The War of 1812

It was a dark and stormy night, Wednesday night last. The tornado watch had been withdrawn, but the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria forces were advancing in Iraq. Still a dozen members of the club met in the Kensington Row Bookshop. With perhaps more than the usual diversions into other subjects, we had a lively discussion of The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies by Alan Taylor. One of the members brought a copy of 1812: The War That Forged a Nation by Walter R. Borneman which she had read, and commented from that reading.

Alan Taylor's book focuses on the war along the U.S.-Canadian border (as it existed in 1812), most notably Lakes Ontario and Erie, the areas around Detroit and Niagara, and the upper St. Lawrence River Valley.

The War of 1812 doesn't seem doesn't seem to be very important in to most Americans as they think of the country's history (it is perhaps more important in Canadian thought). When we Yanks think of the war at all, we are likely to do so in terms of the national anthem (written while the British were unsuccessfully assaulting Baltimore), Dolly Madison and the burning of the White House (in British retaliation for the American burning of York in Canada), and Jackson's victory in the Battle of New Orleans (which occurred after the peace treaty had been negotiated). The northern campaign is less understood, but was more important than any of these.

The war took place while the British and French were heavily engaged in the final stage of the Napoleonic Wars. Indeed, the British had far more invested in the war against France than that against the United States, while the United States was disappointed in any hope it had of help from France in North America.

A Nation Defining War

The discussion began with a comment that the United States of America had not been consolidated as a nation state in 1812. Federalists and Republicans were seriously divided (and the Hartford Convention orientation toward disunion led to the fall of the Federalists). Northern shipping and manufacturing interests tended to oppose the war while southern plantation agricultural interests tended to favor it; indeed, the divisions between north and south, that would lead to a civil war in less than 50 years were visible. Some Americans thought that all or part of the Canadian colonies of Great Britain should be incorporated into the United States.

Some, especially in Upper Canada and England, thought that the United States would fail, and the former colonies could be returned to the British empire. Many in Europe and Canada thought that countries should be run by monarchies and aristocracies, and that democratic republics were bound to fail. Indeed, Lincoln famously said in 1863 that the United States was then (a half century after the War of 1812) engaged in a civil war to determine whether this nation or any nation so conceived could long endure. The War of 1812 has  been described as the second war of independence, ending all thought that the United States could be brought back within the British empire.

The treaty ending the War of 1812 fixed a long part of the border that to this day separates the United States and Canada. Moreover, authors Taylor and Borneman suggest, that the war brought Americans more together as a single people, helping in the formation of the United States as a modern nation state.

The Incompetence of the U.S. Government in 1812

The members of the club expressed surprise at how incompetent the government of the United States in 1812 appears in retrospect. While George Washington and the Federalists had thought to have a national government that could collect enough taxes in order to support a standing professional army and navy, the Republicans had been in power since Thomas Jefferson assumed the presidency in 1802. Their policy was to minimize the tax burden, reduce the size of the army and navy and depend on militias for defense. This Republican policy proved disastrous.

The governor of Massachusetts refused to call out that state's militia (which had been the most effective in the Revolutionary War. The southern states refused to send militias to the north where the fighting was taking place (perhaps keeping them at home to keeps slaves in check and protect against any possible British attacks in the south). While the western militias from Ohio and Tennessee fought well (for example, under Harrison at Tippecanoe and under Jackson at New Orleans), Detroit was surrendered without a shot being fired by the militia, and militias panicked in other engagements. U.S. state militias usually proved unreliable fighting Indians or fighting professional British troops.

President Madison did not order his forces in the north concentrated for a single major thrust, but rather divided them, sending one force to Detroit to attack Upper Canada from the West, one force to the Niagara River area between the lakes, and one force to the east; consequently none of the three could bring overwhelming force against the enemy. He appointed politicians to lead forces who had neither training nor experience and who often performed dismally.

American soldiers were ill equipped. The supply lines were long and supplies seldom arrived where they were needed. Corruption was rampant. Camps were unhygienic swamps, and illness a far more debilitating and lethal enemy of the American troops than the British or Canadians.

Perhaps the best strategy for the United States would have been to control the St. Lawrence River, blocking supplies to Upper Canada. Without supplies needed by the military and the settlers, Upper Canada might well have fallen quickly to the U.S. forces. However, David Parish, opposed that strategy. He was a very wealthy immigrant to the United States who had acquired 200,000 acres of land on the U.S. side of the valley and was renting to settlers. Those settlers were conducting a vibrant trade with Canada during the war, selling much needed foods to Canadian colonials and British soldiers alike, and even cannon balls to the enemy. Parish did not want military campaigns to interfere with their business nor his income. As the war progressed, the U.S. government had increasing difficulty financing it, and Parish agreed to make (what for the time was) a major investment in U.S. Government bonds, but only on the condition that President Madison agreed not to prosecute the war in the St. Lawrence Valley. Thus U.S. military strategy was in part determined by the financial interests of people trading with the enemy because of the financial weakness of the U.S. federal government.

