History in Books

[SeanF]

46 minutes ago, Zorral said:

It didn't hurt that here in the US since so many who immigrated here, like my own family, found in them, via Leif Erickson and so on, a home country national connection to the 'discovery of America', a sea road to joining their own backgrounds to the Great Mythology of the Founding of the United States of America.  In my state, books and tales were rife in our schools at all levels -- I grew up on Norse mythology at least as much on Greek and Roman myths, and the legendarium of King Arthur. (The more mythologies the better, my school age self enthused.) The shelves were also stacked with books in translation from Scandinavia.

There is something wonderful about the belief that defeat is no refutation, that it’s better to die defiant, than live in shame, like Ragnar Lothbrok.

That appeals across ages, classes, ethnic groups.

”Will shall be the sterner, heart the greater, spirit the bolder, even as our strength lessens.”

Edited November 3, 2022 by SeanF

[SeanF]

WRT the Trilogy, this Polish miniseries comes highly recommended.

 

[Zorral]

 

@SeanF 

Quote

this Polish miniseries comes highly recommended.

I have the boxed set  -- watched it many times.  As did, I am certain, Peter Jackson. Are not those orcs of his spitting images nearly of Hoffman's tartars, just for <ah-hem> starters.

Btw, the deeper Sister Novelists gets into the Napoleonic era, the more I've been thinking of your scholarly work; they have many significant relationships -- as do their brothers, well, at least two of the three anyway -- with military figures.  For a period the naval hero, who at the time was even more famous than Nelson, Admiral Sir Sidney Smith (the Siege of Acre, etc.), came often to visit, particularly enjoying time with jane and Maria, as their artist brother -- who was doing very well at that time -- sketched him for one of his monumental history oil paintings. The war(s) are always present during their young adult and early adult periods.

Edited November 5, 2022 by Zorral

[illrede]

3 hours ago, Zorral said:

 

@SeanF 

I have the boxed set  -- watched it many times.  As did, I am certain, Peter Jackson. Are not those orcs of his spitting images nearly of Hoffman's tartars, just for <ah-hem> starters.

Btw, the deeper Sister Novelists gets into the Napoleonic era, the more I've been thinking of your scholarly work; they have many significant relationships -- as do their brothers, well, at least two of the three anyway -- with military figures.  For a period the naval hero, who at the time was even more famous than Nelson, Admiral Sir Sidney Smith (the Siege of Acre, etc.), came often to visit, particularly enjoying time with jane and Maria, as their artist brother -- who was doing very well at that time -- sketched him for one of his monumental history oil paintings. The war(s) are always present during their young adult and early adult periods.

The thing about Sidney Smith is that in one way he is a character out of historical fiction. Napoleon really did at one point go on an extemporaneous rant to his aide-de-camp Narbonne over the guy.

 

Quote

-But for the English pirate and the French emigré who together directed the fire of the Turks, and, together with the plague, forced me to abandon the siege, after St Jean d’Acre I would have conquered half Asia-

 

(Here is the source, by the way. It is in French. I do not read French. https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_04H8x8k_2YYC/page/n125/mode/2up?q=Corsaire)

[SeanF]

4 hours ago, Zorral said:

 

@SeanF 

I have the boxed set  -- watched it many times.  As did, I am certain, Peter Jackson. Are not those orcs of his spitting images nearly of Hoffman's tartars, just for <ah-hem> starters.

Btw, the deeper Sister Novelists gets into the Napoleonic era, the more I've been thinking of your scholarly work; they have many significant relationships -- as do their brothers, well, at least two of the three anyway -- with military figures.  For a period the naval hero, who at the time was even more famous than Nelson, Admiral Sir Sidney Smith (the Siege of Acre, etc.), came often to visit, particularly enjoying time with jane and Maria, as their artist brother -- who was doing very well at that time -- sketched him for one of his monumental history oil paintings. The war(s) are always present during their young adult and early adult periods.

