The Shoardian vol. 1

T HE

S HOARDIAN

Autumn 2009

Produced by the MGS History Department Vol. 1, Issue 1

The Origins of PanArabism

by Bilal Sabbagh All except the most optimistic (most would say deluded) people would say that that pan-Arabism is dead and has been dead for a good 30 years - and I agree. I would argue that it has never really existed in its fullest sense; that of a union of all the Arab speaking nations creating a united economic, political, military and cultural alliance.

But the rise and fall of Pan-Arabism is a story for another day.

The death of Pan-Arabism But if Pan-Arabism only ever existed partially and in short, scattered bursts then the Arab world today is as far as it has ever been from the Nasirist ideals of the Sixties and Seventies. The once fiercely defiant, anti-American Egypt of Gamal Abd el Naser is now the second largest recipient of American aid after

Israel. The Saudi Kingdom and the other Gulf states are home to the largest concentration of American military bases anywhere in the world outside US territory. Even the Palestinian factions of Hamas and Fatah are at loggerheads and have been engaged for many years in heated, often violent, power struggle.

Dissatisfaction and disillusionment after the failure pan-Arabism has, ever since the eighties (which saw the creation of The Muslim Brotherhood) caused huge numbers of Arabs to relegate their Arabism to a secondary status behind their Islamic identity.

Recent times have seen an awakening of Islamic consciousness in the Arab world and both scholars and ordinary people have begun to look into their past to try to find answers to the predicament that the Arab world finds itself in today. The incredible Arab conquests of the 7th century onwards are most commonly cited. The conclusion usually arrived at is that the early Arab conquerors of the 7th century and onward achieved their success, first and foremost, because they managed to leave behind any tribal loyalties or Arab identity (which

had torn apart pre-Islamic Arabia) and unite to fight wholly and completely under the banner of Islam. And this is true. However, it is not the whole story.

It’s all in the tribe Whilst on the one hand it was Islam which united the Arab armies and gave them inspiration, an equal source of motivation and unity was actually the idea of Arab unity, pride in their Arab identity and pride in the tribe. This is not unexpected as the tribe was (and still is in many places) the bedrock of Arab society and membership of a tribe was the principle way for any Arab to identify themselves. The Arabs of pre-Islamic Arabia knew that they were part of a peninsula wide race of people with a shared language and culture and any wars conducted between tribes was just that – tribal, and not racial. It may seem as if the tribal nature of Arab society negates any sense of Arab unity but that is not the case, in fact it the opposite. Across the Arabian Peninsula, Arabs believed they were part of a single Arab race.

Tribes were simply moving villages and towns within the same Arab nation. This age old framework of tribes and clans, the age old structure

of Arab society, was carried straight over into the Muslim armies of the 7 th century. The Muslim armies were divided into tribal and clan-based fighting units, led by the tribal sheikh, and administration of the army was conducted along tribal lines just like any pre-Islamic Arab army would have done.

The importance of Arab, tribal pride and the role it played in motivating the Muslim armies is reflected by the abundance of Muslim sources in which deeds of heroism are conducted for the sake of the tribe. For example, Sa’ad, commander of the Muslim army in Iraq, appealed to the Arab pride of his men when he wished to spur them on: ‘You are Arab chiefs and notables, the elite of every tribe and the pride of those who follow you’. The fact that the Qur’an , the direct word of God, had been revealed in the Arabic language gave the Arab tribes an incredible cultural confidence and contributed greatly to the fostering of pan-Arab sentiment in the ranks of the Muslim armies which ,in turn, created a cohesion unity never before seen in a ‘barbarian’ army invading the Roman Empire.

The Hunnic confederation of Attila was certainly determined to beat Rome and win its riches but it lost cohesion rapidly and

splintered due to the eclectic mix of peoples and languages present in its ranks. The Arab cultural confidence and unity meant that when the Arab armies occupied lands, they maintained their distinctly Arab culture and forms of rule. They initially settled away from locals, displaying their desire maintain their Arab and tribal identities, yet another example of the cultural self-confidence that the Arabs possessed. Whereas the vast majority of ‘barbarian’ invaders of the Roman Empire aspired to emulate Rome and believed they were the successors of Rome, the Arabs saw themselves as something distinctly different. Islam certainly contributed greatly to their sense of confidence and their unity, but so did their Arabism, probably in greater measure. The fact that it was a requirement to be literate in Arabic to serve in government and administration, but not necessarily a Muslim makes this clear.

Belief is father to the man It is important to remember that Islam had an equally huge role to play in fostering this Pan-Arab unity. It was also due to Islam that the Arab tribes first brought the Arab tribes together in large enough numbers so that they

could realistically challenge the Byzantine and Persian Empires. The Arabs looked to the Islamic Caliph as their overall leader as he was Emir al Mu’mineen “Leader of the Faithful” and the ideology of jihad was incredibly powerful. The Arabic sources refer as much to Islam as they do Arabism. So the Arabs armies of the 7th century neither saw themselves as wholly Muslim or wholly Arab but a fusion of the two. They were on the one hand Muslims, fighting for God, but equally, and I believe, they were Arabs, proud of their Arabness and fighting according to an honour code which pre-dated Islam.

