The Imperfect Value of History. Reflections From Miller.

There are no certain ways to predict outcomes of policies or trends in human society. No scientific tests. But one element we have to instruct us is experience of the past. Undeniably, this is a flawed resource. Interpretations differ, some information cannot be recovered and future human behavior is unpredictable. But, if we witness incidents recurring, political acts producing similar results, we at least have some minimal guidance.

In 1794, the major parties were the Federalists and the Republicans.  That year, the US signed Jay’s Treaty with Great Britain. This treaty upset Britain’s chief enemy of the time, revolutionary France, who “retaliated by withdrawing its minister from Philadelphia…and seizing [US] shipping on the high seas.” When the Federalist President, John Adams, sent a delegation to Paris, they were “approached by agents (designated in the American minister’s dispatches as X, Y and Z) of Talleyrand, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who demanded a bribe for the Directory and a loan to France as prerequisites to negotiations…it was a fatal miscalculation: the XYZ Correspondence was published by the United States government; the country was swept by an unexampled wave of patriotic feeling.” (Miller, p. 4).

Since Republicans had favored an alliance with France over Great Britain, they found themselves in an unpopular position. Reading the national sentiment, the Federalists decided to capitalize. They claimed that there was a “French faction” in the US, and that the “political allegiance of the Republican party and this French faction were identical.” All things French became suspect. “Jacobins were everywhere…Even children’s books must be scanned…Jacobins were seeking to corrupt the younger generation.” Republicans were accused of taking “orders directly from the [French] Directory.” (Miller, pp. 11-13).

Feeling their advantage, the Federalists proposed the Alien and Sedition Acts. In brief, these acts permitted US officials to both eject foreigners considered to be undermining the US, and suppress free speech by citizens and newspapers thought to be critical of the federal government. These acts were signed into law by President Adams in 1798.

This campaign to tar Republicans with the brush of Jacobinism, along with a paranoiac fear of foreigners felt by the populace and encouraged by the Federalists, will remind careful readers of other events in US history. During the first Red Scare in 1919 (aka the Palmer Raids), union and leftist offices were ransacked by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer’s agents, as punishment for exercising their rights of free speech and assembly. At that time, over 5,000 foreign-born citizens were deported from the US. During the second Red Scare (aka the McCarthy Era), purges of US citizens from institutions as broadly different as Hollywood and the US Army occurred. In each of the two Red Scares, the label “Bolshevism” was applied to our country’s alleged, foreign-allied enemies, in the same way that “Jacobinism” was applied to Republicans in 1798. In each of the two Red Scares, the charge that traitorous Americans were taking orders from Moscow, mirrored the 1798 accusation that Republicans were taking orders from Paris.

While repetition of occurrences in  history does not  guarantee identical recurrences in the future, it does indicate behavior of which we  should observe with concern. It  is helpful to have a grasp of historical events. In this way, when a demagogic individual or group arises again and asserts that we should persecute foreign-born citizens, repress freedom of speech or otherwise make decisions based upon fear, we will  have the information to resist infringements on Constitutional Rights. History is  not  a science; it is only memory. Memory is an imperfect quality and predictor. But if it is one of  the faculties we possess to examine societies, we should use it.

Miller, John C. Crisis in Freedom. The Alien and Sedition Acts. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1951.

Secular vs Religious University Education in the Eighteenth Century German States. From Watson.

In the German states, prior to 1734, university teaching was dominated by Catholic and Protestant proponents of Christian education. Since the purpose of religious education is to preserve a particular sect’s understanding of the world, little was done to encourage new learning. “Teaching methods were backward. The norm was the teaching of static truths, not new ideas; professors were not expected to produce new knowledge.” (Watson, p. 50).

The year 1734 is significant because that is the year that the University of Gottingen was founded with Gerlach Adolph von Munchhausen as its Kurator. “Munchhausen ensured that theology played a relatively quiet role. Gottingen became the  first university to  restrict the  theological faculty’s traditional right of censorship…By this enlightened measure, Gottingen’s freedom to think, write and publish, became unparalleled in Germany.” (Watson, p. 51). In addition, Munchhausen encouraged the teaching of non-theological courses. The subjects of physics, politics, natural history, mathematics, history, geography, art and modern languages, flourished.

