The Practice and Uses of History

Eleven intrepid members of our History Book Club braved the wind and rain for an evening discussion of the practice of history and the uses of history. The Kensington Row Bookshop again offered its hospitality to our group.

Eli Sola-Sole, who runs the Bookshop asked that we share the news of the upcoming

Kensington Day of the Book Festival

Sunday April 27th 2014, 11am-4pm 

Howard Avenue, Old Town Kensington, Md 

We tried a new approach in this meeting with people reading a book of their own choice on the subject  People had read:

• Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History by Margaret MacMillan
• The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past by John Lewis Gaddis
• "Lessons" of the Past: The Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy by Ernest R. May
• What Is History? by Edward Hallet Carr

The discussion was lively as usual. We had read Margaret MacMillan's book in 2010, and it describes several ways history is used, such as how historical stories can help people feel comfortable when confronting uncertainty. History can be used well in creating a sense of unity in a nation-state, but also has the danger of fueling conflict among ethnic groups as they make conflicting claims of ownership of land and property; indeed, we suspected that many of the situations in which people resort to violence rather than living peacefully together were based on this kind of misuse of history.

One of our members, who had majored in history in graduate school, made the comment that all the graduate schools now seem to focus on quantitative methods for the study of history, and none allow students to do narrative history using qualitative approaches. A second member, who had majored in political science in graduate school noted that that was true also in his field. Both were concerned that the emphasis on quantitative methods sometimes was instead of good thinking on important issues.

We noted that the questions being asked by historians today are different than those asked in the past. We all were brought up with a "great man" approach to history, while now there is much more interest in women's history, black history, and histories of other actors. A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich was mentioned as a book helping to broaden our understanding of colonial America (especially as Ballard was the subject of a TV program popularizing the knowedge). We noted that the further back in time one goes, the less information that there is available to historians about the common people.

It was noted that sometimes historical papers misuse statistics, which got us into a discussion of the problems of peer review of journal articles. We also noted that statistical packages make it easy to provide analyses that appear knowledgeable but have the difficulty that they may disguise poor understanding by the authors of the study. We thought it might be interesting for some future meeting to choose an article from a professional history journal to discuss, rather than a book.

MacMillan got us talking about "what history is good for" and we recalled the final comment from that discussion -- we read history because we like to.

We then moved to discuss the use of history in foreign policy, drawing on May's book. We noted his thesis that frequently White House leaders surround themselves with like-minded people of similar backgrounds, and tend to draw on historical antecedents from their own experience during times that they were already in high office. (It was noted that these days the executive branch has historians, as does the Congressional Research Service.)

May points out that in a situation such as occurred in the post war planning after World War II, it was important to have historical understanding of the places in which actions would be taken (e.g. Germany, Japan), but also of U.S. public opinion, of the Congress and of the government bureaucracy.

We chatted about the utility of a White House Council of Historical Advisors, perhaps like that of the Council of Economic Advisers or the scientific advisory panels organized by the White House Office of Science and Technology. Such a body might help to identify historians whose expertise was specifically relevant to the issues before the decision makers.

Experts in each relevant field might help identify alternative historical events for consideration by the decision makers -- comparable situations illustrating alternative actions and outcomes. They might help to avoid analyses of those historical events that had been challenged as failing to utilize relevant information or utilizing data which had been shown to be questionable. 

One of our members kicked off the discussion of Gaddis' book saying how much she liked it, noting that another had been so annoyed by the early chapters as to give up reading the book entirely.

Gaddis suggests that many historians seem to have a desire to make history more like the social sciences. We noted the anecdote of William McNeill, describing his approach to writing history -- thinking, then reading and researching, refining his original ideas, and then iterating the process. This was greeted by a physicist who said it was also the process of physics.

Gaddis talks about the relation of historical methods to scientific methods. This relates to the earlier point of the focus on quantitative methods in history departments. Certainly historians have difficulty developing hypothesis tests for historical theories. On the other hand, sciences from cosmology, to ecology, to systematic biology, to evolutionary genetics tend to use methods much like those of traditional historians. 

Gaddis suggests that historians write first to convince themselves of the correctness of a narrative, and then the quality of that narrative is judged by the degree that it convinces other historians. Clearly it is an important function of the profession to subject reports of historical research to professional peer review. It is only people who are thoroughly familiar with previous research on the subject, who have themselves explored relevant original sources, who can fully appreciate novelty, and fully criticize the sources and analysis in a new study.

On the other hand, history buffs like the members of this club are better served by people who write well for the intelligent generalist. Such writers will tend to draw on secondary sources rather than present their own research into original sources. They help us to gain the larger picture.

We frequently complain about the teaching of history in our schools and the history text books used in those school classes. (The school boards that select texts and pass on curricula are sometimes more interested in teaching the preferred historical myths of their members rather than the best estimates of the facts or the more complete view of the past.)

One of our members had read What is History by E. H. Carr. This book, first published in 1961. This was from a series of lectures. (The MacMillan and Gaddis books also seem to read like series of lectures compiled in a book.) It is perhaps the classic in the field, read still by those preparing for a career as historians.

We had been discussing (on the Internet) reading a book related to the current crisis in Ukraine and Crimea. That led us into a discussion of the crisis. One of our members had been to Odessa several years ago and again last year, and stressed how much change he had noted; he felt strongly that a very recent book would be necessary to understand the most relevant situation.

We noted that the Crimea is almost an Island, which only became part of Ukraine in 1954 (to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the union of Russia and Ukraine). Moreover, it has a special status in Ukraine, and is important to Russia as a naval base. Russian tourism and export industries are economically important to Crimea.

Few of us had read any Ukrainian history and there was an interest in a book which briefly sketches the distant roots of the current situation. (Indeed, the crisis involves Russia, Turkey, Poland, the EU and the USA, and we have not read much of the relevant history.) It clearly will not be possible to find a book of manageable length that looks at recent and distant history, both specific to Ukraine and Crimea and general to the countries with interest in the conflict. We decided to try to replicate the experience of this evening, letting every member read a book of his choice, and bring together the different viewpoints in our May 14th meeting.

Shall We Read About Ukrainian History?

Given the current crisis between the Ukraine and Russia, is there any interest in reading a book about Ukrainian history as our next selection. Here are a few possibilities:

Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation by Serhy Yekelchyk (2007, more than 4 stars, 320 pages)

In 2004 and 2005, striking images from the Ukraine made their way around the world, among them boisterous, orange-clad crowds protesting electoral fraud and the hideously scarred face of a poisoned opposition candidate. Europe's second-largest country but still an immature state only recently independent, Ukraine has become a test case of post-communist democracy, as millions of people in other countries celebrated the protesters' eventual victory.
Any attempt to truly understand current events in this vibrant and unsettled land, however, must begin with the Ukraines dramatic history. Ukraine's strategic location between Russia and the West, the country's pronounced cultural regionalism, and the ugly face of post-communist politics are all anchored in Ukraine's complex past.
The first Western survey of Ukrainian history to include coverage of the Orange Revolution and its aftermath, this book narrates the deliberate construction of a modern Ukrainian nation, incorporating new Ukrainian scholarship and archival revelations of the post-communist period.
Here then is a history of the land where the strategic interests of Russia and the West have long clashed, with reverberations that resonate to this day.

