Turning points 2. The secular shift. When and why?

In a continuation of our invitation to debate, and in our established ‘broad-brush’ approach, we, in the Sempringham office, conclude that overall since medieval times western society has moved from an emphasis on the collective to an emphasis on the individual. This emphasis is sharply illustrated by Martin Luther’s agonies with his individual (that is personal) salvation. This new emphasis was greatly enhanced by the development of printing, a development that led to a massive increase in information and opinion and enabled individuals unmediated (by others, priests or teachers or rulers) progress in their ambition to self fulfilment. When economies were transformed by mechanisation, developments that began in Britain in the mid eighteenth century and gathered pace, self fulfilment in a religious sense (and notwithstanding Victorian religious hypocrisy) mutated, some say was hijacked, to self enhancement in the material sphere and the world of ‘getting and spending’. It is this latter ‘man-made world’, a world of physical ease and abundant possessions, that has captured the ambition of so many in traditional, less developed, societies.

Contributor: Geoff Williams. Sempringham eLearning Office.

8 October 2015

Turning points 1. The world of man-made objects

As we suggested in a recent blog [6 September 2015], we love reasoned debate in the Sempringham eLearning office; debate is fundamental to good study in History. We don’t retreat before the bigger issues but we do have a tendency, some will have noticed, to a ‘broad-brush’ approach. We decided to share what we thought on the theme of ‘turning points’: readers and classes who engage in debate may take up the challenge and agree or disagree with our conclusions. As with the original Olympics ideal, it is the participation that is more important than the conclusion. Here is the first 'turning points' blog: others will follow.

Turning points debate 1. The world of man-made objects.

In the Sempringham eLearning office we concluded that, in  the post-classical world, there have been only two turning points in the history of man-made objects; first, the replacement of man power by mechanical power [through water wheels, steam power, petrol and electrical engines and so on]. All changes and developments after the 'switch', from man power to mechanical power after the ‘turning point’, were extensions and applications of the initial change and led incrementally to a transformation of the world of work and of society, and not separate turning points. The second turning point was the creation of digitisation [based on the discovery of the electron in the structure of the atom] and its application to computing, programming and the world wide web.

What is the significance of the restriction of turning points to only two? If the time period for the first was some  200 years it is reasonable to conclude the digital ‘revolution’, only some 40 years of age, has a long distance to run and that the extent of applications has only just begun.

Contributor: Geoff Williams. Sempringham eLearning Office.

29 September 2015

The resilience of the major world belief systems

There is endless debate in the Sempringham eLearning office, as Sempringham blog followers would expect. Recently we concluded there were, in broad terms [based on numbers of people influenced and depth of belief] four major belief systems in the world; the Western liberal world view, the Islamic, the Indian subcontinent Hindu belief nexus and, fourthly, the embedded residual Confucian world view of China. Each embodies rigidities and contradictions but of the four we saw more potential and a greater resilience in the Indian/Hindu world view. Our judgement is partly based on the millennia-long history of the subcontinent.

Contributor: Geoff Williams. Sempringham eLearning Office.

6 September 2015

Magna Carta and the rule of law

During the jollities and celebration of the 800^th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta at Runnymede, 19 June 1215, its importance as a stage in the dynamic relationship of the King and the barons has exceeded comment on its place ion the development of the rule of law. In the Sempringham ‘concepts series’ [mostly open access: http://www.history-ontheweb.co.uk/concepts/concept_list.htm ], Gilbert Pleuger who explores the rule of law concept, argues that the rule of law is a truer guide to the quality of a liberal democratic government than trite comments of the genre ‘one man, one vote’

Contributor: Geoff Williams. Sempringham eLearning Office

18 June 2015

The End of History, again

Writing soon after the rapid collapse of soviet governments in Russia and Eastern Europe in 1989, Francis Fukuyama wrote an essay ‘The End of History’ for The National Interest journal. He argued that the collapsed communist governments removed the existence of an alternative to ‘western’ liberal democracy and ended the ‘point, counterpoint’ inter-state pattern. Twenty-five years later the debate about the conflict between communism and liberal democracy, with emphasis upon property ownership, economic management, government and military structures does ‘feel’ very tired: even Marx’s analysis seems empty.

