Military Defeat Research Articles

Der Ostmark treue Alpensöhne. Die Integration der Österreicher in die großdeutsche Wehrmacht by Thomas A. Grischany

Reviewed by: Der Ostmark treue Alpensöhne. Die Integration der Österreicher in die großdeutsche Wehrmacht by Thomas A. Grischany Peter Thaler Thomas A. Grischany. Der Ostmark treue Alpensöhne. Die Integration der Österreicher in die großdeutsche Wehrmacht Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2015. Pp. 327. Cloth €50.00. ISBN 978-3847103776. After World War II the reconstituted Austrian republic defined itself as a victim of National Socialist Germany. According to official historiography, the country had been deserted by the international community and had fallen prey to German aggression in 1938. With the exception of a small minority, Austrians had resisted as best they could. From the very beginning, however, this historical interpretation faced questions about the role of Austrians in the institutions of the Third Reich. Most significant was the military. As German citizens, Austrians were subject to the draft. By the end of the war, 1.3 million of them had served in the German armed forces. More than 250,000 did not return. To counter this impression of active participation, many postwar interpreters emphasized the idiosyncrasies of the Austrian wartime experience. They argued that Austrian units had been dissolved and their members subjected to discrimination and special surveillance. It is this picture that Thomas Grischany contests. Based on a wide selection of both printed and archival sources, as well as on interviews with surviving veterans, Grischany traces the experience of Austrians in the German military between 1938 and 1945. Following a brief introduction to the history of Austro-Prussian military relations, the author zooms in on his core subject, expounding the initial challenges of military integration after 1938. Approximately one quarter of the existing Austrian officer corps was not carried over into the German military, and the remainder had to adjust to differences in terminology and training. To promote assimilation, the German army co-opted suitable icons of Austrian military history into its own pantheon. In this early phase, many Austrians nonetheless encountered questions about their soldierly capabilities. They felt a need to demonstrate their valor and prove that Austrian inadequacies during World War I had been based on the special conditions of the multinational Habsburg army. These efforts were not without success, and Alpine units gradually gained a reputation for toughness and courage. The conduct of predominantly Austrian mountain troops during the Norwegian campaign contributed significantly to this altered perception. The shared victories of the early war years accelerated integration. The author describes the allure of foreign countries during the relative tranquility of military occupations around 1940. Yet he also highlights the interplay of regional and national aspects in the imagery of German identity. At least on a symbolic level, the German military provided ample opportunity for regional identification. This applied to all groups, but it proved especially useful for newcomers such as the Austrians. The increased status of individual territories such as Tyrol—relative to the formerly dominant Vienna—appealed to provincial sentiments as well. [End Page 445] The attack on the Soviet Union changed the character of the war, but it did not disrupt the internal cohesion of the German armed forces. Whereas civilian dissatisfaction in Austria began to rise after 1943, the battle against communism motivated even conservative opponents of the regime. Grischany finds that shared hardships deepened the sense of comradeship and mutual dependency. With the growing diversification of the German military, Austrians also moved closer to the national center. Minority populations from eastern and southeastern Europe deviated appreciably from the German core, as did such reluctant draftees such as the Alsatians. By comparison with these later additions, Austrians had been absorbed into the German mainstream. The rediscovery of Austrian distinctiveness occurred primarily after the military defeat. Der Ostmark treuer Alpensöhne describes the successive phases of Austrian integration into the German armed forces during World War II. As explanations for the substantive success of this process, the study cites regional and professional pride, esprit de corps, a fundamentally German sense of self, ideological indoctrination, and not least the shared experiences of both military triumph and disaster. The author also invokes Götz Aly's argument in Hitler's Beneficiaries (2005) that the National Socialist regime gained much of its popularity...

