Favorite posts, 2010

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Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan (2007)

Every culture has its historical moments that matter a great deal to its members. The moments can be mythological: in the English-speaking world, millions care about the legend of Robin Hood and whether it reflects a historical reality.  It is hard to go broke making a movie about Robin Hood.

If the fall of the Tangut kingdom is your emotionally resonant moment in history, this is the movie for you.  A combination of Russians, Mongolians, Kazhaks,  and Germans have invested a lot of money and talent on the intuition that there are millions of moviegoers just like you.

Just in case you have never heard of the Tangut kingdom, this destruction, if you believe the movie, was the turning point in the early life of Genghis Khan. Its destruction begins and ends the movie; in between there is a rather curious account of the early years of the great conqueror, when he is repeatedly betrayed, defeated, robbed of all his meager wealth, and enslaved. The only positive elements in the story are his relationship with his wife, and his relationship with a blood brother who is not always on his side.  Oh, he is also faithful to the Mongol code, which other people give lip service to but ditch whenever it is convenient. Thus Temugin's (Genghis' ) rough early years. He plays by the rules, everybody else cheats. But don't worry, he will undoubtedly return in a later movie (if financing is available) to teach the Mongols law.  In the meantime, he looks soulful, and does not send away his wife, whom he chose when he was nine, even though there is a reasonable doubt about the paternity of her son. (She was kidnapped by his enemies and who knows what happened then.)

A whole bunch of cultural buttons are being pushed here, but if you're not a Central Asian it's not exactly clear what they are.

This may come across as a negative review, but actually it is a well made movie. It's just not Robin Hood.   For the non-Central Asians among us, the most remarkable feature of the film may be the vast landscapes which fill the screen for the entire two hours.

 Images:  top, Temugin, played by the big Japanese star Tadanobu Asano;  bottom, the Tangut kingdom (Western Xia), shown in green.

This blog's top 5 posts, according to Blogger stats

The legend of Saladin
Not quite Christmas, but wolves anyway
More from Kyrgyzstan
Memories of Catal Huyuk
Blue sunset?

They are all there not for my deathless prose, but for the pictures, none of which originate with me. (The wolves, alas, are no longer accessible, except by searching for the image via Google.)

Charny on retreating and surrendering -- my attempt to understand him

An excerpt from work in progress:

Scenarios involving retreating or surrendering or both appear in a conservative estimate in eleven of Charny's questions on war. It is clear from several of them that anything resembling running away might be interpreted as blameworthy. Question W30 says :

There is a battle …in which many men-at-arms of the defeated party depart and go away. Some consider that these have gone on their honor without being defeated; and many others consider that those who have gone are defeated. How can this be?

Judgments vary, but elsewhere we see that if the judgment was adverse, if one was thought to have been "fleeing" to one's "dishonor," it was so serious that some might think it would wipe out a lifetime of renown (W39). What distinguished dishonorable flight from the "safe and honorable withdrawal" which Charny thought all good men-at-arms needed to learn to execute? Of course we have no correct answer to this, just indications about how serious the dilemma was. For instance, in W31 we have a story that shows what problems arise when good military practice and the perception that one is fleeing conflict:

A captain of men-at-arms rides out in the field and orders some of his scouts to see the situation of his enemies who are in the field; and there are a sufficient number of these scouts. And at the approach of their enemies one party of their enemies pursues them faster than they can go; and the scouts retreat from their enemies and are able to retreat without loss. So there are some of the scouts who turn back and meet their enemies, and perform arms like good people should; and others retreat to their captain and make their report. Which of these are to be more valued and praised: those who went back to their lord or those who are captured?

The scouts who turn back and fight are doing something good and praiseworthy; yet Charny thought that the scouts who returned were also doing something valuable, and were obedient to their captain to boot. Perhaps Charny anticipated a reflexive endorsement of warriors who "perform arms like good people should." This is consistent with scenarios discussed in W7 and W8, where what might seem sensible course of action is contrasted with conventional belligerent courage. In the first we see a captain, the principal leader of one side in a hypothetical war, who

 is defeated but remains on the field so long that he sees and understands that he is unable to recover his fortunes or the day; and the battle has been very well fought. Which is the better thing for him to do: remain and take his chances, or leave so that he can recoup? And if he leaves, should he thereby lose his honor?

We may think that it hardly makes sense that the captain should sacrifice his rights and his person after one serious defeat; and we've seen that Charny did not reject the possibility of honorable retreat. Then we remember that King John refused to leave the field at Poitiers in 1356, even though he understood that the day was lost. This gives the scenario in question W7 a real piquancy. Question W7 also prepares us for the dilemma of the bodyguards in the next question who seriously contemplate abandoning their lord to return to fight in a lost battle. There are good reasons for them to remain with the captain, yet they hesitate:

Which is the better thing to do: lead their master to safety, and in that case, either go with him, or send him outside of the melee alone, and tell him to save himself if he is able? There is a great risk that he will not be able to save himself; and by returning into the battle they take the risk of death or capture. Since they have agreed to be men in his retinue, will they be blamed if they go with him? Which is better, to go or to stay?