I like the Cossack who’s smoking a pipe, during the Battle of Yellow Water.

Sidney Smith, like Cochrane, is one of those people whose lives read like fiction.

[Zorral]

The second volume in Elodie Harper's The Wolf Den trilogy, The House With the Golden Door, is out. (Vol. 1 is The Wolf Den).  The trilogy is set in Pompei, focusing on those who do or have done sex work -- often enslaved -- and those who encounter them in various conditions, from brothel slave owners to those might not just use a worker, but buy one out who is particularly enthralling and intriguing.

 

[Zorral]

The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams (2022), by Stacy Schiff.  So successfully did Samuel Adams obscure his activities organizing a revolution, even from historians’ best effort, that at times it seems as though he’s like the Scarlet Pimpernel, though on the opposition side of the Aristos: “They seek him here, they seek him there. Those Frenchies seek him everywhere. Is he in heaven or is he in hell? That demned elusive Pimpernel”. 

Historians didn't care for Schiff's The Witches: Salem 1692 (2015), so I didn't read that, and my Egyptologist friend and historian of ancient history, and the reviewers too, really disapproved of her Cleopatra: A Life (2010), but it sold very well anyway (as does Witches, though her readers seem not that interested in her 1999 biography Vera Vladimir Nabokov's wife).  Schiff doesn't even read modern Greek, so that's a problem right there, evidently. I tried to read Cleo myself, and stopped in both sceptism and distrust.

The Revolutionary feels more solid and trustworthy. Takeaways are that Jefferson in particular of the Founders studied Sam Adams's trajectory, tactics and behind-the-scenes secrecy very carefully.  In a letter to Adams, late in Adams's life, he rather says so.  I certainly recognized all of Jefferson's own maneuverings in those of Adams. The Secessionists didn't study carefully though, and they failed -- Henry Adams threw up his hands at one point, saying that only insanity could explain what the Southerners were doing -- to themselves.

The current crops of violent seditionists since at least Atwood and Gingrich, have studied with understanding of what Sam Adams did and how he did it.  His Correspondence Circles and the way to re-purpose words, providing them with different meanings and significance, certainly since Reagan.  Control of the media, which then meant newspapers, is the key.  Secret deals with the already-violence prone such as out-of-work sailors and dockworkers, essential, along with creating one's own militias.  Now it's social media and television, and Oathkeepers, Proud Boys, Neo Nazis, Incels, the outright insane, etc.

Among the many mysteries as to how Adams worked and with whom, is his relative poverty.  At some point it was clear somebody/somebodies were supporting him, enabling to continue his 'seditious' work.  But who?  The obvious guess is Hancock, but I wonder, considering it was by-then-prosperous Benjamin Franklin who sent him the secret Hutchinson documents from England. Wass Franklin also a behind-the-scenes secret collaborator? The minds of these two would mesh well.  One of the methods evidently used by Adams and others in Boston was to appear in public as enemies, or antagonists, while really working together.

It's impossible not to see that what Adams did is no different from what the current insurrectionists and seditionists are doing / attempting to do now, via his strategems.

Schiff also says that New England, Massachusetts, and Boston in particular, went bonkers around 1765-8, getting progressively so, with periods when things seemed to cool down, but Adams kept working behind the scenes, and then was prepared the moment the Crown and Hutchinson gave him an opening. Schiff says the same thing, going bonkers in this part of the world, is what drove the Salem witch trials.  Henry Adams says the Secessionists went insane too.

On the other hand, there is this, in my opinion: John Adams wasn't a firebreather from the beginning, and neither was Abigail.  The Crown did some truly stupid moves, understood nothing about the colonies or the geography -- and that governance on all levels of the colonies was very bad.  Hutchinson held multiple offices, got salaries for them all, and what he didn't hold himself, he gave to his family members and his friends.  He and his cronies did everything to block anyone's path that might challenge their complete control and dominance.  It was a real cabal of power and wealth, which would indeed piss off everybody else.

