers in the doctor's office. If it pays and it publishes, a periodical is a winner in my book, and your CV becomes all the more thicker. You can become choosy when you are a star.

4. Start a blog. Sure, there are a lot of poorly-written blogs that give this emerging media an undeserved reputation as the "junkosphere." That being said, it is relatively simple to stand out from the pack of lesser writers on the Internet, sort of like playing basketball against a group of first-graders. I have had my blog writing featured in countless national and international websites, and my blog presence has brought me quite a few paying gigs as a writer and a historian. Finally, the world of communication is rpidly changing, and a quality Web presence is a must for writers in the twenty-first century.

5. Work hard at your craft. Ten years ago I knew next to nothing about the art of writing. While I may never be mistaken for Herman Melville, I nonetheless have achieved considerable personal, professional, and financial success with my writing, and the only recipe for success as a writer is hard work. Read style guides such as The Elements of Style, and improve your competency in grammar by making use of sites such as Purdue University's Online Writing Lab.

6. Write every day. No exceptions. Whatever your writing endeavors entail, you will never succeed if you are a slacker in the business of actually putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). Set daily minimum goals for yourself, and become your most severe taskmaster. In my own example, I push myself to create a minimum of one original post per day on this blog, and I force myself to write no less than one page per day when I have academic writing that looms overhead. Stephen King, in his impressive book On Writing, noted that he has a goal of ten pages per day when he is working on a new novel. By sticking to your goals you will quickly accumulate an impressive body of work in short order.

World Market Systems

Those of you who are looking to start and operate a home-based business should pay a visit to the website of World Market Systems, an internationally recognized company that develops web based software for small to medium sized businesses worldwide. Founded in 2002, WorldMarketSystems has created and currently hosts over 50,000 websites.

World Market Systems built its business on the idea that there is a high demand for creating state-of-the-art websites. This is for the simple reason that most people who want to make money from home simply lack the knowledge and expertise to build their own websites from scratch.

And let's face facts - we have all come across owner-designed websites that were so amateurish and hard to navigate that our eyeballs began to protest and our heads began to ache. Instead, prospective business owners ought to turn to an expert like World Market Systems, which will do all the work to set you up with an excellent website to make money in the affiliate business.

This company will give you access to a corporate coach who can help you understand how to advertise your product or service. They will also offer you a selection of premium advertising products and e-Tools if you desire such amenities. It takes an eye-catching website, popular affiliates, repetitive advertising, and a some patience to build an online business, and World Market Systems will help you navigate through unfamiliar waters in your quest to develop a profitable home-based business. This was a sponsored post.

Changing the O2 Sensor on a 1996 Saturn SL

Left: The oxygen sensor screws into the exhaust manifold

I sometimes use this website to post mechanical information, as I am very much a fan of the concept of shared knowledge. Those who do not wish to be bored with auto repair, please continue on to the next post.

My 1996 Saturn SL has had some stalling and idling problems that have gradually worsened in the last few months. I used my philosophy of "repairing the least expensive related parts," and changed the spark plugs, plug wires, and fuel filter, but the problems continued.

I moved next to the oxygen sensor, which is also known as the O2 sensor. After replacing this sensor - which measures the concentration of oxygen remaining in exhaust gas to improve the efficiency of the combustion process - my car no longer stalled and the rough idle disappeared.

Left: the used oxygen sensor after removal from the manifold

The process of removing an O2 sensor is quite simple, and I suspect that one could continue wearing one's flashy Air Jordan shoes whilst changing said part. Here are the steps you can follow to replace an oxygen sensor:

1. If you have a twin-cam engine (it will say so on a big label on the valve cover), you will need to make sure to purchase the correct sensor. There is also an oxygen sensor that screws into the exhaust system near the catalytic converter, but this is usually a special-order part. The front oxygen sensor that screws into the manifold is typically the first of the two sensors to wear out. Most auto stores stock this oxygen sensor.

2. Allow the engine to cool. It is best to change this sensor in the morning after the engine has cooled overnight.

3. The auto parts store will try to sell you a special O2 sensor wrench, but you can remove the old oxygen sensor with either a box wrench or an adjustable wrench. Just be sure to disconnect the wiring first and do not over-torque the wrench, or you will end up snapping off the sensor in the manifold (very bad). The wiring on the O2 sensor usually clips into a connection, and you have to depress the plastic tab to connect/disconnect the wiring.

4. Apply a light amount of grease on the threads of the new sensor, making sure to wipe off the excess. This will prevent the sensor from rusting or becoming corroded to the manifold.

5. Screw the new sensor into the manifold. If you do not have a torque wrench, go no more than a quarter-turn past hand tight. Again, you do not want to strip out the new sensor in your manifold and have to re-tap it.

6. Reconnect the electrical wire to the assembly.

7. Fire up the engine and see if you now have a fine running automobile. If not, curse the $60 you spent on an oxygen sensor and restart the diagnosis process. Hint - you might next want to check your MAP sensor.

The Quote Shelf

A frequent feature on this site; feel free to comment on the quote or to supply a competing quote.

The best political weapon is the weapon of terror. Cruelty commands respect. Men may hate us. But, we don't ask for their love; only for their fear.
-- Heinrich Himmler

On Mayor Carty Finkbeiner, Municipal Censorship, and Certain Freedoms

The city of Toledo's decision yesterday to close Woodrow Wilson Park to local citizens protesting city expenditures to protect neo-Nazi groups was most unfortunate. This act merely reinforces claims by groups such as the October Fifteenth Anarchist Collective that the city cares more about neo-Nazis than its own citizens.

I spoke with local activists yesterday about the unprecedented closing of the park for "public safety" reasons.

"It is unconscionable that the city will allow out-of-town neo-Nazis to march here and taunt local minorities, while censoring local citizens who object to city funds supporting neo-Nazis," said one attendee of the cancelled public meeting. "It shows that the city is in bed with neo-Nazi groups, and shows exactly where the Mayor's sympathies lie."

Dozens of police could be seen in and around the park, and mounted patrols kept watch over the activists when they went to Manhattan Plaza to meet the media. Media personnel were also banned from the park, although people who had been in the park prior to the event were allowed to continue their recreational activities.

My personal opinion is that the decision to shut down the park represents a disturbing infringement of freedom of speech and freedom of association, and the city might find itself on the receiving end of expensive legal action. The city issued a brief statement explaining its rationale behind closing the park:

Wilson park was closed, effective noon, today. Toledo police received word of a rally with potential for confrontation. To avoid problems, Mayor Finkbeiner ordered the park closed.

At the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, I think that the repressive nature of the closing of Wilson Park is indeed reminiscent of the actions of a certain fascist group that came to power in the 1930s. I respectfully suggest that the Mayor re-familiarize himself with portions of the Bill of Rights if and when this group decides to hold another legal public meeting.

The Quote Shelf

A frequent feature on this site; feel free to comment on the quote or to supply a competing quote.

In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them.
-- Alexis de Tocqueville

Perseid Meteor Shower to Peak Tonight

Left: Time-lapse image of Perseid meteor shower courtesy of Stargazing.net

If you are looking for low-budget entertainment tonight, consider looking to the night sky. The Perseid meteor shower occurs around this time each year as the Earth passes through a trail of debris left in the wake of Comet Swift-Tuttle.

At the storm's peak, which will occur at 2:00 a.m. EDT on Monday, there will be as many as one to two meteoroids per minute. The Perseid shower - so named because the streaks of light seem to emanate from the constellation Perseus - will commence around 9 p.m. on Sunday in the northeast and continue until dawn Monday. The meteor storm gives off no appreciable amounts of radiation, so one need not be concerned with EMI shielding, unlike solar storms.


My wife and I went out last night to see the previews of tonight's show, given that the local weather forecast is calling for scattered thunderstorms today and tonight. I saw one decent contrail that streaked from the north, as well as a handful of faint streaks.

The meteor shower is the result of dust and rock from the Comet Swift-Tuttle, which made its last pass in 1992. This comet will likely one day strike either the Earth or the Moon, given the fact that its orbit interescts those of the aforementioned celestial bodies. Swift-Tuttle will not return until 2126.

We drove out to the countryside to escape the glare of city lights, but we picked a road with an annoying amount of traffic. Still, most of the enjoyment of watching a meteor shower is the company, and holding hands with my wife on a moonless summer night was the highlight of the trip.

Nazi Pop Twins - Prussian Blue

"Nazi Pop Twins" is a documentary by filmmaker James Quinn about the neo-Nazi teen pop singers Lynx and Lamb Gaede, better known as Prussian Blue. Here is a lengthy excerpt of the film courtesy of YouTube.com; if you are intrigued, there will be links at the end of the clip to watch the rest of the film:



In some ways it appears that the Gaede twins are beginning to step back from the racist ideology with which their mother April has inculcated them. Yet it is clear that they still retain quite a bit of hatred for non-whites, and it is sad to see extreme ideology being parroted by children.