Land Battles of the War of 1812 on the U.S.-Canadian Border

The conduct of the war on water was perhaps more successful for the United States. Club members wondered how the Americans had managed to build fleets on Lakes Eire and Ontaria, and even gain naval superiority over Lake Erie; it was suggested that the wooden ships of the lake fleets may have been relatively simple, and that there were many skilled ship builders on the Atlantic coast who might have been employed. There were successful engagements of American frigates against British frigates at sea, shocking the English who depended on naval superiority.

We also noted the relative importance of privateers in causing economic damage on both sides. More than 3,000 commercial ships were taken during the war, more than 1,500 by American privateers. A member of the club commented that there was profit in owning and operating a ship as a privateer.

The Causes of the War

One member asked for a discussion of the causes of the war. Why did the United States declare war on Great Britain in 1812?

• An important cause was the impressment of sailors from American ships. The British in desperate need of sailors for their navy blockaded American ports, stopped American ships and impressed seamen. They ignored citizenship in the United States and papers that should have made individuals immune to such impressment, maintaining that anyone born in the British Empire could be pressed into service. It was noted that there was little chance that a British ship at sea could actually prove that someone was born in the British empire.
• We believed that at least some of the leaders in the United States thought that territory could be conquered in Canada and added to the United States -- part of what would become known as Manifest Destiny.
• The British had been interfering with American commerce with continental Europe.
• (We did not mention the issue of "honor" of the nation, which some Americans of the time felt was being undermined by the British. Nor did we mention the British continued occupation of forts that were to be abandoned by the treaty ending the Revolutionary War.)
• British military alliance with and support for Indian tribes, the raiding of settlers by Indian tribes, and the desire of U.S. settlers west of the Appalachian Mountains to remove the threats from Indians.

With regard to this last item, we noted the efforts of Tecumseh and his brother to forge an alliance of tribes over a large area to resist the incursions of the whites. We also noted that the Iroquois had once dominated an area that reached from Canada to the Carolinas. By the beginning of the 19th century, Iroquois tribal leaders had become quite sophisticated in the ways of Europeans and white Americans, but had also lost a great deal of the area that had been under their control.

We went back to the resolution of the French and Indian War (Seven Year War) which resulted in the French ceding all of the empire's North American territory. Territory to the east of the Mississippi went to the British and the Louisiana territory to Spain. The British had in the aftermath of that war prohibited white settlement to the west of the Appalachians, seeking to preserve that land for the Indians. Napoleon had installed his brother over Spain, and took possession of Louisiana. With the loss of Haiti, and in grave need of money, he began negotiations with the United States. While the U.S. had begun that negotiation in order to achieve trading rights from New Orleans, given the opportunity the negotiators agreed to pay $15 million to France in the Louisiana Purchase. U.S. funding for France did not please the British.

Ultimately, there was U.S. pressure to settle west from the original eastern colonies. Settlement was already taking place east of the Mississippi and the Louisiana territory was there to be settled. An Indian alliance to stop the economic exploitation of those lands was not to be tolerated. American victories over the Indians in the War of 1812 effectively ended the possibility of Indian tribal union against U.S. settlements between the Mississippi and the Appalachians.

Suppositions

We wondered about Madison's government and how it could make what seems now so foolish a decision as to declare war on the British empire in 1812. Did that government not realize how weak the U.S. army and navy were, how incompetent they would be against the experienced forces of the British empire in the final stages of winning the Napoleonic wars? Did they not realize how costly the war would be, and how poorly prepared to finance a war the government would prove to be? While the British were quite generous in the peace terms, the U.S. government could not have depended on that generosity when declaring war.

We noted that governments many times before and since had made similarly bad decisions about going to war. Perhaps it was the news of the event in Iraq, but we then went off on a tangent to discuss the Bush administration's decisions with regard to the Iraq war. "People who fail to study history are likely to repeat historical mistakes, and too few of us seem to study history."

We also wondered what would have happened had things gone differently. What would it be like now in the lower 48 had we stayed within the British empire? (Someone suggested "the hell that is Canada" as a metaphor.) Perhaps something along the lines of Canada, Australia, or New Zealand might not have been that bad.

The discussion was lively. It seemed to be strengthened by the depth of reading that some of the members had done on American history in the late 18th and early 19th century. The Kensington Row Bookshop continues to be a good host for these meetings, providing adequate space in a book filled environment with a kind hostess. 

Here is a member blog post on the book.