But Hutchinson and his fellows, as well as those back in Britain, were incapable of envisioning their positions, perks, privilege and control as anything but their right by wealth and birth, and even less capable of envisioning others seeing it otherwise. That blindness allowed the right person, with all the pertinent skills, from ability to write, speak, quickly, coherently, persuasively, while being utterly personable in person, with a mind that was able to see all the openings for humiliation, protest and incitement to operate, and one, moreover, who had the imagination, unshared, when he began, with any of his colonial contemporaries, to envision a separation from Britain; moreover wanted it, believed it was best for his country -- i.e. Massachusetts and Boston,  and was able to play a very long game.  That was Adams.  He was unique, nearly, it seems -- utterly Bostonian too, a Harvard educated Puritan to the core, though much milder in that than his ancestors, with a great leavening of what was by now in Europe the Enlightenment, though not quite entirely able to let go the days of the 17th Century.

This biography of Samuel Adams, along with Marcus Rediker's Outlaws of the Atlantic : Sailors, Pirates, and Motley Crews in the Age of Sail (2014), provides all the information of how to organize a Revolution and / or Insurrection. First lesson--it will never succeed without deployment of mobs. Second lesson -- it will never succeed without massive media control and presence, all the time, everywhere.

[maarsen]

Zorral, you never cease to surprise and delight me. I don't know how much you know of the Upper and Lower Canada rebellions but reading the above shows why the Americans succeeded and William Lyon Mackenzie and his followers failed. The corruption in government followed the same path in both places but the Canadian rebellions failed. We did get a better system of government and Mackenzie's grandson did become one of Canada's longest serving Prime Ministers, and one of the strangest, but overall a completely different path was followed.

[Zorral]

21 minutes ago, maarsen said:

reading the above shows why the Americans succeeded and William Lyon Mackenzie and his followers failed.

O, I need to learn about this. I will hit the university catalog.  Thank you so much!  This fits right in, since my usual comfy seasonal read and watch has kicked in early.  It usually arrives in the last 2 weeks of December -- often re-reads and re-watches -- that put in the same state of liminal suspension that was my childhood, when the usual schedules and routines were suspended too.  I guess the isolation due to Partner's Covid started the hunker down early though I'm not sure if it even happened last year.

It appears this year it’s going to be an Independence hunker.  A re-watch of Turn: Washington's Spies (I had read the book from which the series was adapted) while reading With Zeal and Bayonets Only: The British Army On Campaign in North America, 1775-1783 (2008), by Matthew H. Spring, now that I've got T Samuel Adams already tickling the history brain lobes.  With Zeal is Vol. 19 in the Campaigns and Commanders series from the University of Oklahoma Press.

Maybe I hope I can aquire some preventive medication to counter this era where obvious insurrection and violent take-overs are being strived for everywhere, here no less than in Indonesia and Russia, say, while there are equally passionate opposition to already violent unbelievably authoritarian regimes, as in Iran, say.

[Zorral]

On 11/5/2022 at 6:17 PM, SeanF said:

Cochrane, is one of those people whose lives read like fiction

 

So does that of his opponent at the Battle of New Orleans, Andrew Jackson -- a truly eviLe, truly effective MFer, as demonstrated by beating the pants off the Brits.

[maarsen]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

O, I need to learn about this. I will hit the university catalog.  Thank you so much!  This fits right in, since my usual comfy seasonal read and watch has kicked in early.  It usually arrives in the last 2 weeks of December -- often re-reads and re-watches -- that put in the same state of liminal suspension that was my childhood, when the usual schedules and routines were suspended too.  I guess the isolation due to Partner's Covid started the hunker down early though I'm not sure if it even happened last year.

