The Rhine River: 12/01/2004

Monday, December 13, 2004

Someone was here before us

Here is an interesting article on a 16th-century Spanish fort found in North Carolina.

Sixth candle

Yes, I skipped one day. I decided to stay away from blogging for at least a day. I roamed the stacks at Mount Holyoke looking for books on pre-historic Mesopotamia. Much of the stuff is theoretical (duh! it's prehistoric). However, as I was looking through books on political anthropology I found, without intending to, some interesting things about how contested hidden Jewish/Sephardic histories can be.

Delirio: The buried history of Nuevo León (The Fantastic, the Demonic, and the Réel) by Marie Theresa Hernández deals with the narratives in the northernmost state of Mexico, whose people have the reputation of being distant from the nation. Nuevo León is perceived as being different, separated by distance and influenced by America due to proximity, surrounded by the desert and mountains. The nuevoleneses have their own values, their own perception of being a more industrious people who have prospered in an area without anything in abundance. Hernandez finds that three narratives weave their way around popular history in order to explain exceptionalism: the "primitive" rural people, the "barbaric" natives, and the "first Jews."

Carvajal

The notion that there are strong strains of Judaism come from the fact that one of the men who established the state (Luis Carvajal y de la Cueva, the first governor of Nuevo León) was a descendant of forced converts. Moreover, the Inquisition saw it necessary to exterminate his entire family. Carvajal was granted the territory as a concession from the Spanish monarch in 1579. This was a period in which the larger population of Spain turned against the "New Christians": the latter, despite being spiritually deprived, prospered as a group in various affairs when the official barriers to Judaism were removed by their conversion. It was suggested that Carvajal, a "Portuguese" (codeword for Crypto-Jew), along with other founders of the state, intended to set up a Jewish state away from the influence of the Inquisition in the most remote part of the empire. According to the official history, the elimination of Carvajal and his family erased all possible Jewish influences in Nuevo León.

Hernandez is not interested in testing the truth of this claim. What interests her is the power of the narrative: that a strong converso population established itself in Nuevo León and that regional peculiarities (in economics, demographics and culture) are attributable to the influence of Crypto-Judaism. The hidden history of Jewish Nuevo León, regardless of its genuineness, is a subversive critique of tensions between popular and official history, center and periphery, the identities of mixing (mestizo) and blood purity (limpieza de sangre). The official history denies this. In the opinion of local and regional historians, the formula "no documents, no history" means that no Jews established themselves during the region's formation. For the believers, there is no solid proof, but many things that are suspicious: peculiarities of practices that are not attributable to native or Spanish influences; family stories that speak of Jewish ancestors and endogamy; the presence of an Inquisition that had no object; and the vehemence with which the "official" historians deny the claim. The problem is compounded by the fact that the types of documents that might show something are no longer extant. Moreover, such documents themselves would be difficult to read because they would not be able to admit the existence of something that should not. The narrative of Sephardic/Crypto-Jewish influence is a counternarrative to the story of national purity.

An interesting example of the emotion and acrimony that surrounds the issue comes from a seminar that Hernandez attended on colonial history of the region.

The topic was colonial Nuevo León, and the lecturer was Rolando Guerra, a noted academic specializing in regional ecclesiastical history. Having heard the Jewish stories for the two years I have been in Nuevo León and read about them ... in the history of Monterrey, I was completely surprised at what Guerra told us. He said that the constant story about the first Spanish settlers being Jewish is an "ideological myth." although he acknowledged that Luis Carvajal was the son of Jewish conversos, Guerra told his class that there were no other Jewish settlers. Guerra was emphatic. "There is no documentation," he said. He also cited Israel Cavazos Garza's statement that there are no archives to substantiate the presence of the Jews in Nuevo León. ... the students began to stand up, barraging him with questions. "How could this be possible?" they asked. "Isn't it possible that the Jews would leave no documentation because of the continuing influence of the Inquisition?" Guerra was firm in his response: "No Jews, no documentation." When I raised my hand and asked him what the purpose of this ideology was, he listened to my question, but did not respond to me."

Of course, I find this narrative interesting because of what is says about the region as well as about possible Crypto-Judaism. The notion of foreign influences in the development of national territory is enough to make the narrative contentious. Mexico prefers to see itself as a nation that has taken elements of the native and the European and mixed them together, forming something stronger and unique. There is something not completely truthful about these mestizo narratives: mixing was never widespread, and it is still possible to differentiate between populations in Mexico.

But what if there was an unintended elements of cultural hybridization, a foreign influence that was neither native nor introduced by the Spanish? And what if that element did not disappear in the process of creating the nation? Even the presence of Carvajal in regional history is evidence of a history that cannot be contained within the body of national history, not just of the experience of Jews, but of transnational movement in European society that may have sought refuge from the abuses created by the civilization of the era. The memory of the founding of Nuevo León has at its roots a critique of Mexico, a counterexample of coexistence outside of national ideologies.

Friday, December 10, 2004

Fourth Candle

Synagogue in Subotica

"Durme, durme" is a common Jewish lullaby from the Balkans. There are many different lyrics of the song, and many different melodies, but all tend to do the same thing. They tell the child of the life they can expect: school, marriage, etc.--the process, and sorrows, of life. One of my favorite versions is on The Sephardic Experience, volume 2: Apples and Honey.

Sleep, sleep, my angel
Little son of the nation
Creature of Zion
Know no sorrow.
Why do you ask my name
and why I do not sing?
My wings have been clipped
and my voice has been silenced,
A world of sorrow.

Random Notes

A little rant: I have done little but apply for funding since the elections. And I am really tired of it. In particular, the shifts in the exchange rate between the dollar and the Euro have made doing research abroad expensive, almost prohibitive. The same amount of money that I received five years ago does not go nearly as far, being almost 35% less when converted to Euro. Moreover, the price of a plane ticket has gone up. The result: I must either cut down the length of my trips, or worse: turn down funds if they are insufficient. Thanks to America's financial politics, studying Europe is becoming impossible.

Claire found this essay related to memorials and monuments. The extended discussion of the Holocaust in German architecture is quite fascinating. Many plans to restore buildings and create new museums are constantly under the shadow of the genocide. The politics of memory tends to lead to disjunctions that tend to place German architecture more in avant-garde, but that continually force Germans to live with their past. On other notes in German architecture, Berlin is now considering restoring the Palace of the Republic (built by the DDR) rather than rebuilding the Hohenzollern Palace. And Rem Hoolhaas will design the new Ruhr Museum in Essen.

Zid discusses how blogs can be disingenuous: the so-called blogger can be nothing more than a facade..

I was not particularly impressed by the last episode of The Amazing Race. I loved Senegal, but I did not want to hear a bunch of Americans complain about poverty. Live with it. In the category "I would be a millionaire if I could qualify for this show": I knew the author of the poet in less than one second that the clue was given (I thought about making Senghor a dissertation subject at one point).

Third Candle

[BTW, I also forgot Nuno at Rua da Judiaria: Happy Chanukah!]

I bought Rembrandt's Jews by Steven Nadler last year ... and put it aside. For some reason, I regretted the purchase and thought that the basic concept behind the book was facile (in fact, the reason that I bought the book was because I wanted something about Jews in the Netherlands). I picked it up recently (probably due to the holiday season), and I must admit that the book is more sophisticated than I expected. More than just a study of the image of "the Jews" Dutch painting, the book looks at the art as a product of the social lives of the Portuguese Jews who settled in Amsterdam in the early 17th century.

Interior of the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam by Emmanuel de Witte

Nadler uses Rembrandt as a hook into a larger problem of Dutch art: were Jews portrayed sympathetically in painting? Were those portrayals a reflection of acceptance, tolerance, or a philosemitic facade with the intention of converting Jews. The answers lie in a complex of changes: merchant capitalism, accumulation of wealth, immigration of Jews from Eastern Europe as well as Portugal, the desire of the Reform Church to get to the root meanings of the scriptures, the place of Jews as voracious consumers of art in the Dutch market, etc.

One of the most interesting changes involves shifts in representativeness in art. In previous posts I have written about how Dutch landscapes tried to achieve a matter-of-factness, taking in the entirety of a landscape without privileging specific features or narratives (such is especially the case of the work of Jan van Goyen, one of my favorites, whose canvases were dominated by large skies). The same values applied to depictions of social life: some sort of broad verisimilitude that presented as much information as possible about the scenario rather than idealizing it (relatively speaking).

Clothing and badges are marks of moral differences. They single out the wearer as evil or mendacious, a murderer or unbeliever. The demonization of the Jew, however, went much deeper than this. The portrayals of Jews tend toward physical caricature, sometimes of a particularly nasty nature. The physiognomic exaggerations and deformities that generally characterize them in medieval and Renaissance art are all part of a worldview in which the Jew is not merely morally degenerated [note: I find this word is applied anachronistically], but of a sinisterly different nature altogether. The bulging, heavy-lidded eyes, hooked nose, dark skin, large open mouth, and think, fleshy lips of Jews in paintings and graphic arts make them look like cartoon characters rather than natural human beings. ...

And then we come to seventeenth-century Dutch art, where we find ... nothing. Utter plainness. There is a uniformity in the depiction of all walks of life. Ugliness and deformity are there, but they represent the common sins and foibles of all humankind. ... there is no special iconography reserved for the Jew. The depiction of Jews and their activities are generically no different from those of wealthy regents, middle-class merchants, and indigent laborers. The naturalistic renderings, the settings of everyday life, and the easy integration in their dress, architecture, and habits into Dutch culture make the Jews in the art of Holland's golden age perfectly normal.