Figures In Excess And The Matter Of Inversion In The Discourse Of The Sublime

Figures In Excess And The Matter Of Inversion In The Discourse Of The Sublime Ian Balfour Technique is the definable figure of enigma in works of art. —Theodor Adorno As one among others in a collective effort to think about figures and about figure more generally, I want in what follows to scrutinize how figures work in the elusive aesthetic mode of the sublime, especially one sometimes held up as paradigmatic, namely inversion or hyperbaton. My topic is circumscribed but there is a tendency for discourse of the sublime to spiral upward and outward, to spill over, to be, at the extreme, absolute, and this might be the case even or especially with figures cut in and by the sublime.1 Much the same might be said for discourse about the sublime: from the Ancients to the British soidisant empiricists, the over-the-top rhetoric of writers on the sublime often make the worst excesses of the French post-structuralism seem tame by comparison. The first great reflection on the sublime, Longinus's On the Sublime (Peri hypsous), is in large measure a rhetorical treatise, aimed at what the author calls "political men" [andres politikoi].2 It defines and gives examples of any number of figures and tropes that characterize and can be enlisted for the sublime, the lofty sort of discourse said to transport and overwhelm like, in Longinus's glosses, a thunderbolt à la Demosthenes or a conflagration à la Cicero (see S, 12.4). One is rendered beside oneself: "ek-stasis" (S, 1.4). Figures are a prime mechanism for the generation of these effects. Longinus contends that figures [σχήματα] are "natural allies" of the sublime, and one glimpses already in the term "allies" something of Longinus's figural nexus of power and violence: the sublime as agon (S, 17.1). The sublime is variously conjured as a domain of great force, danger, and near-death experiences, whose attendant discourse is elaborated in charged figures of speech that both participate in and reflect such danger. One has to be careful how exactly one wields such weapons of rhetoric, as Longinus makes clear in a baldly political passage: [End Page 315] There is an inevitable suspicion attaching to the sophisticated use of figures. It gives a suggestion of treachery, craft, fallacy, especially when your speech is addressed to a judge with absolute authority, or still more to a despot, a king, or a ruler in high place. He is promptly indignant that he is being treated like a silly child and outwitted by the figures of a skilled speaker. Construing the fallacy as a personal affront, he sometimes turns downright savage; and even if he controls his feelings, he becomes conditioned against being persuaded by the speech. So we find that a figure is always most effective when it conceals the very fact of its being a figure. [διόπερ καὶτότε ἄριστον δοκεῖτὸ σχῆμα, ὅταν αὐτὸ τοῦτο διαλανθάνῃ, ὅτι σχῆμά ἐστιν.] (S, 17.1–2) Figures, then, are to be concealed. Or more precisely, the figurality of figures is to be concealed. The best way to achieve this, Longinus suggests paradoxically, is through figurality's very brilliance, through making of it a sort of purloined letter, as in Edgar Allen Poe's famous story, so manifestly visible it escapes notice. This is exemplified in a speech of Demosthenes when his auditors are so taken with the force of his swearing by their compatriots that they overlook the fact that he has invoked a massive military defeat. The sublime figure here, in charged political or juridical scenarios, is extended for figures and art in general; as Longinus says: "[A]rt is only perfect when it looks like nature and Nature succeeds only when she conceals latent art" [τότε γὰρ ἡ τέχνη τέλειος ἡνίκ' ἂν φύσις εἶναι δοκῇ, ἡ δ' αὖ φύσις ἐπιτυχὴς ὅταν λανθάνουσαν περιέχῃ τὴν τέχνην] (S, 22.1).3 Longinus thus draws a remarkably general conclusion about art and nature from the perhaps not-so-typical scenario of arguing one's case in front of a judge or a tyrant. A paradigmatic claim along just these lines will also be made for what I take to be the figure of and for figures in Longinus. Of the many figures defined and exemplified, Longinus reserves the most space not for metaphor, Aristotle's exemplary figure, but the seemingly less central one of hyperbaton or...

