Military Defeat Research Articles

Nasty or Nice?

A large amount of recent research points to the importance of domestic political institutions in shaping foreign policy, most of it turning on the distinction between democratic and nondemocratic regimes. However, fundamental characteristics differentiate regime types beyond the distinction between democratic and nondemocratic. Drawing a distinction between institutional differences that result from variation in the sizes of selectorates and winning coalitions, the authors consider the effect that regime type has on the prospects that a foreign leader will be removed from office following a military defeat, be it in a war or some lesser level of violence. The authors show that the distinction, now common in the literature, between democratic and nondemocratic regimes is not adequate for understanding the linkages between domestic and foreign affairs. A model is presented from which nine hypotheses are derived. A preliminary test of one hypothesis is presented, the results of which are consistent with the expectation that regimes, and consequently their leaders, will be the issue of conflict when power differences are great and the winning state has either a large winning coalition or a small selectorate.

Look to the Earth: Historical Archaeology and the American Civil War (review)

BOOK reviews89 makes a special effort to determine whether or not Battery Wagner's commanding officer, Brig. Gen. Johnson Hagood, did indeed insist that the commander of the 54th, Col. Robert Gould Shaw, be "buried with his niggers." Wise concludes that while Hagood probably did not utter those exact words, he did in fact order that the corpses of black men be tossed on Shaw's remains in a trench in front of Wagner. Neither author is apparently aware that a black man possessing a fair complexion fought with Confederate forces in the defense of Battery Wagner. John Wilson Buckner was a private in the ist South CaroUna ArtiUery. He was wounded on July 12, 1863, as infantry from Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Maine failed to take Wagner. But Buckner remained in the army until October 1864. After the war, local whites who knew he was black commended him as a "faithful soldier." He was one of the few people of color who whites would praise in the years foUowing the conflict. Rosen's short epilogue on postwar feelings and attitudes reveals much about Reconstruction and the decades ofracial hostiUty and discord that have persisted since in American society. It is, of course, understandable that Charleston whites were severely traumatized by military defeat, emancipation, and the occupation of their city by black troops. The haughty behavior and criminal activities of some troops and black residents surely exacerbated deeply felt racial passions. However, far more frequent were instances of black men and women who were kind, thoughtful, and compassionate toward white inhabitants amid the ruins ofthe city. Therefore, the unremitting bitterness, contempt, and meanspiritedness that whites showed in return to black civihans and miütary personnel is one ofthe more regrettable developments in this nation's past. William C. Hine South CaroUna State University Look to the Earth: HistoricalArchaeology and the American Civil War. Edited by Clarence R. Geier, Jr., and Susan E. Winter. (KnoxviUe: University of Tennessee Press, 1994. Pp. xvi, 325. $35.00.) Look to the Earth pubüshes twelve papers given to a conference on historical archaeology held in Richmond in 1991. As scholarship, the essays are working papers and progress reports on topics in historical archaeology ranging from bullet analysis at battlefields, excavations of fortifications and camps, as weU as marine salvages to an analysis oftechnology transfers in the development of American armaments using material evidence from industrial sites. Overlaying all the articles is the argument thathistorical archaeology is ifnot actuaUy central to Civil War historiography a coequal with other discipUnary and methodological approaches to the conflict. As Steven D. Smith writes in "Archaeological Perspectives on the Civil War," 'To ignore archaeological remains is to exercise a partiaUty researchers cannot afford" (8). The authors are especially sensitive 90CIVIL WAR history to the ways in which uncovering material evidence can reveal the lives of ordinary citizens. They also perform the laudable function ofreminding us how much the American land was shaped by man and is itself a historical document that needs to be treated with respect and preserved whenever possible. As advocates for their discipline, the authors sometimes claim too much for what can be derived from fragmentary material remains. They do not always fully articulate what the connection or relationship ofrecovered objects is to the larger problematic of the Civil War. Conversely, in attempting to link objects to the conduct of the war, the authors occasionally argue reductively that the object taken in isolation was history. The object forms a talismanic function, as when WiUiam B. Lees writes, "The fact that these data do not seem to comment beyond the battlefield is, in fact, the most profound comment of all" (57-58). Well no, it must be said, it's not. But overall, as works in a field undergoing the process of self-definition, these essays demonstrate the value of historical archaeology. As the discipline develops, it is expected that it will sharpen its goals and focus, recognizing the limits while emphasizing the strengths of historic archaeology. This volume is a fine initial survey of the ground with initial siftings indicating the valuable evidence to come with deeper digging. David C. Ward Smithsonian Institution ...