Neither avoiding the presumed shame of abandoning their employer, their "master," nor the danger of returning to a hopeless situation are unquestionably preferable to the criticism they might attract for leaving the field. Even if we guess that Charny might have a clear preference himself, he expected debate. This is confirmed by other scenarios, which show that there was an entire terminology of warfare, which was meant among other things to clarify what was honorable behavior. One of the questions I would most like answered, were that possible, is W37:

Since I have heard it said that one is able to leave and retreat (retraire) from a battle from the defeated side (la part desconfite), if he has acted in seven ways without being killed or taken, without being reproached. How can this be and what are the seven ways?

It would certainly be very illuminating to have Charny's list of seven mitigating circumstances, and his comments on them, given that he was twice captured and must have twice surrendered himself, even though he did not consider this something that could be done lightly (W79). Unless Charny is disingenuously preparing to present a list of his own as something he heard from others, the list of seven implies serious discussion, perhaps long debate, that unfortunately never found the pen to write it down.

I feel this way about the Early Modern sometimes

Dr. Beachcombing:

Beachcombing’s first thought on reading this was just how glad he is to not have lived in the seventeenth century. The Middle Ages did bigotry with style, whereas modernity manages tolerance tolerably well. The early moderns though fall between two stools – even the likeable Gage [the English Dominican, Thomas Gage (obit 1656) who traveled to the New World in the first quarter of the seventeenth century] converted to Catholicism and back again to Anglicanism and then worked with that monster Oliver Cromwell towards the end of his life.

You will want to read this post. It's got chocolate.

Image:   Guy Fawkes, a 17th century sort of guy. Er, fellow.

More beautiful iron work from a re-enactor

Historical re-enactors and re-creationists don't have the highest reputation either with the general public or among scholars.  since I have spent more than my fair share of time running around in armor, I  have a  different opinion. Part of it goes back to the attitude that "historians don't own history" ( or at least not all of it :-)) but also because I know a number of people who have come out of the reenactment and become masters of some historical-based skill.   Their accomplishments deserve the highest praise.

One such person is Darrell Markewitz, whom I've known for almost 40 years now. In that time has grown from a young eccentric  to a mature eccentric who knows things other people don't know and can do things that other people can't do.  He loves researching historical techniques and has done valuable work in connection with Viking culture in North America, but he is also a contemporary person who makes iron – based art for modern clients. Here, too, he might be seen as a reenactor – reenacting some of the graphic innovations of the 1970s. Whatever you call it, I say it is good, and better than good. The picture above is an example of a commission piece for a patron/client.  Go here to have a closer look and, if you've got the cash and share Darrell's belief in the beauty of iron, give him a call.

Nipissing University, pictures from September 2010

Every time I go on sabbatical, it seems, a new wing is thrown up at Nipissing University. I come back when everyone else has already gotten used to the alterations, and I feel like the new kid even though I've been here for 20 years. Not that I'm complaining!  Although I missed the good company I had out in the portable when I first came here (not to mention the peace and quiet), it took little effort to adjust to the good facilities of the H Wing. And now the R Wing is up and running; and although it's not really new anymore, this is the first year I've  had the opportunity to use it (one class in R the 313) and I am enjoying it a great deal.

How so? Well, it is a matter of the view.  We always tell people how beautiful the setting of our university is, and it  is quite true that it is beautiful. However, if you are inside the complex we share with Canadore College, you seldom get a good look at it.  Sure, most offices and some classrooms have windows, but they don't  exactly give access to a panoramic impression.  

Until now.

When I walk from my office in the H Wing over to my seminar classroom in the R Wing, both on the third floor, I get this gorgeous view of the pond, of Canadore College, and the trees of the conservation area  from the corridor windows.  Here are some pictures I took during one of our many rainy days in September; but sometimes a gray day really brings out of fall colors. I will let you judge; but if it doesn't come across to you it is probably due to my limited skills as a photographer.

Architects! Well done!

Historians don't own history

The e-mail list MEDIEV-L, like many an established community, falls into repeated discussions of the same subjects. One of the more common repeated conversations is the one about the accuracy of historical movies; many contributors to the list are very critical of just about anything that comes down the pike. I can understand that; I used to have the same attitude. But once upon a time I tried writing a screen treatment of Gregory of Tours' History of the Franks, and I realized that I would have to take considerable liberties with Gregory's material if I was going to tell a story that anyone in the present would care about. Since then, although I can be very aggravated by stupid choices made by filmmakers, I think I've had a more realistic view what contemporary film demands of its practitioners.

In the latest round of films discussion, that famed benefactor of the human race, Paul Halsall, offered the following essay. I find myself in substantial agreement with it so even though it is somewhere on the web and has been since 2001 (sez Paul), I republish it here with permission of the author.

Film is perhaps the most common way the modern American public is exposed to history, but many people still think that it is a waste of time to think seriously about "movies," since, after all, movies are just entertainment. One Internet poster put it this way:

..the idea of the movie is to let the people who go to the cinema have a good time and (if possible) learn something without being too serious.

This position -- that film is primarily entertainment -- is often made by students. The position is wrong.

Some films, it is true, are simply a matter of entertainment (American Pie II for instance), but many others use a particular artistic form to take part in a cultural discussion while also being entertaining. A large number of successful entertaining films have involved a good deal of political commentary, and entire genres are concerned with how we, as human beings, deal with pain and suffering.

There is no reason that a film cannot be both entertaining and participate in the "cultural conversation about the past that we call history."