April Gaede comes across in the film as an intellectual lightweight, and appears to delight in shocking others with her unabashed racism. She denies that she is a neo-Nazi, and then later brandishes a smiley-faced T-shirt with the likeness of Adolf Hitler. At several points in the film she attempts to coach Lynx and Lamb off camera with the "correct" white nationalist answers, but the twins spend much of the film distancing themselves from their batshit mother.

Perhaps the most despicable person in the film, though, is the grandfather of the twins, Bill Gaede, a California rancher who brands his livestock with swastikas. He is the epitome of the ignorant racist redneck, and he is the sort of idiotic white supremacist one could almost find funny were he not so deadly serious about his ideology. He claims to have shot six Mexicans in the past four years, and he spends time on camera describing acts of bestiality that is supposedly a hallmark of illegal immigrants.

Note: the film contains vulgar language, references to violence, and blatant racism, so be forewarned.

Rapid Rhetoric: COMITY

This is an irregular feature - both in frequency and oddness - dedicated to a word I came across that I have never previously used.

comity (KAH-mih-tee) n. friendly atmosphere, especially in social settings; mutual courtesy; civility between nations; a standard of etiquette that governs the interactions of courts in different states, localities and foreign countries.

Legal beagles, of course, are quite familiar with this term, which is derived from the Latin word comitas ("courteousness"). I came across it in the sense of the "comity of nations," which is a concept in rare supply these days.

Should I ever need the services of a New York car accident lawyer, I will now be able to impress said barrister with my command of this basic legal term, though I suspect my successful settlement might bring him or her greater joy.

On Kidney Stones, Opportunity Costs, and Merciful Doctors

I have been a sufferer of kidney stones since 1994, when I was hospitalized with my first excruciating encounter with this condition. Since that time I have had at least six additional bouts with Renal calculi, the most recent of which was last evening.

Fortunately, my latest experience was less painful than my worst stones, and I was reluctant to go to the hospital. Still, as anyone familiar with kidney stone pain can attest, I was in quite a bit of discomfort. My practical wife had a moment of utter brilliance:

"How about if I drive you up to the urgent care clinic?" she asked.

This was a much better plan than either: a) doubling over in pain every half-hour until the stone passed; or b) going to the emergency room, giving invitations for the physicians to run a bunch of tests to confirm what I already knew, and wasting 24 hours.

Thus we drove to the Toledo Clinic's urgent care facility on Secor Road and got immediate service. After my kidneys cooperated in providing him with a particularly burgundy-colored urine sample, this efficient doctor wrote me a prescription for a painkiller and I was home within 60 minutes, including the time it took for me to hit the local Rite Aid.

This was a win for everyone involved: I received much-needed pain medication, my insurance company received a much-smaller bill, and my wife received much-needed sleep, as she did not have to listen to me howl all night long.

Thanks, Doc!

Book Review: Maya Society Under Colonial Rule

Fariss, Nancy.
Princeton University Press, 1984, 600 pages

Farriss is the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, and she is an ethnohistorian who was bestowed with the MacArthur Fellowship. Maya Society Under Colonial Rule examines the reasons behind the ability of the Yucatecan Maya to preserve their collective ethnic identity despite centuries of colonial rule.

Farriss argued that one of the reasons for the ability of the Maya to maintain an independent identity during the colonial period was due to what she termed as the status of the Yucatán Peninsula as a “colonial backwater.” The region, according to Farriss, did not possess significant natural resources that, for Europeans, could be exploited for commercial gain. In addition, the Yucatán possessed climatological barriers to European domination, possessing both “steamy heat “and a “teeming population of noxious insects.” The growth of commercial agriculture was stymied in the by these and other ecological considerations, which contributed to “the retardation of the landed estate.” The author noted that soil conditions were not favorable for many crops with commercial potential, and only the traditional maize and beans fared well in most of the region.

The author next examined demographic evidence in her effort to explain the cultural resiliency of the Maya. While waves of epidemic European diseases raged through the immunologically-naïve Maya with the same virulence as other Amerindian groups, peoples of the Yucatan did possess one significant demographic advantage: the ratio of Spaniards to Amerindians was lower in the Yucatán than most of the other regions in New Spain. Spaniards in Mexico City, for example, made up 50.3% of the population, as compared with a mere 7.9% of the Yucatán in the late 18th century; for the region as a whole, Spaniards constituted 18.6% of the total population of New Spain.

Left: Map of Mayan civilization during the Classic period

Thus, the sheer numerical dominance of the Maya population in the Yucatán helps explain why Spanish culture failed to extinguish Mayan ethnic identity. In addition, the physical territory controlled by the Spanish was quite limited, and effective control was limited to a few cities and outposts. Farriss characterized Spanish holdings as “islands, at best archipelagos, in a hostile Maya sea.” Finally, the low numbers of Spaniards in the colonial Yucatan reduced the effects of miscegenation, unlike the “melting pot” outcome experienced by other indigenous groups in Mesoamerica.

The relative poverty of the colonial Yucatán, according to Farriss, conversely bode well for cultural survival of the Maya. Colonial Yucatán elites - not buoyed by the wealth of silver mines, profitable agriculture, or lucrative ranching – could thus ill afford to import many African slaves, thus further reducing the melting pot effect. Likewise, the cash-starved colonial missions in the Yucatán could only meet the expenses of schools for the wealthiest inhabitants, and the only education most Maya received came in the form of catechism classes, which were conducted by native speakers in the Mayan tongue. Such regional poverty also reduced the opportunities for any would-be hierarchical ladder climbers among the indigenous population to embrace the social world of the Spanish colonizers.

Farriss turned next to the social structure of the Mayan society, which had a number of characteristics that served well the cause of cultural survival. The author noted the near-complete self sufficiency of local groups, whose basic needs could be met without the development of local and regional markets. A self-contained economy, therefore, reduced the need for interaction with both Spanish and regional indigenous peoples, and concurrently reduced the influences of such groups upon Mayan culture.

Left: Ruins at Uxmal

Perhaps the most groundbreaking importance of this work is the development of a sociological model by Farriss to explain the basic unit of Mayan society: the patrilineal, milpa-based extended kin network of the Maya. This extended family, or “milpa gang,” acted cooperatively and collectively for the mutual benefit of individual members. Farriss argued that Mayan communities, composed of these independent extended families, served in the manner of modern corporations in that they “combined forces to promote the common good” and “spread the burden and risk of individual hardship or calamity more evenly among all its members.”

In addition to her skills as a researcher, Farriss exhibited in Mayan Society a superb ability to create compelling prose. The author’s description of English palo de campeche camps on the Gulf coast was particularly memorable: “…the miserable little settlements of dyewood loggers in Belize managed to sustain a brisk commerce in luxury goods out of all proportion to their size and wealth.” A dry wit is evident throughout the book, and Farriss - in describing the Spanish imposition of the onerous taxes, tributes, and repartimientos borne by the Maya - acknowledged that her summary did not “count the many unauthorized supplements devised by the fertile colonial mind.”

On Drunk Drivers, Timing, and Fate

I found myself behind an inebriated driver for several miles this morning. What surprised me was not the fact that the person was weaving and having trouble staying in her lane, but that a person could be so completely blasted at 10:00 am.

I first noticed the asshat on northbound Byrne near Dorr, and I had the displeasure to be stuck behind her all the way to Kenwood. I was leery of trying to pass her, given her propensity to make sudden swerves and drive with the dotted white lines in the center of her older red Chrysler. I called 911 to report her, passing along the license plate number and various descriptive characteristics.

Unluckily for me, Ms. Wasted also turned eastbound onto Kenwood (the same direction I was headed), and proceeded to drive onto the landscaped median as one enters Old Orchard. KA-THWUMP! The passenger in the car did not look much better, being one of those people who have their seat reclined so that all you can see is the top of their heads. Hitting the median did not even cause the passenger to look up, so he might have been sleeping.

As I turned onto a side street to complete my errand, I saw a young mother with a small child walking toward Kenwood, and I wondered about fate. Had this mom and her daughter started on their trek just 30 seconds earlier, their paths might have crossed with the drunken idiot whose utter stupidity and recklessness I had witnessed for several miles.

So whoever you are, Ms. Asshat, consider yourself lucky you managed to avoid killing anyone today, at least not yet. Odds are your continued drunken motoring will not remain undetected for long, and - given the fact that three police departments were within range of your escapades - you might even be behind bars as we speak.

And to the unknown mother and child: I thank God you spent a few extra minutes at home before your journey. Hug her, and walk as far away from the curb as possible.

You never know who is driving the car in front of you.

On Plunging Markets, Fans, and Flying Brown Matter

Nervous brokers at the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday; photo courtesy of AP/Richard Drew

Wall Street plunged even further this morning after the opening bell as fearful investors worried about tight credit conditions began a massive selloff. The Dow has fallen over one percent in the fist half-hour, despite an announcement by the Federal Reserve that it would do all it could to "facilitate the orderly functioning of financial markets."