Looking Back

Essay Looking Back by Hodding Carter III When I went to work for Jimmy Carter, I left the South I had known. It's now been nineteen years since I came to perch here on the outer rim of northern Virginia , and no one is more aware than I of the multiple disconnections that have ensued. Time, distance, and death have all combined to fray ties and weaken memory . . . but not to sever abiding attachment. Southernness lies closer to the bone than I once recognized or acknowledged. Growing older, I find myself more openly receptive to the South's insistent pull and grateful for its lessons. Much like the South itself, I've abandoned old ways and taken on new, but there are veins of thought and instinct that, though mined, are far from depleted. Each trip south restores them. Each fresh reunion with friends from that southern past reminds me of how much I depend upon them for balance and ballast. This attachment could not be otherwise. In Greenville, Mississippi, where and when I grew up, the past was neither prologue nor even really past. It was absorbed whole as explanation and justification of the present, history Where and when I grew up, and life woven together by an the past was neither prologue unbroken thread of context. Our _?_ __?„ .„„n,T „„„* ¥* „t„„ nor even really past. It was South was a place of unchanged, , , , . , , ..., , absorbed whole as explanation unchanging, unchangeable same-r nessin itslivingpatternsandpopu- and justification of the present. lation. We southerners had shared a hard history over a long time, a history based on propositions that were openly at odds with the political and moral preachments of the larger society. We had held slaves and justified their existence in the face of the civilized world's condemnation . Our land had known military defeat and occupation. Growing up with the Lost Cause The Burden ofSouthern History, that seminal historian C. Vann Woodward called it, the burden of the Lost Cause with all its self-absorption and prickly defensiveness. It had a thousand manifestations, and I ingested them all, along with the family 282Southern Cultures heresies and dissent. To this day I will occasionally erupt with the traditional ditties of southern separation, songs I loved to sing to Yankee roommates and honky-tonk companions, songs passed on to my children (who remember none of them), songs still called forth late of an evening. They are simple, evocative, and, for me, unforgettable: One hundred thousand Yankees lie dead in southern dust. We got a hundred thousand, before they conquered us. They died of southern fever, of southern shell and shot. I wish we got a million, instead of what we got. Or, even more delightful for the ardent Johnny Reb: Jeff Davis rides a big white horse and Lincoln rides a mule. Jeff Davis is a very wise man and Lincoln is a fool. Finally, for the son of a New Orleans lady: When the Yankees came to New Orleans, they didn't mean to stay. But they fell in love with the southern gals and couldn't get away. Nor were all these songs learned in the South. In the early 1940s as a grammar-school student in wartime Silver Spring, Maryland, I learned the Civil War songs of both sides. "Just Before the Battle, Mother" was a particularly lachrymose favorite, with its opening line, "Just before the battle, Mother, I am thinking most of you." For that matter, Maryland's unreconstructed state anthem, "Maryland, My Maryland" was and is a proud repudiation of "the tyrant's foot," Washington's foot, a reminder that a clash in Baltimore between Union troops and would-be secessionists claimed the first lives of that shattering conflict. Most years of my family's annual summertime journey from Mississippi to Maine, we'd pass through Frederick, Maryland. Each time, without fail, Dad would recite his ribald parody of James Greenleaf Whittier's ode to Barbara Fritchie of Frederick, the redoubtable lady of legend who refused to pull down Old Glory on Stonewall Jackson's command. You know the refrain. "'Shoot if you must, this old gray head, but spare your country's...

