Beyond non-violence

This is a two-part blog post. The first is basically a long quotation from Jonathan Schell on non-violent protest.  That material, which is indented, is followed by my own reflections.

Over at TomDispatch, the long-running anti-imperial blog, Andy Kroll has posted an interview with Jonathan Schell, who, Kroll says, has been consistently right in his critiques of imperialism ever since the Vietnam War era, and who is therefore ignored by the policy-oriented media.

Schell has some interesting things to say about how non-violent protest, which he sees as invented by Gandhi "at the Empire Theater in Johannesburg, South Africa, on September 11, 1906," has changed politics and frustrated empires. He argues that even classic revolutions began with little violence:

AK: You point to four key moments in history -- the French, American, Glorious, and Bolshevik revolutions -- and describe how the real revolution, the nonviolent one, took place in the hearts and minds of the people in those countries. And that the bloody fighting that, in some cases, ensued was not the true revolution, but an extension of it. It's a revelatory part of the book. Did you already have this idea when you began Unconquerable World, or was it an Aha! moment along the way?

JS: It was really the latter. Gandhi's movement landed the most powerful blow against the entire British Empire, and the Solidarity movement and the revolution in Czechoslovakia and other popular activities in those places were in my opinion the real undoing of the Soviet Union. That's not the small change of history. Those were arguably the two greatest empires of their time. So, having seen that there was such power in nonviolence, I began to wonder: How did things work in other revolutions?

I was startled to discover that even in revolutions which, in the end, turned out to be supremely violent, the revolutionaries -- some of whom, like the Bolsheviks, didn’t even believe at all in nonviolence -- nonetheless proceeded largely without violence. Somebody quipped that more people were killed in the filming of Sergey Eisenstein's storming of the Winter Palace [in his Ten Days That Shook the World] than were killed in the actual storming. That was true because the Bolsheviks were really unopposed.

How could that be? Well, because they had won over the garrison of Saint Petersburg; they had, that is, won the “hearts and minds” of the military and the police.

AK: The Bastille was like that as well.

JS: The Bastille was absolutely like that. In that first stage of the French Revolution there was almost no violence at all. Some people were beheaded in the aftermath of the action, but the victory was not won through violence, but through the defection of the government’s minions. It didn't mean the revolutionaries loved nonviolence. On the contrary, what followed was the Terror, in the case of the French, and the Red Terror in the case of the Bolsheviks, who went on to shed far more blood as rulers than they had shed on their way to power.
...

JS: There is a conventional assumption that superior violence is always decisive. In other words, whatever you do, at the end of the day whoever has the biggest army is going to win. They're going to cross the border, impose their ideology or religion, they're going to kill the women and children, they're going to get the oil.

And honestly, you have to say that, through most of history, there was overwhelming evidence for the accuracy of that observation. I very much see the birth of nonviolence as something that, although not exactly missing from the pages of history previously, was fundamentally new in 1906. I think of it as a discovery, an invention.

The fundamental critique of it was that it doesn't work. The belief, more an unspoken premise than a conviction, was that if you want to act effectively in defense of your deepest beliefs or worst cravings, you have to pick up the gun, and as Mao Zedong said, power will flow from the barrel of that gun.

It took protracted demonstrations of the kind that we've been talking about to put nonviolence on the map. Now, by the way, states have come to understand this power and its dangers much better. Certainly, those who govern Egypt understand it. And what about the apparatchiks of the Soviet Union? They saw it firsthand -- the whole thing going down almost without a shot being fired.

Take, for instance, the government of Iran. They're very worried foreign activists or certain books might show up in their country, because they're afraid that a soft or velvet revolution will take place in Iran. And they're right to worry. They've had two big waves of protest already, most recently the Green Revolution of 2009-2010.


It hasn't succeeded there yet. And to be clear, there's nothing magical about nonviolence. It's a human thing. It's not a magic wand that you wave over empires and totalitarian regimes and they simply melt away, though sometimes it’s seemed that way. There can, of course, be failure. Look at what the people in Syria face right now. And look at the staggering raw courage they've displayed in going out into the streets again and again in the face of so many slaughtered in their country. It's anyone's guess who's going to emerge as the victor there.

AK: It can fail.

JS: It does fail. But the fact that it can succeed suggests something new historically.

This is very interesting material (say I, Steve Muhlberger), quite worthy of prolonged contemplation, but it has this weakness: it ignores the problem of consolidating the gains that people power can sometimes win. When the crowds go home, after having won significant concessions, perhaps a new Constitution, perhaps a popular government, what will prevent all that progress from being eroded, from being stolen by the men who will shoot down the women and children, arrest the inconvenient writers musicians and academics, or just bit by bit steal public property and privatize public power for the benefit of themselves, their children and their allies?

We have got techniques that have shown some success in preventing these outcomes. But many of us have ceased to understand how important these techniques are and how exactly these techniques are supposed to work. We, the not so rich and not so important, have gotten lazy.

The chief of these techniques, but not the only one, is honest elections that select, authorize and legitimize our public officials. No electoral system is perfect, but there are certain obvious methods that serve to rein in the less worthy tendencies of any group of people who have been granted power. The basic elements are rules that make it easy for people who legitimately hold the franchise to exercise it, and rules and institutions that assure that the votes cast by those people are accurately counted. (You, reader, can think of more.) The rules don't implement themselves. Without the habit and the determination of ordinary people to supervise the supervisors, elections become corrupt amazingly fast.

Examples of how such corruption establishes itself are almost too numerous to mention, except that nobody does mention them. Note the recent history of that that long established democracy, the United States of America. Anyone who believes that the presidential election of 2000 constituted a democratic and honest election is either partisan or a fool. I see no reason to grant legitimacy to the 2004 presidential election, either. Recent polls in the state of Wisconsin, where a radical agenda is being imposed by the state government, have to arouse deep suspicion, simply because in classic manner votes mysteriously materialize exactly when and where they are needed, and no one can explain where the votes came from. Add to this the effort by American conservatives to disenfranchise as many poor and otherwise disadvantaged people as they can, and the Supreme Court's decisions that allows the rich to set up corporate bodies that can spend unlimited amounts of money on elections, and you have a Constitution that is in serious trouble.