If readers agree to an extent, this writer suggests the reason for ennui with traditional History is the failure of traditional History to acknowledge and incorporate the massive intrusion of the cultural aspect into the dynamic of history. In this circumstance History as political narrative is seen as hugely incomplete almost to the place of irrelevance as sociologist as well as cultural historians gain prominence. Yes, the old (arguably easier) History is dead. Cultural History has a far more complicated anatomy than Rankean-style national or local histories centred on state or local administrative documents.

Any movement, such as the Islamic State, will have ‘free riders’, those who seek to join an (ideological-based) power train but the vigour of the Islamic expression should challenge the prudent liberal democrat to ponder the deficiencies or incompleteness of their ideology. A part response but not the full answer may reflect the contradictions of liberalism that were identified in the 1890s. One response to the contradictions gained expression in political ideologies in the 1920s and 1930s. Reasons for other deficiencies will be presented in later posts from our office and may contribute to comprehension.

Contributor Geoff Williams. Sempringham eLearning Office

Déjà vu x2 – well, more or less

Repeating History? After the Scottish referendum in 2014 we noted the increased electoral supprt for the SNP and our minds in the Sempringahm office turned to British and Irish history. Between 1874 and 1910, the electoral era of the Second and the Third Reform Acts, in the 7 elections of those years, the Irish Nationalists had between 59 and 86 MPs and held the balance of power between the two main parties at that time, the Conservatives and the Liberals. In the 2010-15 Parliament there are 40 Scottish constituency Labour MPs. If these constituencies do not return Labour MPs the UK Labour Party has less chance having sufficient MPs to form a government outright. Polling suggests that many and possibly most constituencies who have a Labour MP will return a SNP candidate on 7 May. Thereby a situation not unlike the parliaments of 1874-1910 will be created with the Scottish Nationalist Party in a similar position to the Irish Nationalists 140-105 years ago.

Image and the man. Russia’s new ‘tsar’ Vladimir Putin, not so terrible as Ivan IV, but seen by the UK security services as creating a new cold war threat, presents himself in publicity photos as an ‘alpha male’, bare chested in traditional Russian male pursuits but he was beaten to that pose by some 90 years by Benito Mussolini, leader of the Fasci di Combattimento. Readers of this item in the September issue of new perspective, Vol 21, No 1 (page 22) will have the benefit of evidential photos to illustrate the comment.

Contributor Geoff Williams. Sempringham eLearning Office

The western world and the non western world

The United States, in particular, and the western world in general have ‘peddled’ worldwide for many decades the virtues of liberal democracy and the associated universal suffrage. As the Arab Spring [Dec 2010 to mid 2012] illustrated the energy of nurtured popular aspirations, mobilised and in part co-ordinated by contemporary communications, that is by the mobile phone, made political ambitions more achievable. The unleashed ambitions brought the mass movements into conflict with either entrenched elites [the Army in Egypt] or sectional tribal interests [Libya] or awakened sectional religious and social groupings [Syria and Iraq]. The ensuring conflicts have put back the achievement of liberal democratic western ideals.

Contributor Geoff Williams. Sempringham eLearning Office

What's not to like about ‘like’!