The new religion of Islam coupled with pre-Islamic values of tribal pride and pride in the lone warrior created was the crucial factor that lay behind the rapid Arab conquests of the 7 th century. Islam provided the initial impetus for conquest as the leaders of the nascent Islamic state, centred on Mecca, sought to expand in order to both survive and spread the boundaries of their new religion.

Islam also served as a unifying force between diverse and often disconnected Arab tribes and it was Islam that, for the first time in Arab history, managed to unite enough Arab tribes to create an army large enough

to beat the Byzantines and Persians in battle and occupy their lands. On an individual level, the idea of martyrdom played a huge role in motivating Muslim soldiers and raising morale. I believe that the idea that a jihad was being conducted, not just a raid simply for booty, raised the ambition of the Muslim armies, giving them a higher purpose, and played a key role in maintaining the momentum of conquest. At the same time, tribal and Arab pride and identity provided the building blocks of the Muslim armies and administration and served as a key factor behind their cohesion and unity.

The Arabs believed that they were part of greater Arab nation and they fought for the honour of the tribe and the Arab people as much as much as for the sake of Islam. As much as Islam served to inspire and unite the Arab the tribes, so did the fact that they shared a common language, a common culture, common history and a common honour code that was

embedded deeply in their DNA and pre-dated Islam.

Was Kennedy’s

For Vietnam?

From looking at the early Arab conquests two things are evident. First of all, it is clear that Pan-Arabsim did not come into being with Naser. It has been around as long as the Arabic language and was simply revived ,not for the first time, by Naser and his contemporaries. Secondly ,and more importantly, it clear that, contrary to common belief in both the Arab and extra-Arab world, the Arab conquerors of the 7th and 8th centuries were not just Muslim warriors but also were Arab warriors in equally great , I think possibly greater, measure.

Interested Read this:

in

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more?

Hugh Kennedy The Great Arab Conquests: How The Spread Of Islam Changed The World We Live In

Response Too ‘Flexible’

By Jonathan Senior John F. Kennedy entered the Oval Office on the back of an election campaign that had placed great

emphasis on the foreign policy failures of his republican predecessor. In particular, Kennedy had criticised

Eisenhower and Dulles’ Massive Deterrence as a highly ineffective and dangerous policy of asymmetrical response (1), which he considered largely responsible for that administration’s failure to protect U.S. interests in both Southeast Asia and Europe.

The Kennedy administration therefore desired a move to foreign policy based on symmetrical response, which, it believed, would provide “a wider choice than humiliation or all out nuclear war” (2), through both the careful regulation of means to ensure their appropriateness to ends, and, in the words of Walt Rostow, the expansion of “our arsenal of limited overt and covert countermeasures [necessary] if we are in fact to make crisis-mongering, deeply built into Communist ideology and working habits, an unprofitable occupation” (3).

Whereas his predecessor’s strategy was heavily influenced by a desire to minimise spending on defence, Kennedy and his staff placed their confidence in more modern economic thinking that did not necessitate a competition for resources between domestic and foreign interests. The costly expansion of means inherent in the adoption of this new policy was made possible by the success of prominent economists such as Walter Heller in convincing the new President of the need to make economic growth, rather than solvency the chief priority, and accordingly, of the fact that the

U.S. economy could not only withstand, but also in fact benefit from, increases in spending for both national defence and domestic reform. The new symmetrical strategy that was subsequently adopted was to underpin all foreign policy thinking in the Kennedy and Johnson eras, and soon came to be known publically, borrowing from General Maxwell Taylor’s book “The Uncertain Trumpet”, as the strategy of Flexible Response.

Presiding over perhaps the most dangerous years of the Cold War, the Kennedy administration experienced rather mixed success in several areas of foreign policy – the propaganda victories of the crises of Berlin and Cuba contrast rather strongly with the Bay of Pigs debacle and the unsatisfactory neutralisation of Laos – in which the policy of Flexible Response played roles of varying significance. This article is, however, primarily concerned with the Cold War arena that the Kennedy administration believed to be more suited to the application of Flexible Response than any other. American support for South Vietnam presented an opportunity to utilise counterinsurgency, an alternative method of warfare aimed at using similar methods as the communist insurgents, thus fitting perfectly into Kennedy’s policy of symmetrical, nonnuclear response. The administration was indeed rather pro-active in its

promotion of counterinsurgency as the ‘way forward’ in Vietnam: at home, intensified training was carried out for ‘special forces’ versed in the techniques of political, social and economic ‘action’ as well as irregular warfare, while avid discussions were held within the highest circles of the administration of the writings of Mao Tse-tung, Vo Nguyen Giap, and Che Guevara. In Vietnam, similar efforts were made to reform the South Vietnamese government’s efficiency in dealing with the communist insurgency, while the Strategic Hamlet programme attempted to isolate and protect the Vietnamese peasants from communist influence.

