Displacement of populations in the Middle East

We know that the structure of contemporary media has an appetite for news stories but the implied moral horror in western news stories behind reports of the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Kurds from northern Iraq and Syria and the mistreatment of those unable to escape Islamic State forces has created some surprise in our office. Those who remember the graphic depictions of barbarities by both sides during the Second World War in central Europe documented in the Laurence Rees BBC series The Nazis: A Warning from History, 1997, know that similar inhumanities were committed in Europe as recently as the 1940s. Is there no limit to the hubris of the western world?

In the West we may be appalled by the depth of hatred (and bloodshed) between Sunni and Shia denominations of Islam but this conflict is not dissimilar to the conflict between Catholics and Protestants during the Thirty Years War, 1618-48 when large armies roamed Europe and brought untold misery. In the Christian Bible (New Testament) there is a comment on who should 'throw the first stone'.

Contributor Geoff Williams. Sempringham eLearning Office

History is beyond retrospective creation

A person over the age of 35 will have a sense of the speed of change, change in medical science, change in digital control and change in the possibilities of communication. As an example of rapid change, consequent to the technology of fracking, the US has changed from a country with a large energy deficit and major importer of oil to the state with the world’s greatest oil and gas reserves that now outstrips Saudi Arabia. We hear about the vigour of the ‘bric’ states, Brazil, Russia, India and China and there are other countries, such as Indonesia, where the economy will soon ‘take off’. Evidence of economic growth is irrefutable and growth can be engineered and engendered. What can’t be engineered and engendered is a country’s History and in the instance of Britain the political culture has an irreplaceable foundation on, for example, Magna Carta, the Peasants’ Revolt, the seventeenth-century regicide, the development of party in Hanoverian Britain and the extension of franchise and party over many decades. No proclamation of Human Rights adopted and/or imposed on a country can replace or be a substitute for a foundation laid by centuries of political evolution. This comment are connected with the blog entry of 28 August 2012 ‘Why Danny Boyle should be Chancellor/FRHistS’.

Geoff Williams. Sempringham eLearning Office

History and human nature

Human nature is the constant in History, a constant that spans time and place. In consequence and in reverse, History is a mirror of human nature. Illuminating episodes, that ‘shine a light on human nature’ include the American Declaration of Independence 1776, the twentieth-century ‘modern’ dictatorships constructed and then socially tolerated, Stalin and Mao Tse Tung, as examples, and the surrender of many, mostly but not exclusively young males, to religious crusade and jihad over the last 20 years. This writer suggests that all three political ‘expressions’ need ventilation for a society to achieve and retain stability.

Geoff Williams. Sempringham eLearning office.

Social History from the inside: a criteria for liberal democracy

When I sorted my grandfather’s books, I picked up G.M. Trevelyan’s English Social History. It was first published in 1942 by Longman during the dark days of the Second World War and Hitler’s attempt at world political and ideological hegemony. The book ranges from Chaucer’s England to late-Victorian times and has a nostalgic, antiquarian tone and descriptive form. It is astonishing that this volume was one of the main social History texts until the 1960s. G.M. Trevelyan described social History as ‘the history of a people with the politics left out’ and as ‘the daily life of the inhabitants of a land in past ages’. Since the 1960s there has been an ‘explosion’ of publically-funded social History research, publication and degree course provision, a development that parallels the standing of Annales history in France and Gessellschaftsgeschichte studies in Germany.

If attention is turned to contemporary culture and today’s media, observers may note the extent to which emotion is squeezed out of social, even sporting, news. Who was not touched by Andy Murray ‘blubing’ after loosing the Wimbledon final to Roger Federer in 2012? This introduction of emotion into footage is an indulgence unconsidered in, for example, the Syrian Homs settlement where survival and avoidance of catastrophic injury are the (unconstructed cultural) foundation of day-to-day life. This is the line of thought that leads to the suggestion that the, some would say indulgent, ‘working up’ of an emotional dimension in the media is an ‘inside’ yardstick of the security of a liberal democracy. This comment fits with the wider discussion of a definition of Liberal democracy by Gilbert Pleuger in the concepts section of The Good History Students’ Handbook.

Contributor Geoff Williams. Sempringham eLearning Office

Clausewitz is dead

Nationalism is one of the enduring ideas released and nurtured by the French Revolution and Napoleon’s armies. The nation was central to the wars of the last two-hundred years. The centre of a nation was a shared homogeneous culture combined with a unitary state. Major themes of the last quarter century are ‘globalisation’ (and associated uniformity) and the porousness of borders. The southern European and North African coastlines are notable illustrations.  It is suggested that this statement is supported by observation of the ethnic range in any British city and the developing difficulty to describe ‘Britishness’ that is relevant to contemporary culture and society.  In combination, these two influences are a challenge to the strength of the traditional description of nation. If this line of thought is correct, Britain, in the sense of a discreet culture and society, could not now be a party to a national war. If global migration corrodes the core of cultural distinction, wars between nations will not occur. The other possible casus belli are competition for strategic territory or for natural resources; conflict to support or defend a standard of life; conflict for an ideological principle. Is the state as a meaningful entity dead?

Contributor Geoff Williams. Sempringham eLearning Office

Pope Francis and bureaucracy

Live streams of the first public footage of the newly chosen pope, Jorge Bergolio, Pope Francis, depicted him the down-to-earth person written about by journalists. A man of simplicity and modesty, Jorge Bergoglio took public transport back to his lodgings after he was chosen the next pope on 13 March 2013. He has sought  not to compromise his commitment to a life of poverty and he recently arrived for his summer holiday in a ‘beat-up’ old Ford Fiesta. The BMW X5 of his predecessor is seen nowhere. His wish to connect with ordinary people is still strong. When on 30 November 2013, the first Sunday of Advent, a live stream showed him cocooned in full regalia and surrounded by, and isolated by, a coterie of private chaplains and assorted assistants and when the list of his public engagements was noted, two thoughts came to mind. The first was the statement by King Philip II, 1556-98 (quoted by J.H. Elliott Imperial Spain 1469-1716) that his life as King ‘was little little more than servitude to the people of Spain’. The second thought was the work of Max Weber on the form, operation and power of bureaucracy. There is an illuminating page on the theme in Wikipedia with concise comment on theories of bureaucracy by Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, Ludwig von Mises, Robert Merton and Max Weber among others. Bureaucracy is a feature of every society, east and west, a global theme.

Contributor Geoff Williams. Sempringham eLearning Office