Politics after Hitler: the western allies and the German party system

How does a political system rebuild after a cataclysmic military defeat? How can a society, and its political infrastructure, resurrects itself or, in the case of Germany after World War II, be resurrected in such a way as to ensure long-term political stability? Politics After Hitler is the first book to demonstrate the importance of America, Britain, and France in the development of party politics in Germany after 1945. In the wake of the war, rightists of all descriptions, Communists, nationalists, and founders of small splinter parties all came under intense and deliberate pressure from the Western occupying forces. The occupiers arrived in Germany in 1945 without firm plans for reviving German politics and were forced to improvise by hastily constructing a licensing system for new parties. The Allies then used their licensing powers to limit and steer party politics in desirable directions, disempowering reactionary and hypernationalist forces, diluting fears of a Communist revolution, and preventing the political fragmentation that led to the collapse of the Weimar Republic a generation earlier. Based on extensive archival research, Politics After Hitler concludes that interference by the occupying forces made a stable and moderate party system in the FRG much more likely than has previously been assumed. The Allied occupation of Germany was therefore a resounding success in helping move the German political system toward the stability it enjoys to the present day.

After Appomattox: how the South won the war

The premise of this text is that the verdict of Appomattox was largely reversed during Reconstruction. It suggests that the southern oligarchy wrenched political and cultural victory out of military defeat.

Politics by Genocide

Between 6 April and the end of July 1994 an estimated one million Rwandese people, mostly Tutsis, were murdered ‐ often in horrifying circumstances. This assay at genocide was intended to eliminate all political opposition and had been planned by extremist factions within the Hutu government. The assassination of President Habyarimana, at a stroke, disposed of a leader beginning to yield to international pressure on implementation of a peace accord that would have led to the sharing of political power with moderate wing Hutus, and offered a plausible pretext for ‘revenge massacres’. Misinterpretation of the true nature of the conflict by the international community compounded by the confused responses on the part of the United Nations allowed the impetus of the slaughter to develop a critical momentum that only the death of all Tutsis and moderate Hutus or the military defeat of the Rwandese Government Forces could end. Some of the background to the conflict, some of the events that occurred during and following the genocide are described. Some of the immediate problems faced by the Rwandese people are discussed.

The Beta Israel (Falasha) in Ethiopia, From Earliest Times to the Twentieth Century (review)