Fighting for Our Lives: #NoDAPL in Historical Context

Fighting for Our Lives#NoDAPL in Historical Context Nick Estes (bio) This essay puts the #NoDAPL movement to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) into historical context and within the longer histories of Oceti Sakowin resistance against the trespass of settlers, dams, and pipelines across the Mni Sose, the Missouri River, and into our territory.1 From the late summer of 2016 to the winter of 2017, more than three hundred Native nations planted their flags in solidarity at Oceti Sakowin Camp, the largest of several camps that also included Sacred Stone Camp, Red Warrior Camp, Two-Spirit Camp, the International Indigenous Youth Council, and various allied Indigenous and non-Indigenous camps.2 The pipeline will carry half a million barrels of heavy crude oil a day across four states (North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and Illinois), under the Missouri River twice, and under the Mississippi River to refineries in Illinois and the Gulf of Mexico for global export. For most, it's not if the pipeline breaks but when. After all, all pipelines break and leak. Crossing these major waterways, the threat posed to freshwater is immeasurable. Thus, the movement galvanized around the Lakota affirmation Mni Wiconi, or water is life. The pipeline crosses the Missouri less than a mile north from the locations of the camps. The original route crossed the Missouri River above the white-dominated border town of Bismarck, North Dakota. The Army Corps of Engineers rerouted the DAPL from above Bismarck, citing environmental and economic concerns, to its current location just north of Standing Rock.3 Standing Rock had no say in [End Page 115] this proposed reroute and stridently opposed the pipeline as early as September 2014. As it had in previous years, the Corps simply ignored Standing Rock's concerns, claiming sole jurisdiction over the parts of Oceti Sakowin treaty territory that includes the river.4 How and why did this happen? In 1803 the wasicu—the fat-takers, the settlers, the capitalists—claimed this stretch of the river as part of what became the largest real estate transaction in world history. The fledgling U.S. settler state "bought" 827 million acres from the French Crown in the Louisiana Purchase and sent two white explorers, Lewis and Clark, to claim and map the newly acquired territory. None of the Native nations west of the Mississippi consented to the sale of their lands to a sovereign they neither recognized nor viewed as superior. It was only after we rebuffed Lewis and Clark for failing to pay tribute for their passage on our river that they labeled the Oceti Sakowin "the vilest miscreants of the savage race."5 Thus began one of the longest and most hotly contested struggles in the history of the world. For the next hundred years, the United States led various unsuccessful military campaigns to suppress, annihilate, and dispossess us of our rightful claim to the river and our lands. Despite popular belief, we were never militarily defeated. Red Cloud's War and the War for the Black Hills led to the military defeat of the U.S. Cavalry, most famously, the annihilation of Gen. George Armstrong Custer's forces at the Battle of Greasy Grass in 1876. These wars, for our part, were entirely defensive. The Oceti Sakowin signed peace treaties with the invading settler government. The 1851 and 1868 Fort Laramie Treaties provided temporary reprieve and defined the 25-million-acre territory of what became the Great Sioux Reservation and outlying, unceded treaty territory, which stretched from the eastern shore of the Missouri River to the Bighorn Mountains. Four decades of intense warfare, however, took their toll. More than ten million buffalo were slaughtered to starve us out. Settler hordes invaded and pillaged our Black Hills for its gold. Our vast land base diminished, and the treaties were nullified when Congress passed the Indian Appropriations Act of 1876, which abolished treaty making with Native nations, and the Black Hills Act of 1877, which illegally ceded the Black Hills and created the present-day reservation system. The Oceti Sakowin have vigorously opposed these bald imperialistic maneuvers to usurp our self-determining authority over our lives and lands. Settler society entreated...

Revisiting Prussia's Wars against Napoleon: History, Culture and Memory by Karen Hagemann

