Famous Battle Research Articles

Community control in mental health: how far can it go?

Quite far indeed, according to two experts who have been through the fire and water of a famous battle. Contrary to much “expert” opinion, it is possible for consumer representatives of poverty areas to develop a degree of sophistication about what community mental health can and cannot do for them, and to acquire a sense of commitment to the art of the possible.

Forecast 73/Trade

Wait till next year! That famous battle cry of the old Ebbets Field faithful apparently is as hollow today for U.S. international trade as it was for the prospects for the old and colorful Brooklyn Dodgers. Last year, the U.S. was heading for a trade deficit, its first in the century and one, in fact, that did reach $2.1 billion. The deteriorating trade position of the U.S. triggered President Nixon into his now famous Aug. 15, 1971, action, which allowed the dollar to float, imposed a 10% surcharge on imports, and permitted a temporary Buy American tax credit on direct investments. Pressured by these moves, the leading industrialized nations agreed to adjust their exchange rates in the Smithsonian accord of December 1971. Coming late in the year as they did, nobody expected these developments to help the 1971 trade balance. And they didn't. But wait until next year! Well, next year is here and almost ...

Socrates and Archelaus

DIOGENES LAERTIUS (2.23) includes in his Life of Socrates a paragraph on his campaigns and travels abroad. He mentions three battles (Potidaea, Delium, and Amphipolis) which are named by the Platonic Socrates in the Apology (28e)' as the occasions on which he proved his obedience to the orders of the commanders whom the state had placed in charge. He knows, also from Plato,2 of the prize of valour that Socrates won at Potidaea but resigned to Alcibiades, and the trance into which he fell for a whole day and a night, as well as the coolness and determination that he showed in the retreat from Delium. But this clear testimony is obscured by his own bad memory and judgment or his reliance on an inferior source. For he has it that it was Xenophon, and not Alcibiades, whose life was saved by Socrates, and at Delium, not Potidaea, although Xenophon cannot have been more than a child in the year of that battle.3 He says also that Socrates had to go to Potidaea by sea because the land-route was interrupted by the war; but the siege commenced in 432 before the war began.4 Then, after diverting to cite Aristippus on Socrates' love for Alcibiades, he concludes with three statements concerning his travels. The first is attributed to a 1J. Burnet, in his note ad loc. in his edition of the Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito (Oxford 1924), doubted whether Amphipolis can be the famous battle of 432, in which both Cleon and Brasidas fell, chiefly on the ground that only 1200 hoplites were sent out on that occasion (Thuc. 5.2.1), and Socrates, at his age, was unlikely to be required in so small a force. He also felt some difficulty in the order of battles, as Delium (424) preceded Amphipolis. This latter difficulty, at least, was not removed by his suggestion that an earlier fight of 437/436 is referred to. His argument does not lack weight in a calculation of general probabilities. But the natural interpretation of Plato's words, which has priority over other considerations, is that Socrates is referring to the well-known battle; he certainly left himself open to misunderstanding, if he intended any other meaning. (W. M. Calder, III, in Phronesis 6 [1961] 83-85, argues well against Burnet.) Furthermore, it seems probable that the order of battles, which no one can make chronological, is determined by stylistic purposes. (See Burnet's note on the variation of prepositions

"Old Bruin": Commodore Matthew C. Perry, 1794-1858 (review)