On top of that, the signs that identified Jews dropped away: the physical and sartorial markers became meaningless. This is especially problematic because the religious/ethnic identities of subjects in paintings is less certain: the critic must work harder to understand whether or not a particular work must be understand as somehow related to Jewish life. In fact, many critics have made the errors in identifying these subjects: either they look for non-Nordic features or they dismiss the Jewish character of the subject because there is no positive proof. Rembrandt employed many Jews as subjects simply because he associated with them more closely when he lived in Amsterdam.

Finally, the academic trends show increasing knowledge about practice and belief from Jewish sources. Biblical themes could be portrayed in ways that were theologically familiar to potential Jewish customers.

Thursday, December 09, 2004

More Genetics and History

Le Monde has a story about French reasearchers from the Pasteur Institute who tested the claims that nations descended from a single patriarch. The study was conducted on five ethnic groups in Central Asia. They found that communities and tribes generally had a common patriarch around 15 generations in the past, which the researchers claim corresponds with oral traditions. Larger groups must go back much further: it is less clear that there is a common ancestor.

Enfin, l'étude de variabilité du chromosome Y au sein d'une tribu ne montre aucun apparentement spécifique de ses membres. En Asie centrale, la notion de tribu ne recoupe donc pas de réalité biologique. Et ce en dépit des informations transmises par la tradition orale. Selon les auteurs de l'étude, la tribu est donc un agrégat de clans réunis pour des raisons plus politiques que familiales. "A ce niveau de l'organisation sociale, il est probable que le mythe d'un ancêtre commun ait été fabriqué dans le but de consolider des alliances de clans", avance Mme Chaix.

Wednesday, December 08, 2004

Almost a Democracy

I have shifted the focus of my writing, for the moment, on the Weimar Republic. (This is the good thing about comparative history: if I get bored with something, I can always "cross the border.") I have been exploring the links on the internet, some of which (especially those in Germany) give very detailed information.

Scheidemann declaring the republic in 1918.

Die zwanziger Jahre (in German) gives a comprehensive collection of links to sites in numerous fields. Here is a list of available biographies (mostly writers and artists).

In English, Planet Deutsch gives its own overview: "... neo-romanticism inspired fascist ideology on the right, opposite to the far other side of democratic individualism, but the champions of personal liberty were too self-absorbed and apolitical to compete against the proto-Nazi thinkers, and Weimar fell to National Socialism."

The German Historical Museum (in German) has several useful pages. This one has speeches, including audio links, given by major politicians (hmm, Wilhelm Marx was left out). Here is Clara Zetkin announcing Göring selection as president of the Reichstag. There is also an overview of political history which is thoroughly referenced.

Document Archiv has primary sources on German legislation (in German)--invaluable)!

Here is a chronology, in English, from a Wesleyan professor. Think History has some conceptual diagrams to answer typical questions about the republic and its strength.

The German education website Zentrale fuer Unterrichtsmedien (great for people whose native history is not Germany) has lots of stuff in English and German. In English: establishing the republic (1918-1919), turmoil (1920-1923), Golden Twenties (1924-1928), Great Depression (1929-1932).

Wahlen in der Weimar Republik (in German) is one of the best sites I have found. If gives a description offices throughout Germany (at the national, state (Land), and provincial levels) and the results of elections for the relevant posts. Look at this description of Prussia. Weimar Wahlen has English pages as well. It is an extension of a doctoral thesis, using graphics to describe voting trends. (Click at the bottom of the screen: the analysis will open in a new window.)

AAG (in German) has this interpretation of Weimar as struggle against fascism.

From a gymnasium (sort of a hyper-high school) in Munich, a collection of photographs and other images.

Flags of the World gives a run down on the changes in the German national flag (especially the removal of the eagle, a sore spot for nationalists).

Some blogs to note: Manman's Work, Arts and Concepts, FACS 1900 and Weimar Culture (there are a number of similarly named blogs that tend to parallel one another--I suspect the are for a class), Time of exploration.

Second Candle

[BTW, I forgot to wish Joel at Far Outliers a Happy Holidays. Sorry.]

Martin Buber on the Arab question in 1921:

In a just union with the Arab people we want to make the common dwelling place into an economically and culturally flourishing commonwealth whose extension will guarantee each of its member nations an undisturbed autonomous development. Our colonization ... does not have the capitalistic exploitation of a sphere as its goal and serves no imperial aims whatsoever; its meaning is the creative work of free men on the communal earth. In this social character of our national ideal lies the powerful warranty for our confidence that between us and the workers among the Arab people a deep and lasting solidarity of real interests will manifest itself which must overcome all the antagonisms produced by the confusion of the moment.

Tuesday, December 07, 2004

First Candle

Happy Chanukah to the blogosphere! Let me take the time to give wish some bloggers out there out there happy holidays: John and Tom at Perfidy, Brdgt at Female Planet, Geitner at Regions of Mind, Ralph and Jonathan and Sharon at Cliopatria (and the other virtual places they occupy), Claire at Early Modern Print Culture (and the other virtual places she will occupy), Natalie at Philobiblion, David at Barista, the anonymous administrator at The Carpetbagger Report, Bryan at Siris. And congratulations to Sharon and Claire for nominations in the Edublog Awards.

Jonathan Dresner sent me this article about Crypto-Jews in New Mexico (how did he know I am interested in this subject?).

As a boy, Father Williamm Sanchez sensed he was different. His Catholic family spun tops on Christmas, shunned pork and whispered of a past in medieval Spain. If anyone knew the secret, they weren't telling, and Sanchez stopped asking.

Then three years ago, after watching a program on genealogy, Sanchez sent for a DNA kit that could help track a person's background through genetic footprinting. He soon got a call from Bennett Greenspan, owner of the Houston-based testing company.

"He said, 'Did you know you were Jewish?' " Sanchez, 53, recalled. "He told me I was a Cohanim, a member of the priestly class descended from Aaron, the brother of Moses."

With the revelation that Sanchez was almost certainly one of New Mexico's hidden or crypto-Jews, his family traditions made sense to him.

He launched a DNA project to test his relatives, along with some of the parishioners at Albuquerque's St. Edwin's Church, where he works. As word got out, others in the community began contacting him. So Sanchez expanded the effort to include Latinos throughout the state ...

The article goes on to describe how some Latinos in New Mexico believe that they are the descendants of Spanish Jews (Sephardim) who came to the Americas to escape the Inquisition, and that DNA testing is being used to study their claims.

Within Judaism, Crypto-Jews (aka conversos, marranos (derogatory), anusim, although these words have slightly different meanings) are a controversial subject. Many families maintained the essence of Judaic practice in private in the century following the Expulsion. The lucky were able to escape to other parts of Europe (usually after a stint in Portugal) and declared their faith (Spinoza's family is one example). This phenomenon continued until about 1650. After that, there were few people who claimed to have practiced Jewish faith in secret. Scholars differ as to whether secret practice continued, perhaps becoming part of the culture without being referenced to Judaism itself, especially in the Hispanic World. B. Netanyahu (father of the Israeli PM), rejects this notion: rabbis in the 19th century had no hope of finding Crypto-Jews, and they released all descendants of conversos from the obligation to the mitzvot. David Gilitz, looking at the records of the Inquisition in the Americans, believes that Jews made efforts to hide out in the Spanish colonies.

Rabbinical authorities do not always recognize the claims of Latinos to Jewish heritage. Identity must be proved by birth (matrilineal) or conversion. It was not enough that family practices were different from the rest of the community, that they had a special diet, that they read only from the new testament, or that they spoke an unusual dialect of Spanish. If someone can prove Jewish heritage, they are required to go through a ritual process that is essentially the equivalent of conversion: as part of the process they can make a special declaration of their fathers' faithfulness.

Judaism, as a whole, can be uncomfortable with plurality. Samaritans, Karaites, Khazars, and Falashas have been treated harshly; the first two cases involve plurodoxy, the last two genetics. The Lemba of Zimbabwe have used DNA testing to show their genetic relationship to Jews throughout the world. I am interested in seeing what the results of testing Latinos in New Mexico will show (my mother suspects that there is something extra to our Hispanic roots).

No remilitarization, no war?

The much anticipated Becker-Posner Blog, an exchange between intellectual giants (a federal judge and a Nobel Prize winning economist), has begun with a topic that is (hopefully) no longer timely: when pre-emptive and preventive war are justified and should be used (here and here).

Dr. Posner contributed a cost analysis. He ends with this example of when nations should have fought to end a future threat:

A historical example that illustrates this analysis is the Nazi reoccupation of the Rhineland area of Germany in 1936, an area that had been demilitarized by the Treaty of Versailles. Had France and Great Britain responded to this treaty violation by invading Germany, in all likelihood Hitler would have been overthrown and World War II averted.

On the surface, this may not seem controversial. We know from William Shirer's Berlin Diary that the German army was not prepared to encounter opposition. The force sent in to remilitarize was small and lightly armed. Had the Entente powers responded to their actions, the German army would have beat its way back to the right river.

Would the failure of remilitarization have led to a coup d'etat against Hitler (or some other means by which he would be removed from power)? This is a stretch. If we assume that Dr. Posner was speaking emphatically, that he meant that Hitler would have been politically weakened, it is a stretch. Much of it would depend on the constellation of powers that opposed and, necessarily, reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936.

Dr. Posner points to two powers whose opposition could have contained German power in 1936: Britain and France. (Although the United States was not a signer to the Locarno Pact, it could have participated as well.) But it was unlikely that both power would be involved. British government was far less willing than France to undertake an invasion and reoccupation, something which did not bode well for the enterprise, and the British public did not oppose the rearmament. Unfortunately, as Adenauer noted as early as 1919, everything depended on Britain: Wenn England das Ausweg als einen solchen bezeichnet, wird es ein Ausweg werden.