Possible Books for the August 2014 Meeting

We have been reading books on the War of 1812 and the Civil War, and interest has been expressed in reading a book on the origin of World War I, thus completing the set of war commemorations currently being celebrated nationwide. There are three possible books on the causes of the war that might be considered, although each is so long as to suggest it be read over a two month period:

• The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Clark (2014, 4+ stars, 736 pages)
• The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman (Pulitzer Prize winner, 2004, 4+ stars, 640 pages)
• The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 by Margaret MacMillan (2013, 4 stars, 784 pages)

President Obama is currently in Poland and it was suggested in our last meeting that we read a book on Poland's history. Here are three possibilities:

• Poland: A History by Adam Zamoyski  (2012, 4++ stars, 426 pages)
• Heart of Europe: The Past in Poland's Present by Norman Davies (2001, 4 stars, 520 pages)
• The History of Poland by Mieczyslaw B. Biskupski (2000, 4+ stars, 254 pages)

Syria is also in the news, and we might consider reading a book on the recent history of that country:

• The Struggle for Power in Syria: Politics and Society under Asad and the Ba'th Party by Nikolaos van Dam (2011, 4 stars, 288 pages)
• Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East by Patrick Seale (1990, 4 stars, 576 pages)

Finally, our regular reading schedule would have us reading a book on economic history. Several have been listed on the club website. Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty (2014, 4 stars, 696 pages) has been widely reviewed and is an exceptional best seller for a book on economics. 

Borderland: Ukrainian History

16 members attended the meeting of the club last night at the Kensington Row Bookshop to discuss Ukrainian History. A number of books had been suggested, and the discussion was about Ukraine generally rather than about a specific book. However most of the members present had read Borderland: A Journey through the History of Ukraine by Anna Reid. The discussion was enlivened by the fact that one of the members present had visited the country in the 1960s,  and another member in the early 1990s and again recently.

An online video had been identified for the members on the history of Ukraine as well as the associated book available on Kindle. So too, members were informed of this article on Ukrainian history, with the great set of 22 historical maps published with it.

Opening of the Discussion

The history of Ukraine is one of extreme suffering. Polish and Russian overlords dominated ethnic Ukrainian serfs during the 17th and 18th century; moreover there were raids by Cossack bands and periodic warfare. In the 20th century, after the Russian revolution, what is now Ukraine was divided and was wracked by wars among local factions, and between the Soviet and White armies. In the 1920s and 30s, as part of the Soviet Union, Ukrainians suffered famine and purges. It was a major battleground between the Soviet and Axis forces in the Second World War; the Nazi's on being driven out of the region committed massacres and the Communists on regaining possession retaliated against those that they perceived as traitorous. After the break up of the Soviet Union, Ukrainians suffered more than most of the other former republics from economic decline and bad government. Of course today the country is in crisis having lost Crimea, and with the east in turmoil.

We noted that Jews, everywhere an endangered minority in Europe, had migrated in significant numbers to areas that are now parts of Ukraine. They were there a despised group, suffering not only the deprivations of their neighbors but Cossack raids and what was described at a first Holocaust lead by Cossacks led by Bohdan Chmielick. Even today the term Cossack has a connotation of excessive violence (which dates in part to their service to the Romanov Tsars) that is especially vivid in many Jewish memories. The Nazi's killed virtually all the Jews in the Ukraine during the 20th century Holocaust.

Source of map: Talking Points Memo

Creating a Ukrainian Country

We spent some time reviewing the process by which Ukraine came to be a sovereign state. The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was first created after World War I, out of parts of what had been the Russian empire, notably what had been called Little Russia and South Russia. It was a founding and integral part of the USSR. Many of the functions of a national government were carried out from Moscow rather than from Kiev; many people who were born in or lived for a long time in Ukraine played an important role in the government of the USSR (notably Khrushchev, Andropov, and Brezhnev).

Western lands were added by conquest to the Ukraine SSR in World War II. Crimea was transferred from the Russian SSR to the Ukraine SSR in 1954.

At the time of the creation of the United Nations (and its decentralized agencies) Ukraine was made a member state of the UN. This took place in spite of the fact that the foreign affairs of the Ukraine SSR were both formally and actually managed by the government of the USSR from Moscow (as the foreign affairs of U.S. states are managed by the federal government in Washington).

Thus when the USSR broke up in 1991, and Ukraine became an independent country, there was no Ukrainian experience of managing many aspects of the governance of an independent state. Moreover, the country was assembled in the 20th century from regions with very different histories,  economies and cultures.

Why Was Ukrainia So Badly Governed?

The question was asked by one of our members.

For the decade after independence, the Ukrainian economy suffered a huge decline -- more severe even than the Russian economy. There was massive corruption in government, and a oligarchy formed of people who had taken advantage to accumulate extreme wealth. Massive popular demonstrations (the Orange Revolution and Euromaidan) resulted in changes in the administration.