More than this, the dichotomy between "entertainment" and "a good time movie" really involves a denial that film is a legitimate art form. By now, after a century of cinema, it is clear to most thinking people that film can be an art form, and is quite often a "high art."

It is true that unlike a number of arts -- poetry, drawing -- film is heavily dependent of both technology and truly enormous amounts of funding, and also true that film is a collaborative to an extraordinary degree. But so is a play, and no one would assert that plays are "just for fun."

It is perhaps worth noting that academic history itself is a form of intellectual entertainment.  It is true that many historians write badly, or at least do not prioritize writing, but in its presentation of ideas to the mind for consideration, its effort to engage its consumers in thought about things apart from the mundane details of life, I think there is more in common between history and other arts than many people realize.

The important thing is not to mistake "amusement" for "entertainment."  Amusement means nothing but passing satiation, but some of the greatest achievements of human beings have been "entertainments." Good films can be great "entertainments" also: the sadness is when they are only amusements.  For all its faults, Braveheart was an entertainment, while A Knight's Tale was merely amusing.

[Let's not be too hard on "entertainment'! There are many ways of being "entertained" by a historical movie. One of my students who had never really heard of Scotland was inspired the film to start reading biographies of Wallace, and then to enroll in multiple classes in order to expand an interest that began in his imagination and made him want to care about the people he imagined.  Another viewer, say someone with a wide knowledge of Scottish history and the genealogy of its myths, could be "entertained" by the movie simply by contemplating the his or her knowledge of the multiple deflections to bring a myth to its current state. And yet another person could just enjoy men in woad slicing heads off.]

Could A Historical Film be Better than A Book?

It might be possible to mount not just a defense of film, but a real challenge to those who claim that film cannot, by its nature, do history. Perhaps historical film can be better than historical books? Let's try a small thought-experiment.

Both a film and a book are imperfect ways of presenting an understanding of the past.  The problems that film faces in doing so is that, at least in the case of feature films, a single narrative is usually imposed on complex events, dramatic needs force compression of events and personalities, and cinematographic needs require that all the blanks in the record (what people were wearing, who was standing in the background, how someone's voice sounded) be filled in. The problems that books face in doing history include a complete lack of a three dimensional vision, the requirement that readers be able to read in a particular way, very often the imposition of a single point of view, the imposition of analytic simplifying on an actually infinitely complex reality, and finally the presentation of inaccurate information to readers whose first contact with that period is through a particular book.

Just then as it is impossible for film to do accurate history, so also is it impossible for a book to do accurate history.  Both forms, however, have advantages and disadvantages. Just as it is absurd to criticize a scholarly book for its failures in cinematography, so it is absurd to criticize a film for its failures in detail, etc.

A parallel might lie in the rival claims of stage drama and opera.  I think a claim could be made that great opera is a more "realistic" form than spoken drama. It is true that in spoken drama, there can be more scenes and more detail, and it is also true that most people do not go through life singing out their emotions. However, the norm in drama is for person A to speak, then person B.  While person A is speaking, we have no real idea what person B is thinking. Occasionally a dramatist might have two speaking at once, but any more than that and it becomes a hubbub. Famously in The Marriage of Figaro, Mozart is able to construct a scene in which the emotional states of six characters are presented to the audience simultaneously.  In that scene, since in real life multiple people are present at a given event, Mozart is more realistic than Beaumarchais could ever be.

The point is of course that spoken drama and opera are two different ways to present a dramatic event (a novel is yet another), and each has its advantages.   Academic history is an important way to present the past, but all too often the past that is presented in drained of human vividness. Good film, and even Hollywood feature films, can present a humanly vivid past that is true in its own way.

Let me give an example. Gladiatorial games and staged chariot races have been of interest to both academic historians and filmmakers. Academic historians are excellent at getting the details right, documenting the social and class structure of mounting the games, and so forth. Equally, if you want to understand the political implications of the hippodrome, you need to read academic historians on Circus factions.

But in the case of the gladiatorial games, academic historians are simply unable to present the horror of human beings deliberately going to watch other human beings die as well as Cecil B. DeMille did in Sign of the Cross. One might claim that DeMille was being ahistorical, and that the games were normal to the Roman viewers, but we have ample sources documenting contemporary horror -- think of the Passion of Perpetua or Tertullian's On the Spectacles.  In this case, DeMille is in some respects a better historian than an academic writer can be.

In the case of chariot races, little can be understood until one understands the thrill -- and in that respect Fred Niblo's 1927 Ben Hur, and even the 1959 version, are better or at least equally as good as any academic history.

The Problem with the History vs. Hollywood Approach

In 2001, the History Channel initiated a series called History vs. Hollywood. Although the show turned out to be remarkably uncritical about historical inaccuracies in Hollywood movies, its title encapsulated the dominant model in professional historian's thinking about historical film -- that they are to be judged by how "accurate" they are.

Since I first taught a class on medieval history and film in the summer of 2001, I have become increasingly unhappy with judgments on historical or period films that are based entirely on "accuracy."

I am not the first to reject the model. Robert Rosenstone's work is always cited as crucial, and he has long argued that film is a potentially better way to relate history than text. For me, however, his work is singularly unconvincing, or at least irrelevant, since he ends up endorsing not history films as they are actually produced, but specialist documentaries hewing to a programmatic formula.

I want to argue, instead, that there a ways to think about historical movies as they actually are that might make sense to a professional historian, and perhaps more importantly to anyone who enjoys a movie but wants also to be able to think about film critically.