Reviewed by: Revisiting Prussia's Wars against Napoleon: History, Culture and Memory by Karen Hagemann Amir Minsky Revisiting Prussia's Wars against Napoleon: History, Culture and Memory. By Karen Hagemann. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Pp. xiv + 483. Paper $34.99. ISBN 978-0521152303. Revisiting Prussia's Wars against Napoleon contributes to a growing literature reassessing the so-called "anti-Napoleonic Wars" of 1806–1807 and 1813–1815, by offering an interdisciplinary interpretation of the role of the campaigns in shaping Prussian (and more broadly German) history and collective memory during the long nineteenth century. Karen Hagemann combines military, political, and cultural history to describe the rise and consolidation of German nationhood in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, and the subsequent appropriation of their commemorative practices for shifting political and cultural climates. This identity politics was driven by a dual process: on the one hand the construction of collective memory as an amalgamation of communicative memory (generational, temporal) and cultural memory (national, institutional); and on the other the history of suppression of gender from that collective memory. While this marginalization was often ascribed to men's and women's divergent experiences of war situations in the public and private spheres, Hagemann demonstrates how the link between late Enlightenment anthropological perceptions about national descent, identity, and character, and assumptions about "natural" gender hierarchies was instrumental in the efforts to collectively forget or "redomesticate" women's wartime participation, which pushed postwar Prussian political culture toward a cult of martial masculinity. The struggle over definitions of gender identities and relations thus provides the prism through which Hagemann reexamines the wars' lasting significance and various legacies. This interpretative rationale undergirds the book's five parts: from the military and political history of the wars, their representation in a variety of media, commemorative practices, and circulation in the literary market, to their eventual deployment in both remembered and reconstructed German pasts. In contrast to Thomas Nipperdey's famous claim that "in the beginning was Napoleon" as the prime mover of modern German history (32), Hagemann's approach charts the internal experiences of military defeat, emotional crisis, and their catalyzing effect on Germany's subsequent transformation from Kulturnation to Staatsnation. That the campaigns of 1813–1815 came to be known as either "Wars of Liberation" or "Wars of Liberty"—in conservative or liberal interpretations, respectively—underscores their different legacies as either "wars of princes" launched against the external French threat or "people's wars" additionally encompassing internal emancipation struggles along class and gender lines. As Hagemann shows, such legacies were borne by a public sphere that enabled female authors to express themselves politically and wrest a modicum of control over the production of collective memory from professional historians. The book's in-depth analysis of a vast collection of newspapers, pamphlets, broadsheets, and poems, and [End Page 638] their uses of "national pathos formulas" (64) as emotional catalysts in support of the war effort, attests to such media's success in entrenching ideas about national unity, gender order, and cultural and historical identity for generating a new sense of "Germanness." Although this assessment of the spread of nationhood via print culture and an "invention of tradition" of shared cultural heritage is not necessarily new, Hagemann points out the conceptual malleability of gendered thinking in both exclusive and inclusive iterations of nationalism: while Francophobia, antisemitism, and German chauvinism were staples of both liberal and conservative national discourses, the virtuous bourgeois family model informed the paternalistic "Volk family" (60) ideology of the nation, espousing the Prussian monarch as father of his people, as well as the more radically democratic (and French-influenced) visions of fraternal civic patriotism. More broadly, the book raises important questions about the politics of national memory in modern German history. By focusing on autobiographical and memory literature that transmitted the experiences of violence, devastation, and death of combatants and civilians alike, Hagemann's book goes against the grain of the triumphalist war narratives of canonical Prussian and Wilhelmine historiography, which embraced the dominant monarchic-conservative version of German nationalism in the post-1848 era. Although the so-called "nationalist machinery" driving a cult of self-sacrifice and heroic death for the fatherland held...

The British Intervention in Greece: The Battle of Athens, December 1944

The British intervention in December 1944 represents a major turning point in Greek history. The forces of EAM-ELAS suffered a severe blow in the streets of the capital, and their loss had significant consequences. The military defeat of the Left consolidated the anticommunist camp and exacerbated the polarization of Greek society and political life. During the December events, a bloody wave of retributive violence occurred that undoubtedly had its roots in the Axis occupation and the clashes that took place between the main resistance organizations and the state's security forces. Nevertheless, as this paper argues, these confrontations were not the only factors that produced the destructive cycle of violence that took place during the December events. Urban guerilla warfare played a critical role in the conflict, and an analysis of the battlefield can shed new light on certain developments during this crucial period. A series of military decisions taken during the counterinsurgency operation within the context of a civil war radicalized those involved and led eventually to a bloodbath.

РЕСПУБЛІКА СЕРБСЬКА КРАЙНА: ВІД СТАНОВЛЕННЯ ДО ПАДІННЯ

In this article we analize a historical experience of self-declared Rebublic of Serbian Kraina, that appeared in 1991 on a territory of Croatia and was destroyed in 1995. The consideration goes on in context of Serbian-Croatian military opposition during Yugoslav crisis of 1990-es. The historical background of Serbian separatism and the course of Serbian secession from new independent Republic of Croatia are being analyzed there. We course such aspects of Republic of Serbian Kraina’s existence like state-political development, inner political struggle (special attention) and foreign affairs, social-economical domain, cultural and educational policy and military building. The history of military defeat of this self-declared republic from Croatia, causes and consequenses of it are also shortly described. On the basis of this material we make the conclusions about the experience of Croatian Serbs’ state building and about their main problems and contradictions. Serbian and Croatian scientifical literature, weakly known in Ukraine, was used during the writing of this article.