With a broader definition of education, which included topics that required research and the expansion of knowledge rather than the repeating of old dogma, Gottingen found it necessary to introduce a new structured environment to convey learning. In addition to the lecture, the traditional way a professor imparts established wisdom, Gottingen initiated the seminar. Revolutionary for its time, the seminar allowed a group of interested students, with a professor, to discuss their ideas and research. Seminars were conducted in smaller rooms to invite exchange, rather than in lecture halls. That the student was perceived to have individual thoughts and ideas for exploration, which might contribute to a general pool of knowledge, was itself an innovative idea.

An emphasis on original research began to evolve for both students and faculty. Students’ research evolved into the PhD dissertation. Likewise, faculty were not just freed, but expected, to perform and publish original research. The first German professional academic journals were developed at Gottingen for communicating the research of professors. Previously, the main way that a professor could contribute to the literature of knowledge was by adding glosses in the margins of traditionally accepted works.

Though Gottingen was the first German university to employ these techniques, their superiority over pre-existing static forms became apparent over time. The methods employed by Gottingen expanded to other universities. These universities created “a new stratum in German society” which “achieved a prominent position in Germany by means of its domination of the state bureaucracy, the church, the military, the professoriate, and the professions. The self-understanding of this new stratum, which more than any other group helped account for the revival of German culture, set it apart from the traditional, more commercial middle class…a German intelligentsia.” (Watson, p. 54).

What followed was a reading revolution and the notion that learning was a lifelong pursuit. This thirst for learning created a golden age of German science, technology, thought and arts, which persisted for almost two centuries. None of this would have been possible without the initial vision to restrict the religious domination of learning and emphasis on dogma. It is a lesson for all of us that when we remove the bonds of religious education, we make room for knowledge, innovation and the expansiveness of secular education.

Watson, Peter. The German Genius. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2010.

Baader-Meinhof. The Inside Story of the RAF by Stefan Aust.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the majority of college students in West Germany opposed their government’s complicity with the US war in Vietnam and support of totalitarian regimes in developing nations. This resulted in protests against German foreign policy, which were accompanied by police violence against protesters. On June 2, 1967, during a particularly brutal police riot, Detective Karl-Heinz Kurras shot a pacifist protester named Benno Ohnesorg who had been beaten into unconsciousness. This was a lynchpin event for the formation of the Baader-Meinhof Complex, later known as the Red Army Faction (RAF). While most students subsequently chose to continue non-violent activism against West German/NATO international activity, a small cadre of activists began organizing an urban terrorist campaign.

Stefan Aust’s Baader-Meinhof. The Inside Story of the RAF is a thoroughly engrossing read. It is difficult to remain impassive when faced with terrorist and state violence, stories of life underground, and the zeitgeist of a tumultuous era.  In addition to the dramatic history it portrays, this book elucidates the ideas and values that produced this organization, as told by a professional reporter. Reporters who write histories tend to employ some of the traits they would use in their news-writing: attempting to grab the reader right away with action and verbs. While Aust occasionally falls victim to this habit at the outset, he does settle-down to write a more sober chronology as the book progresses.

Baader-Meinhof follows the evolution of this organization from its 1967 inception to the announcement of its disbanding in 1998. It presents both events of that time and biographies of individuals within and without the RAF. The prodigious number of individuals presented can be confusing. There is an extensive, useful index, to which the reader may refer when a previously introduced but forgotten person reappears in the record. A quick reference glossary of individuals involved, would have been helpful.