Over the past two days the Fed has added $43 billion in temporary funds to the nation's banking system through the purchase of mortgage-backed securities in an attempt to meet demand for cash as a result of the rout in bonds backed by home loans to subprime borrowers.

Global markets shared Wall Street jitters, as overnight Japan's Nikkei 225 index dropped 406.51 points, or 2.37 percent, while the Korea Composite Stock Price Index fell 80.19 points, or 4.2 percent. The European Central Bank loaned more than $130 billion in overnight funds to banks at the low rate of 4 percent in attempt to reassure investors. Some analysts view the move by the ECB - which has pumped over $212 billion into the markets over the past two days - as merely confirmation of a global credit crunch.

I have long feared the overreliance of the U.S. economy on the housing market for the past decade, and have speculated that we are about to see a significant burst of the housing bubble. Still, the ferocity of the two-day selloff has been unsettling even to this relatively detached observer.

Going into August our 401-K returns had been spectacular, and we were up over 20 percent in the first eight months of the year. While I am not ready to dump the portfolio and invest in the three G's - gold, guns, and green beans - I watch with more than a bit of unrest what appears to be the beginning of full-blown bear market.

I'm just glad I have low consumer debt, fairly high home equity, and some liquidity in my investments, as we might be hitting one of those proverbial periods of fecal matter running into air movement devices.

Addendum, 11:28 AM: The Fed just announced that it will provide "reserves as necessary" to calm the markets in the wake of the fallout from the escalating credit crisis. At the moment the Fed has decided against cutting the federal funds rate to reduce fears of shrinking credit.

On Refilling Water Bottles

Left: My dirty fluvial secret

I consume a fair amount of bottled water, preferring a serving of cold H2O over drinking one of those sugar-filled carbonated beverages. Over the years, though, I have developed a habit of refilling my empty water bottles and sticking them in the refrigerator to save a few dollars here and there.

I have heard a variety of reasons for not refilling water bottles, running from the argument that refilled water bottles are breeding grounds for bacteria to the supposition that toxic chemicals in PET bottles will leach into the replacement water.

There are also those who advocate the use of an inexpensive reusable container with a water bottle filter built in.

My method of refilling water bottles is fairly simple: I rinse out the bottle and cap between uses, fill with tap water, and stick them in the refrigerator. I figure that any microbes that cling to the container probably came from me or my immediate environment, so I might actually be entering into a sort of homeostatic equilibrium or environmental stasis with my microbiotic pals.

At any rate, I only reuse a given bottle a few times, and I clearly mark the refilled bottles as pictured, so there should be fair warning to all those in the vicinity of the funk that lurks within my bottles.

The Quote Shelf

A frequent feature on this site; feel free to comment on the quote or to supply a competing quote.

Some say Google is God. Others say Google is Satan. But if they think Google is too powerful, remember that with search engines unlike other companies, all it takes is a single click to go to another search engine.
-- Sergey Brin

More Tips on Improving Your Blog

This is part of a series of posts on improving the search engine optimization and traffic counts of individual blogs. Previous articles focused on SEO, the importance of keywords, and using imags to generate site traffic.

Most bloggers have a purpose for their use of the Internet to broadcast their work to a worldwide audience. If you are happy with a readership of three- you, your spouse, and your Uncle Bob - this article will have little purpose, so scroll down to something else to read.

For the rest of you, getting search engines to highly rank your posts and driving traffic are part of the appeal of blogging. I have enjoyed meeting people (at least in a virtual sense) from six continents and many dozens of countries.

I'm still waiting for my first Antarctican visitor.

At any rate, read on for a few more tips on how to improve your blog so that you will attract and retain readers, and how to get the likes of Google, Yahoo, and MSNBC to recognize the unique value of your site.

1. Create quality content every day. Whatever it is that you do on your site, keep it fresh and give your readers a reason to visit. If you only post once every few days, people will not think that they are missing anything if they skip. In addition, Google's algorithm factors in frequency of posting and updating, so you have an SEO angle for updating your site. If you really have nothing noteworthy about which to post, at least add a new link on your sidebar, or tweak your template; both of these will tell the Googlebots that your site is updated. I have some semi-regular features on this site, such as The Quote Shelf and Rapid Rhetoric, which help me keep the site fresh when I am pressed for time or when I have writer's block. Sometimes the very process of posting anything can spark those creative juices.

2. Use your sidebar first and foremost to showcase your own work. Yes, you want to help out other bloggers and pass around a little link love, but you also have to look out for your own needs. Excessive free links with blogrolls and link circles can bleed precious PageRank. Try to limit your sidebar links to those sites who reciprocate, and to those who actually visit or send traffic your way. Conversely, posting some of your proudest blogging posts on the sidebar creates internal links that help raise the PR of individual web pages. Look on my sidebar at the section marked "Top Posts" - these are some of the most visited posts on my site. Since I created this sidebar category, most of these entries now rank on the first page of Google results, and this is because I have over 1,700 posts with internal links to these pages.

3. Visit the sites of SEO experts. I would love to take personal credit for every smart idea I use on my site, but I would estimate that only 10 percent of what I use to build traffic and PageRank I deduced on my own. One of the sharpest out there is SEO guru Andy Beard, whose site is a goldmine of information just waiting for you to collect its valuable nuggets (hey - I had to work with the metaphor).

4. Periodically retool your site's template. Nothing says "boring" to me like one of those standard Blogger templates that has not been tweaked. HTML requires little brain power, so start learning simple tricks like changing the color scheme. Use images in at least some of your posts for visual appeal. Change the default width of your index page, or - better still - use an interesting wallpaper for your background instead of one of those standard designs. While you do not have to go so far as adding closed captioning to a wild Flash intro, you should also be sure that your site takes into account the needs of most browsers and users.


5. Get regular feedback from your visitors, and listen to what they tell you. Sometimes you will tweak your template in one browser (say, Internet Explorer), but your site will be screwed up in another (like FireFox). Actively solicit opinions from your readers, like running a short post called "What Do You Like About This Site?" Then follow up with some of their suggestions. For example, I use an auto-refresh function on this site, and one person complained that the refresh was too quick (I had it set for three minutes). By doubling the refresh rate, I eliminated a source of frustration from a regular reader, and made that person feel like a part of the community of this site.

The Nietzsche Family Circus

One need not have read Thus Spoke Zarathustra to appreciate the absurd humor to be found on a website I stumbled across this morning called The Nietzsche Family Circus.

The site matches a random Family Circus cartoon with a random Friedrich Nietzsche quote. This will give you something to do until the time arrives to draft your fantasy football team, or to buy World Series tickets.

Hit REFRESH repeatedly for more bizarre silliness, and don't blame me when you get canned for wasting too much time on the Internet.

The Rise of Nazi Germany, 1919-1933

This is an unpublished historiographical essay that I decided to upload to the Web. It can be considered a companion essay to my earlier posting of The Fall of the Weimar Republic

Left: Adolf Hitler in a 1928 Nuremberg rally; Hermann Göring is directly in front of Hitler

Introduction

Given the horrors of the Holocaust and the human costs associated with the Second World War, it is not surprising that there is considerable interest in the reasons for the rise to power of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP - commonly known as the Nazi Party). Certainly an important part of the political successes of the Nazis was the failure of democracy to thrive in Weimar Germany, but this factor is really the subject of an altogether different essay. This particular essay examines the question of why the NSDAP – out of all the dozens of parties that formed in the fourteen years of the Weimar Republic – became the political movement that achieved power.

After all, there were numerous political competitors in the waning years of Weimar Germany. Even if one were to ignore the Deutsche Zentrumspartei or the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD) as “discredited” mainstream parties, there still remained a number of strong extremist political factions besides the NSDAP that could have risen to power. The Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD), for example, consistently received between 10 and 15 percent of the vote in Reichstag elections, while on the right there was no shortage of nationalist competitors, including the Deutschnationale Volkspartei(DNVP).

This essay examines the historiography related to the rise to power in Germany of the Nazi Party, and specifically considers the factors that positioned Hitler’s movement to outperform all other political parties by the end of the Weimar Republic. While this is by no means an exhaustive treatise on the topic – and one that is frankly limited by the author’s overreliance on English-language sources – readers will gain an appreciation of the variety of perspectives on the reasons for the rise of the NSDAP.

There are a number of books that are particularly useful for readers unfamiliar with the history of the NSDAP, at least beyond a basic acquaintance with the topic through televison and film. Those who seek a comprehensive overview of the Weimar period should consider Richard Evans’s impressive The Coming of the Third Reich, a comprehensive tour de force that will remain among the definitive accounts of the rise of Nazi Germany for many decades. Dietrich Orlow’s The History of the Nazi Party 1919-1933, though out of print, remains an authoritative, scrupulously-researched overview of the evolution of the NDSAP from a handful of Bavarian extremists to Hitler’s final accession to power on 30 January 1933. Geoffrey Pridham’s Hitler’s Rise to Power: The Nazi Movement in Bavaria, 1923-1933 is a thorough case study of the roots and growth of the Nazi movement at one of the main centers of the party’s electoral and organizational strength.