Canadians are fond of saying that things aren't nearly as bad here as they are in the United States, and that is usually true. Nevertheless the Canadian Constitution is in serious trouble, too. It is finally coming out that there was an organized effort to discourage people from voting in the last federal election by calling them and telling them that their polling place had been relocated, on the guise of passing on official information from Elections Canada. I say "it is finally coming out" because the election was all the way back in May. Elections Canada has an honorable history – see my review of an interesting book on the history of the vote in Canada – but it has been negligent up to now. (One wonders if the federal government has been starving it of funding and personnel.) We are now coming to a crucial moment in our history. Will the public get angry and demand a thorough investigation and the prosecution of wrongdoers? And if the current governing party is found to have used such tactics, will the public demand that it step down?

The corrosive element in both the United States and in Canada is the attitude that politics is so uninspiring and basically dirty that good people like us should stay as far away from it as possible. Maybe we should not even vote, after all, "they are all the same." The Occupy movement, for all its positive aspects, is a perfect manifestation of that attitude, of the ideas that elections don't really matter. At the same time people who are deeply dissatisfied with the politics of our times never seem to make a connection between the results of elections and the noxious policies they disapprove of, which are put in place by people who won the last election. People who contribute to political parties, people who serve as officers in political parties, people who volunteer their labor to their political party, heck, people who join political parties: they make the laws. The people who only vote, or don't even bother to do that, they merely suffer under the laws, which are designed to serve the interests of the people who take politics seriously. And most of them are considerably better off than you are, and understand very well how power works.

The same politically active people have more influence over what the media says about politics than the apathetic majority. Is it any wonder that one message that consistently comes from the media is that you and I should stay apathetic about politics? That it's basically a spectator sport -- if you are cool enough to sit back and laugh at the fools who take it seriously?

There is such a thing as being too cool – maybe too cool to live.

If democracy is going to survive in places where it has been established in the past, ordinary citizens are going to have to take the kind of interest in the workings of the franchise and the structure of the Constitution that serious people took in the 19th century. They will have to work elections, and not merely participate at a minimal level, or just sit back and watch. The theory and practice of nonviolent action are great inventions for sure, but even nonviolence has its limits.

Phil Paine: The Conservative Love Affair with Communism and How It Is Destroying Us

A grim view of the present and the future, all that much grimmer for the news that the international effort to subvert free elections has come to Canada.

Happy Leap Day!

We don't get them very often, so we should take note when they occur.

The coming end in Afghanistan

Tom Englehardt and Nicholas Turse have a detailed discussion at Tomgram, but it all comes down to this one sentence:

Eleven years in, if your forces are still burning Korans in a deeply religious Muslim country, it’s way too late and you should go.

But will this teach future generations how hollow are the pretentions of the warmongers -- all of them safe at home in the imperial capital?  Future generations?  Can the empire avoid catastrophe in Iran this year?

Image:  No, this won't turn the tide.

Remember the Vietnam War? Phil Paine reminds us

For some of us, the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been all too reminiscent of the Vietnam war -- murky and unrealistic motivations, vast expense at home and terrific casualties abroad, fantastic (in the sense of dream-like) official explanations of how it will all work out fine. One difference is that because lots of middle-class kids were drafted into the Vietnam war, there was vigorous opposition to it by people whom the government could not (entirely) ignore. And then there were other factors...

Phil Paine reminds us of the strength of that opposition at http://www.philpaine.com/?p=4259. I would be interested in how many younger people, American and otherwise, are aware of the incidents he discusses.

Harmonica band

I was reading one of Uncle John's trivia books -- which are designed with bathroom readers in mind -- about harmonicas. It listed American presidents who played, including Lincoln (easy to believe) and -- Woodrow Wilson!

WOODROW WILSON! The grimmest looking president of them all! Wow!

Then Uncle John went on to describe a solid gold, jewel-encrusted harmonica given by the Hohner company to -- Pope Pius XI.

What a band they could have put together if they had bumped into each other, say in Paris in 1919.

Cliff face, Novaya Zemlya

Bear looks for seabird eggs; click for a good view.

From the Big Picture's selection from the World Press Photo contest.

Resurrected! Two articles from Florilegium by S. Muhlberger

Way back when -- in 1984 -- Florilegium, the journal of the Canadian Society of Medievalists, was looking for content, and I, a newish Ph.D., was looking for an opportunity to publish.  I was still mining my dissertation research on Latin chronicles of Late Antiquity, so what I had was not one but two pieces on the "Copenhagen" Continuation of Prosper, a seventh-century chronicle which preserves some interesting fifth-century and at the same time gives us access to a seventh-century point of view on the "fall of Rome."  One piece was an article-length appreciation and analysis of the Continuation; the other was a translation of the text, which despite being edited by Theodor Mommsen in the Chronica Minora, was hardly accessible in an easily readable form in any language.

Florilegium took them both, and I was very grateful.

Earlier this month I was thinking about these articles, considering whether I should perhaps turn them into an e-book.  The very next day I got a letter from the current editor of Florilegium asking for permission to reissue them electronically as part of a general reprinting of past issues of the journal!

So there it is:  and here are links to the grand reprinting project, the article "Heroic Kings and Unruly Generals: The 'Copenhagen' Continuation of Prosper Reconsidered" and the translation, "The Copenhagen Continuation of Prosper: A Translation."

Image:  from the Banks Florilegium and Wikipedia.

Speaking of nuns...

Walter Goffart said it long ago:  Gregory of Tours, despite all his assumed modesty about his rustic style, was a heck of a subtle writer.  Teaching Gregory in a fourth-year seminar this year, I am more than ever impressed by his skillful touches.