Throughout the book, Aust struggles to remain intellectually balanced about the time and the RAF. But he was a student activist and writer on college newspapers during this period. He had met many of the members of the Baader-Meinhof group prior to their going underground. Additionally, two RAF members planned to shoot Aust after he helped liberate Ulrike Meinhoff’s twin daughters from a Palestinian camp and return them to their father (Aust, pp 75-78). The reader will promptly see how his perspective is colored by events and politics about which he still has strong opinions. Aust favored the goals of non-violent protesters of his generation. He abhors the activities of the Baader-Meinhof group, whom he characterizes as “terrorists” and compares to Islamist terrorists in our generation (Aust, p. xii). As a result, it is up to the reader to play the part of dispassionate, quasi-scientific historian, where the writer cannot.

As a written work, Baader-Meinhoff resides in a nether region between primary and secondary historical source. Some of the information is the product of research about the past. Enmeshed among the details is the attempt of an informed participant to come to terms with his own development. One may obtain knowledge concerning the era discussed if one is capable of parsing these elements. It is valuable to examine both the flow of events and how a writer of a given time sees those events. Stefan Aust provides one with this challenge and opportunity.

Aust, Stefan. Baader-Meinhof. The Inside Story of the RAF. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2009.

Great Maps by Jerry Brotton.

In this modern era, we have learned to see maps as directional guides accurately depicting locations of, and distances between, point A and point B. But throughout history, this use has not always been the norm. Jerry Brotton is Professor of Renaissance Studies at London’s Queen Mary University. He discusses maps as “a graphic representation that presents a spatial understanding of things, concepts or events in the human world.” When one looks at Brotton’s chosen maps, one quickly sees his point. A medieval European map, circa 1300 AD, shows Jerusalem at its center, Central Asia as populated by cannibals, and Africa as a significantly smaller continent populated by mythical animals and people. It even provides a physical location for the Garden of Eden, at northernmost point in the world. Christ is represented “At the top of the map, outside terrestrial time and space.” (Brotton, pp. 58-9). This representation reveals a medieval culture where Christianity was central and understanding of other peoples or places outside Europe was limited. Brotton presents a wide array of designs from Europe to China; from Paleolithic petroglyphs knapped onto outcroppings to Google Earth. In each, he examines what the cartographer is trying to say about the world, given her social, political or cultural perspective.

While insights are important, this is a book of visual displays. It is an opportunity for the eye as well as the mind. Both author and publisher reveal an understanding of this in their selected layout. Great Maps is a colorful, high gloss, large format (10 inch by 12 inch) presentation of attractive images. Its sixty-four maps represent the aesthetic values of numerous cultures. There is even a map that hangs in New York’s Museum of Modern Art. (Brotton, p. 232). Individual examples are given a two-page canvas, permitting the widest possible view of the topic. This view is followed by another two-page “visual tour” where Professor Brotton highlights interesting portions on the map and what they reveal. This variety and format encourages a reader to set aside time for the quiet enjoyment of a slow, relaxed perusal.

Brotton’s analysis is socio-politically progressive, as represented by some of his selections. Henry Schenck Tanner’s 1839 “Indian Territory” map was “consulted by the US Congress as they planned the various stages of Native American removal.” Today it is a useful chronicle of stolen land. (Brotton, p. 190). Edwin Hergesheimer, an abolitionist, created a US slave population map, showing the distribution of the United States’ 4 million slaves in 1861. (Brotton, p. 194). Charles Booth’s 1898 cartogram of London contains color-coding which shows income levels in the city’s neighborhoods, designed to reveal the extent of poverty. (Brotton, p. 204). David Livingstone’s 1873 Map of Africa is presented in context of the “Scramble for Africa” by European powers. (Brotton, p. 201). Many exploration maps were commissioned by businesses or governments, intending to exploit the land and resources of others. As beautiful as the maps are, they often represent less-than-beautiful aspects of human behavior.

There are some notable scholarly lapses contained in this volume.  In his discussion of Portolan Charts (illustrations for sailing that show shorelines and ports), Brotton states that it is “almost as though the technique for producing this kind of chart emerged out of nowhere.” (Brotton, p. 53). History is a discipline dedicated to uncovering the trajectory of human development. Saying that a technology appears to have emerged out of nowhere, does not substitute for the responsibility of presenting what we do know about its origins. Later, the author describes surgeon and cartographer John Snow as “pioneering the use of surgical anesthesia.” (Brotton, p. 193). This is a careless statement that leads one to believe that Snow introduced this innovation. Anesthesia has a history that pre-dates Snow by 300 years. Paracelsus first experimented with Ether on animals in 1525. Regarding Snow’s chosen substance, Chloroform, Francis Brodie Imlach was using it on patients six years before our cartographer used it with Queen Victoria. In both the example of Portolan Charts and that of John Snow, more patient research should have been employed.