Left: 1925 front cover of Volume I of Hitler's Mein Kampf

Hitler and the NSDAP, in effect, were the first historians of the Nazi movement, and part of the difficulty in studying the Nazi rise to power is the need to separate National Socialist propaganda from the historical record. One of the first attempts to present a version of the earliest years of the Nazi Party occurred in Hitler’s Mein Kampf. In the following passage, Hitler described in humble terms the first tentative meetings of the group in 1919, creating images of an oppressed group of German patriots whose very lives were in danger by the supposed Jewish-Bolshevik menace the Nazis sought to oppose:

In the small circle that the movement then was a certain fear of such a fight prevailed. The members wanted to appear in public as little as possible, for fear of being beaten up. In their mind's eye they already saw the first great meeting smashed and go the movement finished for good. I had a hard time putting forward my opinion that we must not dodge this struggle, but prepare for it, and for this reason acquire the armament which alone offers protection against violence. Terror is not broken by the mind, but by terror. The success of the first meeting strengthened my position in this respect. We gained courage for a second meeting on a somewhat larger scale.

About October, 1919, the second, larger meeting took place in the Eberlbraukeller. Topic: Brestlitovsk and Versailles. Four gentlemen appeared as speakers. I myself spoke for almost an hour and the success was greater than at the first rally. The audience had risen to more than one hundred and thirty. An attempted disturbance was at once nipped in the bud by my comrades. The disturbers flew down the stairs with gashed heads.

Thus it is with a wary eye scanning for hyperbole, distortion, and outright fabrication that historians approach Mein Kampf, the Völkischer Beobachter, and the rest of the substantial body of NSDAP literature. Still, this material also represents an opportunity for students to understand the ideology and mindset of members of the Nazi Party, and any careful study of the reasons for the rise of National Socialism needs to include this primary source material.

Peter Drucker was a writer with a unique historical opportunity to comment on the successes of the NSDAP, as he worked as a banker and journalist in Germany during the Weimar era. After immigrating to the United States in 1937 following a four-year stint in London, Drucker argued that all the organizational talents and propagandistic skills of the Nazis paled in comparison with the simple fact that the alternatives to fascism – capitalism and socialism – were no longer seen as viable systems of socioeconomic organization:

The collapse of the belief in the capitalist and socialist creeds was translated into terms of individual experience by the World War and the great depression. These catastrophes broke through the everyday routine which makes men accept existing forms, institutions, and tenets as unalterable natural laws. They suddenly exposed the vacuum behind the façade of society. The European masses realized for the first time that existence in this society is governed not by rational and sensible, but by blind, irrational, and demonic forces.

Nazi Propaganda and the Growth of the NDSAP

Left: Nazi Reichspropagandaleiter Joseph Goebbels

Among the many strengths of the Nazis in the years prior to Hitler becoming German Reichskanzler was that of party propaganda. This was a realm of activity in which party officials – especially Joseph Goebbels, who became Reichspropagandaleiter in 1928 – made innovations in the use of media to reinforce Nazi aims. Hitler himself outlined the principles of what would become the guiding strategy for future Nazi propaganda efforts; the most important of these precepts is the idea that propaganda must be targeted to the masses:

All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be. But if, as in propaganda for sticking out a war, the aim is to influence a whole people, we must avoid excessive intellectual demands on our public, and too much caution cannot be extended in this direction.

Efficacious propaganda, Hitler believed, had to be structured in such a fashion as to be retained by those to whom it was targeted:

The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan. As soon as you sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away, for the crowd can neither digest nor retain the material offered. In this way the result is weakened and in the end entirely cancelled out.

Nazi propaganda avoided specific positive arguments that advocated particular policies, and focused instead on negative attacks on what the Nazis viewed as the decadent influences on German society. Thus, anti-Semitism, anti-Bolshevism, and anti-liberalism were among the most common themes in Nazi propaganda. Evans argued that one of the most effective propaganda devices developed by the Nazis revolved around the use by France of black colonial troops as occupying forces after World War I and during the occupation of the Ruhr. He noted that cartoonists depicted “crude, semi-pornographic sketches of bestial black soldiers carrying off innocent white German women to a fate worse than death.” Nazi propagandists used this imagery to discredit the Weimar regime, and mixed-race children in the 1930s were “almost universally regarded as the offspring of such incidents.”

Left: 1920s era Nazi propaganda poster proclaiming "Tod der Lüge"("Death of the Lie")

The nature of Nazi propaganda was among its strengths, as it was a type of communication in which truth was relative. Welch described the typical propaganda campaign as rhetoric that operated on “many different kinds of truth – from the outright lie, the half truth, to the truth out of context.” Craig noted that there could often be inconsistency in Nazi messages, citing the example of the Twenty-Five Points, which he described as “a confused mixture of nationalistic, anti-Semitic, and pseudo-socialist demands, which were either exasperatingly vague or mutually contradictory.” Echoing this theme of rhetorical incoherence by the Nazis, Drucker recalled a speech given by a Nazi agitator to German farmers: “We don't want lower bread prices, we don't want higher bread prices, we don't want unchanged bread prices - we want National-Socialist bread prices!”

As innovators of new forms of propaganda, the NSDAP created techniques that far surpassed their political contemporaries in the Weimar Republic. Mommsen held that the intensity of Nazi propaganda “exceeded all its rival parties,” and that Hitler consciously avoided the use of substantive political dialogue between party and the German people.

There is a considerable difference of opinions on the overall importance of Nazi propaganda efforts in the rise to power of the NSDAP. Fraser argued that Nazi propaganda all along was intended to prepare the nation for war, “the function, namely, of bringing about the psychological mobilization of the German people.” Orlow believed that party propaganda and organization acted in a “complementary and interdependent” fashion, with propaganda reaching the masses and then creating the next wave of party members and officials. While noting that Nazi propaganda efforts at the working class were far from a rousing success, Evans noted that the propaganda efforts leading up to the 1930 Reichstag elections “still exerted a sufficiently strong appeal to previously non-committed workers to ensure that some 27 percent of Nazi voters” were manual laborers. Drucker all but completely dismissed Nazi propaganda as an important element in the party’s rise to power:

Nothing impressed me more in Germany in the years before Hitler than the almost universal disbelief in the Nazi promises and the indifference toward the Nazi creed among the most fanatical Nazis. Outside party ranks this disbelief turned into open ridicule. And yet the masses flocked to the Nazi fold.

Still, while the effects of economic collapse certainly contributed to conditions favorable to the rise of extremist groups in Weimar Germany, it seems logical that Nazi innovations in propaganda techniques contributed to the group’s exponential growth. Pridham noted that the NSDAP and KPD made use of similar propagandistic tactics, but argued that the Nazis “used these more successfully in attracting wider sections of the electorate.” Feuchtwanger argued that Nazi propaganda, “with its deliberate vagueness, eased the path of many into the Third Reich.” The evolution of Nazi propaganda strategies is also a function of the party’s ability to develop an internal structure that adapted to changes and was positioned for rapid growth.

Organizational Strengths and Adaptative Tactics of the National Socialists

Adolf Hitler had many qualities that enabled him to rise to positions of leadership in the formative years of the NSDAP, but accounts of his management style suggest that the future Führer lacked strong organizational skills. Orlow noted that Hitler approached his work in “a completely irrational fashion”- a style the author described as “deliberately schizophrenic leadership” - concerning himself with “whatever minute details of the party’s organizational life he happened to find interesting” on a particular day:

The party’s leader was just as likely to submerge himself in the routine bureaucratic life of the organization as to head and direct it; and only he knew when he would choose to do either.

Yet despite any limitations Hitler may have possessed in managing a large organization, he nontheless demonstrated an ability to attract talented subordinates. Among the early administrators Hitler installed in the party organization were Executive Secretary Philip Bouhler and Treasurer Franz Xaver Schwarz, a pair of bureaucrats that Orlow described as “complementary parts of a human computer.” Craig argued that Hitler kept the NSDAP “atomized into countless rival agancies that were balanced and controlled by his personal authority.” Pridham described Bouhler’s “taciturn manner” as indicative of his lack of ambition beyond party bureaucracy and of his unwillingness to participate in party intrigues. The addition of these skilled administrators helped Hitler maintain control of a growing organization:

Bouhler delighted in issuing rules for office procedures that contained admonitions such as “Smoking during office hours is forbidden,” and “The outgoing mail must be presented in the signature folder to the executive secretary at 5:30 each evening.” Schwarz watched with loving care over each incoming penny, and both men pounced upon any local that attempted to bypass the central administration in issuing local membership cards.