Here are my suggestions about how to view historical movies.

1. Realize that the past is not owned by historians.

All sorts of other valuable cultural producers also make claims on the past -- poets, visual artists, theologians, novelists, and politicians. The assumption that "we" as historians own the past is simply not admitted by all others who use the past, and there is no intrinsic reason why film makers should credit historians claims more than others.

The usual assumption is that Academic Historians own the past because they have more accurate information and better skills of interpretation.   In the field of academic publishing, this is certainly true, but standing besides the past as determined by academic historians are "other pasts" that actually matter to people. These other pasts are constructed through a series of filters and distortions, amplifications and deletions, censorships and romanticizations.

Given that academic history is, more or less, only 200-300 years old, it was these "other pasts" that were almost exclusively the way that people in the period we study (i.e. the "middle ages") actually conceived of there own past.   Charlemagne, for example, was in pretty much the same legendary position in thirteenth century France that Wallace was in eighteenth century Scotland.

I would insist that academic historians who insist on sweeping away all the "later myths" are missing the richness of the past, rather like "archeologists" who to get to Periclean ruins used to sweep away the later Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Serb, and Ottoman accretions.

There are many ways of looking at the past. I am in no way suggesting that academic history is deficient, but the way some academic historians talk about historical films reminds me of the Catholics who, upon arriving in heaven, have to be sneaked past the areas holding those of other faiths because they just won't believe its heaven if anyone else is there.

2. Use a multiplicity of ways in which to view the connection of a film and history:

A: A historical film is usually made using topoi (literary or cinematic conventions) established within the history of cinema.

Gladiator for example owes a lot to previous films such as Ben Hur (1927), The Sign of the Cross, Ben Hur (1959), El Cid, and so forth. It is also an expression of a particular director's outlook. Compare the sweep over Los Angeles in Blade Runner, for example, with the sweep over Rome in Gladiator, and the role of director Ridley Scott's own art becomes clear.

Medieval historians who comment on movies are often painfully unaware for both the importance of conventions in the history of cinema, not to mention the significance of understanding that particular directors may manifest a distinct auteur style.  One of the many films made about St. Francis -- Francesco -- features Mickey Rourke as the saint, a casting choice that caused much hilarity. That hilarity illustrates what I have come to see as a major flaw in the way medievalists typically view movies.  Counter type casting is in fact a very common technique, and we should not make too much of the fact that Mickey Rourke plays Francis. We might indeed celebrate how such casting forces a break with overly pious representations of the saint.   (Keanu Reeves, for instance, has performed well in two of the most successful Buddhist movies ever made: as the Buddha in Little Buddha and as the Buddha-to-be in The Matrix).  For any serious historical critic of Francesco, however, the really important thing  is that it is the product of one of the most important female "auteur" directors, Liliana Cavani.  If historians are going to use the film for more than classroom clips, they need to consider the film in relation to Cavani's other interests.  Her film on the Tibetan religious figure Milarepa, for instance, must be taken into account when considering her view of Francis.

B: A historical film, like other films, often reflects the period in which it was made.

Sticking with previous examples, it is interesting just how normative an "early Christian" connection was in almost all Hollywood Roman movies (even Spartacus), whereas Ridley Scott, part of a largely secularized international elite, seems deliberately to avoid that particular topos.

The contemporary reception of movie might also be an interesting area for historian’s consideration. Braveheart, for example, boosted the polls for the Scottish Nationalist Party, and was extensive used in its advertising

C: A historical film can be considered as the product of a cinematic historian.

This is the category where straightforward considerations of accuracy and intent do come in.

Historians need to be careful, though. In the case of Braveheart, the star and director Mel Gibson was asked in one interview how he had learned about Wallace, and he respond that the "script had a lot of information." In this case, the "historian" was the scriptwriter rather than the director.

A film such as Gladiator, which caught a lot of flak from historians, in fact contained a good deal of accurate information, mixed in with inaccuracies, while The Seventh Seal, almost universally praised, has no relationship to its supposed period whatsoever (on the other hand, it is a pretty good way to consider Swedish existentialism in the 1950s).

When evaluting a film as "cinematic history," it cannot be just a matter of checking off points on an accuracy list.

Many historical films concern war and warfare. Military realism has little to do with wider historical accuracy. Taking the example of Mel Gibson's The Patriot, it may have had quite a lot right in terms of uniforms and buttons, but was wildly off target and full of simply atrocious lies in its presentation of race relations and British military actions against civilians. Still, so is the Declaration of Independence in its description of George III and two-timing assertion of human equality in slave-owning society, so perhaps Gibson was being more subtle than I give him credit for in celebrating a revolution that was supported at the time by myths with a film that was entirely fallacious. But I doubt it.

In regard to Joan of Arc films we have a figure who, after Jesus, perhaps the most celebrated historical personage in cinema.. Almost everyone's favorite Joan   film is Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), which with the current addition of Einhorn's cantata can reduce a class of students to whimpering pieces of jelly/jello. It is true that Passion of Joan of Arc did stick entirely to trial transcripts. No one, however, could claim that Passion is historically accurate, but almost everyone understands that Dreyer did capture an aspect of Joan's importance.

D: A historical film can be considered in terms of its way of presenting the past.