book reviews269 are excellent. For twenty-two years the editor grew not weary in well doing, and thus brought the study to successful completion. Berlin B. Chapman Oklahoma State University "Old Bruin": Commodore Matthew C. Perry, 1794-1858. By Samuel Eliot Morison. (Boston: Litde, Brown and Company, 1967. Pp. xxiii, 482. $12.50.) This latest of some fifty volumes bearing the imprint of Samuel Eliot Morison is less dramatic than its companion, John Patd Jones. Matthew CaIbraith Perry was respected but not loved, had presence but no panache. He was a midshipman in the War of 1812 but missed the famous battles. In 1847 he took the naval command in the Gulf only after the Vera Cruz landings. To be sure, he had adventures chasing pirates in the Caribbean, leading a charge against breastworks in Tabasco (the Mexicans inconveniently melted away), and foiling the escape of a troublesome African king by grabbing the royal loin cloth and hanging on as the giant native bolted across the beach. But this was mostly a dull era of American naval history and Perry's fame rests on the Japan expedition. The question then arises whether one auspicious moment justifies an exhaustive biography . The fact is that Perry's importance is by no means limited to the events of 1853-1854. What emerges in Morison's biography is a model professional officer laboring to develop his expertise and improve the navy as a career. A patient, meticulous planner and organizer, Perry was influential in effecting the transformation of the navy from an aggregation of ships mobilized for specific tasks or emergencies into a permanent, peacetime institution. He played a key role in improving the instruction and quality of recruits (here Morison gives a gripping account of the Somers mutiny) and in founding the Naval Academy. It is true he was a strict disciplinarian, wedded to the lash, but his rigorous sanitary precautions on tropical cruises sharply reduced the incidence of the mysterious yellow fever. Perry contributed greatly to technological change as well. Even in the heyday of sail, he regarded the ship as no more than a gun platform and pioneered in the construction, manning, and trials of the navy's first steam vessels. The Japan mission takes a little less than half the book. Earlier chapters show that Perry was uniquely equipped for the command by previous experience : showing the flag along the Barbary Coast, a display of force at Naples, ceremonial visits with Near Eastern potentates, palavers with African tribes. By using Japanese sources, written and graphic, and visiting the scene himself, Morison has enriched but not substantially altered the standard interpretation. He concedes that the commodore was an imperialist with a grandiose sense of national destiny. At first he envisioned a continental empire stretching "from Davis' Straits to the Istiimus of Darien" and 270CIVIL WAR HISTORY then from the perspective of the Asiatic command he conceived of American strategic domination of the Pacific with footholds in Formosa, Okinawa, and the Bonins to control the great-circle approach to China. Here is a significant connection between the Manifest Destiny of the 1840's and the insular imperialism of the 1890's. But Perry was an imperialist with a difference, Morison contends, in that he eschewed forcible annexation and big colonies. Even so, it might be argued, great empires had a way of mushrooming out of small beginnings, and the distinction would have been lost on the Okinawans. Defense of his "hero" leads Morison into several curious distinctions. He sees the commodore reaching his greatest achievement, the opening of Japan, through diplomacy rather than military force. Undeniably, as Morison shows, Perry conducted negotiations with prudence and finesse; he shrewdly calculated how much he could realistically expect and the necessary mixture of pomp, civility, and menace to attain it. Nevertheless, his best argument was his squadron in the bay. He practiced diplomacy, ii you will, but at the cannon's mouth. And why rationalize it by evoking a Japanese reputation for treacherous surprise attacks? One wonders what rules would have applied if the situation had been reversed and a Japanese Perry had marched ashore at San Francisco. This is a book of substance and...

With Burgoyne from Quebec: An Account of the Life at Quebec and of the Famous Battle at Saratoga

With Burgoyne from Quebec: An Account of the Life at Quebec and of the Famous Battle at Saratoga

Navies in the Mountains: The Battles on the Waters of Lake Champlain and Lake George, 1609-1814With Burgoyne from Quebec: An Account of the Life at Quebec and of the Famous Battle at Saratoga

Find information about UTP Journals. University of Toronto Press is Canada’s leading academic publisher and one of the largest university presses in North America, with particular strengths in the social sciences, humanities, and business. The Book Publishing Division is widely recognized in Canada for its strength in history, political science, sociology, Indigenous studies, and cultural studies. Internationally, UTP is a leading publisher of medieval, Renaissance, Italian, Iberian, Slavic, and urban studies, as well as studies in book and print culture.

Navies in the Mountains: The Battles on the Waters of Lake Champlain and Lake George, 1609-1814With Burgoyne from Quebec: An Account of the Life at Quebec and of the Famous Battle at Saratoga

Find information about UTP Journals. University of Toronto Press is Canada’s leading academic publisher and one of the largest university presses in North America, with particular strengths in the social sciences, humanities, and business. The Book Publishing Division is widely recognized in Canada for its strength in history, political science, sociology, Indigenous studies, and cultural studies. Internationally, UTP is a leading publisher of medieval, Renaissance, Italian, Iberian, Slavic, and urban studies, as well as studies in book and print culture.

The Early Romanesque Tower at Restenneth Priory, Angus

In the latter part of the seventh century the power of the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria reached its height. Upon its northern frontier, over against the Picts, a vigorous forward policy was adopted; and here, as so often in our early history, the Roman Church revealed herself as the ally of the State. Some part of the Pictish borderlands, south of the Forth, had by this time passed under Northumbrian control; and on the strength of this an Anglian churchman, Trumwin, was planted in 681 at Abercorn, with the portentous title of ‘Bishop of the Picts’. The Northumbrian Church thus intruded at Abercorn has left its monuments today in a hog-backed stone and some cross shafts, one of great beauty showing among its enrichments the characteristic Anglian vine-scroll. These ecclesiastical measures were the prelude to an invasion of Pictland on a great scale, upon which the whole power of the Northumbrian kingdom was bent under its able and warlike monarch, Egfrith. But the High King of the Picts, Brude MacBile, proved himself equal to the crisis. At the famous battle of Dunnichen, or Nechtan's Mere, on Saturday, 20th May 685, he utterly destroyed the Anglian army of invasion—Egfrith and the flower of his nobles being numbered among the slain. This memorable victory dealt a blow at the power of Northumberland from which that haughty and resplendent kingdom never recovered; and its rapid military, political, spiritual, and moral decline is rightly dated from that event.