Borderland: A Journey through the History of Ukraine by Anna Reid. (2000. almost 4 star average rating, 272 pages) We have an outside recommendation for this book from a good source.

Borderland tells the story of Ukraine. A thousand years ago it was the center of the first great Slav civilization, Kievan Rus. In 1240, the Mongols invaded from the east, and for the next seven centureies, Ukraine was split between warring neighbors: Lithuanians, Poles, Russians, Austrians, and Tatars. Again and again, borderland turned into battlefield: during the Cossack risings of the seventeenth century, Russia’s wars with Sweden in the eighteenth, the Civil War of 1918–1920, and under Nazi occupation. Ukraine finally won independence in 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Bigger than France and a populous as Britain, it has the potential to become one of the most powerful states in Europe.In this finely written and penetrating book, Anna Reid combines research and her own experiences to chart Ukraine’s tragic past. Talking to peasants and politicians, rabbis and racketeers, dissidents and paramilitaries, survivors of Stalin’s famine and of Nazi labor camps, she reveals the layers of myth and propaganda that wrap this divided land. From the Polish churches of Lviv to the coal mines of the Russian-speaking Donbass, from the Galician shtetlech to the Tatar shantytowns of Crimea, the book explores Ukraine’s struggle to build itself a national identity, and identity that faces up to a bloody past, and embraces all the peoples within its borders.

 Black Sea by Neal Ascherson (1996, 4 stars, 320 pages)

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History
In this study of the fateful encounters between Europe and Asia on the shores of a legendary sea, Neal Ascherson explores the disputed meaning of community, nationhood, history, and culture in a region famous for its dramatic conflicts. What makes the Back Sea cultures distinctive, Ascherson agrues, is the way their comonent parts came together over the millennia to shape unique communities, languages, religions, and trade. As he shows with skill and persuasiveness, Black Sea patterns in the Caucasus, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Turkey, and Greece have linked the peoples of Europe and Asia together for centuries.

2014 Ukraine and Crimea Crisis: The Crimean Tatars and Their Influence on the Triangle Of Conflict - Russia - Crimea - Ukraine, History of Crimea, Sevastopol, Russian Black Sea Fleet (2008, unrated, 161 pages) (This book is available from Amazon on Kindle for a fee, or to sample for free on the Internet.)

This study of the conflict over the years involving Ukraine, Russia, and the Crimea is particularly interesting and relevant in light of the ongoing crisis in 2014. The dissolution of the Soviet Union brought about multidimensional problems to the former republics of the USSR and their inhabitants. In 1990s Ukraine, Crimea became a center of conflict between Ukraine and Russia over the former Soviet Black Sea Fleet and Crimea itself, perceived as historically their own by both sides of the conflict. Local Crimean authorities took advantage of the specificity of a demographic situation in Crimea were Ukrainians, the titular nation, are in minority and considerably Russified to claim for autonomy. Later, they attempted to secede from Ukraine. At the same time, the Crimean Tatar influx from exile, orchestrated by the Stalin regime in 1944, further exacerbated the 'triangle of conflict' between the dyads Russia-Ukraine and Crimea-Ukraine. The Crimean Tatars, currently 12 percent of the Crimean population, proclaimed Crimea the national territory of the Crimean Tatar people, on which they alone possess the right to self-government and claimed greater rights for themselves as allegedly the most indigenous peoples in Crimea, while the rest are colonizers. The explains the historical developments in Crimea and attempts to draw implications to the Ukrainian government in dealing with Crimean Tatar nationalism which seems to be overcoming the problems within the 'triangle of conflict' that was so sharp in 1990s. 

Please Comment!

• Do you think it is a good idea to read a book on Ukrainian History? 
• Do you have any suggestion in addition to those listed above for us to read on the Ukraine?
• Which if any of these books interest you?
• Do you like the idea of everyone choosing their own reading and having a more general discussion on Ukrainian history?

As a result of a request from a member, I have added a couple of new books to the list of possibles:

The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation by Andrew Wilson (unrated, 416 pages, 2009)

This book is the most acute, informed, and up-to-date account available today of Ukraine and its people. Andrew Wilson brings his classic work up to the present, through the Orange Revolution and its aftermath, including the 2006 election, the ensuing crisis of 2007, the Ukrainian response to the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008, the economic crisis in Ukraine, and the 2009 gas dispute between Russia and Ukraine. It looks forward to the key election in 2010, which will revisit many of the issues that were thought settled in 2004.

Russia, Ukraine, and the Breakup of the Soviet Union by Joseph D. Dwyer. (3 stars, 438 pages, 2000)

Focusing on the critical relationship between Ukraine and Russia, renowned scholar Roman Szporluk chronicles the final two decades in the history of the Soviet Union and presents a story that is often lost in the standard interpretations of the collapse of communism.

This is not exactly history, but it might be worth reading:

Return to Ukraine by Anie Savage (4 stars plus, 272 pages, 2000, only available in hardback, but available at paperback prices from other venders)

Nearly fifty years after fleeing Ukraine during World War II, Ania Savage returned with her mother and aunt—their first trip back to their homeland. In this riveting account of the journey, she records both the changes they found in Ukraine in the early days of postSoviet existence and the memories they had gone to seek.
Savage, a journalist traveling to teach at Kyiv State University, records in vivid detail her experiences in her homeland, including the political turmoil that gripped Ukraine as it struggled to establish a democracy. In a moving subtext, Savage also describes the intense emotions she felt traveling with her mother, who at age seventyfour was suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer's disease.
Savage skillfully threads these personal themes into narratives of Ukraine's larger history, events that include stumbling upon the excavation of a mass grave from the Stalinist era. She moves through the discoveries of her trip with an honest and passionate voice as she witnesses the rebirth of a nation and as she and her family reconnect with their past. Savage also describes the experience of working in Kyiv and speculates on how her Ukrainian heritage and American youth and education combine to shape her view of the people and places she encounters in Ukraine.
This story will prove fascinating to historians, sociologists, and general readers alike, especially those with an interest in the rise of democracy in Eastern Europe, life in those troubled countries, or personal struggles with memory and its loss. In addition, Ukrainian immigrants and those of Ukrainian heritage will find Return to Ukraine a moving account of their homeland and what it has become.
The cemetery is a desolate, forgotten place. My mother’s face has turned white. She clutches at her purse and is whispering to herself. "This is not the cemetery," my mother says. "We had a beautiful cemetery."
"Of course this is the cemetery," Katia cries. "No one moves cemeteries, not even Communists."
I’m the one who finds the double grave of my grandparents near the center of the cemetery. A rough concrete cross rises above the graves, paid for with money my mother and Katia had sent to the village a few years into Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost. A metal plaque bearing my grandparents’ names hangs from the cross.
We place the gladioli we have brought with us at the foot of the cross and bend our heads in prayer. Our tears mingle with the raindrops falling on the graves.—from the book