It was suggested that the answer lay in a history in which the land had been governed for centuries by the extremely autocratic Russian Tsars and then by the extremely autocratic Communist governments of the USSR. While Ukrainian society formally tried to draw from western political models of democracy and western economic models of free market capitalism, it had not historically developed the institutions to make those models work well.  Indeed, it tended to fall back on autocratic government and extraction of benefits from favoritism by the autocrats that had characterized the USSR and the Tsarist Russian empire.

About the Ukrainian National Identity

One of our members mentioned that he had not been able to find a reference to a Ukrainian people before the Napoleonic wars and the early 1800s. We tossed around the idea that the creation of an ethnic "Ukrainian" identity was part of the rise of nationalism in the 19th century. We suggested that that identity was built around a number of elements:

• The Ukrainian language, which is one of the Slavic languages (quite similar to Russian). Its first grammar was published in 1818 and its first dictionary in 1823. Taras Shevchenko became famous writing poetry in the language. Still many people in Ukraine speak Russian as their "first language" and many more speak Russian as well as Ukrainian. An anecdote was shared of a meeting with Ukrainian officials that broke up because the officials had to attend their class in the Ukrainian language.
• Geography: Ukrainians are people who live in Ukraine (or near it; there are apparently millions of "ethnic" Ukrainians in Poland). During the existence of the USSR, many people who would have considered themselves Ukrainian moved (or were moved) to other parts of the USSR.
• History: a history of Little Russia, was published in the 19th century, the first of the formal histories that Ukrainians could conceive of as their own. But ethnic identity is formed around the stories people tell themselves of the past of their kind. In the case of ethnic Ukrainians that story included the Kievan Rus who ruled the largest area in Europe a thousand years ago, and the Cossack Hetmanate, composed of people who escaped from serfdom and revolted against foreign domination.
• Religion, especially the Orthodox religion. It was pointed out that Orthodox churches tend to be nationalistic supporting the national government. In the case of Galicia, affiliation with the Uniate church was also important in creating a sense of ethnic identity.
• The educational system: beginning with higher education in the 19th century, and much more broadly in the 20th, schools taught the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian history,
• Definition by others: Poles, Russians, and Germans saw the Ukrainian peasants as people to be conquered and/or exploited.
• Ukrainians could define themselves as not Poles, not Russians, not Ottomans, not Germans, not any of the other neighboring ethic groups with whom they had little in common and indeed much to fear.
• Common local bonds: For the villagers in the land that became Ukraine, the only people that they could look to for aid and support were their neighbors and local community. Those were the people that could be looked to for the "ethnic identity" of "people like me". It was suggested that that cultural concept may have persisted.

Still, there was some discussion as to how strong the ethnic identity could be in a nation state so recently become independent, with so complex a history and so diverse a geography. The example of Ireland was brought up, as a country that uses one language (English) for government and day to day living, but in which the people value a language few speak well (Irish) as part of their ethnic history and identity. So too, it was questioned whether the members present did not feel that they were America, even though most could trace their ancestry back to relatively recent immigrants.

Accession to the European Union and NATO

In 2012, the EU signed deals on free trade and political association with Ukraine. but with conditions that members thought could not be met. Plans were formalized for Ukraine to join NATO in 2008, but were shelved in 2010 when Viktor Yanukovych was elected Ukrainian president.

It was noted that the highest wages in Ukraine tend to be in the eastern region, where coal mines and heavy industry are concentrated. Of course, many in this region also see that Russian wages and pensions are higher than those in Ukraine, and may hope for economic gain from linking to Russia. However, were Ukraine to become part of the European common market, many of the less efficient mines and factories in Ukraine would face stiff competition, and many Ukrainians might well eventually lose their jobs. This might have helped divide the country, especially if many people in the west feel they have much to gain by closer ties with the west, while many people in the east feel that they have much to lose.

While these overtures to tie Ukraine to western Europe may not have been realistic, club members suggested that they would have been objectionable to many Russians. It seem to us that Russia would prefer to have Ukraine as a buffer state rather than as a part of the EU and NATO. Russia's current actions may be seen as, in part, responses to the western overtures to Ukraine.

One member noted that Poland might well prefer a Ukraine integrated into western Europe rather than as a country heavily influenced by Russia. However, we agreed that we knew almost nothing about Ukrainian-Polish political relations.

Ukraine and the Russian Federation

We discussed oil and gas briefly, noting that Ukraine was dependent on Russian energy exports, and that Russia had recently increased the price of its energy exports to Ukraine. While Ukraine has some leverage in that a significant portion of Russian exports to western Europe pass through its pipeline, there is also a pipeline through Belarus that allows Ukraine to be bypassed.

We noted that different western European nations have quite different dependencies on oil and gas imported from Russia. The implication is that, given the difficulty of building the infrastructure needed to obtain supplies fro other sources, the more dependent countries may be less willing to confront Russia over Ukraine.