Book Reviews 145 The Beta Israel (Falasha) in Ethiopia, From Earliest Times to the Twentieth Century, by Steven Kaplan. New York: New York University Press, 1992. 231 pp. $45.00. The author ofthis history of events prior to about 1892 is chairperson of the Department of African History and Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University ofJerusalem. This research is largely based on written sources in the Ge'ez language, the ancient Semitic which linguists call "Ethiopic" and which survives in the liturgy of both the Beta Israel and Christian rituals in what used to be known as Abyssinia. One immediate problem, which Kaplan admits, is that we have no reliable sources on Jews in Ethiopia from the fourth to the thirteenth centuries. He dismisses both the Solomon-Sheba and Danite origin theories as mythic or legendary and disclaims concern with the halachic status of the Falashas. Much of Chapter 1, "Obscure Beginnings," is based on Edward Ullendorff's Ethiopia and the Bible (Oxford University Press, 1968) and The Ethiopians (1973), plus updating. Kaplan prepares the basis of his own views in Chapter 3, subtitled "The Invention of a 'tradition," which he believes happened in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries: "The Beta Israel appear to have chosen works [of religious literature] whose Christian versions already displayed a clear biblicalJewish tone" (p. 73). In consequence of military defeats, especially in the early seventeenth century (Chapter 4), the Falasha had to survive by serving royal patrons with marketable skills such as mason work and ironsmithing, and the latter craft changed their status to a despised and feared semi-caste (Chapters 5 and 6). The great famine of 1888-1892 weakened their resistance to the overtures of foreign Protestant missionaries. Kaplan's basic argument is that the Falashas are the product of events that took place in Ethiopia between the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries. He had concluded this in his earlier, French-language book Les Falachas (Abbaye de Maredsous, Belgium: Edition Brepols, 1990). But while one can certainly agree with him that "the history of the Beta Israel can only be understood in the context of Ethiopian history in general" (p. 7), a more comprehensive analysis should also point out their involvement with the specifically Jewish elements of their tradition, as I attempted in my book The Story of the Falashas (New York, 1982). Nevertheless, one is impressed by Kaplan's perseverance in wading through scattered, often episodic, sources and fitting them into a frame of reference, in order to reconstruct at least a tentative history. Thus it 146 SHOFAR Winter 1994 Vol. 12, No.2 contributes to the literature of the subject for the general reader, even if one does not agree with his basic conclusion. Perhaps future archeology, especially at Aksum, will be able to reduce some of the gaps of the historical record. Simon D. Messing Professor Emeritus ofAnthropology Southern Connecticut State University Jewish Symbols in Art, by Abraham Kanof. Woodmere, NY: Gefen Publishing House, 1990. 112 pp. 115 plates. $24.95. Based on his past published work, one would expect of Abraham Kanof a solid, interesting book, and in hisJewish Symbols in Art, one gets precisely that. Intended for a broad, general audience, rather than a narrow, scholarly one, Kanofs work is well-written and accessible. Kanofs interest in this work is two-fold: to explore some of the wealth of symbols which are part ofJewish art; and to consider sources for these symbols outside (and prior to) Judaism as well as their place outside (and contemporary with) Judaism. His admirable goal is to emphasize the universality of human needs that is connoted by the commonality of religious impulses suggested by "the multicultural use of symbols to express them." The volume ofinformation and the range of illustration are useful and interesting, as is the glossary which follows the text. So, too, the organization of material offers a nice rhythm and logic. It moves from a discussion of pre-Jewish ideas that figure early into Jewish symbolism-such as that of the sun and its symbolism or of Dionysus and his attributes-to those which develop as Judaism unfolds in post-destruction dispersion-such as Messianic and Temple...

Acting out Democracy: Political Theater in Modern China , and: Protest in Beijing , and: The Tiananmen Tragedy: the State Society Relationship, Choices and Mechanism in Historical Perspective (review)

164 SAIS REVIEW account." Tibi argues that the superpowers "were able neither to prevent the outbreak of war nor to influence its course," a contention not supported by the record. As he himself notes, the willingness of the superpowers to supply thenclients with weapons was among the most "salient" factors in the conflict, as it enabled Egypt to conduct the War of Attrition and Israel to turn the tide in 1973. Tibi is not only concerned with the causes of wars, but with their outcome. Here too the book falls short. As he notes, the 1967 war brought about significant changes in the Middle East. He gives particular attention to the decline in Egypt's influence, and an increase in that ofthe oil producing states. Yet this is somewhat undercut when he quotes John Waterbury as writing that "the [economic] crisis that overtook Egypt in 1965-66. . .was exacerbated, but not caused, by Egypt's military defeat in 1967." If such is the case, then there likely would have been a power shift in any case. And while Tibi argues that the 1990-91 Gulf War was "the major event in the Middle East since the First World War," he provides little evidence for this contention, and much to indicate that not much has changed. Given that Tibi uses a systemic approach to the dynamic relationship between superpower patrons and regional clients, whose interests are not always constant, it is odd that this receives little elucidation in the historical description, which mainly relies on domestic political factors, the misperceptionor stupidity ofleaders, and mistakes or fate. Also odd is his identification ofvarious authors, at one point noting that an "American political scientist ... an American Jewess, disputes the thesis that Israel's interests are identical to those of the USA." To argue that American foreign policy makers had not thought through the possible "incompatibility " between support for Israel and US relations with the Arab world prior to 1967 is inaccurate, as is the contention that neither the Iraqi invasion of Iran nor the Israeli invasion of Lebanon were "strategically thought out acts based on a political concept. The issues raised in Conflict and War in the Middle East are important. Unfortunately , because the book is discursive, at times disorganized, and marred by inaccuracies, it neither contributes to our understanding of the dynamics of the Middle East, nor to how small states pursue their security, nor to the development of international relations theory. "Acting out Democracy: Political Theater in Modern China" by Joseph W. Esherick and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom (The Journal ofAsian Studies, Vol. 49, No. 4, November 1990) pp.835-862. "Protest in Beijing"by David Strand [Problems ofCommunism, May-June 1990) pp. 1-19. "The Tiananmen Tragedy: the State Society Relationship, Choices and Mechanism in Historical Perspective," by Tsou Tang in Contemporary Chinese Politics in Historical Perspective, Brantley Womack, ed. (Cambridge University Press, 1991) pp. 265-327. Reviewed by Matthew S. Flynn, MA. Candidate, SAIS. As in the analysis of democratization of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, studies of the Democracy Movement China have focused on how the development BOOK REVIEWS 165 of"civil society" serves to challenge the monolithic state structure. The perspective common to the study of the democratization of socialist countries is that when the totalitarian state withdrew from its penetration ofsociety—either because ofshear exhaustion or due to economic reforms—a "public sphere" was created that allowed private interests to organize and challenge authoritarian rule. This avenue of inquiry continues to be extremely relevant as the world wonders whether civil society is vigorous enough either to protect its recently gained independence, as in Eastern Europe, or rebound from state suppression or in China. This review will examine three articles that use a historical perspective to profile the political actors ofthe Tiananmen massacre in a state-society framework. Twentieth-century China has experienced the rise ofa modern state, nation building , civil war, foreign occupation, and industrialization. All three authors use their knowledge of modern Chinese history to illuminate the present crisis. DavidStrand's "Protest in Beijing" echoes his earlierworkoncorporate interest groups in Beijing during the second and third decades ofthis century. In the May 4th, 1919 protests...