This approach directly challenges the primacy of the "historical accuracy" school. Instead of viewing a historical film as a product of "cinematic history," let us consider that a given film might manifest quite different genres of historically-oriented literature - myth, epic, romance, gossip, and inspiration.  Indeed an awareness of the multiplicity of historical genres in film brings us closer to how how "the past" was thought about in the past. Ancient and medieval historical literatures in particular consisted not only of "rational history" (e.g. Thucydides, various medieval writers), but also myth and epic (Beowulf, The Iliad, Anna Comnena in one light), gossip (Suetonius, Michael Psellus), chronicle, miracle story, moralizing (Plutarch, Tacitus) and even nationalist evocation.

Thinking about historical film in this way gives us an opportunity to think about the ways that people in the past understood their own history. The modern study of history is a scientific enterprise to understand things "as they really were." The various approaches of modern historians -- political history, women's history, social history, or even cultural studies -- all fall into this "let's get to the truth" paradigm. But the "past" that was important to medieval audiences was not the "past as it was" but the "past" as a series of somewhat disconnected explanatory myths, epic stories, legendary figures, and entertaining romances. In some respects, then, just the sort of "past" that enthralls modern filmmakers and audiences.

In the case of Braveheart, our opinion of the film's "inaccuracies" becomes more complex when we realize that the "sources" for the screenwriters were not "the historical records of the early fourteenth century" but the writings about Wallace by "Blind Hary" at the end of the 15th century, writings intended to arouse patriotic passions against English penetration. Faulty as it might have been as early fourteenth century history, as a reproduction of a late medieval "nationalist" use of history, it is hard to think of a better "historical movie" than Braveheart!

I do not propose that any one of these ways of thinking about film and history is better than another. Rather I suggest that by using all of them, we can think more clearly about advantages and disadvantages of film as a way to present pre-modern history; assess more critically the different approaches taken by to directors; and come away from a historical movie with understanding rather than nit-picking concerns about accuracy.

--
Paul Halsall
drhalsall@gmail.com
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall

  Internet History Sourcebooks Project
University of Manchester academic staff.

Jethro Tull's "The Clasp," again

I have posted this song before, but I don't care.  Fifteenth century outfits, flute, tall ships, battle horses, the synthetic chiefs of history.  Truth speaks:

Two Americas on September 11, 2010

Anyone who reads this blog is probably aware of the outburst of Islamophobia in the USA recently, with intemperate denunciations of plans to build a Muslim community center a few blocks from the WTC site in Manhattan, threats to burn the Quran (exactly why I am not sure) and rabble-rousing about how (American!) Muslims might not deserve the full measure of 1st amendment protections.  Alarming and in some instances rather hysterical.  It's like the return of Millard Fillmore, in whose time it was the Irish who might not deserve the 1st amendment, because they were the wrong kind of Christian.

But bad as the active promotion of this stuff, by agitators obscure and prominent alike, may be, all may not as it seems.    Let me tell you what I saw this September 11.

I was invited to take part in an SCA medieval re-creation in Northern Illinois.   Despite the distance I decided to go.   Despite some early rain, the weather was mostly beautiful and there were probably 400 people there, dressed in a variety of medieval-style clothing and some very sharp-looking armor.  Among this crowd were some people playing the part of medieval Muslims, including a handful of ordinary black and white Americans wearing niqabs.

And no one said boo.

On September 11.

That evening I was at dinner with another participant, talking about a favorite SCA subject, one's upcoming artistic projects.  The lady in question expressed a more-than-idle desire to extend her knowledge of medieval culture by learning a foreign language. 

Arabic. 

About this point I began to feel that there must be two different USAs, on two different planets, one considerably less hysterical than the other.

Thank heaven.

I will remember this when the big-name agitators start thumping their drums, or start promoting some lunatic preacher or politician because they are steadfast against unAmerican Islam.

BTW, I did indeed see a remembrance ceremony of the 9-11 attacks, too.  The participants were very dignified and appropriate and had nothing to do with denouncing any religious tradition.

Image:  an attendee at the event in question.

Good-bye to dreams of uniqueness

For some time now, I have been thinking that the Internet is a great eroder of that sense of uniqueness that many of us have been attached to.   I have a rather odd last name, and I have never met anyone named Muhlberger who was not related to me. My father, who lived until his mid-80s, never did either. But now, thanks to the Internet, I know that there are a fair number of Muhlbergers in South America and even more in German-speaking Europe. The latter group includes one Steven Muhlberger, who like a variety of other Muhlbergers appeared in a scientific journal in a footnote.  Of course I could have guessed that there must be other Muhlberger around – in fact I had evidence  of their  existence  – but search engines easily throwing out numbers of Muhlbergers have made a bigger impact on my view of life.I may not have  physically stumbled across any nonrelated Muhlbergers, but they are easy enough to find if you really are interested.

There is a humorous report on the Internet which makes a point of non-uniqueness, or at least our realization of that situation. Chuck Shepherd, in connection with News of the Weird, back in 2003 assembled a list of things that can no longer be considered unusual, since they have been reported in the media so often. (I believe John Emerson referred this to me.)  Here are the first 10 of those items. No proof whatsoever is offered at these things have been reported ad nauseam, or just happen to occur all the time, but you know they have been. Just ask your stomach:

1. an old, widely-advertised phone-sex number is reassigned to a
church/charity
2. suspicious package thought to be a bomb, turns out to be something stupid
3. robber leaves his ID [wallet or appointment card for probation officer or etc.] at the scene
4. peace/brotherhood conference erupts into violence
5. robber on getaway accidentally hails unmarked police car
6. political candidate dies but still wins the election
7. family thinks he's dead, but he's not and attends his own funeral
8. hunters shoot each other
9. funeral home owner neglects/mixes up bodies
10. "victimized" drug buyer complains to police that someone sold him weak or bogus drugs

Plenty more where those came from!