France could have expelled the German army on its own. It was strong enough, but it was unwilling to risk a war on its own soil without British participation. French policy was to push the theater of war into Eastern Europe if possible (a reaction to the memories of trench warfare). Nonetheless, unilateral action by France would have been viewed by the German people through the lens of the history of warfare between the two nations. It would be another conflict with an ancestral enemy.

The success of a France-only occupation can be gauged by the occupation of the Rhineland following World War One and the brief occupation of the Ruhr in 1923-4. Their presence in the Palatinate was extremely unpopular. Germans believed that France was trying to rend Germany apart in order to create a buffer state (a charge that is not without merit and which is constantly debated). They policed the political activities of the people and tossed out bureaucrats and replaced them with people who were more loyal. They tried to turn the Rhine into a French economic zone. They gave tepid support to separatists: not enough that the separatists would succeed, but enough to make it clear that the French army was creating disorder within the Palatinate. The exit of the French occupying forces was met with great celebrations, and those who collaborated with the French suffered from violent reprisals and public humiliation. The reaction of Germans to the French presence could have been worse: the participation of other nations, particularly Britain, made the occupation tolerable.

Because of the unpopularity of France among Germans, Rhinelanders in particular, it is possible that a reoccupation of the Rhineland would have strengthened Hitler (politically if not militarily). The Rhine was an area that supported Hitler less than others, but there was lingering resentment over the French occupation. As Heinrich Böll noted in his memoirs, Rhinelanders were overjoyed at the reoccupation: not because it was a success for Hitler, but because it ended more than a decade of helplessness and uncertainty.

Given the resentment that Rhinelanders had for France, it is natural to ask some questions. How would they have reacted to a reoccupation? Would there be resistance (passive resistance succeeded in forcing the French to leave the Ruhr Valley in 1924)? Would resistance have become violent? Would not the French presence played into Hitler's vitriol against the international community that kept Germany from being a world power?

This is not to say that France (and Britain) should not have opposed the remilitarization of the Rhineland. The circumstances suggested a real threat to France ... something more than just a violation of the Locarno Pact. What neither should have predicted is that opposing the remilitarization would be anything but messy. Dr. Posner did not need to add to his historical example that Hitler would have been overthrown: it was strong enough without it. His historical example is not very historical: it is a reinterpretation of history based on his rhetorical argument. And the question of pre-emptive and preventive war could have used more historical analysis.

Monday, December 06, 2004

Stewart

Unfortunately, real political analysis.

Wild Archives

An interesting book that I might never read: Michael W. Young’s biography of pioneering ethnologist Bronislaw Malinowski (Malinowski: Odyssey of an Anthropologist, 1884-1920), a man who established and standardized the practices of the anthropologist in the field, but who was also a romantic figure of the anthropologist who makes himself at home with the natives. Malinowski’s legacy and his penchant to become involved (or affected by) his subjects brought about contradictory reactions when his work was rediscovered in the 1970s. On the one hand he was a defense of anthropology against positive science; on the other he was another type of hero.

As a European, Malinowski was an interesting man: he, like his fellow Austrians, was ambivalent about the Habsburg empire but enamored with the British. He socialized with interesting artists, and his ideas (along with Frazer’s) influence a play by Stas Witkiewicz (Metaphysics of a Two-headed Calf).

The most interesting part of the book concern Malinowski’s relationships with his subjects. He personalized his work, using his methods to study himself as he studied the cultures of the South Pacific. The temptations of going native turned into an examination of his own desires and morality. Young connects these qualities to what contemporary anthropologists would come to believe about the illusion of barriers between the scholar and the subject:

He once noted that his diary was complementary to his ethnography, which was as close as he came to an admission ... that ethnography is implicitly informed by autobiography as much as it is by explicit theory and method. Reciprocally, Malinowski applied rudimentary functional analysis to the understanding of his own life ... .

Young notes Malinowski’s experiences in Vakuta:

[Malinowski wrote in his diary:] “A pretty, finely built girl walked ahead of me. I watched the muscles of her back, her figure, her legs, and the beauty of her body so hidden to us, whites, fascinated me. Probably even with my own wife I’ll never have the opportunity to observe the play of back muscles for as long as with this little animal. At moments I was sorry I was not a savage and could not possess this pretty girl.”

“Soon he was also ‘admiring the body of a very handsome boy’, and observed in his diary: ‘taking into account a certain residue of homosexuality in human nature the cult of beauty of the human body corresponds to the definition given by Stendhal.’ Beauty is the promise of bliss. In the village that evening he ‘pawed’ another pretty girl, a lapse for which he was punished by remorse that night. ‘That lousy girl ... everything fine, but I shouldn’t have pawed her .... Resolve: absolutely never to touch any Kiriwina whore. To be mentally incapable of possessing anyone except [my wife].’ ...

He visited George Auerbach one evening and danced to the gramophone with a local woman named Jabulano. He confessed to his diary that he had ‘pawed’ her. He felt suitably guilty afterwards, and attributed this lapse mainly to ‘a desire to impress the other fellows’. He wanted to show George in particular that he was attracted to women. The rumors that he fancied ‘boys’ had probably reached the Trobriands ..., and he might have felt some need to disprove it. His diary ... mentions several more lapses when he ‘pawed’ young women; but there is not a single reference to his having ‘pawed’ young men; and for every reference to male beauty there are a dozen that admire the female form. If he did show any homosexual inclination during his fieldwork it was weakly motivated and heavily outweighed by his unsatisfied longing for female flesh.

Malinowski would not be the first, or the last, to play with these boundaries. Gauguin and Riefenstahl are but two examples of the romanticization of the apparent sexual freedom of the natives. However, he also shares the preoccupations of many other men of his time, others who were not ethnologists. These were the characters of the plays of Schnitzler and the novels of Musil. These were the nudists who wanted to free their bodies of clothing but to constrain them to a sexless existence. These were the militia men, whom Theweleit studied, whose wave of destruction was the fulfillment and negation of their desires.

Other Malinowski sites: here, here, and here.

Balzac's Paris

Marcel Carné's Children of Paradise is a beautiful film. It is a three-hour movie that takes place around the lives of theater people in nineteenth-century Paris. The core of the film is banal: four men, from different walks of life, pursue the same woman. But the story is much more complex, each character seeking fame, wealth and acceptance in public as well. The best part of the film is Jean-Louis Barrault, the mime who uses subtle craft to express unspeakable emotions. Barrault's physical performance is impressive. Louis Salou is also notable for his authoritarian aristocrat, a delicate depiction of the occupation under which the film was made.

Besides the pantomime, the film is also interesting because of its depiction of street life. The avenues are overcome with throngs of people who file past the street performers and merchants. I am not sure if Carné filmed his scenes in Paris (or some other city) or on a set because while the architecture was appropriate for the time, the avenues were quite wide, suggesting that they were post-Hausmann. The street scene at the end, a carnival, is a wild celebration. The scene owes a lot to King Vidor's The Crowd and FW Murnau's Sunrise.

Sunday, December 05, 2004

Skills

This post from the nascent group Historia reveals the problems that students have exploring their historical interests because of the skills that are involved. I know too many colleagues who decided to become Americanists (after hoping to be Germanists, medievalists, and South Asianists--in that order) because they would not tackled the language challenges. I am reminded how difficult that it was for me to develop the skills that I needed: not just knowledge of French and Germany (as well as some rudimentary Dutch), but also the ability to read old paleography. Many Germanists tend to crowd into twentieth century topics because they refuse to learn Suetterlin.

The Catch-all

Is there some reason why we identify ourselves as a particular type of historian? Jonathan Dresner took up this question, looking at his tendency (and that of his colleagues) to see themselves as social historians. Despite covering a broad range of topics (political, legal, diplomatic, ...), 'social' is a convenient means of describing a broad variety of interest and techniques.

Why is it that graduate students tend to think of themselves as cultural historians? Why is there an impetus to define ourselves under this category when our topics of interest can vary. I have always had an uncomfortable relationship with cultural history. I feel that many graduate advisors (not mine) push their students into this field: social history is messy, forcing researchers to consider a broad, potentially infinite, range of archival documents; cultural history is clean, using theory to draw attention to a smaller number of documents. Moreover, recruiters seemed to be more interested in testing applicants loyalties to particular constellations of culturalists (both theorists and historians) than examining the rigor with which the applicants research and teach. Every introduction must spout off a list of critics in order to put the student's acumen for theory on display (as well as to display an biases). Under these pressures, this generation of graduate students is forced to define itself as necessarily post-Foucauldian.

(I encounter this problem continually whenever I attempt to describe my own research. There is a tendency to regard regionalism, in contemporary politics and history, as a cultural problem that requires cultural methods and that, most importantly, confirms the importance of culture. In my research I have realized that the role of culture becomes limited. As ideas about the meaning of place are explored, regional identities become difficult to maintain. They are rend between the universalism of the nation and the specificity of the local. In order for a regional movement to succeed, it must inevitably base itself in the realm of political activism rather than cultural conservatism. The interesting question is how it becomes political, allowing culture to play a selective role.)

Should graduate students who use cultural methods call themselves cultural historians? Not necessarily. Most of them are standing on the shoulders of the social historians who came before them, even as they criticize their predecessors. Moreover, the relationship between the social and cultural is uncomfortably symbiotic rather than antagonistic. Indeed, our research might involve questions of social structure (just not in the strictly constructed Marxian sense). Or our exploration of cultural developments require reference to economic and class. But it is admittedly unattractive, potentially damaging, to place oneself at odds with the currents within the profession (the same way that we must also describe ourselves as world historians, comparative historians, etc.).

Loose ties that bind

Hermann van der Wusten has an interesting article about political centrality in Europe (Political Georgraphy August 2004). He describes the placement of centers of power within Europe as they relate to a state system that is necessarily decentralized. Quite consciously, he also creates a history of congress cities as they have developed since 1648.