Multiple Restorations: German Political Traditions and the Interpretation of Nazism, 1945–1946

Inthe longer continuity of German history, the year 1945 will always, in part, represent the “Stunde Null” (zero hour), of catastrophic military defeat and complete moral disgrace and bankruptcy following Nazism and the Holocaust.1The term “Stunde Null” evokes the need for a new beginning, a moral and political break with disastrous and ultimately criminal national traditions. Yet, because the Third Reich lasted only twelve years, and because there were non- and anti-Nazi traditions and leaders that survived in inner and external emigration, the postwar rejection of Nazism took the form ofmultiple restorationsof these still extant German political traditions. In the first postwar years, the turn away from Nazism in both Germanies, as well as the break with totalitarian dictatorship in general in Western Germany, was taken by political leaders who had been active in Weimar politics and who returned to take center stage in German politics after 1945.2To be sure, they were all deeply affected in their lives and thinking by the Third Reich. But what changes it did bring about in their political views amounted to rearrangements and different emphases of long-held convictions rather than to wholly new beginnings.

Aliens in the WASP Nest: Ethnocultural Diversity in the Antebellum Urban South

The South has been more haunted by its past and thus more shrouded in myth than the rest of the United States. Needing myths about their past to justify their present, southerners have shared in national myths -often imparting special emphases and nuances to them -while developing myths unique to their own region. In the nineteenth century, the need for distinctive regional myths grew from extraordinary regional traumas: the white South's intransigent maintenance of racial slavery (after abolition had prevailed elsewhere in the country), the bloody military defeat of the Civil War, and the violent struggle over the rights of black southerners during Reconstruction. White southerners' consequent attachment to racism, to a martyrological vision of the Lost Cause, and to a view of Reconstruction as a tragic era all proved the exculpatory and romanticizing power of myth and discouraged challenges to the region's system of racial discrimination and exploitation. Integral to this complex of myths was the belief that the Civil War generation of white southerners embodied an Anglo-Saxon ethnocultural purity, symbolizing not only their virtue but also a unity that had never truly existed among them. This myth helped apotheosize the morally and culturally besieged defenders of slavery, states' rights, and the Confederacy. Later generations of historians have perpetuated some of the distortions of this myth, even though most have sought to understand the distinctive traits of what has seemed a unique region, not to justify slavery and secession. Some historians have dissented from the prevailing view of antebellum white southerners as homogeneously Anglo-Saxon in their roots. In her 1940 monographic study of foreigners in the Confederacy, Ella Lonn began by describing this deeply entrenched myth: Probably no impression has been more deeply cherished by the population living south of Mason and Dixon's line and none more widely accepted by those who dwell north of that line than that which affirms that in the veins of