The Nazi Party demonstrated a willingness to adapt to changing circumstances as in the dynamic political environment of the Weimar Republic. Hitler and the NSDAP were quick to recognize the potential for a coup d'état in the midst of economic and political chaos in 1923, and while the Beer Hall Putsch did not succeed, the party gained a reputation for action and patriotism in many circles. Hitler skillfully used his 1924 trial as an occasion to get his message before German citizens. Pridham argued that the trial “gave Hitler a unique opportunity to build upon his political image as the spokesman for all those who were in some way dissatisfied with the political order.” Orlow, while acknowledging that Hitler’s incrceration “constituted a grave political setback for Hitler,” noted that this turn of events “convinced Hitler that further attempts to overthrow the Republic by force would be futile.” The leadership of the NSDAP, again showing this adaptative ability, thus began a process of organizatonal reinvention geared toward making the party a dominant force in Weimar electoral politics.

1920s NSDAP poster promoting the Nazis as "Germany's Liberation"

The party commenced a campaign to engage the German industrial proletariat, described by Orlow as “the Urban Plan.” The scheme, as described by Goebbels, called for the party to develop “two dozen cities into unshakeable foundations of our movement.” Hoping to draw voters away from leftist groups, especially the KPD, the plan failed to generate the types of electoral turns hoped for by the NSDAP leadership. The Nazi Party received only 2.6 percent of the vote in the 1928 Reichstag elections, which translated into just 12 seats. Yet despite the failure of the urban plan, the Nazi leadership noted that the party received significant support in rural areas in which the NSDAP spent little or no time and money. Thus began yet another period or organizational restructuring, but one in which the party demonstrated that it had the willingness and determination to adjust its tactics to changing political conditions.

Evans argued that one of the most important changes made leading up to and after the 1928 election was the realignment of the party’s regions to match the boundaries of the Reichstag constituencies. This created individual electoral responsibilities for each Gauleiter, and no longer would the party place emphasis on a select few demographic groups. Orlow described the individuals in the revamped position of Gauleiter as becoming “in fact, as well as theory, division managers of a highly centralized party-corporation.” Pridham noted that, especially in regions with a significant rural population such as Protestant Franconia, the NSDAP was able to achieve “effective penetration of the rural electorate.”

Moreover, the NSDAP created effective ancillary organizations in an effort to create connections with an even greater number of Germans. The Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (NSDStB) provided opportunities for university students and academics to contribute to the success of the party, while the NS-Frauenschaft – fused together in 1931 from several existing women’s organizations – created a platform from which women and girls could participate in party affairs. The Hitler-Jugend, Bund Deutscher Arbeiterjugend (HJ) recruited boys between the ages of fourteen to eighteen, and this group not only indoctrinated its members but, ultimately, helped create the next generation of soldiers, party leaders, and state officials. The Sturmabteilung (SA) and Schutzstaffel (SS) not only provided the NSDAP with paramilitary muscle in the violent politics of the Weimar era, but also provided military training to future soldiers and officers in a time when the terms of the Versailles Treaty severely limited Germany’s armed forces.

Pridham argued that these specialist organizations “were presented simultaneously as effective representatives of different interests,” while assisting the NSDAP with “creating a new national community.” Evans maintained that efforts by the NSDAP to create and coordinate voluntary associations represented an attempt to make citizens “amenable to indoctrination and re-education according to the principles of National Socialism.” Orlow argued that the creation of new interest groups – and the eventual subjugation of existing, non-Nazi organizations – was an effort to move beyond the mere “image-buiding” of propaganda efforts into actually organizing future NSDAP voters.

The creation of this efficient and flexible party organization, and the development of innovative tactics, certainly helped propel the NSDAP to unprecedented electoral successes. In the 1930 Reichstag elections, the Nazi Party received 6.4 million votes, and claimed a total of 107 seats. Yet these electoral successes owed much to Adolf Hitler, the person whose personal magnetism and Großdeutschland vision of the future Third Reich inspired legions of fanatical followers.

The Personality Cult Surrounding Adolf Hitler

Hitler’s charismatic personality and rhetorical brilliance simply cannot be overlooked as factors in the rise of the NSDAP. Journalist Richard Breiting conducted a pair of confidential interviews with Hitler in 1931, which remained unpublished until 1968. Over the course of two interviews, Breiting – who was sworn to secrecy prior to the interview process – observed Hitler and his inner circle in an unusually candid setting. Breiting was especially astonished by the level of personal loyalty exhibited by Hitler’s assistants, and described the manner in which Hitler’s personality dominated Rudolf Hess:

The man [Hitler] is like a volcano; his flow of speech submerges his audience like a torrent; one has to watch for the moment to get a word in edgeways. On the other hand a highly intelligent man like Hess hangs on the words of the leader he idolizes with childlike faith in his eyes; there is no doubt that Hitler exerts over his staff a semi-hypnotic influence of almost inconceivable proportions.

Evans argued that no other political party could produce a leader who could match Hitler’s abilities to win converts, and he noted that the NSDAP leader excelled in matching his rhetoric to the particular audience to which he spoke:

He used simple, straightforward language that ordinary people could understand, short sentences, powerful, emotive slogans… There were no qualifications in what he said; everything was absolute, uncompromising, irrevocable, undeviating, unalterable, final. He seemed, to many who listened to his early speeches testified, to speak straight from the heart, and to express their own deepest fears and desires… Such uncompromising radicalism lent Hitler’s public meetings a revivalist fervour that was hard for less demagogic politicians to emulate.

Eyck echoed these sentiments, arguing that Hitler was an incomparable rhetorician whose speeches exhibited an element of the hypnotic. Hitler, argued Eyck, had a special gift for demagoguery, and structured his presentations with an eye toward convincing listeners that he alone knew the sources of Germany’s problems:

But no one can doubt that Hitler knew how to make the hour serve his impassioned ends. For he realized that in time of crisis nothing makes such a massive, moving effect upon one’s listeners as vehement, even libelous, attacks upon others, especially upon others who seemed more fortunate.

Brecht believed that Hitler’s personality was “an altogether unfamiliar type” to both domestic and international observers. Hitler, he argued, rarely demonstrated a predictable demeanor, and used his mercurial nature to great advantage:

There were strange contradictions in his appearance. Alternately, he seemed plain and resourceful, soldierlike and mystical, intelligent and foolish, disciplined and hysterical. When he spoke to a large audience, his voice was harsh and his threats sounded barbaric. Yet in a private circle his speech could be soft and well modulated, and his eyes could appear friendly and frank.

Hitler’s failed Beer Hall Putsch, his conviction, his incarceration in Landsberg Prison, and the ban on his post-prison public speeches were factors that would likely have broken a less indefatigable politician. Yet the future Führer learned valuable lessons through these setbacks, and he used the period of enforced silence to retool the NSDAP. Craig described Hitler as a “nonpareil in his own time,” and that he possessed a particularly unique political genius unparalleled by his Weimar rivals:

In his person were combined an indomitable will and self-confidence, a superb sense of timing that told him when to wait and when to act, the intuitive ability to sense the anxieties and resentments of the masses and to put them in words that transformed everyone with a grievance into a hero to save the national soul, a mastery of the arts of propaganda, great skill in exploiting the weaknesses of rivals and antagonists, and a ruthlessness in the execution of his designs that was stayed neither by scruples of loyalty nor by moral considerations.

Hitler also exhibited a personal charm in speaking with individuals and small groups, and he was known for disarming critics once they met him in person. Craig noted that Hitler used this skill to great advantage in his dealings with adversaries:

In the course of his career he showed an unusual capacity for ingrtiating himself with people who were originally suspicious or antagonistic and winning them over to his point of view. His success in this was due partly to a kind of verbal sleight of hand that made them think that doing things his way would demonstrate the validity of their principles ( afine example of this from the late thirties was his masterful use of the word ‘realism’ in negotiations with the self-styled realist Neville Chamberlain), and partly to his skill in detecting and playing upon their weaknesses.

Yet Hitler’s personal charisma, oratorical excellence, and martyr status were merely elements of a larger phenomenon: the rise of a cult of personality built upon the myth of Hitler as the personification of Nietzsche's Übermensch. The result of this semi-deification of Hitler was the evolution of the NSDAP’s version of Führerprinzip, built upon the unquestioning obedience to hierarchical superiors and an oath of personal loyalty to Hitler. Orlow argued that the Führerprinzip “enabled the party to weather the various changes in organizational priorities with neither major ideological debates nor administrtaive chaos.” Evans maintained that the cult of personality around Hitler “could not be matched by comparable efforts by other parties to project their leaders as Bismarcks of the future.” Mommsen argued that the Führerprinzip set the NSDAP apart from all other political rivals, especially those on the left, with its “main principle that the leader’s power must override any and all decision making within the party organization itself.” More than any other factor, it was this organizational advantage – reinforced by Hitler’s self-created myth of the would-be Führer as homo superior – that allowed the NSDAP to rise from political insignificance to a position of electoral superiority in the waning days of Weimar Germany.