The state system of Europe is incomparably strong. The Peace of Westphalia established a patter in which the elites of states would gather periodically to discuss matters of diplomatic importance. After 1648 the European elites, growing more interconnected, debated means by which the order between states could be made more permanent. Meetings (of various sizes and scopes) became more frequent and regular. In the process they institutionalized congress systems that confirmed (in the most basic sense) the sovereignty and boundaries of individual states. Quite gradually there emerged intergovernmentalism and transgovernmentalism that would serve as the basis for future cooperation. By 1900 there was already consideration for creating a permanent meeting place for the European states. Because of these features of the state system, European participation in international organizations has been much stronger than other areas of the world, and the number of international institutions that are headquartered in Europe is higher.

Van der Wusten’s essay provides an interesting history of the congress cities themselves. One of the features of the state system is the need for decentralization: the building blocks are the states themselves, so that political centers have had to play different roles than national capitals.

Places where congresses were held acted for a while as political centers. ... In the 17th and 18th century, congresses could easily take months and sometimes years, but even then their role was meant to be temporary. Under the ‘ancien regime’, the selection of a congress city was a long drawn out process in which several considerations were important: religious services for all creeds possible, well connected from a transportation point of view, diplomatic immunity assured, city and its surroundings should enable private meetings, not too attractive in order not to encourage a prolonged stay of diplomats. ... From the 19th century onwards, there was a pronounced preference for places with high symbolic value (to underline victory, defeat, the damnation of a protagonist, etc.).

For the cities themselves, congresses were important occasions ... city governments made considerable investments to beautify the town hall, the churches, and the theatre, to decorate the town, to improve personal security and public order. ...

Furthermore, the congress city took on a unique role in the geography of Europe, becoming an island within the state system.

... it was prescribed that the location of a congress should be “le Temple de la Paix de la sureté publique.” ... Slowly a series of conventions had developed concerning order within the congress city. As regards to the outside world, these were differently regulated depending on circumstances. When this seemed appropriate, congress cities were on several occasions officially neutralized. A perimeter was then agreed and demarcated by delegates. Armed forces were prohibtied to enter.

In the twenties century, capital cities have served more often as centers of power. However, as these capitals (like Brussels and the Hague) become more permanent, they compete amongst each other and with other capitals for specific types of authority rather: judicial, administrative, executive, etc. Fragmentation is, therefore, necessary so that the sovereignty of the states are not voided.

Saturday, December 04, 2004

Downfall of Civilization

Blogging, laying waste to the Persian script and language, has been able to drag every serious and intellectual topic into scum of the disease of vulgarity, grow like a cancerous tumor, and trash the writer, the reader and everyone else.
--Seyyed Reza Shokrollahi

This quote comes from at article in the current American Anthropologist, The Vulgar Spirit of Blogging, that deals with the effect of the blogosphere (known as weblogestan) on high culture as it pertained to the debate between Iranian bloggers over Islam's compatibility with democracy.

Of course, it could apply to English language blogs as well.

Thursday, December 02, 2004

Paternity Test

I have read a few articles recently about the "father of Europe." The usual suspect: Charlemagne, Napoleon, Goethe, (my favorite) Robert Schuman, even Delors. I'm sure the list of candidates is longer (is John Paul II in the running?). But I cannot think of one Brit who might be included in this field. And of course, who is the mother?

Stein and the Rhine

Bismarck has so overshadowed history that other people who helped mobilize popular support for nationalism are largely written out of German memories. Unification was not simply the result of 'three wars', but a longer process that began with the Napoleonic Wars. Before Dawn's post about reforms in Prussia reminded me how Karl Freiherr vom und zum Stein (also here) encouraged the political passions of Germans throughout the Reich and encouraged them to see Prussia as a potential nationalizing force. In several conversations that I have had with Germans, Stein does not fit into historical memory as anything other than a reformer. And yet his reforms encouraged popular participation in the project of nationalism itself. In particular, Stein's ideas influence Rhenish liberals to think about building institutions (like provincial parliaments and administrations) that would allow them to become fuller partners in the nationalizing of the German Reich--and that Prussia would help them to do it. Simply, it is hard to dissociate Stein's ideas from the nationalization of the Rhineland.

Stein bounced around several ministries in the 1800s and 10s, occupying the prestigious foreign ministry at times, finance at others. He, like Hardenberg, worked on the problem of reforming the state in order to better confront the threat of French nationalism. Stein's reputation rests on three reforms. The most obvious measure was the abolition of serfdom in 1807. Stein hoped that peasants would become loyal to the state if their feudal burdens were lifted. Thereby Prussia gained a source of men that would help it create a mass army to fight against France as well as direct the political activities of the nobility more toward state administration and military affairs. (These measures corresponded to reforms undertaken of the Prussian army). The abolition of serfdom had little effect in the Rhine where peasants were already free because fedual institutions had atrophied.

In 1808 he introduced a municipal code (Staedteverordnung) that offered self-administration (Selbstverwaltung) to the cities and communes. On the one hand, Stein regarded this as a practical measure that would help the state perfect its own administration because it would force the communities in the east (especially in East Prussia, modern Poland) to develop local governments rather than to continue on services from the Junkers.

But self-administration meant something else as Prussia expanded westward into the Rhine as a result of the war and the Congress of Vienna. Selbstverwaltung was interpreted as a promise that Prussia would not interfere in local affairs; rather the state would facilitate modernization and would allow local politics to flourish beyond the narrow confines of the city walls. In the Rhenish cities like Cologne, it meant that they would be able to pursue grander schemes that were prohibited them by the empire; most notably, the elites of Cologne wanted to pursue international trade, and consequently (and somewhat comically), their own foreign policy. Selbstverwaltung also came to mean decentralization: the state would allow subsidiary powers to administer policy, and the growth of the state would be limited.

Stein's third reform, one which was not implemented but was more influential, was the creation of representative assemblies. King Friedrich Wilhelm and the Junkers roundly rejected this measure. But the idea influenced liberals in the French occupied Rhine to take an interest in creating states within the Reich that had their own popularly elected parliaments and that worked with a popularly elected national parliament. Napoleon had established French departments in the Rhine: each had an advisory council. The men who served in the councils, mostly businessmen, were satisfied in becoming involved in administrative affairs, but they also became hungry for political involvement as well. They wanted to become legislators as well as administrators.

When Prussia took full control of the Rhineland as the result of the Congress of Vienna, Friedrich Wilhelm declared that he would create a Rhenish assembly. This was a popular measure in the Rhineland. The citizens felt that they would not be ruled in the Prussian manner. They were further encouraged by the appointment (1815) of Sack as governor of the province Juelich-Berg-Kleve (an area between Berg on the right Rhine to Aachen), who was a critic of Prussian militarism and a supporter of Stein's reforms.

Because of the reforms, Prussia appeared as the liberator rather than the conqueror, and the Rhenish cities were willing to throw their lot in with Berlin. At least in the short term: Friedrich Wilhelm III considered Stein's reforms to be a nuisance. Subsequent governments tried to work their way around the laws of self-administration. Furthermore, the provincial parliament was an empty promise: the provincial diet was merely a place for the representatives of the four estates to get together and talk politics; it had no ability to affect or administer policy, no ability to pass legislation.

In the end the reforms had two edges. They convinced Germans that they had something to gain from associating with Prussia, either as part of the state itself or as part of the emerging German nation. However, the reforms also suggested the political terms in which the nation would form, terms that Prussian Junkers would reject. Rhenish liberals pursued self-administration and parliament for decades. They conditioned their support for Prussia on these two items. In essence, their nationalism took on a regional dimension. At the Frankfurt Assembly in 1848-1849, the liberals made the lack of self-administration and the lack of provincial parliaments as a major critique of Prussian leadership of Germany.

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

Mapmakers and the Enlightened State

Anyone interested in cartography in eighteenth-century Bavaria? Probably not, but I wrote this book review.

Random Notes

If I have been less sharp, less public, it is because I am sick ... again ... or still, depending at how you want to look at it. Not enough to keep me in bed, just enough to be sluggish and make lots of writing mistakes. I even forget to use simple devices like spell checkers.

I am surprised at the amount of energy being put into Dictionary of Received Ideas, but I worry that people are neglecting their own fine blogging activities. Sharon's excellent post on the judicial career of George Jeffreys, the kind of history blogging I hoped to encourage by creating an index, has been lost in the shuffle. It's a wonderful look at the political aspects of jurisprudence under the Stuarts:

And so to the events that forever sealed his reputation as Bloody Judge Jeffreys. His actions are entirely consistent in the light of his career to that point, his unwavering loyalty to the Stuart monarchy and his harsh attitude towards those who threatened it in any way. His treatment in court of Lady Alice Lisle, an elderly widow accused of treason simply for taking a few rebels into her house after their defeat, has been particularly condemned (although the biographer notes that there is some doubt about the reliability of the only account of the trial). Less often noted, perhaps, is that Jeffreys delayed her execution and recommended her to the king for a pardon; as the biographer says: it was James who pointedly denied mercy in this and scores of other instances that September".

Similarly, Claire looks at cultural artifacts from the same period (I can't use the term Jacobite to describe it, for some reason). (Hereand here). History bloggers can be tight fisted about their research, and it is great that Claire is willing to share a little about how these artifacts should be analyzed.

While I am on the subject, Claire has started a new blog dedicated to historical fiction. Such books are no more abstract than political science, nor less useful. Perhaps she would be interested in my current reading, Edward Jones' The Known World, which tries to make sense of the obscure phenomenon of free African-Americans who owned slaves in 19th C Virginia. In other literary news, I recommend this article on the history of the writing of 120 Days of Sodom (in French) , which de Sade had written in the Bastille and believed he had lost when the prison was stormed. I also recommend this interview with Amos Oz (audio), who discusses his fantasies about being a book, the Holocaust in Ukraine and its effect on his mother (who would commit suicide), and the partition of Israel.