See, for instance Book 9 chapter 40 in Gregory's Histories.  Gregory is writing an account of the nuns' revolt at Poitiers.  After a detailed discussion of the rebels' defiance of their abbess, their withdrawal from the convent, and their preparations for gang warfare against the abbess, he throws in an anecdote about an anonymous recluse at the same convent:

At this time there lived in the nunnery a certain recluse who, a few years before, had lowered herself from the wall and fled to St. Hilary's church, accusing her Mother Superior of many transgressions, all of which I found to be false.  Later on she had herself pulled up into the nunnery again by ropes at the very spot from which she  had previously lowered herself down. She asked permission to shut herself up in a secret cell, saying:  "I have greatly sinned [etc.]." As she said this she entered the cell.  When the revolt started, she broke down the door of her cell in the middle of the night, escaped from the nunnery, found her way to Clotild [the chief rebel nun] and, as she had done on the previous occasion, made a series of allegations against her Mother Superior.

Gregory here is giving his reader a quick analysis of the rebellion -- which among other things is a case of nuns getting tired of the cloistered life that they have committed themselves to and falling into a crazy, unstable way of life.  This recluse stands in for all the other giddy nuns who have fled the nunnery and are now returning to their families, getting married, getting pregnant or hanging out with  Clotild and her gang of murderers.  (Yes indeed, exciting times!)  But what really strikes me in this small parallel account of the evils of nuns on the loose is the humorous or sarcastic touch of the rope hanging over the wall.  You've just got to wonder if it was there all the time...

Image:  Here's one.

Carl Pyrdum on medieval "doodles"

This may not be part of your mental picture of the Middle Ages:

Put aside the issue of errant agency clause,^* because it’s the word “doodle” that really riles my pedantic dander. Granted, it’s not the first time that a marginalia post of mine has been disseminated to teh wider internets under the heading of “doodle,”^** but it still irks me, because, as I try to make clear, the images I post here on Mondays^*** weren’t scribbled into the margins by surreptitious snarkers whilst no one was looking. They were explicitly commissioned by the manuscript’s patrons as part of the project from the very beginning. For the well-heeled noble, ordering a book was not just a matter of selecting the text; deciding on size, presentation, illustration, and ratio of naked dudes to non-naked dudes in the margins was all part of the process of getting a book made.

... 

For this page, somebody sat down and sketched out a rough draft, showed it to somebody else, possibly even multiple somebodies. There were meetings. Consultants were brought in. The client was consulted. And at some point somebody said, “Yes, that’s very nice, the nuns smuggling that dude into their nunnery. Very topical. But I don’t like that blanket. Too drab. Can we get someone to put some flowers on it? 

Another version of the big lie: People in [name that country, culture, or religious group] don't really want democracy

...they love the censors, the secret police and the bosses.

Prof. John Keane of the Sydney Democracy Initiative comments on the situation in China:

James Madison famously remarked that a popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy. The present government of the People’s Republic of China has set out to disprove this rule.

Rejecting talk of farce and tragedy, its rulers claim their authority is rooted within a new and higher form of popular government, a “post-democratic” way of handling power which delivers goods and services, promotes social harmony and roots out “harmful behavior” using state-of-the-art information-control methods more complex and much craftier than Madison could ever have imagined.

Information flows in China are not simply blocked, firewalled or censored. The authorities instead treat unfettered online citizen communication as an early warning device, even as a virtual steam valve for venting grievances in their favor.

This cooptation requires a vast labyrinth of surveillance that depends on a well-organized, 40,000-strong Internet police force. Skilled at snooping on Wi-Fi users in cyber cafés and hotels, it uses sophisticated data-mining software that tracks down keywords on search engines such as Baidu, along the way issuing warnings to Web hosts to amend or delete content considered unproductive of “harmony.”

Government officials working in “situation centers” meanwhile watch for signs of brewing unrest or angry public reactions. Reports are passed to local propaganda departments, where action is taken. So-called “rumor refutation” departments, staffed by censors, pitch in. They scan posts for forbidden topics and issue knockdown rebuttals.

A pivotal role is played by licensed Internet companies. Bound by constant reminders that safety valves can turn into explosive devices, they use filtering techniques to delete or amend “sensitive” content.

...

What are we to make of this repressive tolerance? Looking from the top down, likening the Chinese authorities to skilled doctors of the body politic, some wax eloquent about the new surveillance tactics of “continuous tuning” (tiao). The simile understates the ways in which the labyrinthine system of coordinated do’s and don’ts is backed by predigital methods: fear served with cups of tea in the company of censors; sackings and sideways promotions; early-morning swoops by plainclothes police known as “interceptors”; illegal detentions; violent beatings by unidentified thugs.

Proponents of the Communist Party’s Web-monitoring tactics are silent about such violence. They also overstate the efficiency, effectiveness and legitimacy of the China labyrinth. They ignore the popular resentments sparked by a regulatory system that treats more than a few subjects as ticklish, or taboo.

...

The upshot is that the authorities now find themselves trapped in a constant tug-of-war between their will to control, negotiated change, public resistance and unresolved confusion. They may pride themselves on building a regime which seems calculating, flexible and dynamic, willing to change its ways in order to remain the dominant guiding power. Yet they also know well the new Chinese proverb: Ruling used to be like hammering a nail into wood, now it is much more like balancing on a slippery egg.

Whether the authorities can sustain their present balancing act, so proving Madison wrong, seems doubtful. Within the China labyrinth the spirit of monitory democracy is alive and well. Whether and how it will prevail against the crafty forces of surveillance is among the global political questions of our time.

On the euro crisis

I have just been reading the comments following an article by Eric Reguly in the Globe and Mail's Report on Business.  Reguly makes the point that anger against foreign demands for Greek austerity is rising, and a lot of it is aimed at the Germans, who are providing much of the funding for Greece's financial lifeline as lenders of last resort.

The more than 400 comments show very little sympathy for the resentment of the Greeks. Very, very little.  The Greeks are characterized as lazy, crooked, and beggars who can't be choosers.