Climate-change disaster and Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver

I am going to confess to a common fault. If things are bad enough, I just don't want to think about them, certainly not in any detail. And, as someone remarked at my dinner table two nights ago, things are pretty yucky right now.

The worst thing happening right now, if not the closest, is that climate change seems to be destroying an entire country, and not in a matter of years or decades, but in a matter of weeks or months. One commentator said about the Pakistan situation, "Where are the rock stars?"  For that matter, where are the Saudi princes?

Instead of talking about that, at least the moment, let me reflect on the skill and eloquence of that amazing writer, Neal Stephenson. I am reading his novel Quicksilver, and it has led me to reflect that some people will do a certain amount of research and write a course on early modern Europe, while someone else will to about the same amount of research and write something approaching  a masterpiece of historical fiction.

Here is Stephenson portraying a former harem slave speaking to William of Orange on a beach in Holland in 1685:

"In a way, a slave is fortunate, because she has more head-room for her dreams and phant'sies, which can soar to dizzying heights without bumping up 'gainst the ceiling. The ones who live at Versailles are as high as humans can get, they practically have to about stooped over because their wigs and headdresses are scraping the vault of heaven -- which consequently seems low and mean to them. When they look up, they see, not a vast beckoning space above, rather --"

[William]"The gaudy painted ceiling."

"Just so. You see? There is no head-room. And so for one who has just come from Versailles, it is easy to look at these waves, accomplishing so little, and to think that no matter what efforts we put forth in our lives, all we're really doing is rearranging the sand-grains in a beach that in essence never changes."

Comments welcome!

Image:  Amsterdam.

The worst jouster in the whole world in all of history

That is what Jordan Heron calls himself, since he has jousted in North America, Europe and Australasia. Only problem: he's getting good.

Flow it, show it: paired posts on hair in Iran

I grew up in the 1960s, and though I didn't wear my hair very long, I took the contempt and coercion laid on those who did very seriously indeed.

The battleground of hair is now in Iran. one of the warriors in that battle is human rights activist Fariba Davoodi Mohajer. Here's the beginning of her story as told in Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty:

On a cold winter day, Iranian women's rights activist and journalist Fariba Davoodi Mohajer made an about-face: Having worn the hijab for 25 years, she decided to cast her head scarf into the sea.

That was in 2006. But she still remembers every detail of that day in Ireland: how she walked along the seaport in Dublin for several hours pondering the act; how she watched as her head scarf was pulled away by the waves.

Above all, she remembers how for the first time she felt the wind blowing in her hair, a feeling she had long dreamed about.

"For a moment, I felt that there was no greater pleasure in the world than the feeling of the wind in my hair," Davoodi Mohajer says.

The article goes on to give the background to her decision:

Davoodi Mohajer grew up in a liberal family, but says she decided to wear the hijab at the time of Iran's 1979 revolution because she believed it would make her a better person and Iranian society a better place.

"I thought due to the propaganda then, and also books I used to read, that my hijab gives immunity to the society," Davoodi Mohajer says. "They kept saying men shouldn't become aroused, men shouldn't sin, and I thought preventing that [from happening] was my responsibility."

Creeping Questions

Several years later Davoodi Mohajer, who had chosen to wear the strictest form of the hijab, the head-to-toe chador, began questioning it and other Islamic laws in which she had once firmly believed.

She says her studies and her human rights activities had a key role in her reassessment of reasons for wearing the hijab in the first place.

Davoodi Mohajer says she started asking herself whether the hijab was really giving her "immunity" as claimed by Iranian leaders -- whether it elevated women's status. And, if so, then why didn't women have the same rights as men in the Islamic republic? "Why do women not enjoy equal rights with men when it comes to divorce, inheritance, and other issues?" she says she kept asking herself.

She started writing about women's rights issues and human-rights abuses in reformist publications and giving speeches at universities and other places.

Her activities and her support for dissident Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri led in 2001 to her arrest, beatings, and 40 days' imprisonment at a security prison controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

There, she says, she realized that even the chador she'd been wearing throughout her adult life provided her no immunity.

"When I used to be a 'chadori' and religious, I was arrested and jailed in a men's prison," Davoodi Mohajer says. "They wouldn't let me shower without the door of the bathroom open. The guard would say, 'You can't close the door, I won't look.' I was being interrogated by a man for long hours."

It made her question the motives of those who advocated such strict dress for women.

"I realized then that the hijab doesn't mean anything to them either," Davoodi Mohajer says. "For those who say hijab must be respected, they don't respect you if you wear the hijab but don't share their political ideas."

At the moment, the Iranian government is also going after men with "inappropriate hairstyles." Also from RFE/RL:

Yes, coming to an Iranian barber shop near you… Ali Abedi, the secretary of the Hijab and Chastity conference held in Tehran, has said that the country's newly approved men’s hairstyles are to be named after Iranian cities and provinces.