I also want to welcome Geitner Simmons back to the world of (obsessive) blogging. In one of his posts he discusses language as a factor in Ukraine's political turmoil. As a side note, he mentions the close relationship between Dutch and German when dialects are mapped. I have tried to convince Germans (outside of the Rhine) of this truth for years.

[Added:] Last nights Amazing Race was better. I still hate Jerk-athon: was he really about to hit his wife with his elbow? Is that not enought to get him kicked off the show (threatening violence on other shows is prohibited). I still think it's funny that the contestant will go to ticket counters to take trains. Knowing what I know about travel in Europe, and racing for $1 million, I would take my chances that I would not be caught without a ticket and just board. I still like Gus, whose patience is turning into an effective strategy for staying in the race. And I am half sorry for the team that was eliminated: I liked Lena, but hated her sister.

Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Bunny blogging!

Song for Europe

This weekend several intellectuals and politicians gathered in Berlin to discuss the cultural politics of the European Union. Their goal: "To Give Europe a Soul" (auf Deutsch) , as the conference was called.

I have found little reporting on the conference (I would appreciate any links to articles that people can find), but it seems as if the participants tread on familiar ground. Former German president Weizsaecker emphasized the "mixed character" and classical origins of European culture: Rome, Judaism, Christianity, Islamic Science. Timothy Garton Ash pointed to the struggles for toleration, liberation and rapprochement. If none of these approaches are particularly imaginative, perhaps the conversation itself is a means of defining the culture.

Monday, November 29, 2004

Death of a Disco Dancer

Barista has two interesting posts. One is about the children who sang the verse of Another Brick in the Wall part II. The other is an unusual case of live journaling that is too unusual to describe. Just go read it.

Couldn't someone have just bought her a Joy Division or Dream Syndicate records?

Sunday, November 28, 2004

Larzac

As I mentioned earlier, I am reading Herman Lebovics Bringing the Empire Back Home, a book about contemporary French politics after decolonization. A point that he makes is that the new regionalism, or post-colonial regionalism, arose within the context of decolonization. Retreat from the world placed greater pressures on the French metropole, especially in agricultural sectors. What is interesting is that these farmers, usually described as conservative, connected their struggle with struggles for liberation and against globalization. The larger question, which Lebovics does not enunciate, is whether or not the question of decolonization leads directly to critiques of centralization: why should the national capital monopolize power if national conflict within Europe and imperialism have come to an end?

The origin of the radical regionalism was the fight against the expansion of military bases at the expense of farming in Larzac in the 1970s. The project was conceived by Michel Debré, a nationalist who served as minister of national defense. Debré advocated unilateralist policy toward North Africa as a means of protecting French interests; the expanded base would serve as a training camp for overseas interventions and a prison for foreign fighters. (Deja-vu, anyone?)

The farmers resented Debré's arrogance: he took little interest in the shape of the communities, their environment, or their future. The government started to buy up land in the area south of the Central Massif. The "Larzac Movement" attracted leftist intellectuals who felt that they had been shut out of the post-1968 nation, but they were tangential to the movement. Instead it produced political figures who associated the farmers' struggle with resistance groups around the world. The farmers also took on regional identities, incorporating the symbols of Occitan (south France) into their movement.

The farmers were creative. They would break into government lands and confiscated farms with their tractors; then they plowed the fields and seeded them. On other occasions they flooded the countryside with sheep in order to block the roads to military vehicles. They also engaged in more traditional resistance: collective squatting. The state reacted by withholding infrastructure improvements to the area: they refused to build and maintain roads and telephones. It was believed that the peasants would not be able to organize to prevent the demolition of farms without them.

Eventually, the Larzac Movement was memorialized in Mitterand's decentralization policies of the early 1980s ("Avem gardet lo Larzac").

Le Corbusier in America

The Boston Globe has an article about Le Corbusier's only work in America, Harvard University's Carpenter Center. (And yes, I am no fan of his work).

[W]hen Sert offered him the job, Le Corbusier was still angry at what he called "American officialdom" for his treatment during the design process for the United Nations headquarters, where he had been turned down for the commission only to see his ideas incorporated into the final complex. Ultimately, though, he couldn't turn down the chance to build in the United States, a country that early in his career had represented for him the possibility of the machine age. And the Carpenter Center's role in both housing and embodying Harvard's arts program coincided with his idea that architecture should synthesize all the arts, including painting, sculpture, and even music. As the architectural historian William Curtis has written, Le Corbusier wanted the building to be a "manifesto."

Le Corbusier only visited Harvard twice, but one of his most vivid impressions of the place was the overlapping tides of students that filled Harvard Yard as pealing bells signaled the break between classes. "He was fascinated by that," Sekler recalled in a recent interview, "how it suddenly came to life."

... But the building didn't turn out exactly as Le Corbusier envisioned it. The electronic tones were dropped early on. More significantly, he was forced to abandon his plans to cover the building's external spaces with a garden, an extension of the greenery of the Yard. Unlike the manicured quads, he had wanted it to be a natural, untended garden -- seeded entirely by the wind and birds and insects, watered by the rain and allowed to run riot all over the building's several terraces. The idea didn't particularly appeal to the Harvard administration, and a lack of safety rails rendered most of the proposed space off-limits anyway. Today only the lower front terrace has a garden, and it's a rim of dirt thinly covered in summer with weeds.

Quarter Identities

Initially I liked the idea of placing different images for each state on the tail side of quarters. It was a means of giving variety to American currency, something interesting to look forward to and a way of learning a little something about each state. But I think the results suck.

Few of the state quarters are visually compelling (I reserve praise for Connecticut, Virginia, Vermont, and Iowa). Most offerings could be logos for banks (like Massachusetts and New York), sports teams (like Texas), or vacation bureaus (like Rhode Island, Ohio and South Carolina). Certainly the designers can do more than create a constellation of symbols with the form of the state in the background. By far the worst offender is Wisconson. Is it a dairy ad? Got milk?

Saturday, November 27, 2004

Random Notes

Thanksgiving went well. One of the dishes I cooked up, a couscous with dried fruit, was a disaster because I added too much cinnamon (the lesson is, don't confuse teaspoons and tablespoons). My other dish was much more successful.

We also checked out a new Tibetan restaurant in Northampton. Pretty good. When I got home, I tried to replicate the potato dish that I had with some success (using garlic and ginger sauteed in butter and simmered in a small amount of liquid).

Recently we have watched a lot of movies; all of them show the deep, complex landscapes. Down by law was great, although Benigni carried the second half. The outdoor scenes are wonderful, showing the depth of the urban blocks in Louisiana. Talk about inventing traditions, we finally watched Lawrence of Arabia. The story was paced perfectly, allowing the viewer to fall in love with the vast deserts and high mountains. Finally, the Scottish film Ratcatcher, shows the claustrophobia of youth trapped in Glasgow in the 1970s. It takes place during a strike by garbage collectors that affects the health of the large tenements in which the main characters live. Their lives evolve around an unused, infested canal that cuts through their neighborhood, taking their children and making them ill (mostly morally). The director went out of her way to show the cruelty of the children (something that bothered me). Nevertheless, an excellent film. (I wonder: do the English tease the Scots about how they speak as Americans tease Canadians?)

The death of me will be the South Park movie. Comedy Central shows it twice a month, and every time my wife and I get sucked in. We must watch at least long enough to see Cartman tell his math teacher to "suck his balls."

Claire points out two reviews of books on Weimar Berlin, that romanticized city of decadent cosmopolitanism. The milieu of cabarets and experimental arts has made a big comeback in historical studies, especially as people have returned to the relationship of art and politics. How funny that the ewige junge Stadt (eternally youthful city) would not shape Germany for almost six decades; all the ideas would come from the south (Munich and Vienna), the east (Moscow), and west (Bonn, Frankfurt and Paris).

Whiskey River has a post about the meaning of landscape in Chinese culture and how it references specific topographic features and their symbolic use.

Friday, November 26, 2004

What will he eat next?

Tuivel is, for a rabbit, without scruples. We have discovered that he will eat almost anything.

It started a few days ago. I was hunched over on the floor, looking at a newspaper and casually eating an asiago cheese bagel. He took it from my hand and ran away with it. I could have dismissed this incident. He may have wanted the bread more than the cheese. However, my wife decided to test his limits. She brought him a small cube of gruyere, which he ate with glee.

Yesterday, my wife tried more. I had made betzels, a filled pastry from North Africa that I make with Phyllo and fry in oil. I made some for Thanksgiving dinner (so much for invented traditions), using garlic, egg, gruyere and sauteed spinach. He loved it.

Today, my wife tried something most rabbits would resist. She offered Tuivel roasted garlic. The pungence should have scared him away. But HE ATE THAT TOO.

What next?

Thinking like a continent

James Drake has an interesting article in Journal of World History (15.3, 2004) (here, Project Muse subscription required) that explores how Americans came to think of themselves as (in his words) a continental society. He compares two cases, Anglo-America and Spanish America, to see how the people conceptualized their relationship with the land they inhabited as well as Europe.

The larger current has to do with geopolitical thinking. Continents became a category that interested European intellectuals, especially as they attempted to understand differences between themselves and the peoples elsewhere in the world. Europe had natural barriers that allowed civilization to flourish without excessive war, unlike other continents.

The English colonists combined the category of the continent with their perception of the relationship with the land. Drake sees the Boston Tea Party as revealing: it shows how the colonists identified themselves as the new indigenous people of the Americas. It was not just the local Native Americans that they were replacing, but a whole continent of people who, in their opinion, did little to develop the civilization of the continent. The new Americans were there to do what the old Americans failed to do.

