Primarily on the Treaty Ending World War I and the Aftermath.

In the last discussion meeting of the history book club, members expressed interest in reading a book on the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I and created the conditions that led to World War II. Here are some alternatives:

Prize Winning Histories

The Long Shadow: The Legacies of the Great War in the Twentieth Century by David Reynolds (4.7 stars, 430 pages of text, 2014) The book is not yet out in paperback, hardback $24.25. Here is the review of the book in The Guardian.

One of the most violent conflicts in the history of civilization, World War I has been strangely forgotten in American culture. It has become a ghostly war fought in a haze of memory, often seen merely as a distant preamble to World War II. In The Long Shadow critically acclaimed historian David Reynolds seeks to broaden our vision by assessing the impact of the Great War across the twentieth century. He shows how events in that turbulent century—particularly World War II, the Cold War, and the collapse of Communism—shaped and reshaped attitudes to 1914–18.
By exploring big themes such as democracy and empire, nationalism and capitalism, as well as art and poetry, The Long Shadow is stunningly broad in its historical perspective. Reynolds throws light on the vast expanse of the last century and explains why 1914–18 is a conflict that America is still struggling to comprehend. Forging connections between people, places, and ideas, The Long Shadow ventures across the traditional subcultures of historical scholarship to offer a rich and layered examination not only of politics, diplomacy, and security but also of economics, art, and literature. The result is a magisterial reinterpretation of the place of the Great War in modern history.

Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan (4.3 stars, 494 pages of text, 2003, $11.00) Here is the Washington Post review.

For six months in 1919, after the end of “the war to end all wars,” the Big Three—President Woodrow Wilson, British prime minister David Lloyd George, and French premier Georges Clemenceau—met in Paris to shape a lasting peace. In this landmark work of narrative history, Margaret MacMillan gives a dramatic and intimate view of those fateful days, which saw new political entities—Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Palestine, among them—born out of the ruins of bankrupt empires, and the borders of the modern world redrawn.

Other Histories

A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today by David A. Andelman (4.1 stars, 336 pages, 2007) This is not available in paperback, hardback is $24.50. Here is the short review from Foreign Affairs.

"The failed peace settlement following the Great War of 1914-1918 has been the subject of many fine books. In many respects, David Andelman's A Shattered Peace is the best of these. It is compact and compellingly written. Moreover, it explains more clearly than any other work how the failure of peacemaking in 1919 shaped later history and, indeed, shapes our own era."
--Ernest R. May, Charles Warren Professor of American History, Harvard University 

"The peace settlements that followed World War I have recently come back into focus as one of the dominant factors shaping the modern world. The Balkans, the Middle East, Iraq, Turkey, and parts of Africa all owe their present-day problems, in part, to these negotiations. David Andelman brings it all back to life--the lofty ideals, the ugly compromises, the larger-than-life personalities who came to Paris in 1919. And he links that far-away diplomatic dance to present-day problems to illuminate our troubled times. A tremendous addition to this vitally important subject."
--Ambassador Richard Holbrooke

To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order by Thomas J. Knock (4.3 stars, 400 pages, 1995, $32.53) Here is the Kirkus review.

In his widely acclaimed To End All Wars, Thomas Knock provides an intriguing, often provocative narrative of Woodrow Wilson's epic quest for a new world order. The account follows Wilson's thought and diplomacy from his policy toward revolutionary Mexico, through his dramatic call for "Peace without Victory" in World War I, to the Senate's rejection of the League of Nations. Throughout Knock explores the place of internationalism in American politics, sweeping away the old view that isolationism was the cause of Wilson's failure and revealing the role of competing visions of internationalism--conservative and progressive.

A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East by David Fromkin (4.5 stars, 568 pages of text, 2001) This seems to be out of print, but available online used. Here is the New York Times Review.

The critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling account of how the modern Middle East came into being after World War I, and why it is in upheaval today
In our time the Middle East has proven a battleground of rival religions, ideologies, nationalisms, and dynasties. All of these conflicts, including the hostilities between Arabs and Israelis that have flared yet again, come down, in a sense, to the extent to which the Middle East will continue to live with its political inheritance: the arrangements, unities, and divisions imposed upon the region by the Allies after the First World War.
In A Peace to End All Peace, David Fromkin reveals how and why the Allies came to remake the geography and politics of the Middle East, drawing lines on an empty map that eventually became the new countries of Iraq, Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon. Focusing on the formative years of 1914 to 1922, when all-even an alliance between Arab nationalism and Zionism-seemed possible he raises questions about what might have been done differently, and answers questions about why things were done as they were. The current battle for a Palestinian homeland has its roots in these events of 85 years ago.