Czy rok 1916 był istotny dla spraw polskich w polityce Francji?

Was the Year 1916 Essential for the Polish Question in French Politics? The article presents the political reflections of Polish pro–independence activists in France, in particular Roman Dmowski, Erazm Piltz, and Jozef Lipkowski, as well as the place of Polish issues in French politics. The author also focused on the French–Russian alliance and its significance for the Polish question. All these problems are depicted within the context of political– military changes along the Eastern front after 1915 and the prevailing international situation. Generally speaking, the article deals with the beginnings of the internationalisation of the Polish question due both to the activity of the Poles in France and the overall situation. The author indicated that in 1916 Polish activity in France was becoming for the French decision–makers a burden, which they tried unsuccessfully to exploit in the diplomatic game played with Russia. The Russians forbade the French to discuss the Polish question and successfully ignored the topic. Despite the military defeats suffered by Russia it was precisely the tsarist Empire that continued to constitute one of the prime points of reference of the French anti–German policy. In order to keep Russia within the coalition of allies and to attain a maximum attenuation of Germany, France was even ready to undertake steps detrimental to the Polish question, since they denoted a westward expansion of Russian rule.

Edukacja w islamie oraz obecny kształt wychowania religijnego i moralnego w Turcji

Poniższy tekst został wygłoszony w dniu 19 listopada 2015 roku jako wykład otwarty na Wydziale Nauk Pedagogicznych Uniwersytetu Kardynała Stefana Wyszyńskiego w Warszawie. Charakteryzując problematykę edukacji w islamie, a w szczególności wychowania moralnego, autor podzielił swoje wystąpienie na następujących siedem części: (1) podstawowe źródła Islamu, (2) główne cechy edukacji w islamie, (3) rozejście się drogi kultury i edukacji w następstwie procesu okcydentalizacji Imperium Ottomańskiego, (4) radykalna sekularyzacja w okresie Wczesnej Republiki, (5) przywrócenie edukacji religijnej pod rządami demokracji wielopartyjnej; (6) ostatnie trzynaście lat pod rządami AKP, partii mającej korzenie w tradycji islamskiej, oraz (7) podsumowanie i kilka uwag.

An Epitaph for ISIS? The Idea of a Caliphate and the Westphalian Order

The project of restoring the Islamic caliphate has attracted considerable attention, and caused both hope and anxiety, since the Islamic State (IS) proclaimed a caliphate in 2014. The idea of a caliphate has a powerful attraction for many millions of the world’s Muslims, including those who emphatically disapprove of IS, and is sometimes viewed as a remedy for the marginalization and humiliation that the Muslim world has endured at the hands of the West. Thus, although the military defeat of IS seems likely at this point, a widespread desire for a restored caliphate will undoubtedly persist.On the other hand, prominent Western political leaders, diplomats and scholars have expressed severe forebodings about such a restoration. Among other causes for such concern is the fear that a restored caliphate would challenge, and might eventually overturn, the Westphalian system of state sovereignty, which is the legal basis of the current world order. From this perspective, a restored caliphate could pose a revolutionary challenge to a state-centric system of international law. Indeed, it might pose a more substantial threat to the Westphalian system than those that the Soviet Union or the Islamic Republic of Iran presented in their early phases.This paper explores whether the project of restoring a caliphate, if successful, would indeed have such a destabilizing effect. First, it considers the origins and self-understanding of the IS caliphate, examines IS’ historiographic narrative of Islamic expansion, greatness, decline and eventual renewal, and identifies structural reasons for IS’ probable failure. Then it examines the possibility of what has been called a “Great Power” caliphate, i.e., a restored caliphate in a major Muslim state, such as Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan or Indonesia. Here too, it is argued, the Westphalian Order would probably prove to be resilient enough to withstand a challenge.