Drake, in the process of comparing Spanish and Anglo-America, draws on an event from Mexican history that resembles the Boston Tea Party. The Spanish Mexicans never saw themselves as the replacements for the natives; they were overlords and conquerors. Nevertheless they took the identity of Indians to protest the policies of the mother country:

Under the leadership of Hernán Cortés's son Martín, who had assumed the title Marqués de la Valle de Oaxaca, a number of colonists planned a rebellion, feeling the crown had violated their rights. As heirs of the conquerors, they saw their fathers' rewards as their entitlement, their just inheritance. After the conquest, the Spaniards had divided among the conquerors the right to extract tribute or labor rights from the region's Indians. This lucrative institutional arrangement, known as the encomienda, had long proven a sticking point in relations with royal authorities. Hint of its demise at the hands of royal authorities regularly ignited discontent.

When rumors circulated in 1565 that the crown intended to withdraw support for the encomienda, conquistador elites and their heirs conspired to revolt. This plan, known as the conjuración del marques, never reached fruition, but in a dramatic ritual these colonists asserted their views. Donning the garb of Mexican chieftains and Indian warriors, they paraded through the streets of Mexico City toward the house of Martín Cortés. When they arrived Cortés flung open the gates and the crowd gave him a crown of flowers. Accepting the offering, Cortés returned to his business and the "Indians" dispersed. Cortés and his fellow demonstrators had symbolically reenacted the submission of Moctezuma to the Spanish. When the leaders of the incipient revolt were later put on trial, the judges saw the meaning clearly. In marching through the streets dressed as Indians and handing Martín Cortés a crown, the demonstrators, in the words of one judge, "meant to indicate that the Marqués was to be king of this land.

Contested authenticates

Thanksgiving, for Americans, starts a long season of hyperactivity consumerism that has become the hallmark of year-end behavior. There is no denying that a ritual of shopping has emerged, and that few (even the atheists) can offer any meaningful resistance to the "holiday season."

Sharon has already received some guff for saying that Thanksgiving is "... a classic Invented Tradition ... ." (Hopefully, she won't mind a little more.)

There are few cultural practices that originate before 1800 or whose meaning has not been radically altered since. Carnival, for instance, is by no means a modern invention, but the festivities have been better defined over the modern period than any longer duration. The evolution of Carnival (into its currently codified form) was a reaction to the process of modernization (nationalism, secularization, tourism, consumerism, etc.) as they were experienced in different contexts. In other cases, practices transcended their temporal and spatial bounds in order to achieve broader, more often national, importance.

Why should we care whether or not a tradition has been invented? Should historians judge the authenticity of culture, looking to locate the roots of practices in antiquity or folklore? Given that most of the nations of the world are young (less than two hundred years), their national festivals could be nothing other than recent constructions, nationalizations of local cultures, or secularizations of religion.

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

Historian discovers that films are fiction

Historian David Crowe has published a new, academic biography of Oskar Schindler wherein he claims that Schindler's persona and legend have been hyped up. His actions were actually more ambiguous than courageous, and his efforts to save Jews only a small part of a self-indulgent life. The film portrayed him falsely as a hero.

"Steve is a very wonderful, tender man," Mr. Crowe said of Mr. Spielberg, "but 'Schindler's List' was theater and not in an historically accurate way. The film simplifies the story almost to the point of ridiculousness."

I have questions about why Crowe has taken on Schindler and the film. One of Schindler's List's major themes was the man who rises above his pettiness just once in order to become the hero. Crowe makes the same argument himself, but makes it seem as if the film turned him into the classical hero. Crowe's argument goes into pettiness itself, focusing on minutiae and criticizing it for not reaching standards of "truth" that films, in general, don't promise.

He dismissed some scenes in the film and book that are part of Schindler's legend. For instance, in the film Schindler is shown riding with his mistress on Lasota Hill in Krakow and watching the clearing of the ghetto in March 1943, when he sees a little girl seeking shelter. The scene depicts Schindler's moral awakening, but Mr. Crowe called it "totally fictitious." He said that it would have been impossible to see that part of the ghetto from the hill, and that Schindler never saw the girl. Schindler's transformation was more gradual, Mr. Crowe said, and even before the ghetto was cleared he was appalled by the mistreatment of the Jews.

Attacking the narrative devices of film is a straw man. Is it so important that Schindler had a moment or months of revelation? Certainly historians are not immune to this problem: even Thucydides inserted the legend when he had experienced the real events.

Amazing Snooze

I have yet to get into this season's Amazing Race. I even missed the first half hour, preferring to read (Governance of Europe's City Regions--I am a nerd). The teams are competitive rather than personable. Jonathan, the abuser, should be dropped from the competition as soon as possible. His behavior should not be tolerated. At least Gruff Gus will hang around for another week.

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Periods of Western Urban History

Aidan Southall (The City in Time and Space, read a review) attempts to provide a comprehensive framework for urban history on the global scale. His periodization (Asiatic, Ancient, Feudal, and Capitalist) is based on Marxist theory: the form of cities is determined by creativity, production and wealth. More importantly, cities are sites of disparities and contradictions: intellectual freedom, the manufacturing of prosperity, and social divisions.

After discussing some early forms of urbanization (like Çatal Hüyük), which were more large settlements attached to agricultural endeavors, Southall looks at the settlements formed in Ancient Mesopotamia. These cities are more important than the ones that came before because they are a product of a rich economic milieu that leads to political organization, whereas earlier cities are isolated phenomena. In the Asiatic Mode, cities are ritual centers for agricultural regions (like Eridu). There was not clear difference between "town and country" at this point. Increasingly urban cults developed administration in order to organize agricultural production and income. As imperial expansion occurred, the cities became hierarchalized: settlements submitted to the authority of more powerful entities (like Uruk), but the indigenous political structures were not changed. Some form of political elite emerged, but society was mostly egalitarian.

The Ancient Mode is characterized by ruralization and the emergence of the polis. In the Greek city-states, rural elites withdrew from the countryside, maintaining agriculture as a source of wealth, and segregated themselves from the rest of the population. Within the city they developed freedoms that allowed genius and creativity to emerge. The shape of the city was determined by the politics of the city: the agora (public assembly), public temples, and walls. Political participation was encouraged through public venues in order to increase the loyalty of the citizenry. But the polis was exclusionary: it was based on the domination of the hinterland, the redefinition of non-owning producers as slaves, and limiting participation of women. Greece was particularly influential in that standards of urban planning appeared that were applied elsewhere in the Mediterranean world, making all cities familiar.

The Feudal Mode stands in relation to the ancient. Few new cities were built, and those Ancient cities that survived fought degeneration. Many were the targets for plundered. The buildings, for the most part, grew older: people were aware that they were living in the shells of Greek and Roman accomplishments. Gothic, of course, is one example of how cities were built up. The urban space started to become distinct from the rural. Political power was based on agricultural domination, but those forces were not located within the city but closer to the sites of production. Furthermore, feudal lords attempted to dominate the cities, but with little success. "Town and country" opposed one another. From within the walls the merchants ascended politically, laying the foundations for the next phase.

In the capitalist mode cities are centers of accumulation. They control productive regions and are even productive forces in their own right. The impulse of capitalist city is also imperial. The need to export leads to the creation of colony cities throughout the world.

Note: Southall explores differences of urbanization in other parts of the world, which are striking.

Monday, November 22, 2004

Innovative milieus

[A little theory?]

The current issue of Economic Geography (Volume 80 No. 4, October 2004) focuses on trends in French economic geography, in particular what it calls the new socioeconomic geography as represented by the GREMI group. The new approach focuses on territory as an a priori factor in economic development, a "cradle of innovation".

Olivier Crevoisier's article, "The Innovative Milieus Approach: Toward a Territorialized Understanding of the Economy?", describes the spatial influences on economics: technology (as produced by intellectual organization and creativity), organization (networks related to production and capital, etc.), and proximity (relation of the territory to various resources, both physical and virtual). The territory is an innovative milieu in the sense that it mobilizes these three internal properties: its universities, its financial institutions, and its geographic relationship to markets. Cervoisier points out that cities hold "a privileged place for something new" because they combine intellectual and financial forums and because they are nodes for various global networks--it is difficult to dissociate the city from territorial development.

Nationalism tamed?

This article about J. Gordon Liddy and how fascism influenced his life should raise questions about how much extreme nationalism can be tamed by removing its racism. Simply put: its aggression is transferred into other realms.

This gave Liddy hope "for the first time in my life" that he too could overcome weakness. When he listened to Hitler on the radio, it "made me feel a strength inside I had never known before," he explains. "Hitler's sheer animal confidence and power of will [entranced me]. He sent an electric current through my body."

Ceremonies of Liberation

There were several ceremonies throughout Alsace to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of its liberation. Only one American who participated in the liberation, Paul Stadler, was present at the main event at the Strasbourg Cathedral.

Many of the speeches attempted to strike notes of cultural reconciliation. Some described the final expulsion of the Germans as the moment when rapprochement between France and Germany could truly begin. Raffarin, adding a little bit of contemporary politics, compared the oppression of the occupation with the current religious intolerance against Jews and Muslims:

J'ai pu constater avec révolte que, rompant avec la tradition régionale et nationale de respect des religions, certains extrémistes avaient profané des lieux de cultes et des cimetières de toutes confessions. Souvenons-nous de René Char : le mal vient toujours de plus loin qu'on ne croit et ne meurt pas forcément sur la barricade qu'on lui a choisie.

Here are the links to various articles:

Testimonial of Maurice Lebrun, who led a Moroccan division and raised the national flag above the Strasbourg Cathedral.
Rembering the Oath of Koufra, taken first by the soldiers of Leclerc in 1941, not to put down their weapons until the entirety of France was liberated.
DNA has started day by day articles on the coverage of the liberation.
An extensive article on the first village to be liberated, Seppois-le-bas.