Reparation in World Politics: France and European Economic Diplomacy, 1916-1923 by Marc Trachtenberg (only one rating, 423 pages, 1980, apparently out of print but available online used) Read a very short review in Foreign Affairs.

Histories for Which I Did Not Find Published Reviews

The Illusion of Peace: International Relations in Europe, 1918-1933 by Sally Marks; second edition (4.2 stars with relatively few ratings, 272 pages, 2003, $33.65)

Sally Marks' compelling analysis of European diplomacy between World War I and Hitler's advent, explores the reasons why a lasting peace failed to occur in the interwar era. Building on the theories of the first edition, Marks argues that the Allied failure to bring defeat home to the German people, and the consequences of this oversight, were partly to blame, and reassesses Europe's leaders and the policies of the powers. Thoroughly revised and updated in the light of recent scholarly and documentary research, the second edition of this highly successful text also includes new material, maps, and an extended bibliography.

The Versailles Settlement: Peacemaking After the First World War, 1919-1923 by Alan Sharp (3 stars with relatively few ratings, 288 pages, 2008, $42.00) I could not find a published review.

This text has established itself as one of the most highly regarded studies on the subject. Revised and expanded, this second edition incorporates the latest research and includes more discussion of the roles of the League of Nations after the conference, and of the post-war conflicts between Poland and the USSR, and between the USSR and Turkey.

A more general book that includes a number of relevant chapters to diplomacy at the end of World War I.

Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger (4.5 stars, 836 pages of text, 1995, $14.55) Here is the New York Times review, which Mr. Kissinger did not like.

A brilliant, sweeping history of diplomacy that includes personal stories from the noted former Secretary of State, including his stunning reopening of relations with China.
The seminal work on foreign policy and the art of diplomacy.
Moving from a sweeping overview of history to blow-by-blow accounts of his negotiations with world leaders, Henry Kissinger describes how the art of diplomacy has created the world in which we live, and how America’s approach to foreign affairs has always differed vastly from that of other nations.
Brilliant, controversial, and profoundly incisive, Diplomacy stands as the culmination of a lifetime of diplomatic service and scholarship. It is vital reading for anyone concerned with the forces that have shaped our world today and will impact upon it tomorrow.

 Note: Prices given are taken from Amazon.com and are for comparison only.

Discussion of "This Republic of Suffering"

Eleven of us showed up Wednesday night, a relatively small showing, to discuss This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust. This book won both the Bancroft Prize and the American History Book Prize in 2008. It deals with issues related to deaths of soldiers during the Civil War, especially what happened after their deaths. We received the warm hospitality from Elisenda Sola-Sole and the Kensington Row Bookshop to which we have become accustomed.

The Civil War was the first "industrial scale' war. Millions of men served in uniform. Weapons were more deadly as compared with those used in previous wars, and mass produced. Troops and supplies could be moved long distances via railroad, and communications could be transmitted by telegraph. Author Faust cites there being and estimated 620,000 deaths of soldiers in the war (the Washington Post on Wednesday stated that historians now put the number at 740,000); most of those who died did so of disease rather than in battle. Faust indicates that the people of the United States embarked on a new relationship with death as a result of this industrial slaughter.

We had an active discussion of the book, occasionally digressing from the main subject (as we so often do). Thus we talked about music related to war deaths, and the relative success of different generals, Civil War poetry, and Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary.

We noted that the Civil War was fought largely by volunteer armies; there were relatively few professional soldiers. The impact of battle and the soldiers life would have been different for a farm boy from Iowa or North Carolina than for a professional soldier, and the way a family might experience of the death of a volunteer would be different than the way a family might experience the death of a professional soldier -- different and more difficult.

We also note that in the Confederate army, the enlisted soldiers would have been of a lower class than the officers. (Less than one-third of Confederate whites owned any slaves, and only a small portion of that  third owned large plantations with many slaves.) Plantation owners who chose to serve in the Confederate army would have taken their arms, horses and slaves with them and become officers. Still we thought that southern troops generally supported their cultural institutions. Indeed, they would have supported the institution of slavery even not owning slaves, if only because the slaves and not the poor whites were at the bottom of the social structure.