Still more books to consider (added 3/10/2014)

Ukraine: The Search for a National Identity edited by Sharon Wolchik and Volodymyr Zviglyanich (unrated, 338 pages, 1999, expensive but available at lower prices used)

This comprehensive book focuses on the challenges facing Ukraine as a newly emerged state after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Like all countries with no recent history of independence, Ukraine had to invent or recreate effective political institutions, reintroduce a market economy, and reorient its foreign policy. These tasks were impossible to accomplish without resolving the question of national identity. In this balanced and clear-eyed assessment, a team of U.S. and Ukrainian specialists explores the external and internal dimensions of national identity and statehood, providing a wealth of information previously unavailable to Western scholars.
Arguing that the search for national identity is a multidimensional process, the authors show that it reflects the realities of the dawning twenty-first century. Paradoxically, this quest must cope with the both the weakening of state boundaries caused by globalization and the strengthening of the national model as new countries emerge from the disintegration of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.
After providing the historical context of Ukraine’s international debut, the book analyzes the complexities of constructing a national identity. The authors explore questions of ethnic relations and regionalism, the development of political values and attitudes, mass-elite relations, the cultural background of economic strategies, gender issues, and the threat of organized crime to emergent civil society.

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder (4 stars plus, 580 pages, 2012)

Americans call the Second World War “The Good War.” But before it even began, America’s wartime ally Josef Stalin had killed millions of his own citizens—and kept killing them during and after the war. Before Hitler was finally defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At war’s end, both the German and the Soviet killing sites fell behind the iron curtain, leaving the history of mass killing in darkness.
Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single history, in the time and place where they occurred: between Germany and Russia, when Hitler and Stalin both held power. Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands will be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history.

Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt (4 stars, 960 pages, 2006)

World War II may have ended in 1945, but according to historian Tony Judt, the conflict's epilogue lasted for nearly the rest of the century. Calling 1945-1989 "an interim age," Judt examines what happened on each side of the Iron Curtain, with the West nervously inching forward while the East endured the "peace of the prison yard" until the fall of Communism in 1989 signaled their chance to progress. Though he proposes no grand, overarching theory of the postwar period, Judt's massive work covers the broad strokes as well as the fine details of the years 1945 to 2005. No one book (even at nearly a thousand pages) could fully encompass this complex period, but Postwar comes close, and is impressive for its scope, synthesis, clarity, and narrative cohesion.
Judt treats the entire continent as a whole, providing equal coverage of social changes, economic forces, and cultural shifts in western and eastern Europe. He offers a county-by-county analysis of how each Eastern nation shed Communism and traces the rise of the European Union, looking at what it represents both economically and ideologically. Along with the dealings between European nations, he also covers Europe's conflicted relationship with the United States, which learned much different lessons from World War II than did Europe. In particular, he studies the success of the Marshall Plan and the way the West both appreciated and resented the help, for acceptance of it reminded them of their diminished place in the world. No impartial observer, Judt offers his judgments and opinions throughout the book in an attempt to instruct as well as inform. If a moral lesson is to come from World War II, Judt writes, "then it will have to be taught afresh with each passing generation. 'European Union' may be an answer to history, but it can never be a substitute." This book would be an excellent place to start that lesson. --Shawn Carkonen 

The Rise and Fall of Alexandria: Birthplace of the Modern World

The History Book Club met last night at the Kensington Row Bookshop in spite of the impending snow event. Elisenda Sola-Sole, the owner operator of the shop, very kindly offered to keep the shop open to meet our needs. We began at 7:00 pm, earlier than usual, and ended the meeting by 8:30 as the snow had begun coming down heavily and the roads icy. About a dozen members braved the weather to participate.

The book for the month was The Rise and Fall of Alexandria: Birthplace of the Modern World by Justin Pollard and Howard Reid. It tells the story of nearly a thousand years of the Greco-Roman period of the city founded by Alexander the Great. (331 BC to 646 AD)

The authors, perhaps best known for their work in film and television, made the interesting choice of featuring many quotations in the text from ancient authors rather than footnoting quotations from modern scholars. We rather liked the approach which conveyed some idea of how ancient Alexandria was regarded by people of its own time.

One of the members had brought in a copy of Atlas of the Greek World by Peter Levi which contained a section of maps showing the extent of the region ruled by Alexandria under teh Ptolemies. He had also brought in a copy of Alexandria: A History and a Guide by E. M. Forster. The author of A Passage to India and A Room With a View wrote his Alexandria book while stationed there during World War I, and it has become a model for travel books, albeit one seldom matched for quality.

Interestingly, two members of the club who had visited Alexandria began the meeting, disagreeing about the modern city -- one who was disappointed by it finding little of interest to see, the other a fan of the modern city and especially of its ambitious attempt to build a new library worthy of the fame of the Ptolemaic Library of Alexandria -- the largest and most important library of antiquity.

Both had read the Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell, a modern classic built along the lines of the Japanese drama, Roshomon -- that is, telling the same story as it would be told by four different characters who participated in the events described. Durrell's book is set in Alexandria just before, during and just after World War II. Both had become interested in the city as a result of reading the for novels, and one at least feeling that the city didn't stack up well against Durrell's fiction.

Durell's admiration of C. P. Cavafy, the great poet of Alexandria, who wrote in Greek and died in 1933, led us to discuss his work. Little known in the United States, Cavafy is still well known among those who read modern Greek. Again, one of club members who had visited Alexandria, had actually visited Cavafy's home, now a museum.

In the centuries before Christ, Alexandria was for a time the largest city in the world. It was the capitol of a kingdom that included not only the Nile valley and the oases in the desert west of the Nile, but lands along the Mediterranean coast stretching north to the Levant and west into what is now part of Libya. It combined:

• Military and naval power, built on the discipline and technology of Alexander's army and Greek naval capabilities combined with Egyptian resources.
• The agricultural wealth of the Nile valley, with its many days per year of sunshine, abundant water and well developed irrigation, the soil fertility brought by the yearly inundations from the Nile, and thousands of years in experience with grain crops.
• Ancient Alexandria's unique role as an international market. Alexandria had a ship borne trade with India, Persia and the Arabian peninsula via canals that connected the Nile with the Red Sea and with Lake Mareotis, and thus with the lakeside port of the city. It also had the best port on the Mediterranean, and thus a trade with the Greek and Roman cities and Carthage. Hindus and Persians must have traded with Egyptians, Romans, Jews and Greeks in the markets of ancient Alexandria.
• The intellectual power of the Library of Alexandria and the Museum, which drew scholars from all over the Greek world. Books were acquired from ships coming into its ports, from the lesser libraries of other cities, and from all of the lands that had been conquered by Alexander. The Ptolemies paid scholars to work in the library and museum, and supported translations into Greek from Persian, Hebrew and other languages.
• Religious influence. In the ancient world, cults could live side by side. The Sirapis cult, established under the Ptolemies, was seen as combining Egyptian gods (Osiris and Apis) with Greek gods (Zeus and Hades), a situation that we likened to the ancients identifying the Greek and Roman gods (Jupiter and Zeus, etc.). The cult not only was important in Egypt, but spread through the Mediterranean world and lasted hundreds of years.