In the office we heard an older teenager, well endowed with courage and an appetite for adventure, talk about her application to volunteer for the one-way Mars trip. The one-way journey is scheduled to take off in about 10 years’ time. The young woman's expression was littered with the word like, added incongruously at the end of phrases were an older speaker would add a coma. Kant proposed that people communicate their thoughts successfully because the categories, the underlying concepts, are shared throughout society and that we learn these categories by inference from day-to-day speech ‘on our mother’s knee’. The spread of the contemporary use of ‘like’ that spread rapidly through teenage talk possibly because teenagers lack the protection of cultivated articulation, points to the teenage years are a key conduit and locomotive for cultural change. Without the protection of established expression ‘like’ spread as rapidly as ebola in West Africa. We will point up the growing emphasis of culture in History by further posts over the next sixty days. (See, for example, post dated 5 March 2015)

Contributor Geoff Williams. Sempringham eLearning Office

The Islamic resurgence

Opinion in the relatively stable and prosperous western Liberal democracies is understandably concerned by the ferocity and energy of the Islamic resurgence and troubled by the attractiveness of jihad and the Islamic State to a segment of our citizens. This writer suggests that rather than  a ‘shoot from the hip’ approach and increase in state power through limitation of liberties, increase in state surveillance and so on a more creative and positive response is to evaluate why participation in the Islamic resurgence is so attractive to citizens who otherwise seem content with liberal democratic society and culture. For  helpful definition of Islamic resurgence see: http://press.anu.edu.au/islamic/quest/mobile_devices/ch01s03.html

Contributor Geoff Williams. Sempringham eLearning Office

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

China’s place in world history. The past; the future

China’s transformation over the last three or four decades into the second greatest economy in the world has been nothing less than sensational, an achievement that will be applauded by Smart phone owners made in China  but bearing a non-Chinese brand name. Chinese civilisation is very ancient and predates the late flowering of the West. Chinese cultural memory is strong. Their recent humiliations of the nineteenth century, such as the Opium wars of 1839-42 and 1856-60 [Qing Dynasty], when the West deployed recently developed technology, are unforgotten and a more assertive response to the West has been hinted at in the past. These include the anti-Japanese History book riots of 2005 and now the ‘air defence zone’ in the South China Sea [23 November 2013]. The Chinese population burst with energy, more than the Islamic Fundamentalist surge, and talk in the Sempringham eLearning office is to direct that energy not into scheme for military action but into rejoining and extending the fabulous glories of Chinese ‘high culture’, a culture indicated in the V&A exhibition, Masterpieces of Chinese painting 700-1900 [26 October 2013 – 19 January 2014]

Contributor: Geoff Williams. Sempringham eLearning. [ehistory.org.uk]

It’s the basket case again!

It's the basket case again! [basket as in Ukraine, bread basket of Europe]. The news from Kiev, 2 December, gave me a jolt and a dose of deja vu. The East [Russia] and the West [the European Union] at ‘loggerheads’ over the Ukraine. That's why Hitler got the Germans to start war in 1939, for Lebensraum [room to feed the German population with space in the Ukraine to grow food: the Ukraine was known as the bread basket of Europe]. Adolph would be splitting his sides with laughter in his grave, well he would if he was there but we were informed by the Star, founded in 1978 by Richard Desmond’s Express Newspaper Group that 1. Freddie Starr ate a friends hamster and 2. Hitler was alive [and well, of course] on the Moon, a myth that seemly continues to this day in Yahoo answers [see below]. Post Eddie Shah and Today [published from 1986; the first dtp-produced newspaper] the late ’70s and ’80s were a time of change in British journalism [from what to what? Answers in under 14½ words, please, on a postcard]

Then, when  the war was coming to an end, Hitler was sent to the moon for safe-keeping. "using rocket technology, the Nazis sent Hitler to a secret base on the moon," the Sun reports. The 2012 movie Iron Sky depicts the Nazi's returning from this moon base to establish a Fourth Reich [Yahoo answers]

Contributor: Geoff Williams. Sempringham [ehistory.org.uk] eLearning Office.

The extent and nature of connection in history

In September [2013] a headmaster predicted most exams would be undertaken only by computer/tablet devices within 10 years. Five days later a news report stated that Lloyds List [substantially a ‘factual’ publication related to shipping and insurance], with a 279-year print history, will be available only in electronic format after 20 December 2013. A survey indentified that only 25 subscribers read the paper, as distinct from the digital, edition. These two items indicate that the digital and computer revolution sweeps on but can further consequences be predicted? How many saw a link between the development of out-of-town retail parks and diminished ‘High Street’ prosperity? It can be claimed that there is no necessary connection: improved access to high streets and parking provision could have made different situations.