Curiously, however, Vietnam nonetheless became everything that Kennedy sought to prevent through the use of Flexible Response; although determined to avoid either humiliation or escalation, the Kennedy administration enacted its policy of symmetrical response in a way that played a significant role in determining the realisation of both of these terrible outcomes under its successors.

Countless historians have explored the possible reasons for the catastrophic failure of Kennedy and his successors to deal with the communist insurgency in South Vietnam, but it would perhaps be more pertinent to consider whether Kennedy’s decision to further involve the U.S. in the conflict was fully, if at all, compatible with the foreign policy strategy of symmetrical, Flexible Response to which he so

wished to remain loyal to. Many will, of course, point out that Kennedy had inherited the situation in Vietnam from his predecessor and was perhaps not, therefore, fully responsible for increasing U.S. involvement. It must be remembered, however, that President Eisenhower had kept to the strict allocation of only 685 U.S. military advisors present in South Vietnam originally granted to France under the 1954 Geneva Accords; his successor smashed this barrier with an increase to over 23,000 American advisors in the country in his short term in office.

Although understandably unimpressed with the Vietnamese situation bequeathed to them by Eisenhower, Kennedy and his staff appeared wholly confident of the ability of their new strategy of Flexible Response to defeat the communist insurgency without running the same risks of humiliation and escalation as Massive Deterrence had done in the preceding years. In automatically applying this strategy to Vietnam as it did to all other foreign policy issues, the administration was however making a number of rather significant, and not necessarily correct, assumptions: that the defence of Vietnam was essential to the maintenance of world order and the United States’ position of strength in this order; that the problems in Vietnam could be solved with action precisely measured to achieve the desired effects; and that the means existed to accurately evaluate

performance in order to ensure the preciseness of such action. The first of these assumptions is strongly discredited by evidence showing this administration to be less prone to perceiving threats to the balance of power simply in ideological terms; Kennedy himself remarked in June 1961 that it was too easy, “to dismiss as Communist-inspired every antigovernmental or anti-American riot, every other throw of a corrupt regime, or every mass protest against misery and despair” (4). The administration’s continued involvement in Vietnam, despite this supposedly greater tolerance of revolutionary movements and the blatant demonstration by the ever-increasing Sino-Soviet split that communism was no longer a monolith, therefore demonstrates the importance of what many historians have referred to as the “doctrine of credibility” as opposed to traditional ideological containment strategies. Kennedy may have doubted the strategic need for U.S. involvement, but he was fully convinced that visible success in Vietnam was essential to the political security of the administration (5).

Flexible Response was perhaps, therefore, applied more out of desperation than need, for it is clear that Kennedy’s continued involvement in Vietnam was little more than taking action for the sake of being seen to take action.

In relation to the second of these assumptions, it is clear from simple

examination that the principle counterinsurgency techniques used by the U.S. military advisors in Vietnam were far from the precise, well calculated actions required in the application of Flexible Response. The Strategic Hamlet programme represented a gross misunderstanding of the rudimentary nature of the conflict in Vietnam. Its designers failed to predict the negative effects it had in alienating and aggravating the peasant population, whom were forced to leave their homes and thus further tempted to join communist insurgents in the fight against Diem’s unpopular, authoritarian regime. The Americans were similarly unsuccessful in attempts to address the crippling weaknesses of Diem’s inefficient, corrupt bureaucracy, which required drastic reform if he was to gain increased support from the general population and put up effective resistance to the communist insurgency.

Even Kennedy’s abandonment (albeit, partly unintentional) of Diem in 1963 only compounded his problems, creating a power vacuum that made the South Vietnamese government highly unstable exactly when it most required strength and stability. This complete lack of success in actions vital to American victory thus suggests a failure of the Kennedy administration to consider the likelihood of success of carefully calculated, symmetrical responses to the insurgent threat.

The last of these assumptions was, however, perhaps the most misguided

of all. In choosing to apply the policy of Flexible Response to the problems in Vietnam, the Kennedy administration seems to have completely failed to accurately access the current situation and predict the extent of its ability to accurately evaluate performance. The crucial factor in this necessary but unsuccessful assessment would have, of course, been the fact that the reliability of the reports and statistics used by the Kennedy administration to assess the effectiveness of such action depended wholly upon Diem’s government. Both South Vietnamese government officials and army officers deliberately inflated vital statistics, with the former hoping to impressive their powerful new allies, and the later wishing to avoid as much combat as was possible: only around 20% of the 8,600 ‘strategic hamlets’ the South Vietnamese claimed to have constructed actually existed, while almost a third of all military operations were carried out in areas where the Viet Cong were known not to be. This, unsurprisingly, had a drastic impact in deceiving the Kennedy administration for several months and worsening the aforementioned lack of success in opposing the communist insurgency.