Serapis with Cerberus

Ptolemaic Alexandria had Greek, Egyptian and Jewish quarters. Jews had been brought to Alexandria in significant numbers to help administer government in Egypt, and the Jewish community came to speak Greek. We noted that people moved from place to place in the ancient world, many for the same reasons that they do today -- to avoid conflict, to find jobs and economic opportunity. And of course, sometimes they were enslaved and taken away.

Alexandria left an important heritage in western civilization:

• Its scholars contributed importantly to Astronomy, Geometry, Geography, Medicine, Mechanics, Pneumatics and Mathematics. They created literary forms such as the pastoral idyll and left us the epic poem Jason and the Argonauts. In Philosophy they developed Neo Platonism. They even left a long lasting heritage of Astrology in the four books by Ptolemy (better known for his model of the geocentric universe that ruled western thought for more than a thousand years.)
• Forster suggests that Roman Alexandria played a critical role in the development of Judeo-Christian Theology. It is the place where Greek philosophical analysis was brought to bear on the religions. The Greek version of the first five books of the Old Testament was produced there and Philo of Alexandria produced a philosphical analysis of Judaic beliefs. Arias and Origin lived and worked in Alexandria, and their disagreement over the divine nature of Jesus Christ led to the Ecumenical Council of Nicea (where Arias' view was declared heretical, to be outlawed by the Roman empire.) Later an dispute arose in Alexandria about the human and divine nature of Jesus Christ which led to a separation of the Orthodox and Coptic Christian Churches.
• We wondered how many of the books from Alexandria had, contrary to common opinion, made their way to Constantinople, Baghdad and Fatimid Fustat (now incorporated into Cairo). Could Alexandria's intellectual legacy come to the west via the Golden Age of Islam, the Byzantine Empire, Medieval Spain, and the Renaissance?

Given the importance of Alexandria in the ancient world, and its legacy for modern civilization, it is surprising that it is not better known and more respected. Perhaps Eurocentric historians have been unwilling to recognize the importance of a multicultural city in Africa.

We ended the evening reading Cavafy's poem, "The God Abandon's Anthony" (from Forster's book). It is based on the story of a prophecy that Marc Anthony would hear a heavenly chorus just before his death,

When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who proved worthy of this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen—your final delectation—to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.

A previous post on this blog deals with Eratosthenes measurement of the diameter of the earth, a topic we dealt with only partially in the meeting.

You may read also a post by one of our members on reading the book. 

How the diameter of the earth was calculated in ancient Alexandria.

Last night, as our history book club was discussing The Rise and Fall of Alexandria: Birthplace of the Modern World by by Justin Pollard and Howard Reid we handled a question badly. I will try to do better here.

Eratosthenes more than 2000 years ago, not only recognized the earth as spherical, but made a very accurate estimate of its dimensions. He did so basically armed with a stick. The question was, how did he do so.

How did Alexandrians recognize the spherical shape of the earth?

The Light House of Alexandria was one of the wonders of the ancient world because of its great height. Anyone approaching it from a distance from either land or sea would presumably first see its top just over the horizon. Turning toward the tower and approaching more closely, the tower would rise larger and larger until it dominated the view. It seems likely that some great thinker recognized that this would not be true unless the earth was spherical, at least locally around the building. Of course, with that insight, similar examples of items emerging from the horizon to become quite tall would occur in many places.

Similarly, the great ancient astronomers of Alexandria might have recognized that eclipses of the moon were caused by the earth's shadow falling on the moon, and would have seen that shadow as circular.

How did they recognize rotation around a North South axis?

There was little or no light pollution in the ancient world. Not only the astronomers of ancient Alexandria, but common people would have recognized that objects in the night sky as well as the sun rose in the east and set in the west; they would have recognized that the objects directly overhead traveled a long distance from east to west, while the north star was stationary in the night sky. Thus they could easily infer a rotation around the north south axis.

It would have been hard to recognize that it was the earth itself that was rotating -- that is so counter intuitive. For most people for millenniums it was the vault of the sky that they believed to be rotating, but the rotation itself would have been clear.

The recognized the summer solstice

Like people in many parts of the ancient world, Alexandrian astronomers recognized the summer solstice -- the day when the sun reached the northern extent of its annual path, appearing directly over the Tropic of Cancer, which coincidentally passes through Egypt, at what we now call Aswan.

Eratosthenes' method

Eratosthenes knew of the existence of a deep well in Syene (modern Aswan) where at noon on the day of  the summer solstice, the sunlight pierced directly down the deep vertical walls to fall on the water in the bottom of the well. He recognized that at that instant, the sun appeared directly above that point on the earth's surface. We now recognize that the well must have been directly on the Tropic of Cancer.

He must also have realized that the sun was so far from the earth that sunlight could be essentially assumed to fall in parallel rays all over the surface.

He recognized that Alexandria was essentially due north of Aswan, and the distance between Aswan and Alexandria had been carefully and accurately measured (by trained men pacing it off). He would have realized that since the earth rotated on a north-south axis, noon in Aswan and noon in Alexandria would be simultaneous.

He had a pole placed vertically in Alexandria, and at noon measured its shadow. Any sundial would have told him the exact moment of noon. From the length of the shadow and the height of the pole, he could calculate the angle between the vertical pole and the sunlight.

That angle was the angle subsumed by the arc on the spherical surface of the earth between Aswan and Alexandria. Thus he could scale up the distance between Aswan and Alexandria to calculate the total distance of the 360 degree arc of the circumference of the earth. From that in turn he could calculate the radius and diameter of the earth. He did so very accurately.

How should we select books to read in the future

Some months ago the group decided to select books from a list, going down the categories month by month. There are 10 to 12 books loosely grouped under each category, and ten categories. I have listed below the current categories and the number of books we have read in each going back some 30 months.

• Local Interest (1)
• American History (other than local) (8)
• Native American History (1)
• History of Religion (1)
• European History (6)
• History of Other Regions (6)
• Ancient History (3)
• About History (2)
• Economic History (1)
• History of Science and Technology (1)

Other (3) March of Folly, 1493, Cold War

Perhaps it is time to rethink our approach. Do we want to use these categories? For example, would we like a category of "marginalized groups" that might include women's history and minority groups, or how about "cultural history". Are we interested enough in Religion or American Indians to read a book a year?