Western Europe under Terrorist Attack, also after the Military Defeat of is

Western Europe under Terrorist Attack, also after the Military Defeat of is

Anti-Muslim Sentiments and Violence: A Major Threat to Ethnic Reconciliation and Ethnic Harmony in Post-War Sri Lanka

Following the military defeat of LTTE terrorism in May 2009, the relationship between ethnic and religious groups in Sri Lanka became seriously fragmented as a result of intensified anti-minority sentiments and violence. Consequently, the ethnic Muslims (Moors) became the major target in this conflict. The major objective of this study is to critically evaluate the nature and the impact of the anti-Muslim sentiments expressed and violence committed by the extreme nationalist forces during the process of ethnic reconciliation in post-war Sri Lanka. The findings of the study reveal that, with the end of civil war, Muslims have become “another other” and also the target of ethno-religious hatred and violence from the vigilante right-wing ethno-nationalist forces that claim to be protecting the Sinhala-Buddhist nation, race, and culture in Sri Lanka. These acts are perpetrated as part of their tactics aimed to consolidate a strong Sinhala-Buddhist nation—and motivated by the state. Furthermore, the recourse deficit and lack of autonomy within the organizational hierarchy of the Buddhist clergy have motivated the nationalist monks to engage in politics and promote a radical anti-minority rhetoric. This study recommends institutional and procedural reforms to guide and monitor the activities of religious organizations, parties, and movements, together with the teaching of religious tolerance, as the preconditions for ethnic reconciliation and ethnic harmony in post-war Sri Lanka. This study has used only secondary data, which are analyzed in a descriptive and interpretive manner.

Developmental Idealism in China.

This paper examines the intersection of developmental idealism with China. It discusses how developmental idealism has been widely disseminated within China and has had enormous effects on public policy and programs, on social institutions, and on the lives of individuals and their families. This dissemination of developmental idealism to China began in the 19th century, when China met with several military defeats that led many in the country to question the place of China in the world. By the beginning of the 20th century, substantial numbers of Chinese had reacted to the country's defeats by exploring developmental idealism as a route to independence, international respect, and prosperity. Then, with important but brief aberrations, the country began to implement many of the elements of developmental idealism, a movement that became especially important following the assumption of power by the Communist Party of China in 1949. This movement has played a substantial role in politics, in the economy, and in family life. The beliefs and values of developmental idealism have also been directly disseminated to the grassroots in China, where substantial majorities of Chinese citizens have assimilated them. These ideas are both known and endorsed by very large numbers in China today.

Murdered in the Tabloids: Billposting and the Destruction of the Duke of Suffolk in 1450

This essay examines the media campaign surrounding the sensational murder of the most powerful political figure in mid fifteenth-century England, William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk. Once a great war hero, Suffolk became unpopular when the English suffered military defeat in France and lost Normandy in 1449, a disaster for which Suffolk was singularly blamed by the public at large. He was impeached by parliament only to be saved and sent into exile by King Henry VI. On his journey to the continent his ship was intercepted by another called Nicholas of the Tower, and he was beheaded by the ship’s sailors in the name of vigilante justice. This essay considers the political verses or bills put in circulation prior to Suffolk’s murder which satirized and lambasted the duke’s role in Henry VI’s faltering government on the eve of the Wars of the Roses. The billposting campaign deliberately encouraged the duke’s downfall and eventual murder, and so Suffolk might be considered the first great victim of proto-tabloid journalism in England, signaling the importance of both publicity and public opinion during the ensuing Wars of the Roses.

Colonial Twilight: Italian Settlers and the Long Decolonization of Libya

Italian decolonization has often been described as precocious, given Italy's loss of effective control over its colonies as a result of military defeat in the Second World War. In Libya, however, the projects of agrarian ‘demographic colonization’ that became a showpiece of fascist colonialism continued until 1960 and created persistent tensions between Italy and the independent Libyan state. This article examines a key aspect of Italy's protracted disengagement from Libya: the extended colonial twilight in which Italian farmers continued to work land under the aegis of the parastatal Italian National Social Security Institute. The analysis demonstrates that the fascist colonial project in Libya aimed to sedentarize not only rebellious Libyan pastoralists but also the restless Italian agrarians who formed the backbone of Italian mass emigration overseas. In placing families in planned rural settlements in Libya, the Institute and Italian state officials struggled to circumscribe the mobilities of these colonists. Even after 1945 and fascism's end, settlers possessed little freedom of movement, as demonstrated by the frequent obstacles to repatriation to Italy. Examining settlers' experiences reveals the complexity of the ‘long decolonization’ of Italian Libya, as well as how mobility became a key site of contest under fascism and beyond.