It is particularly noteworthy, however, that even after the ineffectiveness of current U.S. efforts became perfect clear to the administration, Kennedy and his staff remained so determined to find a suitable, effective strategy in the wide variety of means offered by

Flexible Reponse that would avoid either humiliation or escalation, that they remained indecisive for the entirety of Kennedy’s term in office.

The President chose only to increase the volume of U.S. military advisors in the country, in the vain hope that this would, through sheer weight of numbers, solve any problems and prevent or delay the necessity of making a seemingly impossible decision between the two dreaded consequences Flexible Response was intended to prevent. In reality, however, such increases served only to further the American involvement in and commitment to South Vietnam, thus increasing the reluctance of succeeding administrations to withdraw. It is in this way that the Kennedy administration can be allocated a substantial part of the blame for the full U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War. It therefore appears that, as a result of the immense domestic pressure upon Kennedy to avoid humiliation, and his reluctance to asymmetrically apply force due to its incompatibility with his beloved Flexible Response, his administration chose to utilise techniques of counterinsurgency that descended into insignificance because of the lack of means to accurately access and control the performance of these ‘carefully measured’ responses.

Through what prominent Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis has called a “curiously myopic preoccupation with process – a disproportionate

fascination with means at the expense of ends” (6), the administration failed to predict the unsuitability of such symmetrical responses to the situation in Vietnam, resulting in the irony of Kennedy’s reliance on the supposedly wider, safer variety of symmetrical means offered by Flexible Response severely narrowing his options, and leaving him with the seemingly impossible choice between escalation and humiliation, with regards to which he remained indecisive.

1. Asymmetry is described by Gaddis as, “countering challenges of the balance of power not necessarily at the levels at which they had occurred, but rather on terrain and with instruments best calculated to apply American strengths against adversary weaknesses” - Gaddis, John Lewis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy, Oxford: Oxford University Press (1982), pp.

213-4.

2. Kennedy radio-television address, July 25, 1961, Public Papers of the Presidents: John F. Kennedy, 1961-

History’s Unique Warriors

by Asad Rahman

1963 (Washington: 1962-1964), p. 535 3. Rostow draft, “Basic National Security Policy”, March 26, 1962, p.

174 4. Kennedy radio-television address, June 6th, 1961, Public Papers of the Presidents: John F. Kennedy, 19611963 (Washington: 1962-1964), p. 445 5. Republican bullying had seen the young Kennedy labelled as inexperienced, and humiliation in other areas of foreign policy had understandably enhanced the President’s desire for visible success; following the Bay of Pigs debacle, Kennedy is reported to have remarked: “There are just so many concessions that one can make to the Communists in one ear and survive politically, we just can’t have another defeat in Vietnam” (Sanders, The USA and Vietnam 1945-75, p. 42 – primary source not disclosed) 6. Gaddis, John Lewis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy, Oxford: Oxford University Press (1982), p. 238.

Throughout history, there have been many unique warriors, all of whom

contributed something new to the rich tapestry of military history. Here, I will profile five of these unique warriors, examining what made them interesting and superior.

he could regain his honour by committing ‘seppuku’, or suicide. This was always done by the samurai slashing his own sword in a C motion against his abdomen and neck.

The Samurai

When a samurai encountered another samurai from a rival daimyo, the two would duel. First, they would dismount from their horse and skirmish with their spears. Then, they would walk up to each other and duel with their two swords. Each samurai carried a short sword, called a ‘wakizashi’ (literally ‘side arm’), which was never removed from his body, and a long sword, called a ‘katana’, which was removed whenever a samurai went indoors.

Nobody but a samurai was allowed to attack a samurai in feudal Japan.

These duels would continue until all the samurai of one side had been killed.

The samurai were the Japanese warrior class who served the daimyo of early and feudal Japan. In fact, the word samurai is derived from the Japanese verb ‘sabarau’, which means ‘to serve’. The daimyo were essentially the governing class of Japan, similar to European landlords. With the rise in private estates known as the shoen in the 12th and 13th century, and the relatively weak central government, daimyos began to need personal armies to protect their land and to attack other daimyo. Hence, the rise of the samurai.

Samurai followed ‘bushido’, the warrior code of honour. It stressed mastery of the martial arts, frugality and above all total loyalty to the master and the readiness for combat at a moment’s notice. This code became particularly important during the peaceful years of the Tokugawa dynasty, where many samurai were forced to rethink their roles in civil society. If a samurai broke the code,

The Peltast The second warrior is the peltast, a light infantryman from Thrace, which is in modern day north eastern Greece. They had very little armour, carrying only the light shield of goat or sheep skin - the ‘pelte’ - from which the peltast got his name. They carried several javelins and a short sword, used mainly for combat against weaker

infantrymen, although as a rule the peltast never got involved in prolonged combat. The peltast was very cheap to equip, and did not have much training.

What makes the peltast interesting is that they were one of the first examples of a unit designed specifically to counter another unit – in this case the Greek phalanx. The phalanx was made up of slow moving, tightly grouped heavy infantrymen who stayed in rigid column formation. The more mobile peltast was able to outflank a column of phalanxes, attack quickly and withdraw before the superior combat ability of the phalanx could be made to count. This was a very early form of the guerrilla warfare that has become a staple in modern military history.