Alternatively, since we seem to have been happy reading quite a bit of American, European and other regional history, should we pick from these groups more often than from some of the other groups?

Please comment below.

The Reformation: A History

The result has been a remarkable exercise in honest thinking. In the words of the great Roman Catholic theologian, Hans Kung: "modern biblical criticism.....belongs among the great intellectual achievements of the human race. Has any of the great world religions outside the Jewish-Christian tradition ever investigated its own foundations and its own history so thoroughly and so impartially?"
Diarmaid MacCulloch, page 704

On Wednesday night, 10 or 12 members of the History Book Club had a vigorous discussion of The Reformation: A History by Diarmaid MacCulloch. On a winter evening, unusually cold for our region, we were warm and snug in the Kensington Row Bookshop. MacCulloch produced an award winning book; he is a professor of the history of the church at Oxford University.

The discussion was unusual for us in that several of the members had been able to read only part of the book before the meeting. The book, with over 700 pages of text, was unusually long for our group, and was originally planned to be read over a two month period. (In November, however, we decided to discuss the founding documents of the United States at a special December meeting -- see the summary of the meeting.)

Before this January meeting, four short online lessons from the Khan Academy were identified that would provide a basis for the discussion. They are on the Reformation and Counter-Reformation and are easy listening:

• Introduction to the Protestant Reformation: Setting the Stage (Part 1 of 4)
• Introduction to the Protestant Reformation: Martin Luther (2 of 4)
• An Introduction to the Protestant Reformation: Varieties of Protestantism (3 of 4)
• Introduction to the Protestant Reformation: The Counter-Reformation (4 of 4)

Also circulated before the meeting was a recent report on the regional distribution of Christians in the world.

The Opening Discussion

The discussion began with one member commenting that, while she had only read a couple of hundred pages, she found the book very well written. Another commented that the author had too often told more than we needed to know, apparently showing off the massive knowledge he had accumulated on the subject. A third chipped in that he felt the book had really required some tables to provide a visual aid to the reader to organize the flood of information on differing theological positions and their proponents. Finally a fourth member suggested that he found the book very good indeed, summarizing a vast amount of information in a clear manner.

Following the discussion, an email was sent identifying this useful website:

Christian Denomination Comparison Charts

With the comment:

I was struck by how many ways the churches are similar. The Apostles and Nicene Creeds are widely shared. The major Christian churches use very similar versions of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, rejecting most of the same Biblical apocrypha. They have religious services led by priests or ministers, on very similar schedules, and many use books of common prayers much like the missal of the Catholic Church. 

What Was the Situation of the Catholic Church in 1500?

Author MacCulloch provides an appendix with the Apostles and Nicene Creeds, the Lords Prayer, the ten Commandments, and the Hail Mary. A member criticized these as not conforming to those she was familiar with from her church. Another suggested that these are held commonly among the Roman Catholic and the major Protestant denominations, having been originally in Latin or Greek, then translated into German or French according to denomination, and then into English, and as a result the version by MacCulloch might differ in specific wording from that used in a specific church.

More fundamentally, the member wished that the book had provided a clear statement of the theology used throughout the Roman Catholic Church before Martin Luther began his effort to reform the church. Another member (citing MacCulloch's book, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, which he had also read) suggested that there were many poorly prepared priests, and that the church was spread over a very large geographical area without a strong church effort to assure theological consistency. Under those circumstances, it would be impossible for the author to provide an accurate description of the theology of the church in 1500.

The Book Is Intellectual History

MacCulloch focuses much of the book on the theological debates during the 16th and 17th centuries, and to a lesser extent on the humanists that preceded the Reformation. A member noted that she learned for the first time of the advances made by theologians of the Western or Roman Catholic Church in the centuries before the Reformation.

The History Book Club has focused primarily on the history of nations. Members are interested in political and economic institutions. These clearly had an important role in the Reformation, but seemed to be of secondary concern in MacCulloch's book. For some, that was a deficiency in the book. They might have preferred a less detailed account of the theology and theologians, and an account that explained more of the political and economic causes implicated in the Reformation.

We noted that one of the slogans of the time came to be, "My realm, my religion." Kings and queens, the Holy Roman Emperor and Electors, princes and other nobles had their own reasons for supporting or opposing the reformation, and one assumes that they were not always theological in nature. The support of political officials for Luther in Germany, for Zwingli in Zurich, for Calvin in Geneva, and for the communities that grew around them were important for the survival and success of the Reformation.

The pope was himself sire of the Papal states, and popes had been engaged in power struggles with emperors for many years. By the 16th century, the church was facing the emergence of modern nation states in France, England, Scotland and Spain. On the other hand, Germany and Italy were not unified as modern nation states until much later. Poland/Lithuania had its own complex history.

There were tensions over the role of the church and the state in the appointment of bishops and cardinals, and longstanding tensions over the rights of secular and religious authorities to adjudicate different issues.

"If someone says its not about money, its about money." The church had a great deal of wealth in 1500 and was accumulating more rapidly. The huge expense over the building of St. Peters and Rome, the simony of high church officials, and the huge expenses for the installations of the papacy in Avignon were only the most visible signs of that rapid accumulation. We assumed that some of the secular powers saw the opportunity provided by the Reformation to obtain some of that wealth.

Motivations were not constant for the entire period of the 16th and 17th centuries. The concerns of people also changed over that long period of time, as indeed did the principal players in the Reformation and Counter Reformation.

The invention of the printing press in the mid 15th century, together with the insistence of the reformers on people learning to read, led to an increasing distribution of bibles, books and pamphlets, notably in the vernacular. People of all ranks would over the centuries have become much more aware of and concerned with the theological issues, including the common people. (Moreover, there was much more of an effort to teach people from the new catechisms and to preach the theology from the pulpit.)

The Theological Debate

MacCulloch traces the roots of Reformation theology to a rejection of many practices of the Catholic Church, especially those of the 15th century. Luther in his 95 theses focused on the sale of indulgences. The huge flow of pilgrims to sites holding putative relics of saints and the cross -- with the pilgrimages fueled by the Church's promise of forgiveness of the sins of pilgrims -- was also of concern. Rich people endowed monasteries and churches to say perpetual masses, with the Church holding that the masses said for their souls would reduce their time in purgatory. Reformation theologians felt that these could not be legitimate ways to assure salvation. If the Church had gone wrong on such serious matters, then the Reformation theologians concluded that, as currently led and operated, the Church could not be taken as a reliable source for authoritative theological knowledge.

Of course, professional theologians were concerned with truth in theology. However, the issues were not merely academic. People were extremely concerned with achieving an eternity in heaven and avoiding an eternity in hell, probably on average, much more so than today. (MacCulloch points out that the Catholic Church had for many years emphasized that the church was the way to reduce time spent in Purgatory and achieve salvation of the soul.)