We noted that mortality was much higher in the 19th century than it is today. While two percent of the population died as soldiers during the war, or an average of one-half of one percent per year, the prewar mortality was about 1.4 percent per year. People were more used to death than we are today, although the deaths of men of military age would even then have been relatively rare in normal years. During the war women would continue to die (often giving birth) as would children and old people. Thus the soldiers might have represented something over a quarter of the total deaths each year.

It was the Victorian age. Women were expected to grieve differently than men. Indeed, women were expected to wear deep mourning black for a year after the death of a husband, and a somber grey for another year after that; men were expected to be more stoic and to return to their work and normal duties relatively quickly.

The Good Death

We discussed author Faust's use of quotations from letters to their homes from soldiers, especially emphasizing the preparation for a "good death". Faust indicates that one of the aspects believed to make for a good death at the time was to die at home, surrounded by family and friends. That of course did not happen for the men who died in battle, in the field hospitals of their wounds, in camps of disease, or on the march. Faust describes efforts to provide surrogates to comfort the dying from comrades in arms, doctors and nurses; she also describes the efforts to write to relatives providing details of the death.

Faust seems to take these letters at face value. It was suggested that letters from young people home to their families may have systematic distortions of the writers actual feelings and perceptions of their surroundings. A member suggested that when he was a young man living far from home, he certainly crafted letters home with some care; another suggested that daughters don't tell their families everything. Similarly, letters from military superiors and comrades reporting a death to the deceased's family are likely to be empathetic to the distress that that family would expect to be feeling.

One member was rather eloquent describing the anguish of a mother whose son had died, wanting to know when and how it had happened, whether he had suffered, and where he was buried. For a great many of the Civil War dead, their burial place was not known to their families until after the war or indeed ever. For some, believing in the resurrection of the body, the interment of the body of a loved one had great importance.

It was noted that many Irish immigrants would have been recruited for the army as they got off the boat from Ireland. There was a custom at the time (and indeed that lasted much later) to hold an "American wake" for a young Irish man or woman departing for America in recognition that he/she would probably never see his/her family again, that they would not have had the benefit of his/her presence at the death of Irish family members, nor of those left behind at the death of the American relative. These Irish immigrant soldiers did not share the expectation of a death at home surrounded by loved ones that author Faust attributes to the citizen soldiers.

The majority of the soldiers were members of Protestant denominations and Faust suggests that there were a number of factors contributing to a "good death": the person should be conscious of his fate, willing to accept it, shown signs of belief in God and in his own salvation, and leave messages for those who would in normal times have been at his side. Faust suggests that there was a convergence in these beliefs among all denominations, including Catholics and Jews.

One member expressed doubts. He suggested that Catholic soldiers would have believed a good death involved confession of his sins, absolution by a priest, the last sacrament administered by a priest, and burial in holy ground. We mentioned the "conditional absolution" given by Father Corby at Gettysburg to the Irish Brigade (the Catholic priest who later became head of Notre Dame University, who served the mostly Catholic Irish-American soldiers), but the member suggested that most of the Catholic soldiers who died on the battlefield would not have felt that their religious needs at death had been met.

A member mentioned that he understood that it was not uncommon for non-Catholics to ask for a priest to hear a general confession for absolution of sins, and that he had conversations with a retired priest who had himself heard such confessions.

A criticism of the book was that it probably did not do justice to the diversity of responses to death in the differing subcultures from which the soldiers and their families were drawn. Families living in the teaming slums of New York and Philadelphia may not have reacted in the same way as farm families in the north; southerners were deserting the Confederate army in large numbers toward the end of the war, in part because their families were in desperate need for their help at home; the death of such a soldier might have been catastrophic for his wife and children. Indians had been involved and it was noted that the largest mass hanging in American history was of Indians during the Civil War; how would Indian families respond to the death of an Indian soldier?

One of our members who could not attend the meeting had earlier emailed using our club list-serve that he felt the book did not do justice to the situation of these black troops, so hated by the southerners.  There were some 180,000 blacks who enlisted on the Union side starting in 1862.

• We assumed that most of these were free before the war rather than freed slaves. These soldiers probably tended to fight for more personal and deeply felt reasons than did white soldiers. Would their families have reacted differently than white families to the death of a soldier family member?
• As massacres at Fort Pillow and at Poison Springs, Arkansas indicated, black soldiers might well be executed rather than treated as prisoners after being captured during battle. They clearly did not have a "good death". How would family members of have responded to the death of a soldier shot after being captured?
• Some of the black soldiers would have been escaped slaves, whose families remained in slavery or perhaps were in the "Contraband Camps" (camps set up for emancipated slaves who had sought Union protection); how would those families learn of the deaths of the beloved soldiers? How would they mourn them?