These comments bring to mind how historians seek to establish connections between events. In the Sempringham office we admire the approach of Michael Oakeshott on these questions [see On History, Basil Blackwell, 1983]. Oakeshott claims historians can not provide overarching reasons for historical events but only evidence that one event was connected to another. Oakeshott provides a memorable analogy, quoted in Undergraduate History Study – The Guide to Success by Gilbert Pleuger [Sempringham, 1997]:

‘When an historian assembles a passage of antecedent events to compose a subsequent he builds what in the countryside is called a ‘dry wall’: the stones (that is, the subsequent event) are joined and held together, not by mortar, but in terms of their shapes. And the wall, here, has no premeditated design; it is what its components, in touch, constitute.’ [On History, p. 94]

If this view is accepted then History students are freed to see the analysis and claims of ‘causal connections’ presented in History books as historian's attempts to pattern History in a step to understand and present the past but that is not the same as to claim that such analyses are a 'picture' of what really was the past.

Contributor: Geoff Williams. Sempringham [ehistory.org.uk] eLearning Office.

Numbers in History, statistics, testicles

Numbers have had an important part in our understanding of the past, both in war and peace. Voltaire and Napoleon, among others I am sure, have had the aphorism ‘God is on the side of the big battalions’ attributed to them and numbers notoriously played a big part in Western Front trench attritional warfare 1914-18. The centenary for the commencement of the Great War will be well marked next year. With the development of electronic technology and computers, counting and recording numbers has become easier. Interesting, if not significant, correlations are sought, particularly in the area of health. It is numbers [of deaths] that have led to the ‘special measures’ for 14 hospital trusts in the UK. A report, publicised by the BBC [10 Sept 2013], has stated there is a link ‘between the size of a father’s testicles and how active he is in bringing up his children …’. Published correlations between life-style patterns and health are numerous.

From the point of view of the study of the past, the trouble with numbers, that is statistics, is that they can divert from at least part, if not all, the central focus of History study. The focus is Man in society in the past. Individuals ought to be the irreducible foundation of History. The sense of this comment is illustrated by the example of statistics on unemployment. When it is reported that unemployment is lowered to, say, 3.7 per cent it should be remembered that each one of the men and women who make up that 3.7 percent is 100 per cent unemployed and their life is hugely damaged by that.

Update 5 June 2014. [Original post 20 Sept. 2013.]

It is not only the Sempringham blog that draws attention to obsession with numbers. Is there a sense of Wallace-Darwin type synchronicity here? The BBC magazine published an article on 26 May 2014 by James Fletcher that highlights ‘spurious correlations’ and he mentions the ‘spurious correlation’ between margarine consumption and divorce. A Harvard student has created a website titled ‘Spurious Correlations’ that invites vivid examples. As Michael Oakeshott, On History, Basil Blackwell, 1983, persuasively elucidates, only evidence of connection between one circumstance and another is justification for a claim of relation between the two: coincidence is not enough. That means margarine is freed from all culpability!

Contributor: Geoff Williams. Sempringham [ehistory.org.uk] eLearning Office.

The two grand strands in national identity can be uneasy bedfellows

Since the French Revolution and Napoleon’s military artistry western commentators have readily emphasised the political dimension of nationalism, represented by state institutions, and the social element that is connected to cultural expressions has received less attention. With the evident energy of the Islamic world in its contact, some see it as conflict, with ‘the West’ and in the increasing competition within Islam between the Sunni and Shia sects, the cultural creation of social identity, and thereby an influence on national identity, receives more attention. The ‘Islamic World’, especially Syria and Egypt, illustrate this political and social tension. Europe is not free from these situations; the Basque independence movement is an example.

Contributor: Geoff Williams. Sempringham [ehistory.org.uk] eLearning Office.