We noted that Russia had nationalized oil reserves claimed by Ukraine in the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. We also wondered whether Russia could find alternative markets for its energy exports in Asia, either by building a pipeline through Russian territory or by accessing pipelines in Central Asian States. We commented negatively on the appointment of Vice President Biden's son, Hunter, to the board of directors of Ukraine's largest gas producer.

Russia had intervened militarily to separate Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia, to separate Transnistria from Moldova, and now to separate Crimea from Ukraine. It was questioned whether the end game now is for Russia to try to separate some part of eastern Ukraine from the rest of the country, creating a "neutral" region with close economic and cultural ties to the Russian Federation.

We noted that the Russian-Ukrainian situation should be understood in a wider context. Russia is a major global player involved in negotiations with regard to Syria, nuclear weapons, and chemical weapons. It has been a valuable U.S. ally with respect to the war in Afghanistan, allowing bases in countries allied to Russia and transshipment of materials through its territory.

Overall Opinion of Borderland 

We considered Borderland by Anna Reid to be primarily a cultural history, although it also dealt with political history in some detail. On member noted that she would have liked to have had more about economics, given the importance that that subject appears to hold for understanding current events. Still the opinion of the book was very positive. An easy read, well written and interesting.

Source

What kinds of books do you want to read

Some time ago I started an email discussion on the categories we have been using. You can refresh your memory on those categories here:

https://sites.google.com/site/bnhistorybookclub/possible-future-books

Based on your feedback, I suggest hat we reduce the number of categories, so that we will read more books in our favorite categories. I suggest the following categories

Books of topical interest

Tonight's discussion on Ukraine and discussions related to the commemoration of the War of 1812, the Civil War and World War I are examples.

American History

We can include books focusing on events that occurred locally in this category.

European History (anything since the middle ages)

History in Other Regions (modern in Asia, Latin America, or Africa)

Ancient History 

We can read biography, economic history, history of science and technology as they fit into any of these other categories if the book itself is interesting.

Please share your comments,

Possible Books for Club Reading on the U.S. Civil War

The members of our history book club expressed interest in reading books related to the anniversary celebrations we are experiencing simultaneously this year:

• The final year of the War of 1812
• The fourth year of the Civil War
• The first year of World War I.

We have chosen to read The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies by Alan Taylor.

The following is revised, based on helpful comments from members of the Civil War Book Club that meets at Barnes and Noble at the Montrose Crossing Shopping Center.

Note that we read 1861: The Civil War Awakening by Adam Goodheart in May, 2012. We have also read a couple of books on slavery and Jim Crow, including American Slavery: 1619-1877 by Peter Kolchin in November 2011.

In thinking about a book on the Civil War, we can benefit from several articles giving their author's ideas on the best Civil War histories. Here are three:

• "The top 12 Civil War books ever written" by Glenn W. Lantasie, Salon, December 26, 2010
• "The Best Civil War Books" by Malcolm Jones, The Daily Beast, April 15, 2011
• "Civil War Book List" by The New York Times. This is undated, but the most recent books were published in 2010.

The following list is drawn from these sources, eliminating the longer books and those not available in paperback (criteria for our group).

The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner (2011, 436 pages of text, 4+ stars) Listed in two of the three lists. Eddie Patrick wrote that the Civil War Book Club liked this book.

The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans by Charles Royster  (1993, 418 pages of text, 4+ stars)  Listed in all three lists.

Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory by David W. Blight (2002, 398 pages of text, 4 stars) Listed in all three lists. John Crowe would like to read this, noting that it is about the aftermath rather than the Civil War itself.

Additions to the list:

Grant and Sherman: The Friendship That Won the Civil War by Charles Bracelen Flood (2006, 402 pages of text, 4+ stars) This book it also on the first of the lists shown above, and Eddie Patrick read and liked it; it was not a selection of the Civil War Book Club.

For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War by James M. McPherson (1996, 256 pages, 4+ stars) Jacque Pickett said this is great.

Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War by Tony Horwitz. (2011 ,294 pages of text, 4+ stars) Eddie Patrick found it riveting and said the club liked it.

Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War by Gilpin Faust. (2004, 326 pages, 4 stars) Jacque Pickett recommended this book.

Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters by Elizabeth Brown Pryor ( 474 pages of text, 3+ stars) Sam Steppel recommended  this book.

Widely admired books by Bruce Catton, Shelby Foote, James McPherson and Doris Kearns Goodwin are quite long, exceeding the length mandate set by club members. Such a book might be considered for a two month period.

Other possibilities:

This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust (2009, 346 pages, 4+ stars) Listed in all three lists. John Crowe said the book is good but a "very depressing read". Jacque Pickett said this book is great. Sam Steppel said he could not recommend the book as too depressing.

Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam by Stephen W. Sears (2003, 372 pages including an Epilogue and three Appendices, 5 stars) Listed in two of the three lists. Eddie Patrick notes that this is about a single battle, and our group might prefer a broader view of the war. John Crowe mentions that it was originally published in 1973

Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz (1999, 432 pages, 4+ stars) Listed in two of the three lists. Eddie Patrick says probably not right for this purpose as it is not about the Civil War per se, but rather about the author's travels through the modern South and current views there looking back at the Civil War.

John Harrison and the Development of the Marine Chronometer.

Scilly Isles disaster of 1707 from 18th century print

On Wednesday, April 11th, a dozen of us met at the Kensington Row Bookshop to discuss Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel. The book was chosen to honor Cliff Lanham, a long-time member of the club who died last year. He was a world expert on technology transfer, and had often encouraged the club to choose books on the history of technology.

Background

The book is basically the story of John Harrison and his son William who in the 18th century advanced the craft of watch and clock making, eventually producing a marine chronometer that was judged by Parliament as worthy of a major financial reward for the development of a means of measuring longitude at sea.

It was possible at the time to determine latitude by siting of the north star or the sun. Determination of latitude, which required determination of the difference in time between one's location and that of a known place, was not possible as it was beyond the clock makers ability,  Two alternatives standard time -- observation of astronomical events that would be seen at the same moment over half the earth, or development of clocks capable of keeping accurate time over an entire voyage.

Sobel begins her book with an account of a British flotilla that misjudged its longitude in 1707 and crashed into the Scilly Isles, leading to the death of some 2000 men. This was but the worst of many disasters at sea due to mistakes in the estimated longitude of ships. Many of the European countries, as long distance voyages became more common, sought to encourage the development of accurate means of keeping time at sea. In 1714, the British Parliament established a prize for the first to establish a practical means of measuring longitude at sea -- 20,000 pounds if the longitude could be determined accurately to within a half degree. The Longitude Commission, staffed by a distinguished group of scientists and naval officers, was charged with implementation of the law.

John Harrison, who had successfully built some wooden clocks for his local customers, In 1730 he designed the first in a series of clocks that he believed would be sufficiently accurate to win the prize. He was referred by Edmond Halley to England's most prestigious clock maker, George Graham, who was impressed by Harrison's ideas and who provided him with support to develop the clock. It took five years to build the clock, and in 1736 it was given a sea trial on a round trip to Lisbon, the first clock to have a trial approved by the Committee. The clock appeared successful on that voyage, and a trial on a longer voyage was authorized.

Harrison, however, chose to build a second clock rather than go ahead with the proposed longer trial. He abandoned that design when it proved not to retain the necessary accuracy when subjected to the pitching action of a ship at sea. Harrison then spent 17 years working on a third clock. He came to believe that a smaller device would be required to achieve the accuracy and reliability, and to be practical for manufacture to meet the demand.

Harrison's Sea Watch #1
5.2 inches in diameter

He moved to London in 1758, and began work on H4, his sea watch which took six years to develop and construct, was tested on land by the navy, and then sent on a test voyage to and from Jamaica. It kept time with sufficient accuracy to meet the criterion set forth for the prize on that voyage. The Commission, however, was still concerned that the watch could be replicated in sufficient numbers and wished for replication of the success in at least another voyage.

A second voyage was made, and the watch again met the criterion. In that voyage it was compared with an astronomical measurement proposed by Nevil Maskelyne. The Maskelyne approach in the head-to-head comparison was less accurate and appeared to require long and difficult calculations. However, before the prize was awarded, Maskelyne was appointed Astronomer Royal, and thus ex officio, chair of the Longitude Committee. The prize was not awarded.

Harrison then began to work on a second sea watch, his fifth device. When it was completed, however, he had the help of King George III in testing its accuracy. The King also provided help in bypassing the Longitude Committee and going directly to the Parliament which awarded Harrison £8,750 in 1773; John Harrison was then 80 years old. The prize was never awarded. However, in total Harrison received £23,065 for his work on chronometers, and was a wealthy man in his old age. Over his lifetime he made a number of inventions improving the accuracy of clocks and watches.

Our Discussion

Why Did Harrison Have Such A Hard Time? We began by wondering whether Harrison's outsider position might have caused some of his problems with the acceptance of his innovative ideas. Such seems to happen often.

We noted too that negative information from "outsiders" is sometimes ignored; indeed, in the Scilly Isles tragedy mentioned above, a sailor had warned the admiral in charge that according to his, the sailor's reckoning they were about to go aground. The sailor was hanged, as it was a capital crime for a seaman to keep track of a ships position.

We also noted that the class distinctions in England are hard for an American to fully appreciate, and that they would have been much greater in the 18th century than today. A small town carpenter would have been of a much lower class than the scientists of sufficient prestige to be named to the Longitude Committee, or indeed than the senior officers of the navy on the Committee. The class prejudice might have acted in such a way that the Committee failed to properly appreciate Harrison's ideas.