“For example one hairstyle can be named, 'the Shiraz hairstyle,'” Abedi was quoted as saying by Iranian news websites. Apparently, naming the hairstyles will make it easier for customers to tell the barber which state-sanctioned haircut they want.

Iran’s Culture Ministry recently unveiled a number of approved hairstyles that are considered Islamic. Iranian officials have said that the move is aimed at fighting the spread of unconventional hairstyles and promoting Islamic and Iranian culture.

Women are next. The head of the conference, Zhale Khodayar, said that the Culture Ministry is also going to print pictures of approved hairstyles for women in a magazine.

But are they likely to catch on? A hairdresser in Tehran, Saeed Vedayi, is quoted by the “Jam-e Jam” website as saying that the new cuts won't be popular among Iranian youth "unless their taste changes.” As Vedayi reminded us, in recent years young people were more interested in getting “Western haircuts” with names such as “Typhus,” “Metal,” “Pineapple," and “Electric Shock."

(Although, confusingly, another barber, Moloud Emami, said that the approved haircuts are similar to those that are already popular among young people.)

We'll see. RFE/RL spoke to a 14-year-old boy in Tehran who confirmed what we might suspect: that he doesn’t think any of his friends would want a hairstyle that's named “Shiraz." ”It doesn’t sound cool and why would they want a haircut that's approved by the government," he said.

What does it say that so many of these battles are fought by teens?

Quicksilver Messenger Service - Fresh Air - The Fillmore, 1971

Never saw them live, but even on vinyl they were phenomenal.

Somewhere, universities remain relevant and important

And that place is called... Iran.

A battle over the largest university in Iran, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, also shows the divisions within the Iranian establishment. Here is part of a long article:

By Golnaz Esfandiari

A dispute over control of one of the world's largest universities has turned into a fight between government bodies that is exposing deep fissures within the Iranian establishment.

At the center of the tug-of-war is Azad University: its leadership, board, 1.4 million students, and tens of billions of dollars in assets.

On one side are hard-liners within the Iranian establishment, most prominently President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, who appears ready to punish Azad University for its alleged support for opposition candidates in the 2009 presidential election. Supporting Ahmadinejad is the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution (SCCR), whose resolution to alter the Azad University's charter, replace its current head of Azad University, and change its governing board was recently approved by the president.

On the other side are the conservatives within the same establishment, mainly former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who co-founded the university in 1982 and now the heads its board of trustees. Also supporting the conservatives are parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani, and Abdollah Jasbi, the university head who is up for replacement and is a close Rafsanjani ally.

Matters came to a head on June 19 when the university's board secured a temporary injunction that prevented the SCCR from enforcing its revision of the university's charter.

The next day, a bill was rushed through the 270-member parliament that effectively circumvented the government takeover of Azad, by allowing universities to endow their properties to the public.Azad University's board had previously decided to endow the properties of the university, which has 357 branches and satellite campuses throughout the country.

The legislative move was quickly met with demonstrations outside parliament by Ahmadinejad loyalists.

In the wake of the heated protests, 100 legislators made a counter move by voting for emergency discussion of legislation that would support the SCCR's authority in the matter. This, in turn, could result in a bill that would effectively overturn the endowment bill passed on June 20. The counter move led to an uproar in parliament, with legislators exchanging insults.

Now it is up to the Guardians Council, which must approve the legislation, to decide on the matter, and for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to weigh in. The result could either strengthen Ahmadinejad and his allies or give some leverage to his rivals who are trying to curb his influence.

High Stakes

The fight has already been ugly at times. During the June 22 protesters outside parliament, which included members of the Basij militia, threatened to place the parliament "under fire" unless it backed away from its bill.

And that's just the various factions of conservatives fighting each other!

Image: picture taken from Wikimedia Commons. The photographer is named, believe it or not, Mani Parsa. Talk about your archetypal name!

City-state cultures: something I just stumbled across

Looking through my library catalog for material on ancient democracies, I stumbled across a relatively new book by Mogens Herman Hansen, Polis: An Introduction to the Ancient Greek City-State. Hansen is a Danish scholar who for a long time now has been ahead of a major research project meant to systematically investigate the entire phenomenon of Greek polis. The project was designed in part as an antidote to the overwhelming concentration of scholarship on Athens, which city produced almost all of our best sources for city-state life in ancient Greek times. Hansen has produced a number of publications over the years, many of them quite specialized, but Polis is clearly meant as a popular summary of the findings of the project.

This would be a good book if Hansen only discussed the Greek material, but he goes farther. The first section of the book discusses the importance of city-states throughout history, as incubators of many characteristics that we take for granted as modern phenomena:

A general analysis of urbanisation and state formation shows that in world history from antiquity to c.1900 two different types of state have existed: macro-states, with numerous cities included in the territory of each of them, as against regions divided into micro-states each of which consisted of one city and its hinterland. Such a micro-state is what is called a ‘city-state’, and regions divided into city-states form what the Polis Centre has called a ‘city-state culture’. We have succeeded in identifying thirty-seven ‘city-state cultures’, from the Sumerians in Mesopotamia in the third millennium bc to several city-state cultures in West Africa which were only wiped out by the colonial powers a bit over a hundred years ago. In this matter also, nobody has yet tried to get an overall picture of how many and what kind of city-state cultures there have been in the history of the world.