Several commentators cite the old joke I first saw in the comic strip the Wizard of Id:  The joke was that the  "Golden Rule," was "he who has the gold makes the rules." This is used as a point in favor of the "German" position.  But in fact these Greek debts are not gold, nor do the Germans and others have gold to give to Greece.  The money involved in this crisis includes a lot of funny money created by a few politicians and bankers who committed their populations or customers to guarantee the profitability of basically unsound loans.  The question is really who will pay for this imprudence and sharp practice.   In the conflict between lenders of last resort and Greeks resisting debt slavery, the Greeks have almost as much ability to write the rules as the lenders of last resort who are trying to save the banking system from the consequences of its foolish behavior.  Who is the bigger crook, who should suffer, and who can be blamed, can be treated as purely moral questions, but that attitude will not save Greece, the euro, or the banks.

Image:  a gold ecu in more hopeful days for the pan-European currency.

Indefinite hyperbolic numbers!

Zillion, squillion, bajillion!

Stephen Chrisomalis of Wayne State University gives a delightful talk about where these numbers come from!

The Syrian situation -- how not to change a regime

Some of my regular morning reading just oozes pessimism about Syria today:

Eshani writes in Syria Comment that Syria’s Opposition Must Find a Different Way.


Note update:  Eshani discusses critiques of his position.

An excerpt:

As the death toll mounts on the streets in Syria, it is important to remember how we got here. Damascus has decided to reassert control over its restive cities by using the full might of its military. This should not come as a surprise to observers and policy makers. Indeed, the surprise is that the government has taken this long to order its offensive.

In the first three months of this crisis, it is fair to suggest that the opposition was largely peaceful. By the summer of 2011, this was beginning to change. The uprising was morphing into an armed resistance as weapons started to surface on Syrian streets. The defining moment was at the beginning of Ramadan.  Contrary to consensus opinion, the government was not deterred by the start of the Holy month. Hama was stormed and taken back from the opposition to the shock of the region. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia made its first defining public comment on Alarabiya Television Channel immediately following Hama’s fall to the government, after withdrawing its ambassador from Syria.

Since Hama, Syrian opposition members have begun increasingly to  call to demand weapons and a military response to overpower the regime. For the next 6 months, Syrian streets and neighborhoods became armed enough that the mighty Syrian army had to think twice before entering the developing mini enclaves ruled by the opposition within its cities. Not surprisingly, taking up arms suddenly became the accepted modus operandi of the opposition and the uprising. Those cautioning against such strategies were referred to as ignorant or regime supporters.

Young opposition activists who followed the advice to arm and fight the regime are now being left to fend for themselves against the military Goliath of the Syrian Army. As I wrote following my return from the country, many assured me that the armed forces were yet to use more than 20% of their capacity. As I listened to pronouncements by opposition leaders about the necessity to arm, I could not help but wonder what would happen when Damascus would unleash its full  military might. We will now find out.

While Rastan, Homs and Zabadani were becoming hell for its residents, I was dismayed to see that the so-called brains of this revolution were landing in Doha airport. The purpose of the meeting is of course to focus on “the situation on the ground in Syria” and find ways of “helping the rebels”. How infuriating to see men in suites sit in the comfort of Doha hotels instructing the poor men, women and children of the restive neighborhoods of Syria on what they should do next.  The fact is that since the first calls to arm the population, the brain trust of this revolution sent the people of Syria into a kamikaze mission. Did anyone really think that the Syrian army was going to be defeated at the hands of poor young men with Kalashnikovs?

...

Those of us living in the comforts of the West are only too familiar with how politicians in democratic countries compete over their “records”. My wish is to see the Syrian opposition begin to discuss President Assad’s  record on the economy, the public sector, illegal housing, the environment, health care, education, the media, and individual liberties. Instead, we seem to hell bent on steering our country straight into an iceberg with 23 million on board.

The Syrian National Council and many Arab and International policy makers who are now pontificating on Syria’s future were nowhere to be seen in 2007, when the President’s second 7-year term began. We have gone from being in a coma to calling for the downfall of the regime and even the hanging of its leader. This is insanity. The Syrian National Council must call for all rebels and opposition groups to stop arming themselves. Instead, it should declare that the opposition set its sights on 2014, when President Assad’s second presidential term will come to an end.

What is needed is a smart and innovative strategy that helps spare lives but effectively convinces the leadership that the old ways of doing business are over. Popular efforts must be spent in writing a new constitution, a bill of rights to calm minority fears, and an economic plan to reassure the business community and workers alike. The standard of living of most Syrians is appalling, so is the education level and health care system. The opposition must channel their energies towards such topics rather than the senseless calls to arm the rebels in what is clearly a suicide mission. 

Juan Cole on the wider dangers of a violent revolutionary strategy:

The first thing that comes to mind at these horrific images is that something should be done.
But what? Sen. John McCain has called for arming the rebels, as has the The New Republic, which appears to be veering again toward Neoconservatism.

My wise colleague Marc Lynch has raised important questions about the wisdom of this course.

I would argue an even stronger case against. Once you flood a country with small and medium arms, it destabilizes it for decades.

Ronald Reagan spread weapons all around northern Pakistan, and in my view began the destabilization of that country, which now has an endemic problem with armed tribes, militias and gangs. I saw the same thing happen in Lebanon shortly before, during the civil war that threw that country into long term fragility. More recently, we saw a civil war in Algeria (1991-2000) that left 150,000 people dead, which is really no different than what has been going on in Syria except that it was on a much larger scale and the West at that time decided to support the secular generals against the rebelling Muslim fundamentalists. The arming of Iraq post-Saddam has left it a horribly violent society for the foreseeable future (a plethora of US arms given to the new Iraqi military and police were often sold off to guerrillas). And while the war would have been longer in Libya if Qatar and France had not secretly armed the rebels, it likely would have had a similar outcome (what was really important was NATO attrition of Libyan armor). And in that case the problem the country now faces, of militia rule and fragmentation, would have been much less severe.

If people don’t think a flood of arms into the hands of Syrian fighters will spill over onto Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Israel/ Palestine, they are just fooling themselves. The Palestinians in the region have largely given up or been made to give up arms, in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. But if small and medium arms become widespread and inexpensive, it will take us back to the late 1960s and early 1970s when Palestinian guerrillas shook Jordan, Lebanon and Israel. The Palestinians themselves always suffered from a resort to arms, and are best served by a peaceful movement of protest, and a remilitarization of their struggle would produce further tragic setbacks.

