Geography and history

We were just talking about the importance of geographical factors in Middle Eastern and Islamic history in a class today when sure enough, Robert Kaplan comes down the pike flogging a new book pushing a geographical analysis of world politics. Maybe he's taking it a bit far, but some readers may find this interview of interest.

The War of 1812: A Round Table at Nipissing University

1812 -- Turning Points

On the face of it a small frontier conflict, the War of  1812 had world-wide causes and consequences.  It  was not just  one  turning point  but several, for Canada, the United States, Native North America and the British Empire.    

  

In this bicentennial year, the Department of History of Nipissing University presents a Round Table, 1812: Turning Points, for the benefit of the University and the wider North Bay community. We hope to explore all aspects of the war, what it meant at the time and what it means today. Your participation will be welcome.

Friday, September 14, 2012 7:30 PM – 10:00 PM

The Nipissing University Theater, Nipissing University (North Bay campus)

Contact: Steven Muhlberger  -- Stevem@NipissingU.ca --705 – 4744 – 3461 ext 4458

Martial art

For the last 20 years (!), My wife and I have been hosting an SCA medieval re-creation event on our rural property. Because it takes place on Labor Day weekend, and because we have 95 acres of land, there is time and space for a lot of different things to happen, or for people just to relax.
One of the chief activities is SCA style combat, which uses rattan weapons to make possible a vigorous style of fighting. I don't think that the SCA style can honestly be called an historical one; it evolved from some logical but mistaken assumptions about the effects of weapons and armor. Thanks to intelligent and scholarly martial artists we know a lot more about late medieval combat at the very least.
But SCA combat has its virtues. You can stage a hard-hitting analog of medieval combat with a minimum of serious injuries. Many SCA fighters have never broken a bone, even after many years of competition. And it has a certain aesthetic appeal.
This aesthetic element was brought home to me on the weekend. I was discussing various combat systems that now exist with someone who fences in the "cut and thrust" style, in which real steel swords are used. He and I both agreed that we did not see the point of certain modern jousters and martial artists who have adopted medieval styles, who use something like medieval weaponry and medieval techniques, but scorn dressing up in medieval costume, since what they are doing is in their minds a purely modern thing. The two of us didn't see the point. It may or may not make any sense to fight in a medieval or pseudo–medieval style just for the fun of it, but to do the same thing in 21st century dress and high tech armor just has no meaning for me at all.
And that same day I was lucky enough to see the fruits of medieval aestheticism, SCA style. One of our standard fighting activities involves a small earth and wood fort that we built some years back. One of the challenges of using it is coming up with scenarios that make a certain tactical sense, even though the number of fighters involved is seldom over 20. On Saturday afternoon, some good scenarios were devised and played over and over until everyone was good and tired.
It may be the fact that I am now retired from fighting for good and all, but I found this fighting to be really quite amazing. To my educated eyes, everybody involved looked like they really knew what they were doing. That struck me because with few exceptions, the fighters were what passes for average in our corner of the SCA. There were no famous knights, except one, and he is not nearly as famous as he deserves to be as a master of the pole weapon. There were also a number of quite new fighters, and they picked up on the clues of their more experienced neighbors like there was nothing to it. For me, it was an impressive and moving moment.

Making iron at the event, 2006.

More wisdom from Babylon 5

Londo, the Centauri ambassador, is editing a report on potential enemies to make them seem more menacing.
Naïve assistant: "But they are a very spiritual people!"
Londo: "Leave that in. That always scares them!"

A war to end war

Today in the Globe and Mail, "There was a war in 1812? Really?"
Earlier this month, Peter Jones in the Globe and Mail:

But the real legacy of the War of 1812, government claims aside, is simply that there was never a repeat. Tensions remained, small cross-border incursions took place, and fortifications continued to be built and maintained for another half-century, but the primary lesson both sides drew (and which was slowly reinforced) was not to bother again.

This may sound rather uninspiring – it is difficult to gather a group of colourfully dressed re-enactors to flail around in a field but not actually fight each other – but it probably explains much in terms of the incredible success North America’s two northern nations have enjoyed since.
For from the War of 1812, and its aftermath of avoiding another conflict, slowly emerged what might be called the North American regional consensus. It is now largely unspoken; most who live here probably couldn’t articulate it if they had to, but it has dominated the lives of both countries, and especially Canada, ever since.

Simply put, the North American regional consensus boils down to a realization that the cost of fighting for any possible treasure on the other side of the border is patently ridiculous when it is simply easier and cheaper to exchange these things by trade; that two quite different systems of government can coexist perfectly well; and (for Canadians) that maintaining stability and security in the northern half of the continent ourselves means that the United States will not feel compelled to do it for us
.
We may take all of this for granted, but we shouldn’t. It took those sophisticated Europeans another 150 years (and two of the bloodiest wars in history) to figure it out. Most regions of the world still haven’t.
Of course, the fact that the British had a growing concern for their own relations with the United States probably had something to do with the lack of fighting after 1814. We tend to forget that, after 1814, the British often sided with the U.S. in various arbitration exercises, when they probably should have acted differently if strictly Canadian interests were uppermost in their minds. The Alaska panhandle is a case in point.

Whatever the reasons, the North American regional consensus is now so deeply ingrained on both sides of the border that anyone who tried to promote the idea of fighting a war over anything would rightly be regarded in both countries as insane. Social scientists refer to such regions as “security communities” – places in the world where the idea of conflict is so remote that societies and individuals have developed, as Karl Deutsch put it many years ago, “dependable expectations of peaceful change.”
So there you have it. The real legacy of the War of 1812 is that it helped set the stage for a regional security community. Hardly stirring stuff, but, if you look around the world today, you will quickly realize just how rare a thing ours is. And it is a thing very much worth celebrating.

Breivik, coward

Breivik, the Norwegian mass murderer, deserves no better than to be classified as a malicious coward and exhibitionist.

If he was really dedicated to the cause he proclaimed, he would have shot or blown up someone important.

Instead he went for a large number of easy kills.

The Sultan's Organ, by John Mole

John Mole noticed my personal and professional interest in Islamic history and sent me a most interesting book, The Sultan's Organ, a book that is not salacious in the least, concerns an Englishman, Thomas Dallam, who around 1600 transported a gift from Queen Elizabeth and a  number of her merchants trading with Turkey to the Ottoman Sultan: a massive organ that not only played music but was festooned with  mechanical figures.

It's a good read.

I've often thought from other reading that through most of history has been little difference between a sailor and a pirate. This account clearly confirms that impression with regard  to the Elizabethan era.

There is also some really down to earth description of the daily life of a traveler: the search for provisions on an infertile Mediterranean island that results in the searchers finding only some garlic for sale – garlic that their fellow travelers are very interested in acquiring once they hear of  it;. or the amazing story of how these English travelers, spending the night in an abandoned house, almost scare themselves to death because they mistake a loose garter for an attacking snake.

John Mole has written a number of other books, which can be acquired on his website here. One that appeals to me is his story of being "a potato oligarch in the new Russia." You can read the first page here and see why I am considering following up.