It appears this year it’s going to be an Independence hunker.  A re-watch of Turn: Washington's Spies (I had read the book from which the series was adapted) while reading With Zeal and Bayonets Only: The British Army On Campaign in North America, 1775-1783 (2008), by Matthew H. Spring, now that I've got T Samuel Adams already tickling the history brain lobes.  With Zeal is Vol. 19 in the Campaigns and Commanders series from the University of Oklahoma Press.

Maybe I hope I can aquire some preventive medication to counter this era where obvious insurrection and violent take-overs are being strived for everywhere, here no less than in Indonesia and Russia, say, while there are equally passionate opposition to already violent unbelievably authoritarian regimes, as in Iran, say.

Considering some of the families involved still figure prominently in past and present news, I hope you enjoy. 

[Zorral]

The books I've read or tried to read, or listened to, or read aloud in the last 2 1/2 months begins with The Richest Man Who Ever Lived: The Life and Times of Jacob Fugger (2015) by Greg Steinmetz. This man, born before the fateful 1492 voyage of Christof Colón, active throughout most of the 16th century, was Europe’s first millionaire, who was not a royal. Silver and land were the pillars of his wealth, made by lending to European monarchs, particularly Philip II, funding their wars and their rivalries.  They almost always lost; he almost always won, gaining control of what had been their silver mines and cities, making him all that much richer.  Much if not most of the hot flow of gold and silver coming into Seville via Philip II’s flotas from the New World, ended up in Fugger’s accounts as well.  This is how men who worked with money could become millionaires w/o being a monarch.  Fugger’s story is the birth story of capitalism, allowed by the vast rapine of the unbelievably vast rich riches of the New World, and the equally unbelievable stupid behaviors of monarchs.  It is a fascinating tale, even as it is a tragic one, particularly for African and Native Americans, as both the new worlds and old were transformed by floods of plundered gold and silver. This book filled in a big missing space in the transformation of finance that allowed for the coming European era of industrialization and the finale of the medieval eras.

he Radical Potter: Josiah Wedgewood and the Transformation of Britain (2021) by Tristram Hunt. This figure well represents the changes to Europeans’ culture of the material life, the birth of mass production and industrialism, financed by what happened in the 16th Century, providing for the first time ornamental, decorative and often plainly useless, non-functional objects even to the lower middle classes as markers of status.  Not only did this brilliant fellow with quite poor health beginning with childhood tuberculosis of the bone in one of his legs get the whole world desiring English -- his! -- pottery, including the French, but received accolades for the quality and beauty of his works from Chinese porcelain connoisseurs. To more easily and far less expensively to receive the quality of clay his works needed he was instrumental in his region developing the canal system -- which also allowed his products and himself to get to London much more easily, quickly and safely. The Grand Trunk Canal system cost a billion dollars to build, in today’s money.  Not only did pack pony owners and suppliers object to the project as a threat to their business, so did many ‘conservative’ lords and others, as being a waste of money.  But if potters of luxury porcelain products weren’t important enough to get it built, the surge in coal mining in the region was. Josiah himself, who played an important role getting their route and connection to Liverpool approved and funded by the local lordships, was concerned it would put his potteries too much on the map, too easy to visit (which was true), and thus catch the eyes of those who imposed taxes on large businesses. The trade-off was that the canal would make his business grow ever larger.

Currently I'm  reading The Story of Russia (2022) by Orlando Figes. A less large book than many who attempt these matters, less than half the size of Simon Montifiore's really wonderful Romanovs -- and Figes starts at the start -- long before the Mongolian incursions and conquest, and gets Putin and Ukraine in it as well at the end.