Turkey, it should be noted, is against letting arms in to either side. They do not want another ‘dirty war’ in their heavily Kurdish southeast, as happened in the 1980s-1990s.

Update:  Eshani summarizes and answers critiques of his essay. 

And then there is a Joshua Landis interview on the significance of events in the city of Homs.

A new era in publishing (might be "The Call of All Nations")

At the ccel.org site, they have an electronic copy of Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History.

And this note.

This book has been accessed more than 1280134 times since July 13, 2005.

This is not the only copy on the Web, either.

A new article on Boucicaut and Christine de Pizan

A colleague drew my attention to this:

Zenep Kocabiyikoglu Cecen, "Two different views of knighthood in the early fifteenth century:  Le Livre de Bouciquaut and the works of Christine de Pizan," Journal of Military History 76(2012): 9-35.

Summary:  the big differences in attitude are a strong argument against Christine's authorship of the Livre.  I agree.

Image:   Boucicaut as portrayed in the book of hours he commissioned.

Review of "The Secret History of Democracy" by Christopher Hobson

A fair evaluation, I think:

The Secret History of Democracy is an ambitious attempt to offer an alternative narrative to the dominant account of the history of democracy. Reacting to a common tendency to draw a line from Ancient Athens, through Republican Rome to revolutionary America and France and so on, this book seeks out other historical instances of democracy. In highlighting these ‘hidden’ examples, the hope is to re-energise the way we now think about democracy. Even if not fully announced as such, what the editors are essentially trying to offer is a history of the present – a critical rereading of the past to better comprehend the contemporary situation and enable political action towards further democratisation. Lamenting the way democracy is regularly understood by the (Anglo-American) West, Isakhan and Stockwell propose that by ‘opening awareness of the breadth of democratic forms [it] gives people the means to deepen, strengthen and develop democratic practice and the opportunity to promulgate democracy more widely’ (p. 223). And the various chapters in the volume do indeed offer a broad selection of democratic pasts. The book considers pre-Athenian experiences elsewhere in Greece, the Middle East, India and China; it explores democracy in the ‘Dark Ages’ in Iceland, Venice and Islamic history; it revives forgotten democratic practices in colonial and settler contexts in Africa, Australia and Canada; and it looks at more contemporary examples in the Arab Middle East. In light of the ongoing Arab Spring, the notable inclusion of multiple chapters on the Arab Middle East – too often excluded from books on democracy – is particularly prescient and worthwhile.
For the most part, the individual chapters are strong, and they offer useful illustrations of how versions of democracy can be found in many places where we have forgotten to look. For instance, Philippe Paine provides a fascinating account of ‘Buffalo Hunt democracy’ that was practised by the Métis people of Western Canada. The extent to which the chapters contribute to the overarching aims of the book is more mixed, however. Contributions such as Steven Muhlberger's on Ancient India, Pauline Keating's on China, and Mohamad Abdalla and Halim Rane's on Islam's past clearly identify the relevance of previous democratic experiences for contemporary struggles, but some of the other chapters do not connect their historical examples to present-day concerns in a sufficiently deep manner. This does not undermine the value of the chapters as stand-alone pieces, but it does have consequences for the volume as a whole. In itself, identifying examples of democratic practices that fall outside the standard historical narrative is not necessarily that difficult. Few would maintain the extreme position that democracy has only existed in the West. The question then is how these past experiences with democracy can be mobilised so that ‘people all over the world may come to have a greater sense of ownership over democracy and take pride in practising and re-creating it for their time, for their situation and for their purposes’ (pp. 15–16). On this point there is less direction both from the editors and most of the contributors.
A further issue that arises is: why these specific cases? There are many ‘secrets’ in democracy's past, and there are many different examples that could have been considered. What is it about these experiences that make them particularly valuable in re-envisioning contemporary democracy? Here the editors give little guidance. For instance, given that there are many examples of democratic practices in countries that are now struggling to institute democracy, what is it that makes street protests in Iraq worthy of inclusion above so many other alternatives? In this regard, the volume would have benefited from a much better explicated set of cases, and a stronger attempt to link them to contemporary concerns over democracy. While noting these shortcomings, on the whole this is an interesting and worthwhile addition to the slowly growing literature on the global history of democracy. In redirecting our gaze away from the standard historical reference points, it offers an important corrective to the common tendency of identifying democracy as a Western product. This volume pushes us to question accepted thinking on the topic, and suggests that the past may be one route towards a more democratic future.

Christopher Hobson (2012): The secret history of democracy, Global Change,

Peace & Security: formerly Pacifica Review: Peace, Security & Global Change, 24:1, 193-194

Charny as arbitrator under the "droit d'armes"

Back in 1992, the renowned military historian Philippe Contamine wrote an article of Geoffroi de Charny for the festschrift (celebratory collection) dedicated to Georges Duby.  I just found this little nugget in the article (my rough translation):

At that time [Charny] was recognized as an expert in the conflicts that can arise between people in arms about ransom and loot: an act of Philippe de Valois in April 1347 sets out how Aimery de Rochechouart, chevalier , was retained, he and the men of his company having "all costs and expenses and everything which appertained to their profession" from Savary de Vivonne, Lord of Tours. However, during the taking and plundering of Poitiers by the English of the Earl of Derby in October 1345, Aimery and his people were captured. He himself was ransomed for  4000 crowns of gold, a sum to which were added expenses of 2000 crowns. He  thought he should be able to demand the 6000 crowns from Savary de Vivonne, who refused. The King with the consent of both parties, appointed arbitrators  for  the dispute concerning the "droit d’armes," namely Guillaume Flote, seigneur de Revel, and Geoffroy de Charny. They discharged Savary de Vivonne any fault, however, requiring him to pay to pay 2000 crowns (the costs) to Aimery de Rochechouart.

I also found out today that if you type enough French into MS Word, it starts giving you French spellings, French quotation marks, etc.