Random Notes

I am relieved that the damned presentation thing is over. I am glad it’s over. How well did it go? My paper was not as well organized as the others, but I think I left it open enough to generate some better questions from the audience. Now I want to stop thinking about French republicanism. For the next month, I will ignore the French side of my subject. There is only one problem. Some guy talked to me for fifteen minutes about how intolerance of regionalism could be used to understand intolerance of Muslims in France. An interesting question, but for later.

Last night my wife and I watched Laissez-passer (Safe Conduct). Bertrand Tavernier is my favorite contemporary French director. This film, based on real experiences, deals with the French film industry during the occupation. The action surrounds writers and directors that was overseen by the SS. As a micro-study it does an great job of showing the extent to which resistance and non-conformism required collaboration. And after watching it, I want to see many of the films that Tavernier depicts. Two critiques, which apply to all Tavernier films: he tends to cast people who look similar to one another, and the dialogue can be so rapid that subtitles are somewhat ineffective.

We also had a mini-fest of Planet of the Apes. It got me thinking about how concepts of degeneration (and the requisite fragmentation of humanity) must necessarily lead to speciation.

I am completing the syllabus for by Ancient Civ class. Advice that I got from someone yesterday: find the two best books on the subject; assign the second best, teach the best.

I am happy with the progress of Dictionary of Received Ideas: lots of good things to read. I want to thank whomever changed the format. It looks better now.

Saturday, November 20, 2004

Decentralizing Patrimony

Are Raffarin's plans for decentralization and regionalization of France dumping more competencies on régions and communes than they can handle? Increasingly it looks like the national government is divesting itself of domestic policies and forcing the régions to pick up the slack. The current project turns over the maintenance of historical sites and monuments (en français). The commission Rémond established that the national government should only care for monuments and buildings of national or great historic importance. Regions and communes must assume responsibility for all others. It is not clear that they can handle the load. Some sites bring in profits for localities: it should be easy to administer them. Others, like ancient sites in Brittany, are remote and fragile. It is unclear whether local governments can adequately provide for upkeep and preservation.

On a similar note, officials in Madrid are considering what they will to with the last statue of Franco (auf Deutsch).

Alexandre Millerand, commissaire-général

I am presenting a paper at a graduate symposium tomorrow. The title: No Place like Alsace: The Fate of Regions in France, 1918-1925. It describes the attitude of the French administration to regional institutions and how the question of their preservation influence the discourse on national territorial reform and decentralization. The Herriot government ultimately decided no territory could have political institutions that were not granted by the state, and Alsace would be abolished. Abolishing the example of Alsace-Lorraine undermined the discourse of reform.

Writing the paper, I realized that a great article about French republicanism was emerging. But in the context of a twenty minute presentation two-thirds (perhaps more) of what I wrote has been cut out. One person whom I had come to appreciate is Alexandre Millerand (1859-1943). He was best known as the minister of war during WWI and prime minister and president in the mid-1920s. He also spent over a year (1919-1920) as the commissaire-général, a special office created as the executive head of Alsace-Lorraine during the transitional period.

Millerand might have appeared to be the perfect candidate for this job. In his opinion recovery of Alsace-Lorraine was the minimal condition for French victory. (He realized that full gallicization was preferred). He learned to appreciated Alsatian institutions, and he wanted to extend them through out France. His pet projects were the creation of other territorial executives (like the commissaire-général) and regional parliaments, both with the ability to create policy and law independently of Paris. There were other things he wanted as well: the German pension laws, which he had preserved for retired Alsatians, was more comprehensive than French and should become the national standard. There were other ways in which Millerand wanted to reform from the region to the nation.

Looking at the "fine print" I have become more conflicted about Millerand. Whereas he seems to be a fan of the region, I realized that he had some anti-democratic tendencies. He was a socialist, but his positions continually drifted to the right. He was unimpressed with popularly-elected officials: he preferred assemblies that were composed of indirectly chosen professionals. That example resembled the Alsatian lower house, a senate that was composed of imperial appointments and representatives of guilds, universities, municipal councils. The upper house was the body of popularly elected representatives. Alsatians fought for the latter; Germany imposed the former. He was not the only politician of the era who preferred government by experts rather than democracy. However, there are some important questions about how this affected his image of territorial France. Which regionalism did Millerand like: the republic that Alsatians tried to create, or the authoritarian institutions that the German Empire used to limit popular sovereignty?

Friday, November 19, 2004

Dictionary of Received Ideas

OK, I am going to try the link thing again in a different format. I started a new blog at Dictionary of Received Ideas. (Somehow I thought it was an appropriate name for a blog about knowledge.)It will be a group blog that will allow people to crosspost stuff and links that they find elsewhere. If people want to join as a member, they need just contact me (and get a Blogger account). I have done nothing with the format, so I am up for suggestions.

Pumpkin Soup

I have been in a big cooking mood. Since Thanksgiving is approaching (US nationals only, please) I want to throw out one of my favorite pumpkin soup recipes, an amalgam of difference recipes involving pumpkin that I have tried over the years. It is an easy and quick recipe, depending on how long it takes you to peel a pumpkin (I recommend cutting one inch slices first, than removing the skin from the individual slices). It has a slightly Indian flavor without going overboard.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoons whole cumin seed
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoons whole black mustard seed
small onion, chopped
small to medium sugar pumpkin (enough to yield 1 and 1/2 pounds flesh after peeled and seeded), cubed
medium potato, thinly sliced
four cups vegetable broth (meat eaters can use chicken broth at their own risk)
salt and pepper to taste
heavy cream

Heat the olive oil in a medium pot. Stir in the cumin and mustard, stirring a few times. Wait until it pops a few times, then stir in the pumpkin and onion in two to three batches. Make sure that the oil and seeds coat the pumpkin well. Let it heat up for about five minutes. Stir in the potato, than cover with the broth. Increase the heat to high. When it starts to boil, reduce heat to low, cover, and let simmer until the vegetables are soft. It shouldn't take too long. Remove from the heat and puree. Add salt and pepper. Pour small swirl of cream into the individual servings.

Random Notes

A question that people are dancing around in various posts on the internet: why is nineteenth century Europe still the bottleneck through which all histories must flow? It is a question that involves the roots of western civ, international relations, the periodization of history, and the normativity of the nation-state. I expect to have some thoughts soon.

Tuesday's Amazing Race sucked. Too many models, too many thespians. Jonathan, the entrepreneurs, is completely abusive. Colin was abusive, but watching him implode was fun. Everytime I see Jonathan, I think, "where are the police?" How will he react when the teams need to interact with the natives?

Geitner considers how public spaces framed electoral events; he even has excellent photos of JK speaking. Jonathan Dresner's article on constitutional reform in Japan is a must.

History Blogging

Here is a collection of links to blog entries dealing with history and historical practice that have appeared since Tuesday

Far Outliers
The Early 1940s Japanosphere
Asia
Concept of "Great East Asia" as a Japanese sphere.
Early Modern Web
Eighteenth-Century Rebellion, Political Responsibility, Unrest and Rumor
Europe
Seditious words in early modern English law
Philobiblon
The Match Factory Women
Europe, women
Bryant & May 'match girls' strike of 1888
Rhine River
Anti-Nazi Youth in Cologne
Europe
Anti-nazism
Early Modern Print Culture
National Archives
Europe
Researching images of prisoners at British National Archives.
Chapati Mystery
Wonder of Wonders
Asia
12th Century text on politics, "Sea of Virtues."
Rhine River
Fantasies of Skin Color
Europe, Asia
European intellectuals' perception of the Japanese.
Early Modern Print Culture
Blenheim Palace and St. Paul's Cathedral
Europe
Architecture in late 17thC England.
Far Outliers
How the Japanese changed color
Europe, Asia
Ethnic classification of the Japanese by Europeans.
Early Modern Web
Tonight we're going to part like it's 1669
Europe
Sociability and substance of English parliamentarians.
Siris
Sor Juana chats with a rose
Europe
17thC Mexican poet.
Philobiblion
Cuneiform, now I get it
Ancient
Writing in ancient Sumeria
Red Ted
Nuggets of Wisdom?
Intellectual
Teaching the "Protestant Ethic"
World History
Crimean Diary
Europe
Personal accounts of the Crimean War
World History
Martin van Buren
North America
Biography of the mid-19thC US President.

So far, I do not think that this is a successful effort. I hoped to bring together links from outside the circle of blogs that I normally read. I'll try it for another week. However, I think that any sort of collection of links should be a collective effort, and it should be given a blog of its own.

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

AIDS Vaccine

I don't know how far American nationalism has gone, but I have not found an English language source about the Pasteur Institute's success cultivating a vaccine for AIDS in rabbits, or the testing of the vaccine in humans. (Of course, I want to know that the rabbits will be alright.)

Fantasies of Skin Color

Rotem Kowner has an interesting article in Ethnohistory, Skin as a Metaphor (Project Muse subscription required), that deals with European perception of the Japanese during the period in which Japan was isolated. The evolution of perception was due completely to the changes in scientific discourse in Europe, which increasingly obsessed on skin color. Although they did not escape becoming an inferior race, the Japanese were not described with the same harsh language as other non-Europeans.

[Linnaeus'] followers maintained his focus on color as a major component of their racial classification: The Scottish anatomist John Hunter (17281793) depicted Mongoloids as brown, whereas Johann Blumenbach was apparently the first to depict the peoples of East Asia as yellow. This color better suited the Japanese, for whom the designation brown was frequently far from reality. The Europeans could easily see yellow in others' skin color because it is so vague, and it was enough that a few members of a group were perceived as such to generalize the characteristic to the whole group.