The Battle of the Downs

The first newspaper publishers of the seventeenth century faced a momentous challenge. How could they compete in a highly competitive news market with their periodical invention? The newspaper was generally a cautious medium, offering an assortment of short international news reports without overarching editorial opinion. The newspaper rarely displayed the wit and polemic present in other news media of the early modern period, and operated with a rigid schedule of publication. This article portrays how such standards could be cast off in the face of military victory and defeat. The naval battle of the Downs in 1639 engaged two rival newspaper markets in Amsterdam and Antwerp. By analysing the simultaneous reporting of the battle in the Dutch Republic and the Habsburg Netherlands it becomes clear that newspaper publishers employed numerous tactics in order to shape the coverage of the battle—and to strive for the relevance of their newspapers.

North African merchant networks of the western Mediterranean: New approaches to the nineteenth century

ABSTRACTThis article examines recent attempts to write the history of Moroccan merchant networks in the western Mediterranean corridor in the nineteenth century. Morocco was not formally colonized until 1912, but the second half of the nineteenth century was a period of rapid political, cultural, and economic change in Morocco as European imperial powers intensified their rivalry for commercial and political predominance on the southern shore of the western Mediterranean. This is particularly true following a series of new treaty agreements with European powers in the 1850s and 1860s and after a disastrous military defeat by Spain in 1860 that plunged the Moroccan state into debt. The historiography of the period, however, has tended to focus on the role of European consuls and merchants to the neglect of their Moroccan counterparts. Looking at a variety of North African merchant families situated in several Mediterranean port cities, this article highlights their role in weaving Morocco more tightly into global and regional patterns of trade. It also points out still existing gaps in our historical knowledge of these influential groups and suggests a few avenues for future study.

Terrorism versus insurgency: a conceptual analysis

This study analyzes the distinction between terrorism and insurgency by drawing upon the case of the PKK conflict in Turkey. It provides a conceptual discussion through multi-dimensional analyses from the actor-oriented, the action-oriented, the purpose-oriented, and the ontology-oriented perspectives. In so doing, in addition to the organizational characteristics, it critically identifies the PKK’s varying strategies of terrorist and insurgent violence, and their temporality and reasoning as the conflict unfolded to make conceptual inferences. This study found, first, that while the PKK as an actor indicates an insurgent character, the PKK’s use of violence reflects intense terrorism action particularly after its military defeat. Second, the use of terrorism by the PKK reflects an inextricable overlap in temporality and a direct link with guerilla methods. Despite the PKK’s terrorist and insurgent violence resulted from different factors and reasoning at the intermediate level; they are designed to converge at the overall aim of the PKK’s political campaign. Third, the PKK violence reflects varying purposes of terrorism, e.g., intimidation, attrition, survival and group solidarity. Fourth, after reaching the tipping point that resulted in its military defeat in 1994, the PKK resorted to more indirect and asymmetrical violence in an increasing tendency to deflect state power and, thus, to coerce Turkey into a political compromise, i.e., a negotiated settlement.

The Euro

Alain Parguez is right when he claims that the “euro” is a political failure and an economic disaster, in which French politicians and economists seem to have played a significant role. France’s elite envisaged being a dominant political power on the Continent after the two military defeats of Germany in 1918 and 1945. The two strategies the elite tried were very different, but they both failed. A heavy war indemnity in 1919 and the common European currency in 1990 were seen by the French elite as instruments to suppress Germany’s potential economic (and political) superiority. The French economic elite, represented by F. Perroux and Jacques Rueff, supported the elite’s aspiration of being the leading power within a united Europe by academic arguments. The academic support for the Mitterrand government’s European Union (EU) policy was organized by the former economics and finance minister (and later president of the European Commission), Jacques Delors. He headed the Committee for the Study of Economic and Monetary Union, which unanimously recommended a common European currency “to the benefit of European prosperity.” According to Parguez, the resulting common currency created at a French initiative is the prime reason for the present European economic defeat, which has frustrated the French aspiration to play a leading role as primus inter pares on the Continent. This is so because the rules we are bound to follow make no economic sense for Europe as a whole, which is collectively denied by the European elites. This short commentary discusses whether the economic profession not only in France, but in general, is incompetent, ideologically biased, or simply a “rent seeking” profession.