We could use more of this

From the Weather Network site, the sun rising over Lake Nosbonsing:

It's been a gray winter.

"Killer of Men" and "Marathon" by Christian Cameron

I read these books a few months ago but I guess I was too busy to write them up properly.  I will make up for that omission now.

I read these two books under what must be ideal conditions.  A mutual friend took me over to see Christian Cameron -- re-enactor, amateur scholar, and historical novelist -- at his home.  Although there were other guests already present, Christian took the time to share with us wine, food, and sparkling, amusing, learned conversation.  As we left, he gave me copies of the two books, and I had them to read on the long bus trip home.

All you need now is that the books be good, right?

Well, they are.

Cameron has pulled off a difficult feat, writing a pretty convincing story of the distant past in the first person -- from the point of view of a fifth-century BC Greek householder and warrior.  Lots of people write first-person historicals that may or may not be fun, but aren't very convincing as a portrait of the protagonist or the protagonist's society.  There is always the temptation to make the hero/heroine more sympathetic by portraying him or her as somehow holding to some or even many contemporary values, however unlikely that may be.  How many medieval historicals feature a physician or other healer whose remarkably modern and scientific insights are an essential part of the plot and her/his character?  Too many.

I didn't feel that way about Cameron's protagonist, who is modeled on a real person, but one who, thank heaven, is no one famous.  The amount of learning and literary skill it took to do this should not be underestimated.

There is one aspect where the first-person presentation eventually lost credibility with me.  First-person presentation demands a fair bit of suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience; that suspension is a delicate thing.  Somewhere in the second book of this (unfinished) series I stopped believing the hero could remember every blow he threw or tactic he used on various battlefields or in maritime encounters through his whole long life -- which ain't over yet.  You are warned -- Cameron is a military re-enactor and it shows.

That doesn't affect my judgment that he is also a superior historical novelist.

A costuming book of interest: Illuminating Fashion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Netherlands, 1325-1515

I got the following note a few days ago, and I know some readers will be interested:

Kindly note our offer on:
Illuminating Fashion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Netherlands, 1325-1515
by Anne H. van Buren; edited by Roger S. Wieck.
published by Giles Ltd. in association with the Morgan Library & Museum, New York
- reg. price: $95.00
- now: $76.00 (20% discount) + 8.00 shipping (in the U.S.) = $84.00
- published: Sept. 2011
- 464 pages, 9 x 12"
- 298 color illustrations
- hardcover with dust jacket
More info about the book below.
Limited number of copies available.
Please inquire for shipping cost outside the U.S.
Send orders to: eskenazi@riversidebook.com
thank you very much.
best wishes,
Brian Eskenazi
Riverside Book Company, Inc.
New York
www.riversidebook.com


About the Book

A comprehensive study of dress in Northern Europe from the early fourteenth century to the beginning of the Renaissance,Illuminating Fashion is the first thorough study of the history of fashion in this period based solely on firmly dated or datable works of art. It draws on illuminated manuscripts, early printed books, tapestries, paintings, and sculpture from museums and libraries around the world.
“Symbolism and metaphors are buried in the art of fashion,” says Roger Wieck, the editor of Illuminating Fashion and curator of the accompanying exhibition at the Morgan Library. Examining the role of social customs and politics in influencing dress, at a time of rapid change in fashion, this fully illustrated volume demonstrates the richness of such symbolism in medieval art and how artists used clothing and costume to help viewers interpret an image

.
At the heart of the work is A Pictorial History of Fashion, 1325 to 1515, an album of over 300 illustrations with commentary. This is followed by a comprehensive glossary of medieval English and French clothing terms and an extensive list of dated and datable works of art. Not only can this fully illustrated volume be used as a guide to a fuller understanding of the works of art, it can also help date an undated work; reveal the shape and structure of actual garments; and open up a picture’s iconographic and social content.
It is invaluable for costume designers, students and scholars of the history of dress and history of art, as well as those who need to date works of art.

About the Authors

Anne Hagopian van Buren, who died in 2008, was an eminent art historian. A specialist in Medieval and Netherlandish art, she was the editor of Early Netherlandish Paintings: Rediscovery, Reception and Research (2005). 

 Roger S. Wieck is curator of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at the Morgan Library & Museum and author of Late Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated 

Most resonant phrase I saw on the Web this week

"The unreported world," used by Al Jazeera English to characterize what they try to cover.

In my experience, a pretty accurate characterization.

Best short discussion of medieval scholarship of the day

From Got Medieval:

As everybody knew, the lives of saints were meant to mirror the life of Christ, so if you wanted to tell the truth about a saint, all you had to do was tell the truth about Christ.

This sort of thinking derived from the way that medievals read their Bible, which is to say, typologically. Things in the Old Testament were said to pre-figure or pre-incarnate the things in the New Testament. Jonah spent three days in a whale’s belly. Christ arose from the grave after three days. These two facts were not coincidental: Johan pre-figured Christ; he was a “type” of Christ. So if you want to know more about the Resurrection, you could always learn more about Jonah and the whale. Indeed, you can’t swing a dead cat in medieval exegesis without hitting an earlier dead cat that prefigures the very cat you’re swinging.

Wish I'd had this to put before my grad seminar on medieval chroniclers a couple of  years ago.

BTW, Got Medieval's author is blogging his thinking on the subject of his dissertation, namely Geoffery of Monmouth and Uther Pendragon, if you want to see a modern scholar at work.

"Losing" Iraq

Some of Obama's political opponents are peddling the idea that his administration "lost" Iraq.  An article in Salon by Matt Duss refutes this charge:

 Brett McGurk, who served as a senior advisor to three U.S. ambassadors in Baghdad, helped negotiate the 2008 withdrawal agreement with the Iraqi government. He also attempted to negotiate a new agreement in 2011 that would’ve allowed a residual U.S. force to stay.

It wasn’t possible, as he explained in a Washington Post Op-Ed. “The decision to complete our withdrawal was not the result of a failed negotiation,” McGurk wrote, “but rather the byproduct of an independent Iraq that has an open political system and a 325-member parliament.”