Before the Figes I did get to read The Lion And The Fox: Two Rival Spies and the Secret Plot to Build a Confederate Navy (2022), by Alexander Rose.  This is the same author who wrote Turn: Washington's Spies, from which the AMC 4-season scripted drama was adapted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Rose_(author)

If one wonders how the rebels came up with the idea of building a navy in Liverpool -- recall that Liverpool was Britain's greatest center of the African slave trade and everything that went with it, from shipbuilding to insurance to the forging of manacles and shackles.  It was no coincidence then, that Liverpool was also Britain's primary port for Southern cotton, and where the British Cotton Exchange was located.  These Brits provided so much money and assistance, not to mention encouragement, to confederate James Bulloch, the honcho from Georgia.

While reading Lion and Fox, I was listening to Edmund Morris's The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (1979 -- I've read the second and third volumes, but hadn't read this one as I'd read other biographies of TR's earlier years prior to becoming POTUS), the first volume of his biography of the (then future) POTUS, whose uncle is a central figure in The Lion and the Fox, so all through, as in the past, when I evaluate anything regarding Teddy, I take into account first that his mother was confederate, who would, if she could have, would, if she could have, do anything for the Rebels, and as it was she did send lots of supplies and money not only to her family on the plantation in Georgia, some of which went without doubt to her brother's efforts in Liverpool -- until public opinion forced her husband -- an ardent Northern unionist, instrumental in many ways to the Union war effort -- stop. Upon which, she took to her room as a permanent invalid.  Such an affecting scene when she was finally reunited with her brothers in Liverpool 2-3 years after Appomattox.  He indulgent, adoring husband was taking her -- and thus the family- on a European tour for the sake of his wife's 'nerves.'  There, Mattie regained her nerves,and Teddy met his 'bully uncle James' for the first time.  Teddy hero worshipped his uncles -- the other one was working in Paris with Slidell.

~~~~~~~~

Currently my workout book (this is when I listen to audio versions of books) which I've nearly come to the end of,  is In Search of a Kingdom: Francis Drake, Elizabeth I, and the Perilous Birth of the British Empire (2021) by Laurence Bergreen.  So much I never dreamed of I've been learning about the run-up to the Spanish invasion and what 'the Battle of the Armada" actually was. By no means was it a single battle of a single day or even of a day and night and another day.  It went on for weeks.  Prior to this one I listened to the audio version of Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan's Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe that Ended the Outlaws' Bloody Reign  (2007) by Stephan Talty. Morgan was almost two centuries post Drake, but the Spanish were still considered the bane of England and fair game, most fair game, nay the game to which the Brits were entitled.  His trajectory continued almost up to the age of Bourbon Spain -- which had so many of the same problems and errors as did Phillip II's Spain when it came to a navy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Our current read-aloud to each other before lights out is an old one, Bourbon Spain 1700 - 1808 (1989) by John Lynch, part of a many-volume academic series of the history of Spain, for which series Lynch is the general editor.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Among the works waiting for me are The Mongol Storm: Making and Breaking Empires in the Medieval Near East (2022) by Nicolas Morton that tells me all sorts of things I've wanted to know about the region and the period, told from the perspective of the then established medieval kingdoms in the near East, from Europe and from that of the Mongols.  It's wonderful, but I haven't had time to read it yet.  Also there's Inside Central Asia: A Political and Cultural History of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Iran (2011) by Dilip Hiro, which will help in my doomed desire before I die to get some geographic, cultural and historical sense of this vast region about which, alas I know nothing.

 

 

Edited January 23, 2023 by Zorral

[The Grey Wolf Strikes Back]

I recently got a (signed) copy of Islam and the English Enlightenment: The Untold Story (2022) by Zulfiqar Ali Shah. Will report back once I've read it.

[Zorral]

25 minutes ago, The Grey Wolf Strikes Back said:

Islam and the English Enlightenment: The Untold Story (2022) by Zulfiqar Ali Shah.

That is going to be most interesting!  Enlightening as well. >ah-hem< 

 

Edited January 23, 2023 by Zorral

[The Grey Wolf Strikes Back]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

That is going to be most interesting!  Enlightening as well. >ah-hem< 

 

Heh. Might take me a while though. Time's limited and I've become a slow reader since HS. Thankfully, the chapters are short.

Edited January 23, 2023 by The Grey Wolf Strikes Back

[SeanF]

19 hours ago, Zorral said:

The books I've read or tried to read, or listened to, or read aloud in the last 2 1/2 months begins with The Richest Man Who Ever Lived: The Life and Times of Jacob Fugger (2015) by Greg Steinmetz. This man, born before the fateful 1492 voyage of Christof Colón, active throughout most of the 16th century, was Europe’s first millionaire, who was not a royal. Silver and land were the pillars of his wealth, made by lending to European monarchs, particularly Philip II, funding their wars and their rivalries.  They almost always lost; he almost always won, gaining control of what had been their silver mines and cities, making him all that much richer.  Much if not most of the hot flow of gold and silver coming into Seville via Philip II’s flotas from the New World, ended up in Fugger’s accounts as well.  This is how men who worked with money could become millionaires w/o being a monarch.  Fugger’s story is the birth story of capitalism, allowed by the vast rapine of the unbelievably vast rich riches of the New World, and the equally unbelievable stupid behaviors of monarchs.  It is a fascinating tale, even as it is a tragic one, particularly for African and Native Americans, as both the new worlds and old were transformed by floods of plundered gold and silver. This book filled in a big missing space in the transformation of finance that allowed for the coming European era of industrialization and the finale of the medieval eras.

he Radical Potter: Josiah Wedgewood and the Transformation of Britain (2021) by Tristram Hunt. This figure well represents the changes to Europeans’ culture of the material life, the birth of mass production and industrialism, financed by what happened in the 16th Century, providing for the first time ornamental, decorative and often plainly useless, non-functional objects even to the lower middle classes as markers of status.  Not only did this brilliant fellow with quite poor health beginning with childhood tuberculosis of the bone in one of his legs get the whole world desiring English -- his! -- pottery, including the French, but received accolades for the quality and beauty of his works from Chinese porcelain connoisseurs. To more easily and far less expensively to receive the quality of clay his works needed he was instrumental in his region developing the canal system -- which also allowed his products and himself to get to London much more easily, quickly and safely. The Grand Trunk Canal system cost a billion dollars to build, in today’s money.  Not only did pack pony owners and suppliers object to the project as a threat to their business, so did many ‘conservative’ lords and others, as being a waste of money.  But if potters of luxury porcelain products weren’t important enough to get it built, the surge in coal mining in the region was. Josiah himself, who played an important role getting their route and connection to Liverpool approved and funded by the local lordships, was concerned it would put his potteries too much on the map, too easy to visit (which was true), and thus catch the eyes of those who imposed taxes on large businesses. The trade-off was that the canal would make his business grow ever larger.

Currently I'm  reading The Story of Russia (2022) by Orlando Figes. A less large book than many who attempt these matters, less than half the size of Simon Montifiore's really wonderful Romanovs -- and Figes starts at the start -- long before the Mongolian incursions and conquest, and gets Putin and Ukraine in it as well at the end.

Before the Figes I did get to read The Lion And The Fox: Two Rival Spies and the Secret Plot to Build a Confederate Navy (2022), by Alexander Rose.  This is the same author who wrote Turn: Washington's Spies, from which the AMC 4-season scripted drama was adapted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Rose_(author)

If one wonders how the rebels came up with the idea of building a navy in Liverpool -- recall that Liverpool was Britain's greatest center of the African slave trade and everything that went with it, from shipbuilding to insurance to the forging of manacles and shackles.  It was no coincidence then, that Liverpool was also Britain's primary port for Southern cotton, and where the British Cotton Exchange was located.  These Brits provided so much money and assistance, not to mention encouragement, to confederate James Bulloch, the honcho from Georgia.

While reading Lion and Fox, I was listening to Edmund Morris's The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (1979 -- I've read the second and third volumes, but hadn't read this one as I'd read other biographies of TR's earlier years prior to becoming POTUS), the first volume of his biography of the (then future) POTUS, whose uncle is a central figure in The Lion and the Fox, so all through, as in the past, when I evaluate anything regarding Teddy, I take into account first that his mother was confederate, who would, if she could have, would, if she could have, do anything for the Rebels, and as it was she did send lots of supplies and money not only to her family on the plantation in Georgia, some of which went without doubt to her brother's efforts in Liverpool -- until public opinion forced her husband -- an ardent Northern unionist, instrumental in many ways to the Union war effort -- stop. Upon which, she took to her room as a permanent invalid.  Such an affecting scene when she was finally reunited with her brothers in Liverpool 2-3 years after Appomattox.  He indulgent, adoring husband was taking her -- and thus the family- on a European tour for the sake of his wife's 'nerves.'  There, Mattie regained her nerves,and Teddy met his 'bully uncle James' for the first time.  Teddy hero worshipped his uncles -- the other one was working in Paris with Slidell.