The Praetorian Guard The Praetorian Guard were the household troops of the Roman Emperor. Their name derived from the word ‘praetor’, the name of the commanding Roman general in the field. Started by Emperor Augustus in 27 BC, only the best soldiers from the Empire were able to become join the Praetorian guard. Augustus was also probably the only emperor able to command the complete loyalty of his

Praetorian guard. After his death, the Praetorian guard grew so powerful that they were able to influence the appointment of emperors. For instance, they largely orchestrated the death of Caligula in 41 AD, and placed Emperor Claudius on the throne without any reference to the Senate.

The Praetorian guard were heavy infantrymen. They carried a ‘scutum’, a large, curved full body shield that was used to crowd the enemy soldiers and smack them on the head. They also carried a ‘gladius’ or short sword.

Roman soldiers were always taught to thrust the gladius at the enemy’s stomach, from where it was most easily withdrawn and used to fight the next man. Lastly, they carried several ‘pilum’ or spears. These were most often thrown at the enemy before melée engagement, or to dismount enemy cavalry. These were designed to break on impact, so they could not be thrown back at the Romans.

The War Elephant The first use of war elephants is estimated at somewhere around the 8th-4th century BC in India, from where it spread westward through the Persian

Empire and into Macedonia, where Alexander the Great famously used them on his campaigns, and into Egypt, where they were used in the Carthaginian campaigns against the Romans. Only male elephants were used as they were more aggressive, and female elephants tended to run away from each other. They were used largely to charge the enemy front line before the main army moved in. Their thick skin provided natural armour and their sheer size caused many armies to flee, particularly those unaccustomed to seeing elephants at all let alone charging against them.

Many generals preferred to ride atop elephants to gain a better vantage point of the battlefield.

If the elephant was strong enough, a ‘hoda’ or tower was placed on its back, housing several archers that would shoot down on the enemy. The driver carried a chisel and a hammer, with which to sever the elephant’s spinal cord if it panicked and ran into allied forces. In time, strategies developed for fighting the war elephant. The

Book review: “A History of Histories” by John

trunk and the driver were often the target of attack. When either was destroyed, the elephant usually fled.

Eventually, the ancient world discovered a way of permanently scaring away the elephant. Pigs were doused in oil, set on fire and sent towards the elephants. For some reason, elephants are horrified by the squeal of pigs and would bolt in terror from the battlefield.

The value of war elephants remains a contested issue. Whether they were used often and effectively, or have just been passed down because they sound cool is debatable. It became fashionable in the 19th and 20thcentury to contrast Western, particularly Roman and Greek, focus on discipline and infantry with exotic Asian use of elephants. However, their use until the late 15th century and advent of gunpowder suggests their enduring value to the commander.

Want to learn more? There are several books on these themes in the school library. Go and investigate!

Burrow Review by Josh Green

Burrows sets out in his book to decide what exactly is History? He argues that Herodotus is “the father of history” (I always believed it to be Homer) and to set out the differences between history and records, accounts and epics which are not. The title of the book itself receives its name from Herodotus’ work “the Histories”. Starting with Egyptian and Babylonian record keeping, Burrow moved from the Greeks, to Romans, to Christendom and to secular history and the study of the past. Burrow writes that at the beginning of his work Herodotus states why he wrote it. This is part of the argument put forward by Burrow, that the writing or study of history needs an explanation and is not just the retelling of the past. The French word for history is the same as story, for Burrow this is not History. What is important for Burrow is the distinction between what is and what is not history, as he attempts in his work “A history of Histories”.

The thesis of the book is to prove what is history and how it has developed over the ages and where it has remained firm. Burrow attempts to prove his thesis by first discrediting the proposal that the Egyptian and Babylonian records are not history and the distinction between the work of Herodotus and Thucydides. He argues that record keeping is commercial and bureaucratic good practise. Herodotus uses an inquiry, he acquires his knowledge via interrogation and questioning, furthermore his results

are turned into a historical narrative.

Furthermore more Herodotus gives an account of History from both a Greek and non-Greek perspective, he gives a balanced side to his argument only ever done before by Homer (a poet not a Historian) of which my teachers constantly remind me to do. Burrow moves onto Roman Historians next, in particular Polybius. Polybius writes about the rise and dominion of Rome over the Mediterranean. Polybius believes a Historian is not to install emotion into the reader or to exaggerate the facts, he is to deliver an accurate account of what happened, otherwise how can it be useful?

Burrow writes that Polybius is the first Historian to write about a world theme, the rise of Rome, a universal theme of which Polybius was the first.