After the Cold War: The United States, Germany, and European Security

The onset of the Cold War was, at least in part, caused by the struggle over how to incorporate Germany into the postwar order. Despite total military defeat, the devastation of its economic base, and the loss of its political sovereignty, Germany remained a potentially important European power. If its economic and military potential could be controlled by either the United States or the Soviet Union, it might well determine which side emerged victorious in the Cold War. Today, as Europe, the republics of the former Soviet Union, and the United States begin to fashion a new European order, Germany will again play a pivotal role. Indeed, many of the ideas and concerns that governed the thinking of policymakers during the postwar era, as to how to end the division of Germany and still maintain the stability and security of Europe, will reemerge as contemporary leaders try to forge a post-Cold War order on the Continent.

Delinquency in the Land of the Rising Sun: An Analysis of Juvenile Property Crimes in Japan During the Showa Era

This paper assesses Japanese juvenile delinquency from 1936 to 1988. This period encompasses some of the most important events in the history of Japan, including her only military defeat, occupation by a foreign power, and economic ascendance to superpower status. The paper also discusses the impact of modernization and affluence on the Japanese school and family, and attempts to explain selected juvenile property offenses with a theoretical framework of social control, anomie, strain, and reintegrative shaming. The paper concludes that increased individualism, egoism, and materialism in Japanese society may contribute to rising levels of juvenile embezzlement and theft.

The Social Origins of Democratic Collapse: The First Portuguese Republic in the Global Economy.

An outstanding contribution to the growing literature in world-systems theory, Kathleen Schwartzman's study of the first Portuguese republic demonstrates the significant ways in which a nation's and political structures are shaped by its position in the global economy. In May 1926, a military coup ended Portugal's first turbulent, sixteen-year experiment with democracy. During that period no less than 45 prime ministers and an equal number of coalition cabinets failed to solve the nation's complex economic and political problems. Portugal and its far-reaching colonial empire exerted tremendous international influence during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its subsequent decline as a sea power, military defeats, the gradual loss of its colonies, and an inability to compete with industrializing nations, however, left it stranded on the periphery of the world economy. Schwartzman shows how the collapse of the First Portuguese Republic resulted from its marginal place in the world economy, a highly fragmented domestic economy, the failure to forge a social compromise between classes, and the inability to create stable political coalitions. This study, which reframes national politics within the world-systems paradigm, enhances our understanding of why some democracies are more fragile than others and, thus, more vulnerable to authoritarian takeover. Equally significant, Schwartzman's theoretical contributions suggest important new directions for sociologists, political scientists, and economists using world-systems theory to examine developing nation states within the global economy.

Imperatores Victi: Military Defeat and Aristocratic Competition in the Middle and Late Republic

Imperatores Victi: Military Defeat and Aristocratic Competition in the Middle and Late Republic

A Usable Past for the Future

To those living through it, each era seems unique. But I suspect that even later generations will share this perception of the 1990s. Rarely if ever has world politics been fundamentally reordered without a major war. Of course, in some sense we have witnessed a major war, and the Soviet Union has lost it.1 But the differences between a conflict that was prolonged yet bloodless—at least for the major protagonists—and a "normal" war are very great. This is particularly true for the victor. While the Soviet Union is facing the internal turmoil, if not revolution, that often accompanies a military defeat, the United States, even with its triumph in the Gulf war, does not appear to have the strength, will, or vision to establish a "new world order."2 The structure of power in the post-Cold War world also appears to be unique. Indeed, we cannot even characterize it in terms of the system's polarity, the concept of which political scientists are so enamored.3 Is the system unipolar because the United States is so dominant, bipolar because nuclear weapons are still concentrated in two hands, tripolar because we can anticipate the emergence of a united Europe that will take its place alongside the two former superpowers, or multipolar because so many forms of power—especially economic power—are now widely dispersed?

