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The Barbary Coast, and Wars

It is difficult to find any time since the Byzantine Empire when the North African coast from Morocco to Libya was not infamous for piracy. The worst period was the beginning of the sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth. The Berbers, who may or may not have originally populated the Canary Islands, were piratical by nature and good navigators in the treacherous Atlantic and unpredictable Mediterranean.

Algeria, Tunisia and Tripolitania (Libya) take their name from the infamous pirate Barbarossa. Even the English adjective barbaric has its roots in berber, bereber or Barbarossa. (more…)

Appeasement

A bit of a dirty word since 1938 but it shouldn’t be. There is enough appeasement going on now over the disgusting situation in Syria to fill the Golden Bowl with appeasers eager to keep Assad Junior happy. It is all rather puzzling. With one Bush, America went with its cautious allies to war against Iraq because Saddam invaded Kuwait. Firepower won, of course, but Saddam’s government remained! Then Bush Jr. went to war with Iraq with equally cautious allies, beat him up, and permitted the locals to lynch Saddam in a particularly horrible way. Now in Syria the Assad boy kills hundreds of fellow citizens every day, even using poison gas to do it, and the world’s committees sit expensively around asking themselves what to do. (more…)

Revolution in Mexico (1910 – 1949)

Mestizo Porfirio Diaz, President of Mexico 1876 - 80; 1884 - 1911 / sinaloamx.com

Mestizo Porfirio Diaz, President of Mexico 1876 – 80; 1884 – 1911 / sinaloamx.com

During Porfirio Diaz’ rule, power in Mexico was pre-eminent among the elite – landowners, bankers, captains of industry etc. Urban and agricultural workers, the growing middle classes and peasants were excluded from any political process. Foreign financiers dominated the economy. When the inevitable revolution came there was for once no organised political party behind it, more usual in revolutions. One Francisco Madero called for democracy and rejected Diaz’s re-election as President in 1910. A rebellion, he insisted, was called for. In the north peasants grabbed machetes and went to war under the leadership of the fanatical former ‘Robin Hood’ of Mexico – Pancho Villa. Meanwhile in the southern areas, Indians whose lands had been stolen from them were led by Emilio Zapata. (more…)

By | 2013-09-11T10:28:33+00:00 September 11th, 2013|South American History, US History, World History|0 Comments

The International Brigade(s)

A Brigade section training; note the extreme youth of many of the volunteers / iwm.org.uk

A Brigade section training; note the extreme youth of many of the volunteers / iwm.org.uk

Volunteers from countries foreign to Spain rushed from around the world to aid the republican cause during the Spanish Civil War (1936 – 1938). Contrary to popular literature’s view, the Brigades were not packed full of European and American playwrights, intellectuals and novelists. Most volunteers came from the working classes. Ernest Hemingway came, but as a war correspondent. Stephen Spender and George Orwell came, but were kept as far away from the front as possible, because the propaganda value of their possible capture to the Nationalist forces would have been great. Poets W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood watched from a safe distance, as indeed they did again, this time from California, during the Second World War. (more…)

The Treaties of Paris (May 1814 & November 1815)

Treat 1814 / ebay.com

Treaty 1814 / ebay.com

Just eighteen months separate two important agreements reached in the city of Paris. After the Allies (Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia) had at last defeated Napoleon, a pact was made with France which, considering the awful damage done to most of Europe, was perhaps over-generous. (more…)

The ‘Meiji’ Restoration & the Satsuna Rebellion

The young Emperor Mitsuhito / nndb.com

The young Emperor Mitsuhito / nndb.com

Meiji means enlightened rule, and this was shown throughout the reign of the Japanese Emperor Mitsuhito, ruling from 1868 to 1912. After the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate, a powerful group of Samurai decided (in January 1868) that the shogunate (‘federal’ rule by warlords) must be abolished as old-fashioned and unprogressive, and that power must be returned to the Emperor. (more…)

The father of Winston

Lord Randolph / brooklyneagle.com

Lord Randolph / brooklyneagle.com

Lord Randolph H.S. Churchill was born in 1849, the third son of the then Duke of Marlborough. In character more similar to his grandson Randolph than his son Winston, he got into the House of Commons for the family borough (and almost fief) of Woodstock in 1874. I say ‘fief’ because near Woodstock stands Blenheim Palace, presented to John Churchill Ist Duke of Marlborough by a grateful Queen and Nation after his military successes. The building was designed by a retired playwright called John Vanbrugh, and the massive park was designed by Vanbrugh himself aided by Queen Anne’s gardener Henry Wise, with later additions by ‘Capability’ Brown. (more…)

The dashing Prince Rupert (amended)

Prince Rupert of the Rhine / ntprints.com

Prince Rupert of the Rhine / ntprints.com

He might have been invented by Daphne du Maurier or Rafael Sabatini. He was outlandishly handsome and a lover of women; he was an aristocrat of the best blood, which he shed from other men’s veins in floods, as he was a soldier. He lived to old age and died in his bed. (more…)

The German Democratic Republic (East Germany)

ulbricht_2In a recent post I put the word ‘democratic’ in this title between inverted commas, and a student has asked me why. Did I doubt, I was asked, that the GDR was democratic? Well yes I did. East Germany emerged in 1949 from the Soviet-occupied zone of recently defeated Germany. As an eastern European country it ceased to exist in October, 1990.

The Potsdam Conference had, among countless other disgraces, invented a country divided into four zones, each occupied by one of the victorious Allies. They were American, British, French and Russian, though why the French should have got a zone to themselves when they had hardly fired a shot in anger at the commencement of the Second World War is questionable. Three-fifths of France fell to the Nazis in 1940 but the French were permitted to govern the rest of the country as a ‘neutral’ state with its own government at Vichy. As Vichy collaborated with the Germans from day one the term ‘neutral’ is dubious. The Third Reich had by that time invaded the Polish Corridor, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, parts of Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands. (more…)

Berlin: City, Congress, Airlift & Wall

Berlin was the capital of Germany from 1871, though it was also the capital of Prussia. When the capital moved from Bonn after the Second War, Berlin became again the capital and hub of Germany, but after the War the city found itself 110 kilometres inside the Russian Zone of a Germany divided (at various hideous conferences) into four: Russian, American, British and French sectors. The city itself was divided into West Berlin (480 sq.km.) and East Berlin (403 sq.km.). West Berlin was administered and governed by the United States, Great Britain and France, each having their Sector and military HQ. East Berlin was governed by the Communist GDR, under the military eye of around 200 divisions of Russian troops. West Berlin could probably muster a division and a half, and had its own (American) military commander. There was a complete military imbalance in all the post-war period. (more…)

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