He sticks to Herodotus in his inquiry but differs in his approach to presenting his version of history. Next on Burrow’s list of histories is that of Christendom. This version of history according to Burrow is linear (being a beginning with Adam and end being the apocalypse) and combines myth and epic with a purpose of being read and not a literary exercise of earlier historians after some sort of career (Polybius was an official). What this shares with the other histories is the narrative, however the narrative of a people as a whole collective voice, the Israelites. Burrow had to take three sections of history through the ages and show the similarities which have carried on through since the age of

Herodotus the first historian. The idea of themes, universal or local, the idea of a balance and history being accurate via inquiry and not used to create emotion, this is not the case in Christendom writing however.

What Burrow did well was to actual offer strong evidence for his thesis, the book is precise in what Burrow wishes to convey and is fluidly done. Well organised Burrow simply started at the beginning and worked his way through highlighting his key points as he went along, drawing on comparisons and illuminating the differences in approach and style over the histories.

The detail in the book is vast, yet it does not bog you down and written in a way that you feel informed yet want to know more and find it out for yourself. Burrow is meticulously careful in ascribing credit where it is deserved and earned, he does not spend his time praising or criticising one Historian over another, it would be hard to tell which Historian Burrow favours over others or if he has a particular favourite. Which would probably please Polybius as a Historian is not to impart an emotion on an individual, he is to be accurate and his History is to be useful.

The first three parts of the book must be credited they seem to have direction and are linked together well, much like the Christendom idea of linear history. It almost seems that Burrow writes the book in accordance to how past Historians would wish

themselves to be perceived. It comes across like Burrow does not wish to step on toes, he says what is good and then bad but his opinion is scarcely found in his own work. Potentially the biggest flaw in his work is he fails to show why he has written the book in the first place, someone who hopes to distinguish between epic, chronicle, accounts and history fails to do so, Burrow merely recounts what other historians have done the purpose of this is not transferred from the page.

The second half of the book is not as intricately woven as the previous part.

Whilst having clear focus at the start.

Burrow seems to have short comings in the way the second half of the book should follow.

Overall the book does cover a vast amount of time and deals with it fluidly. Burrow does provide solid evidence for his thesis that history is an art and that inquiry and balance are required in order for history to be history. The connections from time in history to the other are clearly made and most importantly make sense. The area of the study of history from Hume through to Marx is also well detailed and well laid out. Burrow succeeded in clearing up what History is and to some extent what History is not. Unfortunately in the study of the past section the opinion of Burrow seems to be none existent, which way does he prefer? Does Burrow favour Marx and his class system of history or the German influence? Some more opinion would have been nice. But

essentially it is not what the book is about. Burrow successfully presents a history of histories and it is

accomplished in a structured and readable manner without being side tracked it sticks to the point.

, universal or local, the idea of a balance and history being accurate via inquiry and not used to create emotion, this is not the case in Christendom writing however.

Burrow writes the book in accordance to how past Historians would wish themselves to be perceived. It comes across like Burrow does not wish to step on toes, he says what is good and then bad but his opinion is scarcely found in his own work. Potentially the biggest flaw in his work is he fails to show why he has written the book in the first place, someone who hopes to distinguish between epic, chronicle, accounts and history fails to do so, Burrow merely recounts what other historians have done the purpose of this is not transferred from the page.

The second half of the book is not as intricately woven as the previous part.

Whilst having clear focus at the start.

Burrow seems to have short comings in the way the second half of the book should follow.

What Burrow did well was to actual offer strong evidence for his thesis, the book is precise in what Burrow wishes to convey and is fluidly done. Well organised Burrow simply started at the beginning and worked his way through highlighting his key points as he went along, drawing on comparisons and illuminating the differences in approach and style over the histories.

The detail in the book is vast, yet it does not bog you down and written in a way that you feel informed yet want to know more and find it out for yourself. Burrow is meticulously careful in ascribing credit where it is deserved and earned, he does not spend his time praising or criticising one Historian over another, it would be hard to tell which Historian Burrow favours over others or if he has a particular favourite. Which would probably please Polybius as a Historian is not to impart an emotion on an individual, he is to be accurate and his History is to be useful.

The first three parts of the book must be credited they seem to have direction and are linked together well, much like the Christendom idea of linear history. It almost seems that

Overall the book does cover a vast amount of time and deals with it fluidly. Burrow does provide solid evidence for his thesis that history is an art and that inquiry and balance are required in order for history to be history. The connections from time in history to the other are clearly made and most importantly make sense. The area of the study of history from Hume through to Marx is also well detailed and well laid out. Burrow succeeded in clearing up what History is and to some extent what History is not. Unfortunately in the study of the

past section the opinion of Burrow seems to be none existent, which way does he prefer? Does Burrow favour Marx and his class system of history or the German influence? Some more opinion would have been nice. But

Harrison’s Hatchet Boo to the Annales. The longue durée is overrated.

By Mr G. Harrison In July 1559, the French crown passed to a frail fifteen year old, Francis II. It was a time when France needed resolute leadership: religious tensions between Huguenots and Catholics were threatening to break out into civil war in large parts of the realm. Francis was not equipped to rule by his own authority and relied on his mother, Catherine de Medici, whose combination of practicality and determination allowed her to overcome contemporary prejudices against political roles for women .