In 1775, the year Blumenbach's book was published, the Swedish botanist and Linne's disciple Charles Peter Thunberg (17431828) left for Japan. Thunberg, who worked as a physician at the Dutch mission for one year, was the first naturalist of the new school to examine the Japanese. A decade later, when Thunberg wrote his own account of his experience in Japan, he depicted the Japanese as having "yellowish colour over all, sometimes bordering on brown, and sometimes on white."

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

Amend for Arnold?

Let's have a woman, an African-American, and an Hispanic before we make more white men eligible for the presidency.

Swept in the series, but ...

An Angel still won the MVP. Cool!

I love this quote:

Anaheim manager Mike Scioscia said Guerrero was “at times carrying our team single-handedly."

Random Notes

I have been plugging away at the paper I am giving this weekend: the French administration's desire to abolish Alsace-Lorraine in the early 1920s. So far it is quite long (more than I can fit into the fifteen minutes that I have been given) so I will have to use some heavy editing. I am also putting together a proposal for a paper on the competition between cities to establish a Rhenish Museum in the late 1920s.

I have given a quick glance at Herman Lebovics' new book on contemporary French politics, Bringing the Empire Back Home: France in the Golden Age. It deals with the debates over migrants and regionalization: discussions have been clouded over by the legacy of republicanism that have made France look more homogeneous.

I should note that Chirac and Raffarin are rejecting Sarkozy's suggestion that the 1905 secular laws should be moderated to let religion (especially Muslims) come into French public life. But will the intrusion of the state into religion go beyond what there neighbors will do: Muslims may be forced to pray in German.

I am so glad that the new Secretary of State already has the respect of world leaders (auf Deutsch).

By the way, I am frustrated with reading. I feel as if I never complete books any more. I have been picking away at Stephen Baxter's Evolution for weeks. I highly recommend the book (fictionalization of the emergence of man since the extinction of the dinosaurs--hard sci fi that is really dramatic), but I have had so little time for concentrated reading (for pleasure) that I can read no more than a few pages at a time. And yet I have read parts of numerous books in the last few days.

I am trying hard to put the elections out of my mind (avoiding all the tin foil haberdashery). Fellow Cliopatriarch Jonathan Dresner sent me this link that divides the nation into ten regions on the basis of political orientation. I am impressed by the sophistication of this map, avoiding cliches about geography and mentality. It is too early to make predictions, but I think the next Democratic candidate for the the presidency should come from here. I am reminded that the Bush administration wants to divide the country into ten regions for the purpose of medical insurance. The idea is that insurers should provide coverage for the entire region, and they would not be able to to farm only the rich communities. I wonder if there is any correlation between the two models.

In the mood for some philosophy? Brandon has some interesting remarks regarding temporal perception in the works of Augustine.

Amazing Race 6 is coming up. Like Brdgt, I am not impressed with the contestants (with the exception of the ex-CIA guy and his daughter, this season's version of the vet-daughter combo). This description for this ex-couple disturbs me:

Rebecca's first impression of Adam was that he was gay, but after he pursued her for months, he proved otherwise.

WTF? What kind of test proves heterosexuality, and why does it matter? Is CBS trying to prove that the contestants have been properly screened?

Process over Identity

Since the days of Schuman and Monnet European integration has been more about process and cooperation than expressing identity. American unilateralism is probably giving Europeans something to integrate against, speeding up the process: desire to gain freedom from American influence, withdrawal of American resources to other parts of the world, pure European successes in global diplomacy.

Links Deposit

I suggested several days ago that there should be some way of bringing together blog posts about history and historical theory and methodology in one place. I guess I will try, at least once, to do this myself.

Here's how it will work:

All the links should be written into the comments of this post. You can also e-mail the information to the address in the sidebar.
They should include the following information: name of blog, name of post, web address, general areas (Europe, Africa, Women, Science, Ancient ...), and a brief, optional description of the subject (no more than ten words). I don't want to replace other people's posts about the links that they discovered, so I want the information to remain brief.
I will post the list on Friday or Saturday. If you want a copy e-mailed to you, please tell me.

One more thing: there are a lot of posts out there that use history to argue politics. I write some posts like that. In my opinion, these are politics and not history and should not be included.

OK, let's see how this works!

Monday, November 15, 2004

Respect resigns

He could have been president. He should have been president.

The Degenerate Adam

In her book about French naturalist and feminist Clémence Royer, Joy Harvey describes how Royer produced one of the most heavy-handed interpretations of Darwin's Origin of Species by translating it into French. Royer was more of a popularizer of science that a scientist herself. She looked out for ways of bringing scientific understanding to a broad audience. To her credit she was one of the first French women to become a member of the Society of Anthropology.

Royer learned of Origin of Species through a book review. She appeared to have the right skills and knowledge to understand and translate the book. However, her translations was weighed down by her desire to make the implications of Darwin's ideas as explicit as possible, and to correlate Darwin with her own ideas about morality. She added a preface that directly attacked Catholicism and all organized religions. She added extensive footnotes, and she removed spots where Darwin expressed doubts about his own theories. (More confusing was the decision to use élection naturelle in place of natural selection: election implied moral choice, but selection had no equivalent in French.)

Royer was particularly interested in how Darwin's ideas could be used to explain degeneration.

Royer's preface also included a lengthy description of the consequences of Darwinism's evolution for human beings. In a section that gained her instant notoriety she made the first eugenic suggestions about the consequences of natural selection. ... she argued that [because of Christian charity and pity] the human race was "aggravating and multiplying the evils that it argued that it pretends to remedy." She added that, through the excess of devotion, human beings regularly "sacrifice what is strong to the weak, the good to the bad ... beings well-endowed in mind and body to vicious and malingering individuals." ... she posed the issue in a manner that seemed to imply the need to eliminate such individuals. The preservation of "beings incapable of living by themselves" weighed heavily "on the arms of the strong." ...

The effect of marriage and mating selections on human society and particularly on women she extended and maintained throughout her life. Through the selection of partners on the basis of passivity and beauty, men had weakened human development. Women tended to pass these characteristics on to their daughters, but were saved by the mental and physical strength that they inherited from their paternal ancestors."

Darwin agonized over the French translation. He felt that he was misrepresented to his French audience, and he battled with Royer in order to make changes to subsequent additions

Sunday, November 14, 2004

Imagining provincial Iraq

Fred Kaplan and Juan Cole are debating whether some new subdivisions for Iraq will help to ease ethnic tension. They differ on whether there should be larger regions that encompass the major ethnic groups (between three and six territories) or smaller that better represent social and tribal structures (on the order of eighteen territories) respectively.

Prof. Cole comes up with a few reasons why smaller regions should be preferred over larger regions. First, the creation of a "Kurdistan" will cause tensions between the ethnic majority and the Christian and Turkmen minorities. Second, larger provinces are a prelude to partition, drawing boundaries that define the players in an eventual civil war. Third, smaller provinces have already been established: they have already proven to be a " bulwark against ethnic cleansing" and will help to stabilize the country as prosperity begets internal migration.

There is every good reason to keep the territorial structure as it is. It has a history of its own. The provinces themselves match up with existing social structures.

However, the preservation of the eighteen provinces does not preclude the creation of larger territories to encompass them. The eighteen can be maintained as administrative entities for the state while regional power is represented by larger regions. There can be a "congress of Sunni territories", and perhaps there should be. Regionalism works best when there are multiple levels to intermediate government, each of which is a different mixture of popular participation and state administration. Better to have eighteen provinces and five regions.

Furthermore, the preservation of eighteen provinces does not guarantee that forces that oppose the government will remain fragmented. The notion of ethnic regions, like Kurdistan, have already been imagined and, to some degree, operationalized. If the existing provinces don't appear to fulfill political ambitions and interests, people will fight for imagined regions in their stead.

No use pretending.

Winter is here. The land has lost its color and it is falling under a perpetual chill. Blah!

Normally I am no fan of centralization (look at my topic), but I would like to bring together links relevant to the history blogosphere. Something simple, like a list of links to posts that refer specifically to the subject, theory or method of history (not politics) and a one sentence description that can be passed around on a weekly basis.

The Rhine River

Monday, December 13, 2004

Someone was here before us

Sixth candle

Friday, December 10, 2004

Fourth Candle

Random Notes

Third Candle

Thursday, December 09, 2004

More Genetics and History

Wednesday, December 08, 2004

Almost a Democracy

Second Candle

Tuesday, December 07, 2004

First Candle

No remilitarization, no war?

Monday, December 06, 2004

Stewart

Wild Archives

Balzac's Paris

Sunday, December 05, 2004

Skills

The Catch-all

Loose ties that bind

Saturday, December 04, 2004

Downfall of Civilization

Thursday, December 02, 2004

Paternity Test

Stein and the Rhine

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

Mapmakers and the Enlightened State

Random Notes

Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Song for Europe

Monday, November 29, 2004

Death of a Disco Dancer

Sunday, November 28, 2004

Larzac

Le Corbusier in America

Quarter Identities

Saturday, November 27, 2004

Random Notes

Friday, November 26, 2004

What will he eat next?

Thinking like a continent

Contested authenticates

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

Historian discovers that films are fiction

Amazing Snooze

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Periods of Western Urban History

Monday, November 22, 2004

Innovative milieus

Nationalism tamed?

Ceremonies of Liberation

Random Notes

Saturday, November 20, 2004

Decentralizing Patrimony

Alexandre Millerand, commissaire-général

Friday, November 19, 2004

Dictionary of Received Ideas

Pumpkin Soup

Random Notes

History Blogging

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

AIDS Vaccine

Fantasies of Skin Color

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

Amend for Arnold?

Swept in the series, but ...

Random Notes

Process over Identity

Links Deposit

Monday, November 15, 2004

Respect resigns

The Degenerate Adam

Sunday, November 14, 2004

Imagining provincial Iraq

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