Civil War at West Point

Major Arthur P. Wade, Artillery, USA, graduated from West Point in 1943 and served in Europe during World War II. After an assignment as Assistant Professor of History of Military Art at West Point, he is now on duty with the 1st Infantry Division. Civil War at West Point ARTHUR P. WADE WITH THE APPROACHING CENTENNIAL OF THE OUTBREAK of the Civil War, interestin that greatAmerican conflict increases steadily and quite perceptibly . Hardly a week goes by in which the book review sections of the great metropolition newspapers fail to record the appearance of a new work on some facet of that war; the quality of the productions may vary, but interest in the general subject is unflagging. From best-selling novel to privately-printed pamphlet, each of these works reflects the unique position in our history of the war of 1861-65. After some years in which the emphasis in Civil War writing was almost entirelyon the political, economic, or sociological aspects of the period, the purely military or operational history of the war is coming back into its own with the publication of such fine works as those by Bruce Catton and Kennetii P. Williams. Surely a high point in the resurgence of interest in the operational history of the war was reached with the recent reprinting of Century's famous Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. To date, however, it must be noted that the revival of the military history of the Civil War has not spread to the schools and colleges of die country, even in the South. Whereas fifty years ago college history students could toss off such names as Gordon, Mahone, Reynolds, Ewell, and Granger with facility, and recite chapter-and-verse the reasoning behind Lee's reinforcement of Bragg in September of 1863, the interposition of two world wars has dulled the appreciation of such men and such strategy, so that it is a rare college student today who can identify with certainty any of the great Civil War commanders beyond Grant, Lee, Sherman, Sheridan, and perhaps Jackson. Every college offers courses in its history curriculum which deal with economic, political, and—lately—sociological treatments of the war period, and while this is not to say that no mention is made of 6 ARTHUR P. WADE military operations, such mention usually is only to set the stage, to frame the chronology for other discussion. This condition is not particularly surprising, nor is this author "viewing with alarm." It is simply pointed out that, were a student interested in taking a course in the purely military history of the Civil War, he would in most cases be out of luck. He would be told with some justice that no university could afford to underwrite so specialized a subject, that the undergraduates inparticular are so busy with the required hours leading to their chosen degrees that they have no time for such a restricted course. It may then be of interest to Civil War students to know that there is one school at which every undergraduate takes such a course—the United States Military Academy. The West Point course in military history, or more properly History of Military Art, is not confined to the Civil War, but covers the art of war from the earliest recorded engagements through the recent fighting in Korea. At one time the study of the Civil War filled one-third of the course, but with the additional content posed by two world wars and a police action, the fraction is now nearer one-fifth. Nevertheless the concentration of the Civil War into a much shorter span of teaching has not had a corresponding decrease in interest, either on the part of the cadets or the instructors ; the study of die military operations of 1861-1865 remains probably the high spot of the course on both sides of the lectern. The aim of this article, then, is to describe and discuss the West Point course in the History of Military Art, show briefly how it fits into the overall cadet curriculum, and then focus on the Civil War subcourse. Shortly after World War II there was instituted at West Point...

Battle Scars of Military Electronics — The Scharnhorst break-through

This paper opens our Famous Battle Series with an account — from an electronic point of view — of the daring escape up the English Channel of the German ships Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Prinz Eugen during World War II. We hope to follow this in a later issue with an analysis from the German side.

The Rationale of 'Podunk'

'Six miles from Pottawoone, and ten miles from Poppasquash, and about four miles west of Cononicut, and not far from the spot where the famous battle with the warlike Pequots was fought.' 'In what part of the East Indies is that, sir?' asked one of them. 'East Indies, my dear sir!' he rejoined. 'It is in the state of Rhode-Island, between Massachusetts and Connecticut river.' He left them thereupon to study a new lesson in geography.'

Early Relations of Baptists and Quakers

On a little hillside that rises abruptly from the Baltimore Pike, an old highway from Philadelphia to Baltimore, some fifty miles south of Philadelphia, stands a little old meeting-house a-round which gather many interesting historical incidents. It is the home of the Brandywine Baptist Church, on the edge of the famous Brandywine battle field where Washington, joined for the first time by Lafayette, met defeat by the British under Howe and Cornwallis and was forced to abandon Philadelphia, September 11, 1777. Giant oak trees tower high on the hillside to-day and members of the church will point out the one against which, according to tradition, the young French general leaned, severely wounded.

VII.—The Battle of Bosworth

To make a satisfactory study of the story of a battle it is no doubt desirable to visit the field of action and examine it carefully with one's own eyes. Where much time has elapsed and many changes have taken place in the aspect of the country the written records are not always easy to interpret; and where even these are scanty and obscure a large number of open questions will naturally be the result. Such has been the case with the famous battle of Bosworth Field, of which we possess virtually only one narrative, and that not written by an eye-witness or even by an Englishman, but by an intelligent foreigner who settled in England some years after. Polydore Vergil, the first writer of a connected history of England, arrived in this country about eighteen years after the battle, and doubtless gained his information about it from those who had seen and taken part in it. The accounts given by the subsequent English chroniclers, Hall, Grafton, and Holinshed, are little more than translations, a little amplified, of the description given by Polydore. Nevertheless, their additions to the narrative, as we shall see, are not without significance.