Fortunately for his wife, Mary Queen of Scots, Francis died in December 1560. Less happily for France, he was succeeded by his brother, Charles IX, who was ten. Powerful factions had, in Francis’ case, been willing to allow Catherine to direct royal policy, as the king was at most three years from his majority. The new king’s age, together with their experience of Catherine’s

essentially it is not what the book is about. Burrow successfully presents a history of histories and it is accomplished in a structured and readable manner without being side tracked it sticks to the point. rule, meant that 1561 saw noble leaders seeking to wrest control away from the Queen Mother.

In considering the religious wars in France up to 1572, this article seeks to emphasise the significance of individuals in the paths of history. In particular, it hopes to gainsay the arguments of admirers of the Annales’ school of history, who point to geology and climate as keys to understanding man’s experiences. The longue durée has value as a backdrop, but our attention is fixed on the players themselves.

Let us start by considering the predicament in which the French Crown found itself as the seventh decade of the sixteenth century began.

France was splintering along religious lines. On the Catholic side, the most influential nobleman in the country, the Duc de Guise combined the material advantages of his considerable estates in eastern France with the efforts of the country’s leading churchman, his brother, the Cardinal of Lorraine. Both men deployed their acute political skills leading a counterReformation against the growing force of Protestantism. Walking away from court in early 1562, they built up a powerful coalition of like-minded

Catholics who rejected all prospects of compromise with those they considered to be more than heretics.

Huguenots were agents of the AntiChrist, seeking to destroy Mother Church and the protection it offered against eternal damnation (and the support it provided to the social status quo). Militant Catholics had many advantages: over eighty per cent of France was Catholic, including the capital; the majority of significant noblemen favoured a firm line against the Calvinist heresy spreading from Geneva and Crown revenues were at levels so low that an independent royal policy seemed unwise. It should have been a foregone conclusion that Catherine would preserve her young son’s authority by siding with the party most likely to succeed in any conflict.

To do so would have fitted well with the traditional ‘Most Christian’ title of the French king, conferred by the papacy at the start of the century.

Moreover, taking a strong antiProtestant line would have removed a bone of contention with Spain, Europe’s most Catholic realm, thereby ensuring the continuation of a peace nervously agreed in 1559. Thus, the line of least resistance for Catherine, acting as mother of the king but not as official regent, would have been to acquiesce in the decisions made by the Guise family. Yet she pursued an independent line.

The defining characteristic of the royal policy in the period 1561 to 1572 was one of toleration (but not acceptance)

of Protestantism in France. Edicts, the means by which French monarchs made law, issued in 1561, 1562 and 1563 gave Huguenots limited rights to worship and to bury their dead in Protestant cemeteries. In addition, French bishops did not, on Catherine’s orders, attend the Council of Trent, at which Catholic powers across Europe were meeting in order to resolve what to do about the dangers of Protestantism. Ultimately, the Council of Trent took a hard line against the new religion and by boycotting the sessions, Catherine was able to prevent France being bound by its decisions.

More, however, was done than simply issuing proclamations. The young king was taken on a tour of his realm in March 1564 which was to last over two years. Civil war had wracked much of the country and his personal presence was required to oblige the eight sovereign parlements around France to register royal edicts (the final step in making them law). Despite the provocation of troops massing by Spain on France’s eastern borders (to put down Protestant risings in the Spanish Netherlands), the open defiance of Guise to royal orders and the tensions following his death at the hands of a Protestant assassin, Catherine refused to place the French Crown in the Catholic camp. Three civil wars raged in France between 1562 and 1570 and the numbers killed rose from hundreds to thousands, leading to hatreds becoming ingrained and to the nature of the violence

worsening, so that mutilation and rape became part of each side’s arsenal.

Catherine kept the monarchy above the conflicts, however, and devoted her efforts to repairing the damaged realm. In 1572, she sought to mend the religious fissure by marrying the king’s sister (and her daughter) to the leading Huguenot, Henri of Navarre.

The attempt failed, as the Protestant wedding guests, about 3,000 of them, were slaughtered in the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of August that year. The deaths, planned by an ultra Catholic faction at court, did not dissuade her from her policy, although her influence waned when her third son, Henry III, became king in 1574. It is hard to fathom what motivated a royal policy which cut the Crown off from the overwhelming majority of the population and which brought it no real domestic or foreign benefits.

It has been suggested that Catherine was attempting to preserve an independent line in order to stress the authority of the institution of the monarchy when the individual French monarch was either a minor or otherwise feeble. Whilst recognising the plausibility of such a theory, it is also possible to argue that such a risky policy was pursued not to preserve the

monarchy but the realm over which her son would one day reign. If Catherine had opted to support the Catholic party, she would have given royal authority for the attempted annihilation of one in five of the kingdom’s subjects. In certain regions, notably a crescent around the south of the country, perhaps four in every five were Protestant. By tolerating but not promoting Protestantism, Catherine played a waiting game, hoping that persuasion might bring France back together. There was little point in restoring the authority of the French king if his realm was devouring itself.