Star Kings and Merry Monarchs

Star Kings and Merry Monarchs Matthew Jenkinson (bio) Clare Jackson Charles II: The Star King london: allen lane, 2016 ix + 130 pages; isbn: 9780141979762 Alexander Larman Restoration: The Year of the Great Fire london: head of zeus, 2016 xv + 285 pages; isbn: 9781781851333 in may 1914 The Graphic published a cartoon by E. T. Reed titled “The Restoration of Charles II.” The cartoon features a classic, statuesque image of Charles, but he is standing within some makeshift scaffolding, on which sit five gnomish figures. Two of the figures polish and buff the king’s shoes; another brushes his hat; the fourth curls Charles’s hair; while the fifth paints the finishing touches on the king’s face. It is an image reminiscent of William Makepeace Thackeray’s photogravure “Rex, Ludovicus, Ludovicus Rex,” in which the short, paunchy Louis XIV has majesty bestowed on him by a cloak, wig, and high-heeled shoes: “Thus do barbers and cobblers make the gods that we worship.” While Reed’s cartoon plays on the word restoration and may also be concerned with contemporary labor politics (it is noted that “Fortunately there were no labour disputes at the moment, so the work was able to be carried out without interruption”), it highlights what has become a historiographical norm: early modern monarchs’ images were constructed, in much the same way that we have become used to the images of modern politicians being “spun.”1 [End Page 709] Eschewing the conventional cradle-to-grave biography, Charles II: The Star King—Clare Jackson’s contribution to the Penguin Monarchs series—focuses on the creation of monarchical imagery through the visual arts, ceremony, and literature. Jackson’s use of the sobriquet “Star King” comes from the star that shone throughout the day above London on the day of Charles’s birth, May 29, 1630, and that was then incorporated in a number of cultural artifacts related to the king’s image. It is also a neat equivalent, of course, to Louis XIV’s more famous “Sun King” epithet, though Jackson rightly admits that “Charles cannot be imagined asserting personal ownership of his kingdoms in terms of ‘l’état c’est à moi’ ” (10). “Star King” is a welcome change from “Merry Monarch,” the jaunty moniker that originated in a vicious squib by John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester, but has since more often been used to sanitize Charles’s complex and sometimes dark reign. Jackson’s biography offers a deft summary of this reign, and of Charles II’s life more generally, with a touch sufficiently light to navigate real complexities, but without losing a secure expert grasp or analytical rigor. The implication of Jackson’s exploration of Charles II is that sobriquets like “Merry Monarch” or even “Star King” do not do sufficient justice to a king who, for much of his reign, actively adopted dissimulation and multiple, sometimes inconsistent, images to survive in an extraordinarily difficult political landscape. Charles II was, Jackson notes, “keenly aware of the deep ideological fault-lines that divided his kingdoms” (21). The trauma of civil war and regicide, and the ignominy of exile during the Commonwealth and Protectorate, reverberated throughout the Restoration. The celebrations that marked 1660 also masked the persistent ideological fissures centering on the respective power and authority of king and Parliament and the long shadow of political republicanism. The nation was also divided religiously, with the Stuarts accused of plotting to return their kingdoms to the Catholic faith and the Anglican Church preoccupied with how to deal with a splintered Protestantism. The cries for persecution, toleration, or comprehension varied in intensity according to the changeable political and devotional climate and the perceived likelihood of ’41 coming again. Criticism of the restored king was also provoked by his penchant for multiple mistresses (one of whom was considered to be providing Charles with a hotline to French despotism), his siring of several illegitimate children, and his indulgence of a libertine court. The national disasters of plague and fire compounded these man-made troubles, as did military defeat against the Dutch. Plenty of commentators, especially fearless satirists, were willing to lay the blame for such disasters at the feet of the court, which...

Defeat, Honour and the News: The Case of the Fall of Breda (1625) and the Dutch Republic

The honour of the polity, closely tied to military success, was of great importance in seventeenth-century European international relations. This article provides an analysis of the importance of the honour of the polity in the early Dutch Republic – the late sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth-century – and the role of military success and failure as crucial matters in this. It also contributes to the debate about the position of the Republic, now no longer seen as an anomaly, in European relations. In existing research scant attention is paid to the role of military glory in this. A military defeat, the loss of Breda in 1625, functions as an analytical tool. Analysing the manner in which this defeat was dealt with enables an assessment of the importance of the Republic’s honour in a ‘national’ and international context.