We also thought that the scientists were much more likely to consider the  astronomical approaches, which were cutting edge science of the day, to be effective, rather than an approach based on clockwork. It was noted that the naval officers seemed much more positive about Harrison's clocks, especially those who had seen them in use on voyages. James Cook used a copy of Harrison's first sea watch on two of his voyages and was very positive about its utility.

We noted that a captain of one of the ships used on a test voyage asked to be placed on the list for one of the first Harrison chronometers on sale; indeed once marine chronometers became commercially available in the 19th century, many sea captains purchased their own. On a tangent, we noted that long after Harrison died, sea captains regularly brought their own marine chronometers on board their ships, and that ships at sea had several of the expensive devices, not willing to take the chance of a single chronometer stopping, leaving them without a means of knowing the exact time.

The astronomers were also partly right. Measurement of time by astronomical observation was used in surveying on land. It was effective in establishing the longitude of ports, for example. Indeed, astronomical determination of longitude was used by Zebulon Pike (of Pike's Peak fame) in his survey of the American west in the early 19th century.

However, we contemplated also the idea that Maskelyne might have wanted the prize money for himself, and was not a fair judge. Indeed, a member suggested that it is hard to avoid conflict of interest in committees that make technological judgments, where members of the committee may well know some of the applicants for money (or where their institutions may benefit from grants).

Was the Committee Right? A member noted that one would want more than one test. The clock could be right at the end of the voyage by chance. Or the voyage might itself have been unusual, say unusually calm, leading to a good result that would not be repeated on a rough voyage. Or a clock that often would fail over a long voyage, might not fail on a single test voyage. The facts that Harrison chose not to subject his first clock to a longer test voyage, and that his second clock proved vulnerable to the pitch of the ship, suggests that multiple voyages might indeed be needed to test the practicality of a watch (no matter what the Parliament said in its law).

The Committee also asked that Harrison disassemble his clock while members observed the process. Their interest seems to have been whether the clock could be replicated commercially at an affordable cost. We thought that it might not have met that test. Harrison apparently hand tuned the parts of the device carefully to obtain the required accuracy. When the Harrison clocks were cleaned and put back into operation in the 20th century, one had to be taken apart and reassembled a thousand times before it worked accurately. Indeed, there were elements of the early clocks that represented remnants of experiments that had been tried and failed -- but portions not disturbing other functions simply left in the device.

It was noted in passing that Sobel perhaps failed to do justice in the book to Edmond Halley, who was for part of period covered the Astronomer Royal and chair of the Longitude Committee. As Neil deGrasse Tyson describes in the third episode of the TV series Cosmos, Halley was a very great scientists indeed. Among his many accomplishments was that of convincing Newton to write Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica documenting the theory of gravity and the invention of calculus; when the Royal Academy failed to publish Principia, Halley did so with his own money.

John Harrison

Why the Concern: Loss of a warship and crew was of course important to the navy; loss of a flotilla was even more catastrophic. We noted that at the time ships tended to sail to the desired latitude and then sail at that latitude to the desired port. If they mistook their longitude and sailed east when the port was indeed to the west, the results would be not only an extended time of the voyage, but might also result in deaths on board from scurvy; food or water resources could run out sailing in the wrong direction on a long voyage.

We noted that by the 18th century, long voyages had become much more common. Marine trade routes had developed from western Europe to Asia and the Americas. (Not to mention down the coast of Africa, and from America to Asia as we read in 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created by Charles Mann. The increase in long distance sea voyaging increased the magnitude of the problems related to failing to measure longitude accurately.

We also noted that sailing south to a given latitude and then sailing east or west to the desired port involved (in theory) traveling two legs of a right triangle, while the voyage via the hypotenuse would be shorter, perhaps much shorter. Long distance voyages by sailing ship took a long time, and were dangerous. If the distance could be shortened and the time cut, money would be saved. It was suggested that the economic benefits of a good way of measuring longitude in the age of sail might have been as important or more important than the military benefits.

And of course, a nation that gained a monopoly on the technology to measure longitude would gain trade and military advantages that would lead to economic and political power. That is why various governments were not only offering rewards for the development of such technology, but doing so on condition that the means would be closely held within the nation,

Developing Technology Capacity: Sobel tells a great story of a lone inventor working for decades alone, unappreciated, to create a new kind of machine that both met an important need and that could be manufactured. According to one member, that is not the way we understand technology to develop.

Clocks had been around for a very long time. Galileo had proposed the pendulum clock early in the 17th century, which was the basis for Harrison's early, accurate wooden clocks. (Incidentally, Galileo also proposed using astronomical observations as a standard for "celestial time".) Watches, albeit of very limited accuracy, had been available in the 17th century, and the watch makers art had advanced. Moreover, there were advances being made in metallurgy, metal working machinery, and the measurement of mechanical devices. One must assume that Harrison benefited from the science of the Age of Enlightenment and the technology of the new Industrial Revolution.