The area where Brotton excels is as a tour guide for these maps. He has spent a great deal of time examining them quadrant by quadrant. His “visual tour” sections help make sense of complex designs, revealing what is important. Many of the maps do not conform to the style of a modern atlas. These can be disorienting to the novice. Brotton’s expert navigation is useful in such circumstances.

Brotton, Jerry. Great Maps. New York: DK Publishing, 2014.

Biology and Genocide Prevention. From Wiesel to Burundi.

“People wanted to understand…what had paved the way for Auschwitz. Explanations alternated with theories involving everything from politics to mass psychosis; none proved adequate…Twenty-five years later, after the reckoning, one feels discouragement and shame. The balance sheet is disheartening...Nothing has been learned; Auschwitz has not even served as a warning. For more detailed information, consult your daily newspaper” (Wiesel, pp 6-9).

When I read the above commentary by Elie Wiesel in December of 2015, Burundi had recently devolved into a crisis of ethnic conflict and genocide. Clearly we have not learned as much as we need to, in order to avert such atrocities. Much of our inability to change our approach to these situations results from continuing to believe outdated ideas about human nature. Ideas that existed in 1965 when Elie Wiesel first wrote those, disconsolate words.

In the early 1960s, our approach to human nature was psychological. Behaviorism was the dominant school of thought. The world was understood as alterable through education, cooperation, rational policy and positive reinforcement. Since then, our scientific community has come to respect the force of our own biology. A biology that has permitted us to survive and proliferate by selfishly using, consuming or murdering anything that was not us. We evolved, over millions of years, from a mindless organism with a mouth, to a creature with a complex brain. We used that brain in service to our goal of reproduction: creating tools; creating beliefs and ideologies that explained and supported what we were doing. To those of the Judeo-Christian tradition, whose cultures most successfully dominated Western politics and world empires during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, God placed us on this earth and gave us dominion. Nature was to be tamed. Inferior peoples were to be conquered so that we might either eliminate the inferior culture or, if we were feeling benevolent, permit those inferiors to live under our authority and benefit from our superior ways.

But Wiesel was a memoir writer and a philosopher, not a biologist. He did not see that we are two prehensile toes away from being that baboon-like ancestor who climbed down from the trees, evolved to stand and began to use its hands to fight for its life. Though our biology is not all that we are, in the context of genocide it is the best explanation I have found for our behavior. Our failure to come to terms with our animal nature, a discomfort we have felt since Darwin took us out of Eden and placed us on a continuum of mammals, has permitted genocide to occur many times before and since the Holocaust. We keep thinking that we can civilize ourselves beyond a biological impulse that existed far before civilization. When we learn of an attempt to eradicate a people, our response is to educate and communicate sensitive plans for rehabilitation. But it happens again because the one thing we don’t do is face what we are. If we could add knowledge about our biological nature to our understanding of ourselves, we would have one more piece of information with which to work.

Perhaps then the world would be willing to take measures to tame our inner animal. Endless dialogue with murderers, or carrot-and-stick diplomacy, might take a second place to immediate protective action. Perhaps the UN would authorize the creation of a rapid response force that could go anywhere in the world it was necessary to defend a threatened people.

We are both our intellectual and our biological natures. Education has worked wonders in Germany concerning the Holocaust and cultural sensitivity, but this is after the fact of genocide. Asking the Khmer Rouge of the 1970s to hold hands around a campfire with urban Cambodians for a sing-along would not have worked. What did work was the violent intervention of the Vietnamese Army. Education can come afterward.