To sum up the results of the researches of the Polis Centre I single out four features. In city-state cultures, including that of ancient Greece, there has been (1) a degree of urbanisation unexampled in major states before the Industrial Revolution, which began in the second half of the eighteenth century; (2) an economy based on trade and centred on the city’s market; (3) a political decision-making process whereby laws and decrees were not always dictated by a monarch, but were often passed by majority votes after a debate in an assembly, which mostly was a selection from among the better-class citizens but sometimes included them all; (4) interaction between city-states, which resulted in the rise of leagues of states and federal states. As a type of state, the federal state grew up within the city-state cultures, and only appeared as a macro-state with the foundation of the USA in 1787–9.

There is no longer any city-state culture remaining; the last of them vanished in c.1900. So it is an irony of history that the social,economic and political organisation that characterised the city-state cultures did not disappear when they disappeared, but came to dominate states and societies in the world we have today. In many important respects modern macro-states are more like the ancient city-state cultures than they are like the ancient macro-states.

I like Hansen's analysis, in so far as I've seen it,but one thing really bothers me. The Polis project identified 37 city-state cultures from around the world, most of them pretty obscure and some rather small. The republican city-states of North India around the time of the Buddha and, later, Alexander the Great, are not included. I think the evidence is incontrovertible that there were plenty of republics in North India in the first millennium BC and even later, and that some even fit the Greek definition of democracy -- Greek writers tell us so. Maybe I should write a note to Hansen. I can't see how he missed the ancient Indian republics and I rather think that he didn't. Why, I wonder, did he exclude them?

Best summary of the results of the Iraq war so far

One of the McClatchy bloggers -- an Iraqi reporter for the best American wire service -- looks for celebrations of Sovereignty Day (formal end of the Coalition occupation) , can't find them, and realizes why:

Then I called the Baghdad Municipality office – They must know if an event is to take place in Baghdad, but, no, there was nothing.

"Last year we were informed weeks in advance in order to make preparations – It's 2.30 already and until this moment we have received nothing. I doubt very much that there will be any celebration tomorrow".

Still not convinced that the incumbent government is not taking advantage of this anniversary to boost its standing in the talks to form a government (that are not making any progress), I called our source within the interior ministry – Maybe he had an idea.

"Sovereignty Day?? What sovereignty?? And who is to hold the celebration?? The government? What government??" [The elections some months back have still not produced a ruling coalition in parliament; there is only an interim government and negotiating parliamentary factions. -- SM]

I put down the phone.

Indeed – What sovereignty? And what government?

This occupation opened the door for powerful winds – and they entered and are blowing, still.

Iraq has become a plain on which international and regional forces are struggling for supremacy. A tug of war between the Shiites in Iran and the Wahabis in Saudi – between the Kurds, whether in Iraq, Turkey or Iran, and the Arabs – between forces that want to keep the country together and forces that want to rip it apart.

And in the midst of all this – I think the government has actually forgotten Sovereignty Day.

It is as if Sovereignty Day does not exist.

There you have it.

Image: Iraqi sandstorm.

Boy, do I feel dumb! Afghan railways

I like to think of myself as smart and well-informed, more interested in world history and comparative history than other people, and sensitive to the little details that change the big picture.

I guess I have to revise that self-image. I just found out today, thanks to Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post, that Afghanistan has never built a railway of any particular length, that it is not connected to the greater network of Asian railways.

Here is my excuse: back in the 1920s, Afghanistan had a modernizing King named Amanulla. After reading Before Taliban about two years ago, I was aware that he built or at least started to build, a railway from Kabul. I know that he came to a bad end and was replaced by a more standoffish government, in typical Afghan style, but it never occurred to me that this was pretty much the end of railway building in Afghanistan! The Soviet military had big plans and actually laid some track, but the anti-Soviet resistance took care to see that it didn't get very far. In more peaceful times, the Kabul government has usually been opposed to the extension of foreign lines into Afghanistan, since those plans were almost always sponsored by the government of British India or the government of Russia.

I really should have known, since I've seen lots of pictures of the Khyber Pass. If you have seen them too, you'll notice that there's nary a track, and no place to hide one, either. Furthermore, that I was teaching first-year world history, I found that it was difficult to talk about and illustrate 19th-century developments without lots of pictures of locomotives. It was the prestigious symbol of modernization and development in those times -- and into the 20th-century, too. I should've been sensitive to the fact that there are no such pictures of Afghanistan, and what pictures of Afghanistan there are have no locomotives.

The lack of rail transport in Afghanistan is not just a symbol of the country's rejection of the outside world, it is one of the major concrete policies that Afghan governments have usedto guarantee of outsiders will not, in somebody's words,plunge a knife into the vitals of the country. (Of course they have had to deal with large-scale air transport for long time now, and there are highways, but that doesn't take away from the original point. See what Eugene Robinson has to say about the prospects of mining in Afghanistan.) I am sure that not everyone feels that way about the outside world, but enough do.

If you're interested in the railways of Afghanistan, such as they are, see this excellent article on the web and its various links.

Image: somebody else's railway.

A Torontonian explains why he is supporting Cote d'Ivoire in the World Cup

"My ex-girlfriend lived there for a few months."

Neither Canada nor Trinidad (his personal heritage choice) is in it, you see.

Thanks to CBC Radio news for that one..