Trying to force an agreement through that parliament would have been “self-destructive,” he wrote. “That had nothing to do with Iran and everything to do with Iraqi pride, history and nationalism. Even the most staunchly anti-Iranian Iraqi officials refused to publicly back a residual U.S. force — and in the end, they supported our withdrawal.”

As for the claims that Iran would benefit from the U.S. withdrawal, the fact of the matter is that Iraq became “exposed” to Iranian influence the moment the Bush administration removed Saddam Hussein.  For years Saddam had served as the biggest check on Iranian power in the region. It was the Bush administration, supported by the likes of Krauthammer and Ajami, that created an Iraqi government largely run by Iran’s partners and clients. Paradoxically, removing the U.S. presence from Iraq could actually serve to diminish Iranian influence there, by removing one of the drivers of resentment that Iran has exploited in recent years to its advantage.

Actually this whole theory of a "lost Iraq" makes me wonder when it was "unlost."

Image:   The Iraqi parliament, whose deliberations you can read about here. 

Report from Syria

From Ehsani at Syria Comment.

Feel threatened by Iran?

Here's Tom Englehardt's take on the threat:

Exclusive: New Iranian Commando Team Operating Near U.S.

(Tehran, FNA) The Fars News Agency has confirmed with the Republican Guard’s North American Operations Command that a new elite Iranian commando team is operating in the U.S.-Mexican border region. The primary day-to-day mission of the team, known as the Joint Special Operations Gulf of Mexico Task Force, or JSOG-MTF, is to mentor Mexican military units in the border areas in their war with the deadly drug cartels.  The task force provides “highly trained personnel that excel in uncertain environments,” Maj. Amir Arastoo, a spokesman for Republican Guard special operations forces in North America, tells Fars, and “seeks to confront irregular threats...”

The unit began its existence in mid-2009 -- around the time that Washington rejected the Iranian leadership’s wish for a new diplomatic dialogue. But whatever the task force does about the United States -- or might do in the future -- is a sensitive subject with the Republican Guard.  “It would be inappropriate to discuss operational plans regarding any particular nation,” Arastoo says about the U.S.

Okay, so I made that up.  Sue me.  But first admit that, a line or two in, you knew it was fiction.  After all, despite the talk about American decline, we are still on a one-way imperial planet.  Yes, there is a new U.S. special operations team known as Joint Special Operations Task Force-Gulf Cooperation Council, or JSOTF-GCC, at work near Iran and, according to Wired magazine’s Danger Room blog, we really don’t quite know what it’s tasked with doing (other than helping train the forces of such allies as Bahrain and Saudi Arabia). 

And yes, the quotes are perfectly real, just out of the mouth of a U.S. “spokesman for special-operations forces in the Mideast,” not a representative of Iran’s Republican Guard.  And yes, most Americans, if they were to read about the existence of the new special ops team, wouldn’t think it strange that U.S. forces were edging up to (if not across) the Iranian border, not when our “safety” was at stake. 

Reverse the story, though, and it immediately becomes a malign, if unimaginable, fairy tale.  Of course, no Iranian elite forces will ever operate along the U.S. border.  Not in this world.  Washington wouldn’t live with it and it remains the military giant of giants on this planet.  By comparison, Iran is, in military terms, a minor power. 

I sincerely wish the war-drum beaters would cool it.  But the chosen strategy of  American politicians to blow everything except the problems of unemployment and climate change out of all proportion really worries me.

I am no fan of the scummy Iranian regime.  But as someone else said recently, it is mainly a threat to Iran.  They have got real problems but are no closer to dealing with them than...you name it.

One state in Israel/Palestine

Over at Juan Cole's Informed Comment site, the guest bloggers Yoav Peled and Horit Herman Peled argue that the two-state solution (two sovereign entities, Israel and Palestine) is now impossible.

What makes the two-state solution unachievable is the fact that since 1967 Israel has settled close to three quarters of a million Jews in the territories it captured from Jordan in 1967. About one-third of those are in the area Israel defined as Jerusalem and annexed in 1967, declaring it to be non-negotiable. Of the remaining five hundred thousand, the lowest estimate of the number that would have to be removed in order for a viable, territorially contiguous Palestinian state to be set up in the West Bank is one hundred thousand. This is a task that no Israeli government, committed as it may be to the two-state solution, would be able to carry out, politically. To this day no Israeli government has removed even one of the West Bank “outposts” that are illegal by Israeli law (all Jewish settlements in the occupied territories are illegal by international law), despite promises to the US and several decisions by Israel’s own High Court of Justice.

The declared purpose of the settlement drive in the West Bank (as in the other occupied territories) was to change demographic realities in order to make Israel’s withdrawal from those territories impossible. This purpose has been achieved. Not only are the settlers, their family members and their supporters an electoral power block that cannot be ignored, settlers and their supporters now make up a significant proportion of the command structure of Israel’s security forces, the same forces that would have to carry out a decision to remove the settlers.

To counter this argument, critics may point to the withdrawal of Jewish settlements from Gaza in 2005. That example, however, actually supports our argument. In order to remove 8,000 Jewish settlers from Gaza, an easily isolated region of no religious significance to Jews, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a military hero idolized by both the settlers and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) had to deploy the entire man and woman power of all of Israel’s security forces. Moreover, the Gaza withdrawal was not done in agreement with the Palestinians, or in order to facilitate peace with them. It was done unilaterally, in order to make Israel’s control of Gaza more efficient. Judging by this example, removing 100,000 settlers from the West Bank, in order to enable the establishment of a Palestinian state, would be an impossible task.

Of course, dealing with the realities of a single state is not going to be exactly easy.

History Club events

Hi all,

From the club officers:

This is a reminder of a few events happening this week.

There will be a meeting this Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 11:30-12:30 in room A143. ... We will be discussing clothing orders, the book sale, 4^th year pub night and the next pub night. Anyone interested in being on the executive council next year are encouraged to come out so they can learn the ropes!