A UN force dedicated to such a tactic in Burundi could have halted their genocidal course. But can we overcome our own selfish genes enough to agree on this approach? A majority of world nations would have to agree to spend a great deal of time, resources and money on such a project. Additionally, this project would endanger the lives of individuals (soldiers) within one’s own primate troop to save the lives of those in another. The question is: Are we up to such a challenge?

Wiesel, Elie. One Generation After. New York: Schocken Books, 1982.

The Proud Tower. A Portrait of the World Before the War: 1890-1914 by Barbara Tuchman.

The Proud Tower is Barbara Tuchman’s depiction of the western world between 1890 and World War I. In her introduction, the author claims that “The Great War of 1914-18 lies like a band of scorched earth dividing that time from ours…we have been misled by the people of the time themselves who, looking back across the gulf of the War, see that earlier half of their lives misted over by a lovely sunset haze of peace and security. It did not seem so golden when they were in it. Their memories and their nostalgia have conditioned our view” (Tuchman, pp. xv-xvi).  Instead, we should see this period less romantically; as a time like any other, with its conflicts and its optimism existing side by side.

Tuchman’s chapter topics are highly selective, magnified and engrossing. The chapter list is brief and enigmatic enough that it should be displayed so the reader may see if she is interested: 1) “The Patricians,” is about the British aristocracy which continued to rule that country between 1895 and 1902. 2) “The Idea and the Deed,” is about the anarchists of Europe and the USA between 1890 and 1914. 3) “The End of a Dream,” discusses the change in US foreign policy from one that promoted worldwide democracy as an alternative to old world colonialism, to one that militaristically promoted US imperialism in the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific. 4) “Give Me Combat,” is about France’s internal division over the Dreyfus Affair. 5) “The Steady Drummer” is pervaded by humor and irony as the worlds militaristic powers meet for two Peace Conferences, where the goal is to show the public their commitment to peace while accomplishing nothing that might restrict their militaries. 6) “Neroism is in the Air,” presents Germany as an advanced culture in terms of art (especially music), science and industrial progress, but hints at the qualities that lead to the Great War. 7) “Transfer of Power,” portrays the political triumph of the Liberals and the commoners over the Patricians in Britain between 1902 and 1911. 8) “The Death of Jaures,” compares the hope of Socialism, (that workers would preserve world peace by refusing to fight a world war), against the reality of Nationalism.

These topics are interesting unto themselves, but hardly form a cohesive narrative of the period or even offer a summation. Tuchman is aware of this discord. In explanation, she states “I realize that what follows offers no over-all conclusion, but to draw some tidy generalization from the heterogeneity of the age would be invalid. I also know that what follows is far from the whole picture. It is not false modesty which prompts me to say so but simply an acute awareness of what I have not included. The faces and voices of all that I have left out crowd around me as I reach the end” (Tuchman, p. xviii).

Despite faults one may find with this book’s selection or cohesion, one will see a rare open-mindedness. Barbara Tuchman had a talent for presenting a balanced historical view. She was able to write sympathetically about people and groups with whom she felt no political or cultural affinity. In The Proud Tower, she depicts, with equal non-judgmental insight, both the British aristocracy and the western anarchists (two groups whose values she did not share). Her dispassionate portrayals permit readers an unprejudiced access to worldviews and cultures, that appear as if they are written by an insider of the milieu described. While Tuchman’s contribution to the study of this period is far from comprehensive, it is delightfully insightful and impartial.

Tuchman, Barbara. The Proud Tower.  A Portrait of the World Before the War: 1890-1914. New York: Bantam Books, 1989.

Shining and Other Paths, edited by Steve J Stern.