Left: 1930 NSDAP poster promoting the slogan "Freedom and Bread"

Conclusions

After the New York stock market crash in 1929, Weimar Gemany entered a period of economic, political, and social upheaval that destabilized the young republic. At the height of the crisis, nearly six million Germans were out of work, and the flight of foreign capital ground German industry to a halt. The economic crisis exacerbated existing weaknesses in the political structure of the republic, and Germans lost faith in their government to provie even the most basic of services. This widespread discontent ushered in an era of political extremism, and parties such as the NSDAP, the KPD, and the KVP found new converts among German voters fed up with mainstream parties.

Yet the rise to power of the NSDAP was far from a foregone conclusion even as late as 1932, and the growth in membership of the KPD as a result of mass unemployment meant that the Nazis faced considerable competition on the political left. Certainly the Nazis also benefited from the poorly conceived political machinations of Franz von Papen and the increasing senility of Hindenburg. However, the organizational and propagandistic innovations of the Nazi Party – especially the ability of the NSDAP to appeal to widely disparate demographic and socioeconomic groups – led to the eventual usurpation of power by Hitler on 30 January 1933.

Finally, the sheer force of will, charismatic personality, and political genius of Adolf Hitler stand out as a unique blend of leadership characteristics perhaps unparalleled in modern history. While there is some merit to McKenzie’s argument that it is “one of the fateful coincidences of history that at that very time there existed a demagogue who possessed the personality and political ability” of Hitler, nonetheless his accomplishments cannot be minimized. Time and time again Hitler provided the necessary leadership that saved the NSDAP from seeming destruction, and he displayed an uncanny knack for political patience and for knowing the right time to act. While the horrors of the Holocaust and the Second World War had yet to unfold, Hitler’s ascension to the positions of Reichskanzler and Führer capped a personal quest that perhaps could have only been achieved by this former Austrian corporal and unappreciated Viennese street artist.

Bibliography

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Blackbourn, David. The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany, 1780-1918. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Brecht, Arnold. Prelude to Silence: The End of the German Republic. New York: Oxford University Press, 1944.

Breiting, Richard (transcribed by Edouard Calic). Unmasked: Two Confidential Interviews with Hitler in 1931. London: Chattou & Windus, 1971.

Craig, Gordon A. Germany: 1866-1945. London: Oxford University Press, 1978.

De Jonge, Alex. Weimar Chronicle: Prelude to Hitler. New York: Penguin Books, 1978.

Drucker, Peter. The End of Economic Man: A Study of the New Totalitarianism. London: Basis Books, 1940.

Eyck, Erich. A History of the Weimar Republic (translated by Harlan P. Hanson and Robert G. L. White). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967 (1962).

Evans, Richard J. Rereading German History, 1800-1996: From Unification to Reunification. London: Routledge, 1997.

----------. The Coming of the Third Reich. New York: Penguin Books, 2005.

Fischer, Fritz. Germany's Aims in the First World War (originally published in German as Griff nach der Weltmacht: Die Kriegzielpolitik des kaiserlichen Deutschland 1914-1918). New York: W. W. Norton, 1967 (1961).

---------. War of Illusions: German Policies from 1911 to 1914 (translated from the German by Marian Jackson). New York: Norton, 1975.

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Fraser, Lindley. Germany between Two Wars: A Study of Propaganda and War-Guilt. London: Oxford University Press, 1944.

Fritzsche, Peter. Germans into Nazis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.

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Hiden, John. “Hard Times: From Weimar to Hitler.” The Historical Journal, 32:4 (December 1989), 947-962.

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Horkheimer, Max. Dawn & Decline: Notes 1926-1931 and 1950-1969 (translated by Michael Shaw). New York: The Seabury Press, 1978.

Kolb, Eberhard. The Weimar Republic (translated by P.S. Falla). London: Unwin Hyman, 1988.

Laidler, David E. and Stadler, George W. “Monetary Explanations of the Weimar Republic’s Hyperinflation: Some Neglected Contributions in Contemporary German Literature.” Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking 30:4 (November 1998), 816-831.

Lacqueur, Walter. Weimar: A Cultural History, 1918-1933. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1974.

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Mommsen, Hans. The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy (translated by Elborg Forster and Larry Eugene Jones). Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

Mommsen, Wolfgang J. Imperial Germany: 1867-1918 – Politics, Culture and Society in an Authoritarian State (translated by Richard Deveson). London: Arnold, 1995 (1990).

Mühlberger, Detlef. Hitler’s Voice: The Völkischer Beobachter, 1920-1933 (Volumes I and II). Oxford: Peter Lang, 2004.

Orlow, Dietrich. A History of Modern Germany: 1871 to Present (Fifth Edition). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002.

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Pridham, Geoffrey. Hitler’s Rise to Power: The Nazi Movement in Bavaria, 1923-1933. London: Hart-Davis, 1973.

Welch, David (ed.). Nazi Propaganda: The Power and the Limitations. Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble Books, 1983.

Winkler, Heinrich August. “Choosing the Lesser Evil: The German Social Democrats and the Fall of the Weimar Republic.” Journal of Contemporary History, 25:2-3 (May-June 1990), 205-227.

The Quote Shelf

A frequent feature on this site; feel free to comment on the quote or to supply a competing quote.

Until 1990, Sweden had an unemployment rate of less than 3.5 percent, which is amazing, considering that 3.5 percent of my bum friends wouldn't take any job, even if it paid $100 an hour and involved doing inventory for a blind liquor-store owner.
-- P. J. O'Rourke , Eat the Rich

Toledoans to Protest Use of City Funds to Protect Neo-Nazis

Click to enlarge poster

(Toledo, OH) Toledo citizens will get a chance to tell city leaders their feelings about the use of police and city revenues to provide protection for neo-Nazi and racist groups during white power rallies.

Organized by a group known as the October Fifteenth Collective, the "Rally Against Racism" will take place Sunday, August 12 at noon, and will be held at Wilson Park. The flyer provided by the group calls on city leaders "stop supporting racism and violent threats toward minorities in our community":

The Rally Against Racism will be a chance for you to speak openly to city officials and tell them that our money, resources, and quality of life should not be jeopardized for the sake of those preaching hatred and genocide.

The group notes that the city's current financial difficulties have led to the cancellation of programs such as public pools, and members of the October Fifteenth Collective question the merits of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to protect neo-Nazis.

Wilson Park is located at 600 East Oakland Street in North Toledo, and the park is within the epicenter of the failed rally by the National Socialist Movement that sparked the 2005 North Toledo riot.

Members of a group known as American National Socialist Workers Party (ANSWP) recently announced that they plan to stage some sort of event on Friday, August 17 in Toledo. City officials have vowed to force ANSWP to restrict their activity to a designated area, much like the plan developed for the second NSM rally in December 2005 and the recent white supremacist rally in Kalamazoo.

The Sanctuary at Wildwood

(Jones, MI) My wife and I spent two nights and three days in western Michigan last week at a bed-and-breakfast The Sanctuary at Wildwood, and we were quite impressed with the accommodations, hospitality, and overall excellence of this establishment.

Each of the rooms at The Sanctuary has a different theme, and we stayed in a room called Keeper of the Wild. The room features handmade birch furniture, beautiful wildlife murals, and a birch trunk headboard. Included with the room are a full bath, a Jacuzzi, a fireplace, a service bar with refrigerator, a writing desk and a private patio.

Nestled on a 95-acre parcel south of Kalamazoo, The Sanctuary boasts hiking paths that meander through forests and meadows. In addition, there is a small private lake that is stocked with a variety of gamefish, and The Sanctuary has a heated outdoor pool for relaxation.

Within a 30-minute drive of the inn are a wide variety of shops, restaurants, and outdoor activities for those who wish to explore western Michigan. One of the highlights of staying at The Sanctuary is the hospitality of the hosts, Dolly and Dick Buerkle, as they know all the quality destinations and are more than happy to make reservations for you.

The Sanctuary wouldn't be a "bed-and-breakfast" without providing visitors with a morning meal, and Dick and Dolly prepared incredible meals every breakfast. Each morning we went downstairs to the dining room and enjoyed breakfasts so delicious they were almost beyond description.

The Sanctuary at Wildwood is located at 58138 M-40 in Jones, Michigan, and you can reach Dick and Dolly at 269-244-5910 to make reservations.

Kalamazoo Yawns as White Supremacists Rally

Photo of white supremacists rallying in Kalamazoo courtesy of WZZM-13

(Kalamazoo, MI) Between 30 and 40 white supremacists attended a rally in Kalamazoo billed as a protest against "Black Gang Terrorism" yesterday. There were no reports of serious injuries, although at least four counter-protesters were arrested on a variety of charges.

Organized by racist podcaster Hal Turner, the event drew suporters from across the racist right, including members of the Ku Klux Klan and the National Socialist Movement. Reports on the number of counter-protesters varied between 60 and 120; many of the counter-protesters refused to enter the fenced-off area created by police for the purpose.