This Thursday, February 2, 2012 will be our first pub night of the New Year. It will take place at the Fox and the Fiddle beginning at 8pm. The theme is symposium. Symposiums held in Ancient Greece involved wine and discussion. At our symposium you are welcome to drink whatever you chose, alcoholic or not. There will be tables set up with a political or social question placed at each table (ie. Are men and women equal always in all ways? or Should marijuana be legalized?). You are invited to come out and discuss these questions with your friends and peers. Or just come out and hang out! Hope to see you there!
Sam 

The cathedral of Middlesex

The pic is from the Daily Mail.  Here's why it is in the news (the Guardian):

An extraordinary medieval barn once dubbed "the cathedral of Middlesex" by Sir John Betjeman has been bought by English Heritage in a move to save it from decay, it is announced on Monday.

Just beyond today's sprawl of Heathrow, between the roaring M25 and M4 motorways and the straggling warehouses and industrial estates around the airport perimeter, the Great Barn at Harmondsworth has stood since 1426.

It has long been famous among building historians and admired by the poet and conservation campaigner Betjeman. Repair work is now being carried out – including to its huge roof – and it will open to the public regularly for the first time this spring.

"This is the best preserved medieval barn in England, probably in Europe, and the ninth largest ever built in England. For its size, and its state of preservation, it is unique," said Michael Dunn, an English Heritage historic buildings expert, of the 60 metres long, 12 metres wide and 11 metres high timber structure.

Justine Bayley, an archaeologist who lives in Harmondsworth village and secretary of the group that has acted as guardians for the barn, said: "If we had a pound for everyone who walks in here and says 'wow!' we could have re-roofed the building twice over. It's really the only appropriate response."

 Those of us who have owned or used barns, packed them with hay for the winter will say "60 METERS LONG!"

This great barn was owned by a church corporation, which had the stability of ownership and wealth to build such a thing.  Imagine the fertility of the area necessary to justify the investment.  Now, of course, Middlesex is pretty much indistinguishable from suburban sprawl anywhere.

Thanks to sharp-eyed Paul Halsall.

For scale, and for the fun of it, another pic from the Guardian:

That beautiful destrier, again

I am trying to put the finishing touches on my translation of Charny's Questions, and once again I have come up against the case of the beautiful destrier -- Tourney Question 8.  I have had real experts look at this and they are baffled, and suggest that there is a transcription error.   Therefore I am putting out this call to anyone who has access to Jean Rossbach's edition (in the Free University of Brussels library, or to the main mss., which are at Paris and Brussels.  Your help in checking the text would be much appreciated.

Anyone who has sufficient confidence in their mastery of Middle French can contact me directly and I will send you the French text and my current translation, and you too can have a go at it.

Rent, charity, First Nations, Canada

My colleague at Nipissing University, Catherine Murton Stoehr, wrote this fine piece for the Toronto Star:

Strengthening the chain between First Nations and non-aboriginal Canadians

On Tuesday, Assembly of First Nations national chief Shawn Atleo presented Governor General David Johnston a silver wampum belt symbolizing the relationship between the British people and the First Nations. He stopped short of saying what we all know to be true, that the chain is almost rusted out. One of the central reasons for this breakdown is that non-aboriginal Canadians see all money and resources given to First Nations people as charity, while people in Atleo’s world see it as rent. If you’re handing out charity, you get to set conditions like submission to unelected managers. But people paying rent don’t get to interfere in their landlords’ business.

When British officials took over the land and destroyed the hunt in northern Ontario, they promised to immediately rebuild aboriginal communities’ infrastructure and then to support that infrastructure forever. In the same way that a lease remains in effect as long as a person rents a house, the treaties remain in effect as long as non-First Nations people live in Canada. Consistently fulfilling the terms of the treaties is the minimum ethical requirement of living on the land of Canada.

Attawapiskat is covered by Treaty 9. Like all the treaties, the written promises that colonial officials made in exchange for the land were very small. Historians correctly point out that the real treaties were the agreements that colonial representatives and First Nations leaders made orally. Indeed, the written documents cut out many of the oral promises and all of the shared “spirit and intent” of the oral agreements. So when we in 2012 talk about fulfilling the written treaty documents, we are talking about a limited, achievable goal. The more difficult part will be recovering and living up to the spirit and intent of the treaties.

So what did Canadians offer in return for the right to live on First Nations land and to sell the trees, minerals, fish and furs they found there? In Treaty 9, we promised to provide teacher salaries, school buildings and educational equipment. The children of Attawapiskat have been without a safe school building since 1979 when their school was contaminated by a diesel spill that made them ill. In 2000 the community moved the children into temporary buildings. In 2008 the Canadian government refused the request of a delegation of children from Attawapiskat asking for a new school.

The worst effect of that decision was to deprive 400 children of a proper school and to lay on them all the social and economic exclusions that arise from not having education. Another more insidious effect was to poison the relationship between the ancestors of the treaty signatories. By failing to provide the promised school, our government made it impossible for Canadians in the Treaty 9 area to live up to their moral obligations.

It may be that Stephen Harper wishes to begin a radical new era of just relations with First Nations people, but when he stands up in Parliament and expresses frustration at Attawapiskat’s finances, he hurts his cause by engaging in an old tradition of political theatre. He is encouraging Canadians to continue believing that we are the generous benefactors of the First Nations people, but that is not true. They have been our benefactors since the days of the fur trade and we have become one of the wealthiest societies in human history.

The bad news is that we have been left holding the bag and the profits from a 200-year-old land heist. The good news is that there is a clear path forward. To strengthen the chain between the First Nations and non-aboriginal Canadians, we must turn our gaze from the shortcomings of First Nations people onto our own. We must restore our side of the treaty relationship, which means learning the written and oral promises made over our bit of Canada and requiring our representatives to put fulfilling them at the top of their priority list.

We must do this because we said we would and we are honest. The Canadian people are not thieves and profiteers and we will make good on the deals from which we have received one blessing after another. My generation will pay the rent in Attawapiskat.

Catherine Murton Stoehr is an instructor in the department of history at Nipissing University.