The Shining Path, or Sendero Luminoso, was a Maoist revolutionary movement born of Peru’s university system. It was the creation of Professor Abimael Guzman who, with fellow professors and students, saw communism as a potential liberating force for Peru’s impoverished underclass. They began by addressing the plight of highland, Quechua-speaking “Indians,” who labored long hours in poverty under a centuries-old, colonial, hacienda system. In that system, a “patron” owned the land and exercised such complete control that he was permitted to physically punish his workers. Organizing an army in the province of Ayacucho, Guzman and his cohort initiated retribution against patrons and corrupt local government bosses. The Peruvian military responded with violent attacks on Sendero villages and cadres, which began a war that lasted from 1980 to 1995 and claimed almost 70,000 lives. In the end, what defeated the Sendero Luminoso was an inflexible party dogma. By demanding that all regional produce go to the party, that traditional tribal leadership be abolished and replaced by their hierarchy and that children be conscripted for military service, they lost the support of the people they had come to liberate. The communists could not tolerate disloyalty to the party. Their response to resistance was assassination and massacre. Though the initial years of the war were dominated by Peruvian Army annihilations of Quechua-speaking communities, “by around 1988 it was the Shining Path’s massacres that populated the map of regional death” (Stern, p. 147). The military saw an opening, began arming highland (Serrano) communities, and expelled the Maoists with that support. Today, there are still a few bands of Sendero Luminoso, but the threat of revolution has passed.

Shining and Other Paths is an anthology of history and analysis discussing the rise and fall of the Sendero Luminoso. It’s five parts cover 1) The history of oppression and resistance that gave paved the way for the failed revolution; 2) The war in the highlands and Quechua life during this period; 3) The destruction of reform efforts by both the Shining Path and the Peruvian Armed Forces, 4) The different roles and political stripes of women during the war; and 5) The legacies of this war.

Frequently, an anthology will attempt to cast a wide net, representing voices of as many different political perspectives as possible. An editor covering a nation experiencing revolution, might choose to present articles written by government, revolutionary, native, reformist and reactionary individuals, to present the full spectrum of opinions. This book is distinctive in its single-point political perspective. Its writers are uniformly of a liberal-progressive stance that is to the Right of the Shining Path and to the Left of the government. Their concern is entirely with the well-being of the Quechua-speaking population, the poor city-dwellers and the Peruvian reformers, all of whom were the main victims in this conflict. According to a report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CVR), out of a national death toll of 69,280 people, 75% spoke Quechua as their native language.** To put this in perspective, 80% of the population speaks Spanish. Only 20% of the population speaks Quechua; yet they accounted for three-fourths of the casualties.

Shining and Other Paths is a compendium of thoughtful essays elucidating the destructive impact of the Maoist revolutionaries, and the government forces, on Peruvian society. But in many ways, this volume is a both a product and a victim of history. The Shining Path lost. It is this fact that informs the analysis recorded therein. If the revolutionaries had been successful, US leftist analysis would appear more conciliatory. After all, when the Vietnamese Communist Party was victorious, many of its wartime atrocities against perceived traitors and resistant communities in the countryside were forgotten. The rigorous demands and conscriptions imposed on farming communities by the Viet Cong were seen, by many sympathetic western scholars, as a necessary evil to create the conditions for victory and the overcoming of oppression. The Peruvian authors of this volume would also represent events differently. Within a nation where a successful revolution has occurred, a different, cleaner perspective on the events is taught in the schools and advanced to the public. Few US citizens are aware of British claims that US revolutionary soldiers scalped wounded Redcoats at Concord. The excesses of any revolution are sanitized in a campaign of honoring the “visionaries” who supported revolution and a public agreement of national forgetting. Shining and Other Paths is an insightful guide to the failures and injustices of its subject organization. But the reader must not forget the events and political agendas that inform this book’s conclusions. The writers represent views far more aligned with those of Peruvian reformers, who were assassinated by the revolutionaries, than with any other group. The Sendero Luminoso could not have gained a foothold in Ayacucho without initial Quechua support. They did speak to the aspirations of some disenfranchised Serranos. Some gave their lives for the Sendero view of the future and supported the Maoists even in defeat. I wonder what they would have said.

**"CVR. Tomo VIII. Chapter 2. "El impacto diferenciado de la violencia" "2.1 VIOLENCIA Y DESIGUALDAD RACIAL Y ÉTNICA"" (PDF). pp. 131–132.

Stern, Steve J. (ed.) Shining and Other Paths. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.