We know that Harrison had financial help from George Graham, and that he discussed his original design with Graham. (He also had contact with Thomas Mudge, Graham's successor.) In 1753, John Jefferys made a pocket watch for Harrison (apparently to keep time as an observer moved from the chronometer kept in a ships cabin to the deck where astronomical observations would be made). An apprentice of Jefferys, Larcum Kendall, made the copy of the Harrison chronometer that Captain Cook took on his voyage. According to Wikipedia, "the marine timekeeper was reinvented yet again by John Arnold who while basing his design on Harrison's most important principles, at the same time simplified it enough for him to produce equally accurate but far less costly marine chronometers in quantity from around 1783.  Nonetheless, for many years even towards the end of the 18th century, chronometers were expensive rarities, as their adoption and use proceeded slowly due to the precision manufacturing necessary and hence high expense."

Thus perhaps John Harrison, while contributing many innovations to the marine chronometer, is likely to have built on the work of others, to have benefited from the collaboration with expert watchmakers, and to have had his work actually become commercial due to John Arnold.

The Measurement of Time and Calendars: We left the subject of Sobel's book per se, to talk about time and calendars. For example, a member explained the use of a simple device with two aligned pinholes located at either end of a tube with a crystal at the back pinhole. When the tube is oriented north-south, the sun at midday can pass through the two pinholes and fall on the crystal, making it shine brightly. This device was used before there were accurate clocks to identify noon exactly on shipboard. Indeed, a ten minute warning bell or blast used to be used in ports to alert arriving ships that the measurement could soon be made.

A member also explained the analemma, the figure 8 that is found in the Pacific Ocean on many globes. From earth, the sun appears to move against the celestial sphere over the course of the year, due to the nature of the earth's orbit around the sun. The analemma describes this apparent path. It is also related to the equation of time, which which describes the discrepancy between apparent solar time (measured by tracking the sun) and mean solar time (with noons 24 hours apart).

We also talked about various calendars. The Gregorian calendar, used by most of us today, was promulgated so that Easter Sunday in the Catholic Church's calendar could remain in its original relationship with the Spring equinox. The earlier Julian calendar had defined a year to be slightly longer than the time it takes the earth to orbit the sun. By 1582 when the Gregorian calendar was proclaimed, the Spring equinox had shifted 10 days, so 10 days were simply skipped that year. However, the Gregorian calendar also does not have leap years on years that are divisible by 400. The Jewish and Islamic calendars are lunar rather than solar; the Jewish calendar periodically has a special month to realign the lunar with the solar calenday, the Islamic calendar does not, and the location of its months shift with respect to the seasons over time.

A member also explained the difference between solar time and sidereal time.

The Writing of History: As an aside in the discussion of the book we came again to the question of why so many historians seem to write poorly. There are of course authors, some whom we have read, who write well and know their history, but many seem to have come to a style that is stultifying, Two members present mentioned that they had in graduate school done projects focusing on why historians can't (or at least too often don't) write well. In neither case was the project well received by faculty.

The Bottom Line: This short book was received by the group as a pleasure to read. It read like a feel good novel, with a heroic protagonist overcoming great diversity to triumph in the end. Attracting a wide readership, it acquainted its reader with an important problem of the 18th century age of sail, and how that problem was solved. Its author is not a professional historian, but rather a former New York Times science writer. However, we found that the book failed to put Harrison;s contributions in the context of the science and technology of his time, thereby suggesting a simplistic model of technology development. It perhaps failed to adequately recognize the economic motivation behind the search for a means to measure longitude, the cultural divide underlying Harrison's problems with the Longitude Committee, and the quality of that Committee and its work.

What kinds of books do you want to read and discuss?

For about a year we have been choosing books from a set of categories that were chosen without much thought. I have gone back and looked at the books we have read and discussed since the beginning of 2009, some 73 in total. The count is shown in the table below.

57 of the books are general histories, focusing especially on American and European history. Few deal with native Americans (Indians), Religion, Ancient history, Historiography and the uses of history, Economic history or Science and Technology. If we continue with the new practice, we will change the nature of the club.

Should we revise categories from which we select books, or indeed, change the process more fundamentally? Your comments are welcome.

Category	Most Recent	Since 8/2011	2009-7/2011	Total
Local Interest	February 2013	1		1
American History	December 2013	8	10	18
Native American History	July 2012	1	2	3
History of Religion	January 2014	1	1	2
European History	May 2014	8	9	17
History in Other Regions	November 2013	4	9	13
Ancient History	February 2014	3	1	4
About History	March 2014	1	1	2
Economic History	April 2013	1	1	2
History of Science and Tech.	April 2014	2		2
(More than one region)	November 2012	3	6	9
		33	40	73