On a side note, the neo-Nazi group the American National Socialist Workers' Party (ANSWP) staged an alternative protest outside the rally zone. Bill White, Commander of ANSWP, was joined by Michigan ANSWP member Neal Joitke to pass out literature and to claim to passersby that "Hal Turner is a fraud."

Left: ANSWP members Bill White and Neal Joitke walking to protest both Hal Turner and anti-racists

A scuffle ensued between White, Joitke, and antiracists that was broken up by police, and neo-Nazi forums claim that NSM members came to the aid of White and Joitke. Bill White said that he "busted commie skulls" during the short conflict, but these claims cannot be confirmed by independent sources.

ANSWP members have publicly announced a return to Toledo on August 17, which may be in conjunction with an ANSWP event scheduled on August 18 "25 miles east of Battle Creek." The city of Toledo has vowed to force ANSWP to obtain a permit and participate in a controlled rally. Bill White has denied that the group intends to rally in Toledo, calling any August 17 event a "literature drop."

Bill White, with the NSM before its 2006 breakup, was the mastermind behind the failed 15 October 2005 rally that led to the North Toledo riot. Local antiracist groups will be staging a rally later this month to protest municipal expenditures to protect neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups. The first two Toledo rallies reulted in over $700,000 in spending to protect the racist groups.

On Tom Tancredo, Bombing Muslim Holy Sites, and Abject Stupidity

I have become used to hearing the fascist, quasi-racist rants of Representative Tom Tancredo on the issue of illegal immigration. Tancredo, who is also a Republican presidential candidate, has made something of a name for himself by staking ground on the fringes of the immigration debate.

Yet the absurd call by Tancredo Tuesday that the U.S. should bomb Muslim holy sites as means to deter terror attacks is a new low for the four-term congressman. Moreover, one begins to question the thought processes that led Tancredo to this dubious conclusion.

The terrorists who embrace a violent strain of Islamic philosophy began to single out the United States as the object of their rage after the 1990-91 Gulf War. In particular, the presence of U.S. troops stationed in Saudi Arabia and the U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq were the sources of contention for people like Osama bin Laden.

Bin Laden, as most of you already know, was once our ally when the attention of radical Islamists was on the former Soviet Union for its invasion of Afghanistan.

History aside, Tancredo's call to attack Muslim holy sites would only serve to enrage the radical Islamists even more, and would act as a rallying cry across the Muslim world. The recruitment efforts by terrorist groups toward disaffected Muslims to participate in terror campaigns would gain a tremendous boost by such an asinine campaign. Imagine how indignant and enraged Catholics would be if, for example, the Vatican or the Shrine at Lourdes were bombed.

Yet Tancredo continues to stand behind his idiotic proposal, leading this pundit to question his intelligence and/or sanity. At the very least, Tancredo's comments forcefully underscore the idea that the congressman belongs far, far away from the Oval Office. The sound we now here is the rushing of the last blasts of hot air that were left in the balloon that was the Tom Tancredo campaign.

Cicada Killer Time

(Toledo, OH) I first noticed the arrival of the wasps commonly known as cicada killers this morning, as there appeared on the hood of my car a female wasp dragging a paralyzed cicada.

These large wasps are misunderstood, and - though they sometimes dart about in a manner that might be interpreted as menacing - the cicada killer wasp is a relatively benign insect.

At least if you are a human being.

The males do not possess the ability to sting, while the females prefer to use their stinging abilities on their favorite prey: cicadas. The female cicada killer digs the nest in sandy soil and feeds the young wasps the captured cicadas, while the males serve little purpose beyond mating.

There is an obvious parallel here between male cicada killers and some human males, but I will let that pass.

Aquafina Alive: I've Tasted Better Aquarium Water

I just finished a bottle of a new beverage called Aquafina Alive, which bills itself as "Wellness Water." I chose the product from a selection of bottled waters this morning because I was looking for something non-caffeinated, as I had already consumed enough coffee to get me jittery.

I was also intrigued by the addition of vitamins E, B6, B12, and niacin, thinking the additional nutrients might be useful in combatting my occasional overindulgence in fried foods.

Unfortunately, the product tasted like the remnants of a glass of iced juice left out in the sun all afternoon. There is a slight hint of fruit, as Aquafina Alive contains five percent juice, and then you get hit with that bitter, cotton-mouthed tang of Aspartame, which is used to "sweeten" this forgettable drink.

I ended up going to get a glass of water after drinking this swill to wash away the Aspartame. Don't waste your money on this unpleasant product - you would be better off drinking a leftover fast food soft drink that sat overnight in your car. And no - this is not an example of blog advertising.

:-}

Lakeside Sunrise

(Jones, MI) Pictured on your left is a small private lake nestled on 95 acres in rural western Michigan, south of Kalamazoo. Standing on the lake's edge I saw great blue herons and geese, busy doing whatever it is that waterfowl do when the sun rises.

It is peaceful moments like this that tempt me to contact a real estate broker and move out of the city, chucking the aggravations of traffic, smog, and noise in favor of the tranquility of life in the country.

Of course, as someone who has lived virtually his entire life in busy cities, it is easy for me to wax poetic about the natural beauty that can be found in abundance in places like western Michigan. I get positively giddy when I see Mallard ducks in a city park, so I am hardly one to draw upon a long history of communing with nature.

Still, there is something primordial and visceral about watching the flight of a heron, or seeing a doe and her fawns crossing the road in front of you. Without slipping into a naïve Romanticist nature-worship, one gets a sense of the eternal when watching the sun rise on an isolated lake.

Book Review: The New Cambridge History of India - The Portuguese in India

Pearson, Michael Naylor
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987, 179 pages

This text is part of the Cambridge History series, the books of which cover virtually every time period and region. It is also a component of the sub-series History of India. Pearson begins his narrative with da Gama’s arrival near Calicut in May 1498, and concludes with the fall of the Salazar regime in the Carnation Revolution of 1974; the text, however, is heavily skewed toward the sixteenth century. The text follows a chronological approach, with several thematic chapters addressing such topics as “Catholics and Hindus” and “Indo-Portuguese Society.” There are, in addition to the narrative, a number of historical bonuses in this book, including detailed maps, lists of Portuguese rulers and viceroys, and a glossary with Portuguese, Hindi, and Tamil terms. The near-complete lack of footnotes is partially redeemed by a very extensive bibliographic essay at the end of the book. The index, however, suffers from annoying brevity; surely a publishing house as prestigious and well staffed as Cambridge could afford to develop more than 1-3/4 pages of textual reference.

Pearson attempts to present the material as Indocentric rather than Eurocentric, although his acknowledged shortage of Indian sources hurts this effort. The author thus attempts to reinterpret European sources from a Hindi perspective, admittedly not an easy task. Pearson claims to avoid generalizations, but any book that attempts to squeeze nearly five centuries of global history into 162 pages will find it difficult to shun the universal in favor of the specific.

The traditional and revisionist explanations of Portuguese motivations for exploration receive significant attention in this text. Pearson argues that the past few decades of European expansion historiography have devolved into mere economic determinism, and he pushes for a return to a more balanced blend of geopolitical, economic, and religious factors leading to the Portuguese role in exploration. He also brings in recent research that suggests the Portuguese, with their history of being net food importers, looked to expansion as a means to feed its population; Pearson points to the establishment of agricultural enterprises on the Madeira, Canary, and Cape Verde Island chains as proof. Strangely, though, no mention is made in this book of the Portuguese (and European) fascination with the mythical Prester John, despite the frequent appearance of the legendary priest-king in contemporary accounts.

Left: Portuguese Prince Henry the Navigator

Pearson downplays the role of the Portuguese as the initiators of European expansion, and instead places them in the context of a long European tradition of exploration and expansion dating back to the Greeks, Romans, and Norse. He argues that, if not the Portuguese, some other European power (most likely the Spanish, in Pearson’s view) would have inevitably commenced exploration around Africa. Such reasoning, in the opinion of this reviewer, is merely a counterfactual parlor game, as the Portuguese did perform the exploration that Pearson seems unwilling with which to give them due credit. However, Pearson does a commendable job of debunking the historical myths surrounding the Portuguese expansion; for example, he describes as “quite far-fetched” the notion of a Dom Henrique-inspired seafaring school, and calls mistaken the traditional views of a static and isolated pre-Portuguese Goa. On the contrary, Goa was a thriving trade port with contacts from throughout the Indian Ocean basin.

Pearson calls into question the terms “impact” and “reaction” as used to describe the Portuguese presence in India and indigenous response. Upon arrival, the Portuguese were viewed as just another trading concern; later, the cartaz system simply meant another cost of doing business for coastal traders (at least, those who did not resist; active resistance was generally met with military action). However, for most of the subcontinent’s population, the Portuguese had little effect on daily life at any point in their centuries of Asian trade. Thus, “impact” implies a sense that Portugal, a nation of a little over one million souls at the beginning of the sixteenth century, could have profound influence on the 140 million or so “reactive” indigenous peoples. Pearson argues that the social and political effects of the Portuguese were limited to the small coastal trading areas that they protected with fortifications.

