Wednesday, April 25, 2018
THE CAUSES OF WAR IN THE AGE OF THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION
This is an important point to keep in mind in all discussions of war, war guilt, the West and the Rest:
After about 1789, it became the common practice of the Sea Powers, Britain and France, the one a so called constitutional monarchy, the other either a republic or an empire, to threaten other powers, especially the Eastern European powers, with democratic revolution or ethnic unrest.
The Eastern powers likewise threatened each other and the Ottoman Empire with either democratic revolution or ethnic nationalism.
The Czars, most notably, went much further than threat, when they systematically expelled millions of poor, destitute, scorned, exiled Jews into Europe, America, and elsewhere.
The instability was hardly limited to hitlerite Germany and Austria, when one considers the firestorm of endless political instability symbolized by the Dreyfus Affair in France.
So, it was hardly a new, unethical, an uncommon thing, for a power to foment revolution, especially in time of war, as was the case when Germany sent Lenin into Russia.
After about 1789, it became the common practice of the Sea Powers, Britain and France, the one a so called constitutional monarchy, the other either a republic or an empire, to threaten other powers, especially the Eastern European powers, with democratic revolution or ethnic unrest.
The Eastern powers likewise threatened each other and the Ottoman Empire with either democratic revolution or ethnic nationalism.
The Czars, most notably, went much further than threat, when they systematically expelled millions of poor, destitute, scorned, exiled Jews into Europe, America, and elsewhere.
The instability was hardly limited to hitlerite Germany and Austria, when one considers the firestorm of endless political instability symbolized by the Dreyfus Affair in France.
So, it was hardly a new, unethical, an uncommon thing, for a power to foment revolution, especially in time of war, as was the case when Germany sent Lenin into Russia.
"Hess (1853) replied (against Buol's policy (of siding with the Sea Powers), to the Emperor) that while everyone rightly condemned Russia for her present revolutionary policy, Britain's was worse and France's no better. Even if Russia tended to dominate, she had helped fight the revolution for forty years, while Britain protected and promoted it for selfish commercial reasons and France was the chief source and victim of revolutionary ideas."
Monday, January 1, 2018
THE OLD EUROPEAN ORDER'S LIBERALISM FROM SAY 1760 WHIG WAG SHAG
resulted in the major wars of the 20th Century, but also the major ones of the 19th that liberals like to more or less completely overlook, the Irish chronic endemic military unrest, the Crimean, the Franco Prussian, etc, Russo Japanese (a heads up, Boxer Rebellion, another), the Boer a milestone to WWI, and then in the globalization debacle which followed, and which now puts what has gone before in the shade...all swept under the thick shag rug of Western Whig History.
Americans make much of the Civil War, but it was a ridiculous, blundering, small, side show, really, in which the great powers, for various reasons, failed largely to take part (quite contrary to how they had behaved, say, at the American Rebellion of 1776... and for quite different reasons).
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