The general approach of the theologians of the Reformation to finding the truth in religion, Christians as they were,  was then to seek to learn from the bible and from the early church leaders who had the closest connection with Jesus Christ, the source for truth in theology in their judgement, Thus, using the tools of the humanists, they went back to the sources of Christianity.

They were concerned with key issues. For example, the nature of Christ and specifically the nature of the Trinity. Could Christ be worshiped as true god, or would that somehow violate the first commandment. Sacraments such as baptism and communion had firm biblical bases, but were they properly understood? If not, would the performance possibly be sacrilegious? There was biblical support for the ministry of the apostles, but how should priests and ministers be selected in their time?

We briefly discussed the theological debate about predestination versus the role of good works. would those who tried to avoid sin and do good works go to heaven, or was the ultimate fate of each individual predestined, determined only by the grace of God. We wound up in laughter on facing the difficulty of modern folk in appreciating the importance and intricacies of such a debate in the 16th century.

It turned out that the most eminent of the Reformation theologians -- Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, etc. -- sometimes (often) came to different conclusion about some such issues. Thus the Reformation leaders also had conclaves to negotiate formulas seeking theological positions that the various Protestant groups could all or in majority accept. These were not always successful in doing so, and thus there was a proliferation of Protestant churches.

The Changing Intellectual Climate of the Time

We noted that this was also the time of the scientific awakening. (Copernicus published his book saying that the earth revolved around the sun in 1543; Galileo was condemned in 1635). Were scientific knowledge to successfully contradict statements in the bible, then the authority of the bible -- on which so much depended -- would be compromised in the view of the theologians of the time.

We noted that Galileo's heliocentric model of the solar system was more fundamentally correct than that of the church's belief that the earth was the center. We also thought that the failure of Galileo to fully understand the orbital mechanics may have led to inaccuracies in his predictions of the locations of the planets in the sky; thus the church officials may have had some justification in saying that if his theory did not result in predictions that corresponded to measurements, then the theory was suspect. It would await Newton's theory of gravity to more accurately map planetary motion. (We were not aware of this very nice discussion of the Galileo Affair during our discussion on Wednesday.) (Following the discussion, a member shared this reference: "The Case against Copernicus" by Dennis Danielson and Christopher H. Graney in the January 2014 Scientific American magazine.)

We briefly noted that modern science gives an understanding of many phenomena that is very different than that of the people writing at the time of Christ or the people of the time of the Reformation. As a result, terms in the Apostles and Nicene Creeds would seem to have quite different meanings today than they would have had in the distant past.

Why Did the Reformation Happen?

It was suggested that in an earlier time, Luther might simply have been killed quickly as a heretic after he posted his 95 theses. Why did his action -- at the particular time and place that it occurred -- trigger so broad a response?

There have been 21 ecumenical councils in the history of the Catholic Church, including the Council of Trent in the 16th century.  Each of them was occasioned by some issue on which a decision was needed by the church to resolve a dispute or to reconcile some competing points of view. In some of the Councils, negotiation succeeded and compromise reached. In the time of Constantine and Justinian, the Roman Empire accepted a specific creed; the might of the empire was then used to persecute as heretical any Christian groups that refused to accept the Council's decisions. Councils failed to heal the division between the eastern Orthodox Church and the western Roman Church, leading to permanent schism in the 11th century. The Council of Trent, in the middle of the 16th century, essentially formalized the schism between Protestant and Catholic Churches.

As had happened 500 years before, in the 16th century many Christians thought that the world would soon end; many of them believed that communities "polluted" by the wrong religion would be condemned with all their people to hell at the end of days. A member of the Club cited MacCulloch's belief that the dramatic Muslim incursion into Europe also led people to increased fear of the end of the world and increased demand for Christian theological purity. Thus it would seem that it was the complex pattern of current beliefs and problems, theological differences, power politics, and economic concerns that institutionalized the split between Catholics and Protestants.

The Violence

While perhaps compared with the genocides of the 20th century or modern industrialized violence, the Reformation was not so violent, it was still marked by religious wars and even by neighbor killing neighbor in the name of religion. To the people of the time in Europe, their time seemed very violent. That people would kill each other over what seem like fine points of theological dispute seemed inexplicable to members of the book club.

We noted, however, that there are recent examples of equally hard to understand violence: Catholics and Protestants in northern Ireland, the various factions after the breakup of Yugoslavia, Rwanda's genocide, the Violencia between Blancos and Colorados in Colombia, and the fighting between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq. We even mentioned the violence between loyalists and neighboring revolutionaries in the American revolution. We concluded that there are many hidden grudges among neighbors that can erupt in violence in the wrong circumstances -- especially if there were authorities promoting violence.

In the Reformation, fear of Islam and millennial fears were implicated as causes of the violence. We noted that there was a great concern for pollution. In neighborhoods dominated by members of one religion, members of the majority would fear that members of another religion in the neighbor would pollute the entire neighborhood, condemning all to damnation. What we now would call "ethnic cleansing" could follow. That has been described as happening in Paris during the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre.

Today

Many of the reforms promulgated in the Protestant religions have also been adopted by the Catholic Church. Indulgences are no longer sold. Simony seems to be gone. The mass is now said in local languages rather than Latin. The bible is also available in Catholic editions in local languages and read by the laity. Music associated with the mass is now much more like the hymns in some of the Protestant churches. The possibility of allowing priests to marry is still under discussion. On the other hand, papal infallibility was proclaimed a matter of doctrine in the 19th century.

One of the members read the section from the modern Catholic catechism reflecting the decision in the Vatican Council in the 1950s on the primacy of following one's conscience. The recognition of the importance of conscience was an important change in Catholic theology. That reading, however, pointed out that the conscience should be informed of the true virtue and sinfulness of the alternatives, and that there are many dangers of accepting a sinful choice by an uninformed conscience.

Some of the conditions that were present during the 16th century and the Reformation appear to be present again today. We noted that there are again people who believe the world will end near the year 2000; Secretary of the Interior James Watt of the Reagan Administration is believed to have been one, and that his conduct in office is thought by some to have been affected by that belief.  Christian fundamentalism grew significantly in the 20th century, and there are still more recent evangelical and spiritualist movements; there are many new congregations that are not affiliated with either the Catholic nor with Protestant churches born in the Reformation.

The Great Geographic Divide

We briefly wondered why when the Reformation and Counter Reformation had run their course, the Catholic Church dominated southern Europe and the Protestant churches north western Europe. We suggested that the wealth flooding into Spain and Portugal from their colonies in the Western Hemisphere may have helped the Catholic Church retain its influence in those countries. We also suggested that greater integration of the Catholic Church and the secular powers in the south, or the role of the Dominican and Jesuit Orders which were strong there may have been important. (Of course, it may have simply been that the cultures were different -- that the areas of Europe that spoke Romance languages were more willing to remain with the Roman Catholic Church, while the Anglo, Germanic and Scandinavian peoples who had not been as closely linked to Rome were culturally more disposed to the new Protestant religions.)