(Surprisingly perhaps, we did not discuss the book's chapter titled "Killing", perhaps because none of us had had experience of serving as a soldier in battle and thus had little basis to judge why soldiers killed in battle and how they felt about doing so. I assume that neither had author Drew Gilpin Faust.)

One member mentioned the extensive notes provided by author Faust, a professional historian. That led to a discussion of sources. Some members found the references to letters to be useful and informative. Another quoted that "the plural of anecdote is not data".  Statistical analysis of the mail from three million soldiers written over four years would be a huge effort, and apparently was not undertaken for this book. It was also noted that young people away from home do not always write the truth in letters to the home folk, and it is perhaps dangerous to take the content of these letters as factual. So too, writing about the death of someone to their family, one tends to be kind to the deceased rather than brutally honest.

The book is fundamentally about an aspect of American culture and its change during the Civil War, and notes to other authors' works that have considered these changes are quite appropriate. A scholarly analysis of cultural change should take into account what other scholars have written on the subject, and appropriate notes to sources would help many readers.

Union soldiers wounded during the July 29, 1862, Battle of Savage’s Station in Virginia lie outside a field hospital near the battlefield.

Failures During the War

From today's vantage point, we percieve that the death rate was too high during the war. Far too many people died of disease, in part because of poor hygiene in the military camps. It was noted in our discussion that the situation was so bad that soldiers camped around Washington, Richmond and other cities polluted water supplies for the civilian population causing civilian disease outbreaks. A member mentioned that Willie Lincoln in Washington and Willie Sherman (the son of William Tecumseh Sherman) in Vicksburg both died of typhoid during such outbreaks.

Wounded soldiers might lie on a field of battle for a day or more before receiving medical attention for lack of ambulances and for lack of periods of ceased fire to enable their recovery. A wounded soldier who reached a field hospital they might wait days until an overworked surgeon could provide service; often the only available treatment was amputation; sometimes the doctor would have amputated many patients limbs without cleaning his instruments nor his hands.

While soldiers sometimes tied identification notes to their clothing, often the bodies of dead soldiers could not be identified. Indeed, when a defeated army left a battlefield often its dead were dumped in mass graves or simply left to rot in the open.

Rosters of soldiers killed and wounded were required, but apparently often neglected. Officers seeking to recover from battle and reorganize their troops, perhaps retreating, apparently had little time nor interest in accurate record keeping. Moreover, late in the war it may have been difficult to find out if specific soldiers had been killed, had been captured, had been wounded and taken to receive medical treatment (and perhaps sent home disabled or died) or simply deserted.

A letter might be written to a dead soldier's family by the officer under whom the soldier had served, or by a fellow soldier, or by someone in the hospital in which he had died, but their was no formal system for the government to notify next of kin. There was even less possibility of notification of family for someone missing in action.

While the bodies of a few notables were shipped home, the best most soldiers could hope for was a rapid burial in a makeshift coffin and poorly marked grave. Southerners were especially viscous toward Union soldiers, and most so toward black Union soldiers. One Union soldier's remains were found with a pitchfork stabbed through its back. Many soldiers were buried in mass graves. Other bodies were simply left where they had fallen.

In the south, it was often the former slaves who created cemeteries for the Union dead and tended them. While the government in Washington treated the Confederate dead as traitors, denying them military honors comparable to those of its Union soldiers for decades after the war, the Confederate anger was still more extreme.

Institutional Development

An important aspect of the book is its discussion of institutional change. There was a medical corps at the beginning of the war, and field hospitals were established at battlefields (albeit inadequate to the needs), but there was no ambulance service. The book describes how the father of a dead soldier made it his mission in life to convince the army to establish its ambulance service; he was successful in that endeavor.

At the outbreak of the war there was no formal governmental systems for identifying the dead, notifying their families, nor providing "decent" graves. There were no national graveyards. Death registries, notifications, and national cemeteries were all institutionalized by the government as a result of the Civil War.

The book also describes Americans reacting to the war by creating non-governmental organizations such as the Sanitary Commission and the Christian Commission in the north and women's groups who organized cemeteries for the dead soldiers in the South. Clara Barton in 1865 created an office for correspondence with the families of missing men, helping to fulfill the need for information about loved ones who did not return from the war. Clara Barton at the beginning of the war collected bandages, food and clothing from Ladies' Aid societies for the troops, and eventually worked to clean field hospitals, apply dressings to wounds, and serve food to wounded soldiers, having gotten military permission to fill an unmet need.