Overall, then, the turns of events in France in the mid-sixteenth century were largely determined by the decisions made by individuals with drive, vision and the good fortune not to be assassinated. Naturally, the longue durée has a role to play. The ability of new religious ideas to spread is assisted or hindered by geography, population density, prosperity and literacy, but we should not allow totalhistorians to overplay their cards.

More than that, given the choice between a history of agricultural methodology or reading about a man walking around Paris with a head on the end of his spear, what book would you pick up?

History of Lies And finally…. A

by Tom Flynn

Of all the articles in this fine journal you are currently holding in your innocent trusting hands, this is probably the going the most honest one of all. Trust me. Why would I lie to you?

There is a conspiracy in the History department, which a certain mole has revealed to me in return for Seinfeld Series 2. My bearded spy, who must remain nameless, revealed to me one lesson, that almost no history, relatively modern history excluded, is concrete fact. Does this reveal History as a completely fatuous, unnecessary department? Or does it, in fact, make even more necessary?

A case in point first, however. If you were to draw up a list of the greatest writers ever to have graced this Earth, ahead of Dickens, Wilde and of course, the lucid Katie Price, I’m sure you would have placed Shakespeare. If not then go to the English department and get some culture in you. Historians, though know virtually nothing of the man they call Shakespeare. We do not know hen he was born, his sexuality, his religion, his profession before theatre, or even his real name. In fact, there is so little we do know about him that a few people claim that he did not even write his plays.

Next time you start an essay on Macbeth, to be factually correct, you shouldn’t claim it was written by our

man from Stratford. “Macbeth, by the playwright ? ”, should stand you in good stead. Certainly never call him “Shakespeare”, as he certainly never did. He went through “Shakspere”, “Shaksper”, even the truly excellent “Shagspear”. How can we claim history holds the secrets of the past, when the assumed name of the world’s most famous playwright was never used by the man himself?

Is history then, as Napoleon declared “A fable agreed upon”? Considering that this is the man who invaded Russia, so perhaps he is not to be trusted. What he says, however, does have some truth to it. To refer back to Shakespeare, scholars simply agreed to give him the name Shakespeare, it is not his real name.

One of the few factual things we know about him, his baptism on 26 th April 1564, written down in the Stratford Charter, is also questionable. It almost certainly is factual, but we cannot know whether the priest who recorded this forgot the date, or even just decided he was bored of writing down 11 th of November. We cannot be 100% sure of even the most basic facts of history, in a time when writing was not common place, facts were easily manipulated, and word of mouth was all to often trusted. There seems to be a suspicious symmetry between Shakespeare’s birthdate and the day of his death. He is assumed to have

been born on 23 rd April 1564. He also died on 23 rd April, in 1616. 23 rd April also happens to be St George’s day. Perhaps all a bit to convenient and twee, and history is full of unreliable “facts”, as, some would argue, all facts are unreliable. Just because we all agree something happened on a particular day, it doesn’t mean it did. Nazi Germany believed that Jewish people mixed “the blood of a Christian child” with their matzah during the Passover.

This doesn’t make it true. The whole of the USSR believed Stalin and Lenin were best friends. This is probably not true, as Lenin in his last wishes demanded that Stalin not be made leader of the Communist party.

These were lies promulgated deliberately by people, for their own ends. Myths also build up around people, which can be as devoid of fact as any propaganda campaign.

The great Mohandas Ghandi is case in point. True he did great things in his life, made all the more remarkable to his adherence to his principles of non-violence, however, it is often forgotten that he once described black people living in South Africa as “like animals”. He did fight for race equality in South Africa in 1908, however, he fought only for Indians to be equal to white people, as he claimed that they were “undoubtedly infinitely superior to the Kaffirs”. He may have been young when he made these claims, and may have grown sympathetic to

the “Kaffirs” in later life, however this does prove that even the most gleaming of myths are often not wholly true, and are built up purely on human adoration.

It seems then, that the History department may be redundant. It is however, in the previous argument that we see the point of history.

Historians break through the lies of the past, and work tirelessly (well, during the ad breaks in Seinfeld marathons) to come to that most holy of holy grails, the Truth.

Without historians, we would be powerless at the hands of those who seek to manipulate the past to their own ends, who would have you believe that they were best friends with Lenin, who would have you think that exams are easier now (no they aren’t, maybe we’re just not as thick as they were) and who would declare the Coldplay as good, if not better than The Beatles. It is the upstanding, brave and noble scholars of The History department who can search through the Last Testament of Lenin, past papers, and Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band respectively to give, if not the absolute truth, but something so close we can smell the cigar smoke.

In the end, it will always be impossible to find the absolute truth of any matter, but without historians, we would be nowhere even close to

that point.

So why are you wasting your time with this magazine? It’s as factual as

“heat” but without the fun pictures.

Go pick that up instead. Katie Price is doing something of interest presumably…

The Shoardian — The Magazine of

the MGS History Department