Identity and tradition in the post-Civil War South

The attempt to create a nation-state in the form of the Southern Confederacy was an act of political geography, induced by growing sectional identities and the forces of romantic nationalism. The crises which culminated in Civil War were associated with a reinterpretation of the Southern past, particularly of its role in the Revolution, and by the invention of a stereotypical Southerner. The military defeat of the Confederacy enhanced Southern identity rather than destroyed it. Monuments erected throughout the South, particularly statues of the Confederate soldier, can be interpreted as celebrations of the Lost Cause, a romantic version of the antebellum South. The peak years of monument unveilings were the first two decades of the twentieth century, fully two generations after the Southern surrender at Appomattox. The statues provide tangible evidence of the currency of the cult of the Lost Cause in the New South. Post-Civil War trends in Charleston, South Carolina, represent an extreme version of a cultural continuity evident throughout the diverse regions of the former Confederacy, and illustrate the persistence of the South as a distinctive geographical entity well into the present century.

Imperatores Victi: Military Defeat and Aristocratic Competition in the Middle and Late Republic.

Given the intense competition among aristocrats seeking public office in the middle and late Roman Republic, one would expect that their persistent struggles for honor, glory, and power could have seriously undermined the state or damaged the cohesiveness of the ruling class. Rome in fact depended on aristocratic competition, since no professional bureaucracy directed public affairs and no salary was attached to any public office. But as Rosenstein adeptly shows, competition appears to have been surprisingly limited, in ways that curtailed the possible destructive effects of all-out contests between individuals. Imperatores Victi examines one particularly striking case of such checks on competition. Military success at all times represented an abundant source of prestige and political strength at Rome. Generals who led armies to victory enjoyed a better-than-average chance of securing higher office upon their return from the field. Yet this study demonstrates that defeated generals were not barred from public office and in fact went on to win the Republic's most highly coveted and hotly contested offices in numbers virtually identical with those of their undefeated peers. Rosenstein explores how this unexpected limit to competition functions, reviewing beliefs about the religious origins of defeat, assumptions about common soldiers' duties in battle, and definitions of honorable behavior of an aristocrat during a crisis. These perspectives were instrumental in shifting the onus of failure away from a general's person and in offering positive strategies a general might use to win glory and respect even in defeat and to silence potential critics among a failed general's peers. Such limits to competition had an impact on the larger problems of stability and coherence in the Republic and its political elite; these larger problems are discussed in the concluding chapter.

Preventing the vacuum: determinants of the Namibia settlement

This paper examines the political, military and economic factors behind the diplomatic agreements which led to the withdrawal of South Africa's colonial occupation of Namibia in 1989–90, and it identifies some of the major constraints which Pretoria placed upon the independence of the new Namibian state. The view that the South African government withdrew from Namibia — but not Walvis Bay — because of military defeats in Angola during 1988 is rejected. It is argued that explanations for the settlement given by US diplomats, Chester Crocker and Charles Freeman, do not take into account key variables such as the underlying economic imperatives, South Africa's state and party building strategy in Namibia, and the political actions of the Namibian people themselves. Such determinants have also been ignored or obscured by most of the radical literature on South Africa's destabilisation of the sub‐region. It is argued here that Pretoria's attempts to consolidate stable conditions for a semi‐colonial state on it...

Defeated Commanders - Nathan S. Rosenstein: Imperatores Victi: Military Defeat and Aristocratic Competition in the Middle and Late Republic. Pp. xii + 224. Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford: University of California Press, 1990. $28.

Defeated Commanders - Nathan S. Rosenstein: Imperatores Victi: Military Defeat and Aristocratic Competition in the Middle and Late Republic. Pp. xii + 224. Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford: University of California Press, 1990. $28.

Imperatores victi: military defeat and aristocratic competition in the middle and late Republic

Imperatores victi: military defeat and aristocratic competition in the middle and late Republic