The division extended in the centuries since the Reformation, as the Catholic Church still has large numbers of members in large parts of the world colonized successfully by Spain, Portugal, and France, while the Protestant churches are strong in parts of North America, Australia, New Zealand and sub-Saharan Africa colonized by the Protestant peoples.

Source

Founding Documents of the United States

Last night ten members of the club met in the Kensington Row Bookshop for a lively discussion of the founding documents of the USA. The members had been asked to read the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, the Constitution, and its amendments before the meeting. One of the members has also suggested The Penguin Guide to the United States Constitution by Richard Beeman. Other online resources were identified including:

• The Founders' Constitution edited by Philip Kurland and Ralph Lerner
• Constitute
• The Federalist Papers

Who Were the Founding Fathers and What Were There Interests?

We began by discussing who the "founding fathers" were and what their interests were. They were property owners and leading members of their communities chosen to represent their colonies/states.

A number of British actions were cited by members including the Proclamation of 1763 which forbade settlers from settling past a line drawn along the Appalachian Mountains, tariffs that reduced the profits of exporters, enforcement of laws against smuggling, and the effective abolition of slavery in England in 1772.. The Quebec Act of 1774 gave rights to Quebecois to use French law for some purposes, rights to practice the Catholic Religion, and dominion over lands to the Ohio River

These we saw as threatening the economic interests of the founding fathers. After independence when the Proclamation of 1763 no longer applied, land sales would eventually make many Americans rich and would pay for government for decades; George Washington himself had nominal rights to thousands of acres in the west. Merchants would lose money under the tariffs; John Hancock, a rich merchant and probably a leading smuggler whose ships were specifically targeted by the British, was very prominent among the founding fathers. Any hint that slavery would be abolished would be perceived as threatening by many; slaves were found in all the colonies before the Revolution. Some Protestants would take any opening to Catholicism as a threat.

Thus the affluent, powerful founding fathers may well have felt that their economic and other interests were threatened, and that they could better manage their own government to protect those interests.

Why Didn't We Learn These Things In School?

The discussion of the failures of our schools to teach history adequately was rather emotional. Reference was made to the school book purchasing procedures of the large states of California and Texas, and their influence on the publishing industry to produce texts that are sufficiently conservative and uncontroversial to pass the inspection of their selection boards.

It was also noted that World Wars tend to bring demands for histories of American exceptionalism and success in military endeavors, while the Cold War brought demands for books that would stress the positive aspects of American culture and downplay the less admirable aspects such as racism.

The Continental Congress

We commented on the difference between the Declaration and Resolves of the Continental Congress in 1774 and the Declaration of Independence of 1776. The earlier document has a statement of rights and a description of how parliament has passed legislation infringing on those rights. It asks for the support of the British and American people, and states that the king will be petitioned for a redress of those rights. The Declaration of Independence, written after the delegates to the Convention had received new instructions from their state legislative bodies and after a year of war, was a frank break with Britain. It ascribed the acts causing the break to the king, not the parliament.

We discussed how the founding fathers had been of divided mind, both valuing the relationship with England and valuing their own self determination. Not only did they consider themselves British in 1770, but Britain had helped defend the colonies during the French and Indian War in their lifetime, and provided a defense from other predatory imperial powers. But the founding fathers came to support independence: they thought themselves better able to advance their interests by governing themselves. However, they were not "small d" democrats, wanting to share power widely with the people.

We noted that the two documents were written by politicians to persuade people. The Declaration was initially distributed in the States and intended to gain support for Independence and the Revolutionary War; only later was it carried to England (via British troops) and the European mainland. We did not trust the members of the Continental Congress to give the real and deeper reasons in the minds of the founding fathers for independence in these documents.

We also noted that apparently the Declaration of Independence was little known and seldom referred to in the 80 years after it was promulgated. Apparently it only began to attain its current importance after the Gettysburg Address by President Abraham Lincoln. The opening of the second paragraph is relatively newly famous:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

And that has come to be seen as an important statement of the purpose of the American government, but the founding fathers were focusing on white men, and perhaps were especially interested in creating a government to secure the rights of "substantial" men like themselves.

The Articles of Confederation and the Constitution

The founding fathers had conflicting objectives. On the one hand, they needed the colonies/states to act together militarily to protect themselves.  In fact, independence from Britain was not achieved by the Americans themselves, but only when France, Spain and the Netherlands joined the war against Britain. The people of the United States could did not have the economic power, the manpower, the military power nor the naval power to defeat Britain; each of the states alone would have fallen easy prey to more powerful states. We recalled that after the Revolutionary War ended Spain still had huge colonies in North America, Britain had Canada and would seek more territory in the War of 1812 and thereafter, and France would soon acquire the Louisiana Territory. Even the Dutch, who had had a colony in New York, were still an important and active imperial power. Thus protection of the states and their people could only be guaranteed by a central government that could coordinate an army and navy and finance the defense.

On the other hand, the founding fathers didn't want to sacrifice local governance to a distant central authority more than was necessary. The colonies had very different peoples, cultures, and colonial governments. Someone from South Carolina was unlikely to have any contact with someone from Maine or New Hampshire. The founding fathers had had a bad experience with government from afar, and were not comfortable delegating a lot of power to a central government, albeit one on the Atlantic coast of North America; The preferred to keep as much power as possible close to home in the state government.

We noted that the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union established that the union was intended to be perpetual, and that the Constitution was intended "to perfect that union". Thus the Constitution was to perfect a perpetual union, and the two documents together precluded legal secession from that union. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 was cited by members as a law passed by the Congress under the Articles of Confederation that remained in force under the Constitution.

That Northwest Ordinance was written to define the governance of territory ceded by several states to the federal government after the Revolutionary War. That territory would eventually be divided into several states, and the Northwest Ordinance set a precedent for establishment of new states from federal territories. It also includes a bill of rights for the people living in the territory, and forbade slavery in the territory.

The Articles of Confederation give the central government power to declare and prosecute war. The central government conducts international relations and the individual states are prohibited from doing so independently. The Articles allow the central government to assess funds from the states apportioning them according to the value of landed property in the states, but did not provide means for the collection of the assessed taxes. While the delegations of the states to the Congress can be of different sizes, each state would have only one vote.

It became clear that the central government did not function well under the Articles of Confederation. During the Revolutionary War, the troops were sometimes not paid. Some states did not pay their taxes to the federal government, and the bonds issued by the government lost their value. Shays Rebellion, in part brought on by a post war depression and lack of hard currency, catalyzed reform efforts.