The private sector also played its role commercializing aspects of death, for example selling coffins (including sealed ones for shipping bodies home). Embalming for such shipments was sufficiently common that it fostered embalming becoming common among the civilian population. Mathew Brady's company photographed battlefields and exhibited the images. Reporters telegraphed news from the front, and newspapers printed lists of the local dead.

Final Comments

One member saw this book as opening a number of new fields for historical research. Did different subcultures in America respond to the wholesale deaths of soldiers in the Civil War differently, and if so how and why? Indeed, the book barely begins the academic analysis of the ways in which the Civil War experience changed American culture's treatment of death.

We found it hard to empathize with the feelings of our ancestors as described in this book. Some of the mourning customs seem strange and artificial. So too do some of their religious beliefs. We could not understand their apparent callousness with regard to the bodies of dead soldiers nor fully relate to the ways that grief was expressed by their families.

The discussion was initiated calling upon one member who we knew in advance liked the book. Her opinion was shared by some other members who were present. Several members had not read it, perhaps due to the summer doldrums or the dark topic. At least one member found many problems with the book. Thus there did not seem to be consensus.

Vicksburg National Military Cemetery

Possible Books for September, 2014

One of the possibilities that came out of the last book club meeting was to read a book on World War I in October or November, given that so many good books on the beginning of the war are available, but many of them are long. Please take a look again at the discussion of those books.

Someone suggested a biography of Catherine the Great. Given her role in the creation of the "modern" Russian state, this seems an interesting idea. 

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie (4.4 stars, this edition 2012, 574 pages) Here is a review.

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Peter the Great, Nicholas and Alexandra, and The Romanovs returns with another masterpiece of narrative biography, the extraordinary story of an obscure German princess who became one of the most remarkable, powerful, and captivating women in history. Born into a minor noble family, Catherine transformed herself into empress of Russia by sheer determination. For thirty-four years, the government, foreign policy, cultural development, and welfare of the Russian people were in her hands. She dealt with domestic rebellion, foreign wars, and the tidal wave of political change and violence churned up by the French Revolution. Catherine’s family, friends, ministers, generals, lovers, and enemies—all are here, vividly brought to life. History offers few stories richer than that of Catherine the Great. In this book, an eternally fascinating woman is returned to life.

Someone suggested this book:

Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America by Richard White (3.2 stars, 518 pages of text) Here is a review.

This original, deeply researched history shows the transcontinentals to be pivotal actors in the making of modern America. But the triumphal myths of the golden spike, robber barons larger than life, and an innovative capitalism all die here. Instead we have a new vision of the Gilded Age, often darkly funny, that shows history to be rooted in failure as well as success. 8 pages of illustrations

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is being celebrated this year, and it was suggested that we might read a relevant book.

An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Two Presidents, Two Parties, and the Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by Todd S. Purdum (4.5 stars, 2014, 340 pages of text). The book is available in hardback and kindle, but the paperback will not be published until 2015. Here is a review.

A top Washington journalist recounts the dramatic political battle to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the law that created modern America, on the fiftieth anniversary of its passage
It was a turbulent time in America—a time of sit-ins, freedom rides, a March on Washington and a governor standing in the schoolhouse door—when John F. Kennedy sent Congress a bill to bar racial discrimination in employment, education, and public accommodations. Countless civil rights measures had died on Capitol Hill in the past. But this one was different because, as one influential senator put it, it was “an idea whose time has come.”
In a powerful narrative layered with revealing detail, Todd S. Purdum tells the story of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, recreating the legislative maneuvering and the larger-than-life characters who made its passage possible. From the Kennedy brothers to Lyndon Johnson, from Martin Luther King Jr. to Hubert Humphrey and Everett Dirksen, Purdum shows how these all-too-human figures managed, in just over a year, to create a bill that prompted the longest filibuster in the history of the U.S. Senate yet was ultimately adopted with overwhelming bipartisan support. He evokes the high purpose and low dealings that marked the creation of this monumental law, drawing on extensive archival research and dozens of new interviews that bring to life this signal achievement in American history.
Often hailed as the most important law of the past century, the Civil Rights Act stands as a lesson for our own troubled times about what is possible when patience, bipartisanship, and decency rule the day.

It was suggested that we might read a biography of Metternich. There is a famous one, out of print but available used at affordable prices.