Left: Sixteenth-century illustration of Vasco da Gama

The author downplays the significance of the Portuguese language as an important feature of the emerging world market, claiming that it was the lingua franca in "several parts of littoral Asia." He does not provide evidence for this claim, and it is generally accepted that Portuguese was the de facto language of world commerce in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and into the eighteenth centuries. Yet Pearson, in the same paragraph, described how the chief Indian representative of the British East India Company spoke Portuguese and this was the common language by which people of different nationalities could understand each other.

Pearson brought into question the traditional historiographical notion of Portuguese “decline” in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He pointed out that a decline in the intercontinental trade, cited by traditional historians, does not take into account the flourishing inter-Asian trade. In addition, declining revenues from customs duties and cartaz passes were also offset by the expanding Brazilian commerce, as Pearson noted. Pearson also decried the lack of research in later periods, bluntly declaring that “the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have been neglected by historians” and “younger scholars are beginning to do new and important work on this dark age.”

Due to the aforementioned lack of footnoted material, this text cannot serve a graduate level - or higher - scholar in any capacity other than as background information. It does, however, serve as a knowledgeable and balanced introduction to the field, providing a solid foundation for future study. The text also mentions hitherto ignored areas of study – such as the Konkan horse trade through the ports of Dhabul, Chaul, and Goa – that further illuminate understanding of the Portuguese seaborne empire.

The Quote Shelf

A frequent feature on this site; feel free to comment on the quote or to supply a competing quote.

The writer must earn money in order to be able to live and to write, but he must by no means live and write for the purpose of making money.
-- Karl Marx

On Red Barns and the Yearning for Simplicity

(Marcellus, MI) We passed this old barn on some back road in the middle of nowhere, perhaps 30 minutes south of Kalamazoo. It seemed to stand like a crimson billboard against the summer sky, a vivid marker for both voluntary simplicity and for the not-so-distant past.

I would have liked to spend an hour or two with the owners of this structure, whose holdings included at least several hundred acres of land and two additional buildings, but my need to return to the city and one of my sources of income, the income that allows me to visit rural settings such as this and wish I could embrace such an unhurried lifestyle.

A pair of kids with wagons waved at us as we approached, our car a relative novelty on this gravel road. I wondered if they shared my valuation of their idyllic surroundings, or if they envied the strangers who waved back at them from the SUV.

So we zipped along this county road, having to settle for these momentary glances at the simpler life that was simultaneously yards and light-years away from us. Our Suburban felt like a mobile cage, ostensibly carrying us to our destination but also representing the same forces that compel us to work multiple jobs, deny ourselves rest, and spend money on items we really do not need.

And the red barn was soon just a speck on the horizon behind us until it disappeared from view altogether. I turned up the radio in an attempt to drown out these unproductive thoughts, these yearnings for a simplicity that is warily viewed by many people as subversive to the catechism handed down from on high by the gods of hypercapitalist consumerism.

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Book Review: History of the French in India: From the Founding of Pondichery in 1674 to the Capture of That Place in 1761

Malleson, George Bruce
Delhi, India: Renaissance Publishing House, 1986 (1868), 614 pages

George Bruce Malleson was an officer in the British army, and also served in the British civil service in a number of capacities. Born at Wimbledon in 1825, he was educated at Winchester College. He obtained a cadetship in the Bengal infantry in 1842, and served through the Second Burmese War. His subsequent appointments were in the civil line, the last being that of guardian to the young maharaja of Mysore, and Malleson retired with the rank of colonel in 1877.

Malleson was a prolific writer, and his first work to bring him fame was a government document entitled the "Red Pamphlet," published at Calcutta in 1857 at the height of the Sepoy Rebellion. This document, a prime example of British divide-and-conquer tactics, urged Hindus to avoid interaction with Muslims. As a historian, Malleson considerably rewrote the six-volume History of the Indian Mutiny (1878-1880), which was begun but left unfinished by eminent British military historian Sir John William Kaye, the man who took John Stuart Mill’s place as Secretary of the India office. Among Malleson’s other books includes The Decisive Battles of India (1888).

History of the French in India had its first printing in 1868, although the book was slow to sell at first. The second printing in 1893 was in response to growing demand for Malleson’s work, which surely benefited from his decades in the British military and civil services in the East.

Malleson began his work with an overview of French efforts to enter the lucrative Asian trade by emulating the Dutch and Portuguese. He described a number of early incarnations of La Compagnie française des Indes orientales that fizzled out for a variety of reasons. The French did not achieve any success, according to Malleson, until the administration of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, finance minister under Louis XIV. The 1664 founding of the Company was bankrolled with 15 million livres torunois, 3 million of which was advanced by the French treasury as seed money to attract investors. Colbert, according to Malleson, was “one of those men who stamp their name on the age in which they live” and “was one of the glories of France.” He also captured the Asian exploits of former VOC employee Francis Caron, who elevated corruption to new levels during his tenure with his new French employers.

Left: French finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert

Malleson argued that Francis Martin was the man most responsible for the founding of Pondicherry, the first and most enduring of the French ports in India. Unlike most of his countrymen, who were regularly dismissed by Malleson as prone to, among other negative traits, “jealousy” and “the inherent vice of their government,” Martin was “single-mided, liberal, large-hearted without a thought of envy or jealousy, and a true patriot.”

The author next laid out the connections between La Compagnie française des Indes orientales and the wild financial schemes of the Scot John Law, whose creative financing makes Johnny-come-latelies like Enron and WorldCom pale in comparison. The financial disaster known as the Mississippi Bubble got its start after the death in 1715 of Louis XIV. The French economy, thanks to Louis' extravagant spending, had fallen into a depression. Law went to Paris and became friends with the regent of France, who was ruling temporarily. Law convinced the regent that the economy could be stimulated by issuing paper money, which could more easily circulate. Money in France had previously consisted only of silver or gold coins. Law chartered a company named La Compagnie d'Occident and persuaded the regent to grant it exclusive rights to all trade between France and its Louisiana territory, which centered on the Mississippi River; the company was known in the English-speaking world as the Mississippi Company. The monopoly on the fur trade was the hook to draw in investors in the new firm. Through a series of complicated amalgamations that included the French public debt, royal tax farming, and La Compagnie française des Indes orientales, Law managed to effect a complete implosion of the French economy.

The focus of Malleson’s text turns next to Bertrand-François Mahé, count of La Bourdonnais, who was a French sailor and Company administrator. Born in Brittany, La Bourdonnais served as governor of the French islands of La Réunion and Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, and achieved military success against the British with the capture of Madras in 1746. Malleson also highlighted the rivalry between La Bourdonnais and Joseph François Dupleix, upon whom the author gushed endless praise. Dupleix, in the eyes of Malleson, possessed a “brilliant genius” that was destroyed by the “universal corruption, which, during the reign of Louis XV, consumed the very vitals of France, ruled in her palaces, and tainted all her public offices.” Malleson went so far as to compare the France of Louis XV with the Greek mythological figure of Medea, claiming that “often did she, with her own hands, immolate her offspring, and, failing this, she treated the best and bravest of her sons as enemies.” Malleson devoted nearly 400 pages to the development of a romantic epic between these two heroic rivals. He frequently peppered his narrative with passages of the following sort about the competition between La Bourdonnais and Dupleix:

Success had now been attained [the capture of Madras]; the two men were about, for the first time, to come into contact. Which of them was to take the lead? It was in the chance of some disagreement between these two strong natures, both conscious of the possession of genius, both customed to command, that lay the best chance of [British] Governor Morse and Madras.

Thus, the crafty British were once again able to best the French, who were always so prone to emotional outbursts and fits of pride. As a son of the Empire, Malleson was certainly prone to exhibit such bias toward British rule in India; after all, he served the British Crown in the India service, and it would be unreasonable (as well as blatantly presentist) to assume that he could engage in detached, objective historical inquiry. He defended the capitulation by Madras Governor Thomas Saunders of the British port of Madras by pointing out his ability to make alliances:

It was his constancy and resolution, his determination, when the English fortunes were at their lowest, to support Muhammad Ali, in order that through him he might stop the progress of Dupleix…that tended, by a slow and certain procedure, to lower the pride of France…

Never mind that Saunders had surrendered an important British outpost on the Coromandel coast; in Malleson's eyes he was a bastion of steely resolve, ready to fight another day for the Empire.

Left: Bertrand-François Mahé de La Bourdonnais

Malleson made fairly extensive use of French sources for this book, bringing many of the details about the Company to English readers for the first time. There are but three maps in the book, which is unfortunate, since he used archaic spellings in his text; Hyderabad, for example, is spelled "Haidaradad," and Tiruchirappalli is spelled by Malleson as "Trichinapalli." The author provided reference years on every page, so that readers are able to have a ready guide to where the narrative is at any point. Malleson also provided a wealth of detail on internal Indian geopolitics, especially the Mughal battle for succession that accompanied the death of Aurangzeb Alamgir.