A convention was convened to revise the Articles, but over time its function was transformed to writing a new Constitution. Led by the Virginia delegation that was especially concerned with the weakness of the government under the Articles, the delegates created the government with legislature, executive and judiciary branches, and gave it more power than had been given under the Articles. One of the differences we notices was that under the Constitution finance of the central government was to be raised from the states based on the population census. Thus taxes would be population based rather than property based as before.

Many of the founding fathers had read history and political philosophy and had knowledge relevant to their task. James Madison, perhaps the key member of the Constitutional Convention, before it began asked Thomas Jefferson, who was then representing the United States in France, to send him books that could inform his deliberations. On receiving a couple of hundred such books he spent time reading and thinking, preparing a memo for himself defining his constitutional philosophy.

Notably, Madison believed that the Roman Republic and the Swiss republics worked as long as they were small, but historical large republics had failed due to factionalism. That was a fear shared by many of the founding fathers, including George Washington, who warned against factions in his farewell address on leaving the office of President. Madison however proposed that a very large republic, which necessarily would have many factions, could remain functional; in such a republic, no faction could alone come to dominate. That view came to be accepted in the framing of the Constitution.

We noted that while the powers of the different branches were specified in the Constitution, as were their limitations, no duties were specified. Thus the Congress does not have a duty to pass legislation in a timely fashion in order to fund government operations and keep government open; there is no sanction if Congress fails to do so. We recalled times when the government shut down because the Congress failed to appropriate funds for its operation.

The 14th amendment to the Constitution states:

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.

However, the Constitution does not explicitly state that Congress has no duty to authorize funds to meet the payments due on the debt; were the government to default the Congress would not be held to account for that failure.

The Great Constitutional Compromises

We discussed the two great compromises in the negotiating the Constitution:

• That necessary to include the small states, and
• Than necessary to include the slave states of the south.

These compromises perhaps indicate the critical importance that the founding fathers attributed to finding a way to hold the union together. As Benjamin Franklin said at the signing of the Declaration of Indpendence, "we must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."

Large states wanted a legislature responsive to the needs of their large populations. The small state compromise resulted in a House of Representatives that had membership proportional to population and a Senate with two senators for each state. In the presidential electoral college, each state had one member for each representative in the House and one for each senator. Thus citizens of small states got more influence per capita in national politics than did citizens of populous states. We recalled from previous reading, that in the latter part of the 19th century Republicans created several states with tiny populations and Republican leanings to cement their electoral advantage in the Senate and presidential elections. This Republican advantage remains. Thus in the Bush-Gore election in 2000, Gore won the electoral vote and Bush was elected president with a majority in the electoral college.

Southern states delegations wanted protection for the continuance of the institution of slavery, and wanted power in the central government reflecting the number of slaves in their states even if those slaves were not to be citizens. The compromise with the slave states made slavery legal in the United States, called for the return of fugitive slaves across state borders, and added 3/5th of the slaves to the white population to define the number of seats in the House of Representatives, and allowed the importation of slaves for some years. It also set a $10 tariff per slave -- not enough to preclude importation of new slaves but enough to raise some significant tax income for the government -- perhaps the most specific item in the Constitution. (It would take the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement to rectify the problems created by this compromise.)

Representatives would be chosen by popular vote of adult males, Senators would be elected by state legislatures, not the people. Again, the presidential electors were to be chosen by the state, not elected. Thus control of government was not to be directly in the hands of the voters, but indirectly through the selections made by their state legislatures. The founding fathers were not too comfortable with direct democracy, rather preferring to have control in the hands of men much like themselves.

The Judiciary

There is very little about the judiciary in the Constitution. It seems that each branch of government was expected to observe the rules set forth in the Constitution; the legislature would not pass an unconstitutional bill, the executive would not sign one into law nor commit an unconstitutional act, and the judiciary would adjudicate issues in accord with the Constitution. It was not until the Supreme Court decided in Marbury vs. Madison that the Court assumed the role of judging the constitutionality of acts of the other two branches.

We took a detour to talk about the proposals to reform the Supreme Court and the Constitution coming from the extreme political right. These include having some of the Supreme Court Justices appointed by the Governors rather than by the President with the consent of the Senate. Indeed, ten new amendments to the constitution have been proposed. The role of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) was mentioned in working on the state level to promote policy changes.

We appeared to agree that some age or term limit would be appropriate for Supreme Court justices. The founding fathers did not expect individuals to live as long as we do now. While job security for the justices does promote their political independence, people in the 80's are likely to have less capacity to perform the demanding intellectual work required,  Indeed, members of Congress being carried into the chamber to vote seem inappropriate. Note that Jefferson believed that Senators should have six year terms to provide some insulation from popular pressure, but that they should return to private life after a single term. Perhaps some term limits or age limits for legislators might be considered. Even though President Wilson was incapacitated for a period of time during his presidency, it was not until the 25th amendment in the 1960s that the presidential succession was clarified.  So, constitutional reform to impose such limits may not be quick nor easy.

We also talked about "originalism" and the difficulty of discovering the original intent of the many people who drafted the Constitution; they did not agree uniformly among themselves. Is the intent of the people who ratified the Constitution critical" What did they believe that they were ratifying? (Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788 by Pauline Maier was mentioned in this context.) The Federalist Papers, in which Hamilton, Madison and Jay argued for the ratification, were written to influence public opinion, and perhaps not simply to explain the thinking of the authors much less the meaning of the articles of the Constitution. It is clear that the Supreme Court has made radical changes in its interpretation of the constitution in the past -- e.g. Plessy vs. Ferguson as compared with Brown vs. Board of Education. (Still one clearly wants the law to be known and predictable, and thus the Court to interpret it consistently until the Constitution is changed or the laws themselves changed).

Amendment

During the ratification of the Constitution anti-federalists demanded that the Constitution include a Bill of Rights. Quickly after ratification the Congress passed a set of 12 amendments, and the first ten became the requested Bill of Rights.  It was suggested that the members of the Constitutional Convention rebelled against drafting a Bill of Rights; after a long summer of debates they wanted to go home.

There have only been 27 amendments since the Constitution was ratified, two being prohibition and its repeal and three implementing the changes after the civil war. The there were only 12 other amendments spread over more than two centuries. It is hard to amend the constitution.

We noted that the U.S. Constitution is not very specific, and believed that to be a deliberate decision by the founding fathers. While many Constitutions have been written and rewritten in other countries, the U.S. Constitution has lasted. It may be that it only generally lays out the structure and functions of government, leaving a great deal to be elaborated as problems are met and solved.

We cited Benjamin Franklin's wise comments recommending that the members of the Constitutional Convention unanimously sign the document, recommending its ratification.

The Discussion

Several members said that they had not read these documents before and were glad to have done so now. Generally the group felt that the topic for this meeting had been very well chosen, and that even without a common book to read we had learned a lot and had enough common information for an interesting and useful discussion. After two hours, when the bookstore was closing, we were still going strong, and members of the group had to be ushered out of the store, where they continued chatting on sidewalk in the cold.