World History – Page 39 – General History

A short history of the PSOE (Spanish Workers’ Socialist Party)

Spain as a modern country is naturally bent towards Socialism, as a direct result of centuries of oppression of workers by the Monarchy, the Church and the Nobles on whose huge estates serfs toiled every day all their life, often starting work at six years old. The natural inclination of any Spaniard is a hatred of any kind of boss, and a surge towards Communism/Socialism after the success of the Russian Revolution was inevitable. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2012-08-16T11:17:29+00:00 August 16th, 2012|Russian history, Spanish History, Today, US History, World History|0 Comments

World War II: resistance movement in Russia, France & Italy

The ‘Resistance’ was a term coined for underground movements that fought a courageous but sometimes useless battle against Nazi Germany during the Second World War. The movements aided the Allies in at least four strategies: first, the providing of intelligence; second, sabotage; third, helping Jews and escaped prisoners of war to escape capture from the Gestapo (q.v.) and the SS (q.v.); and fourth, fighting in the open during the latter stages of the war. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2012-08-15T10:13:59+00:00 August 15th, 2012|French History, German History, Italian History, Russian history, World History|0 Comments

Prohibition: a dry America

In every Western you have ever seen a Hollywood cowboy, spurs jangling, goes to the saloon and slaps some cash on the huge counter, saying nothing. The barman picks up the nearest bottle and pours a healthy slug of some kind of whisky. No-one says anything. Cowboy knocks the contents of the glass back in one gulp, wipes his mouth with his sleeve, and leaves. Sometimes he just leaves. Other times he pauses to shoot dead three or four villains down from their rickety tables, all trying to draw their six-shooters. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2012-08-14T11:56:17+00:00 August 14th, 2012|Humour, US History, World History|0 Comments

The brothers Gracchus B.C.

Tiberius Sempronius GRACCHUS was born in 168 B.C and lived only until 133 B.C. The Gracchii were important in Roman politics, but Tiberius became a Tribune only in the last year of his life. He presented a bill to re-possess illegal holdings of what he called ‘public lands’, later to re-distribute this land among the poor and needy. He was a very early example of socialism. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2012-08-13T09:28:29+00:00 August 13th, 2012|World History|0 Comments

Jean Monnet: turning in his grave?

Jean Monnet / lewebpedagoguique.com

Monnet (1888 – 1979) was, if not the progenitor, at least the clever uncle of the European Union. He was an able administrator and economist who devised and became the chief commissioner of a project that bears his name, whose object was to restore the French economy by means of a centralised planning system. But he was also an internationalist who was forever campaigning for European unification.

Monnet it was who worked out the details of the Schuman Plan, before French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman put it forward. The Plan aimed (at first) to pool the resources of the coal and steel industries of France and (what was then) West Germany, following a common authority that other European nations might join. It was 9 May, 1950; this was the first indication of what should have been a mutually beneficial European common market. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2012-08-11T07:38:30+00:00 August 11th, 2012|English History, EU History, French History, Philosophy, US History, World History|0 Comments

The Krupp family: influences

A scene from the film The Damned (1969) a story about the Krupp family / todossobre2webcindario.com

The family was based in the industrial Ruhr, in Essen. Their business was founded in a small way, in 1811, and was unable to expand in any significant way until the railway boom of the 1850s. In 1859 Krupps received a big order for cast steel cannon barrels from Prussia. The starter’s gun had gone off.

In a remarkably short time the family firm was the largest supplier of arms in the world. Krupps extended its operations to include mining in the Ruhr and shipbuilding. Socialists will admire the family’s paternalistic philosophy: they introduced a welfare scheme for the workers which included a sickness and burial fund, a pension scheme (in 1855) and a housing fund in 1861. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2012-08-10T10:07:19+00:00 August 10th, 2012|German History, History of the Cinema, World History|0 Comments

Laurence of Arabia (article revised 2012)

The real Laurence, later he wrote Seven Pillars of Wisdom’ / luisantoniodevillena.es

Thomas Edward Laurence was born in 1888, the son of Thomas Chapman, a member of a distinguished Anglo-Irish family. Thomas had eloped with his daughter’s governess, and settled in Oxford after adopting the name of Laurence. His son gained a First Class Degree in History at the University, and became an enthusiastic archaeologist wen he undertook to make excavations in Syria and Mesopotamia between 1910 and 1914. He learned desert lore from the many Arab friends he made on these scientific expeditions. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2012-08-06T17:10:14+00:00 August 6th, 2012|English History, History of the Cinema, History of Turkey, The Arab races, World History|0 Comments

Important American Moneybags: John P. Morgan & J.D. Rockefeller

Rockefeller / exito-motivacionysuperacionpersonal.com

The 19th and 20th centuries were the twenty decades during which men (and some women) astonished the world by making uncountable fortunes in the vast territories of the United States. Many of these fortunes remained and remain even in the over-taxed 21^st century. Here we deal with financiers; but some of those colossal, Croesus-like money boxes came from meat-packing, cotton, the invention of the canning industry, timber, building and builder’s materials, manufacturing of paint, motor cars and the railway,, glass and glassware; even buttons and ink.

John P. Morgan was a scion of an already rich banking family. John made his first million or so by investing heavily in railroads after the American Civil War (q.v.) and the crushing of dangerous Native American tribes. He was able to found his own investment banking house in 1895 when he was forty-eight. He named it J.P. Morgan and Co. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2012-08-03T10:55:32+00:00 August 3rd, 2012|US History, World History|0 Comments

What was the Committee of Public Safety?

The term is self-contradictory, but the committee’s founders could hardly call it the ‘Committee of Public Danger’. It lasted only from 1793 to 1795 but greatly damaged France’s reputation and standing in the eighteenth century world. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2012-07-31T19:56:09+00:00 July 31st, 2012|French History, World History|0 Comments

The Fall of France: “for you, the war (of 42 days) is over!”

France´s surrender / learning.blogs.nytimes.com

For many, if not all, of our seasoned history-lovers, the fact that the Second World War might have been over by the middle of 1940 is unknown. But for the dogged determination of certain European nations, Hitler’s Germany could have been the military victor of the War, not just, as has indeed happened, the political and economic leader it has become. The United States need never have entered the War at the end of 1941. Russia could have stayed Russia instead of being under the Soviet yoke until the fall of the Berlin Wall. German could have been the obligatory second language in all European schools. Berlin might have been the capital of a different kind of European Union. To find the reasons why this did not happen we must look at France. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2012-07-30T08:45:58+00:00 July 30th, 2012|English History, French History, German History, History of the Cinema, US History, World History|0 Comments