A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812-1822 by Henry A. Kissinger (4.1 stars, 1973, 354 pages) Here is the Kirkus review.

The Napoleonic Wars were followed by an almost unprecedented century of political stability. A World Restored analyses the alliances formed and treaties signed by the world's leaders during the years 1812 to 1822, focussing on the personalities of the two main negotiators: Viscount Castlereagh, the British foreign secretary, and Prince von Metternich, his Austrian counterpart. Henry Kissinger explains how the turbulent relationship between these two men, the differing concerns of their respective countries and the changing nature of diplomacy all influenced the final shape of the peace. Originally published in 1957.

In 2009 we read Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna by Adam Zamoyski which covered some of the same material.

It occurs to me that we have not read anything about U.S. foreign policy per se. A relatively new book seems interesting:

The Blood Telegram by Gary J. Bass (4.5 stars, 2014, 346 pages of text) Here is a review.

This magnificent history provides the first full account of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger’s secret support for Pakistan in 1971 as it committed shocking atrocities in Bangladesh—which led to war between India and Pakistan, shaped the fate of Asia, and left major strategic consequences for the world today.
Drawing on previously unheard White House tapes, recently declassified documents, and his own extensive investigative reporting, Gary Bass uncovers an astonishing unknown story of superpower brinkmanship, war, scandal, and conscience. Revelatory, authoritative, and compulsively readable, The Blood Telegram is a thrilling chronicle of a pivotal chapter in American foreign policy.
Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction; Winner of the Lionel Gelber Prize for Best Foreign Affairs Book; One of the Best Books of the Year at * The Economist * Financial Times * The New Republic * The Washington Post * Kirkus Reviews * A New York Times Notable Book

This also seems an interesting book, dealing with a country we have not read about but which has some importance in the world.

Indonesia, Etc.: Exploring the Improbable Nation by Elizabeth Pisani (unrated, 2013, 380 pages of text) Here is a review.

Indonesia "is the world’s fourth most populous nation and third most populous democracy. With 210 million citizens who identify as Muslim, Indonesia is also the country with the largest number of Muslims. The Indonesian capital, Jakarta, tweets more than any other city on earth, and around 64 million Indonesians (more than the population of the United Kingdom) use Facebook. It is among the world’s largest suppliers of thermal coal, palm oil, copper, tin, nickel, gold, rubber, coconuts, rice, and coffee." Los Angeles Review of Books

Previously I thought we might want to read about history related to current hot spots, especially Poland (for its relevance to the Ukrainian crisis) or Syria. I identified several relevant books. The best of these seem to be:

Poland: A History by Adam Zamoyski  (4.3 stars, 2012, 426 pages) Here is a review.

As Zamoyski set out to update The Polish Way, his bestselling first history of Poland, he realized the task required not so much re-writing as re-thinking the known facts well as the assumptions of the past. The events of the last twenty years and the growth of the independent Polish state allowed him to look at Poland's past with a fresh eye. Tracing Poland's complex development from the Middle Ages to present day, Zamoyski examines the country's political, economic, and military struggles, as well as its culture, art, and richly varied society through the ages, bringing the major events and characters in Poland's history to life.

Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East by Patrick Seale (3.9 stars, 1990, 495 pages of text) A review is here.

“This is a book in the finest tradition of investigative scholarship. The research is awesome. . . . Seale’s great strength is his ability to explain the confusing kaleidoscopic nature of Middle Eastern diplomacy. He understands the game being played and also knows the players. . . . [An] impressive book.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review

And a late addition, by one of my favorite authors:

Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West by Wallace Stegner (4.5 stars, 1953 reprinted edition 1992, 367 pages of text) Here is the Kirkus review.

In this book Wallace Stegner recounts the sucesses and frustrations of John Wesley Powell, the distinguished ethnologist and geologist who explored the Colorado River, the Grand Canyon, and the homeland of Indian tribes of the American Southwest. A prophet without honor who had a profound understanding of the American West, Powell warned long ago of the dangers economic exploitation would pose to the West and spent a good deal of his life overcoming Washington politics in getting his message across. Only now, we may recognize just how accurate a prophet he was.
"This book goes far beyond biography, into the nature and soul of the American West. It is Stegner at his best, assaying an entire era of our history, packing his pages with insights as shrewd as his prose." —Ivan Doig 

"Stegner’s book now ranks as one of the most influential books ever written about the West, and more than any other work its publication explains Powell’s resurrection to sainthood after World War Two." -- Donald Worster

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,