~~~~~~~~

Currently my workout book (this is when I listen to audio versions of books) which I've nearly come to the end of,  is In Search of a Kingdom: Francis Drake, Elizabeth I, and the Perilous Birth of the British Empire (2021) by Laurence Bergreen.  So much I never dreamed of I've been learning about the run-up to the Spanish invasion and what 'the Battle of the Armada" actually was. By no means was it a single battle of a single day or even of a day and night and another day.  It went on for weeks.  Prior to this one I listened to the audio version of Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan's Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe that Ended the Outlaws' Bloody Reign  (2007) by Stephan Talty. Morgan was almost two centuries post Drake, but the Spanish were still considered the bane of England and fair game, most fair game, nay the game to which the Brits were entitled.  His trajectory continued almost up to the age of Bourbon Spain -- which had so many of the same problems and errors as did Phillip II's Spain when it came to a navy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Our current read-aloud to each other before lights out is an old one, Bourbon Spain 1700 - 1808 (1989) by John Lynch, part of a many-volume academic series of the history of Spain, for which series Lynch is the general editor.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Among the works waiting for me are The Mongol Storm: Making and Breaking Empires in the Medieval Near East (2022) by Nicolas Morton that tells me all sorts of things I've wanted to know about the region and the period, told from the perspective of the then established medieval kingdoms in the near East, from Europe and from that of the Mongols.  It's wonderful, but I haven't had time to read it yet.  Also there's Inside Central Asia: A Political and Cultural History of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Iran (2011) by Dilip Hiro, which will help in my doomed desire before I die to get some geographic, cultural and historical sense of this vast region about which, alas I know nothing.

 

 

Spain had an immensely powerful navy, in 1800, and military expenditure was lavished on it, by comparison with the army which was starved of funds.  Yet, the performance of the army was far better than that of the navy.

[Zorral]

22 minutes ago, SeanF said:

the navy

The book of Bourbon Spain shows what a wreck the Spanish navy had become.  The navy operated Spain's flota system -- i.e. transporting goods back-and-forth between the metropole and the colonies, and it was a wreck.  The reforms instituted, beginning in the middle 1700's changed that, instituting the privately owned, solitary vessels -- registered ships for the flota.  Which helped enormously with Spain's wreckage of a national budget as well.

They had to have a 'military' navy starting around 1800, in great degree due to the pressures of Bolívar and the Independence struggles of the colonies. Bolívar in Venezuela did the most for expansion for Spain's 'military' navy.  As you point out, the navy was indeed a wreck -- they weren't able to do much even against Morgan.  But his activities did quite a bit to spur Spain to do more.

Edited January 23, 2023 by Zorral

[SeanF]

9 minutes ago, Zorral said:

The book of Bourbon Spain shows what a wreck the Spanish navy had become.  The navy operated Spain's flota system -- i.e. transporting goods back-and-forth between the metropole and the colonies, and it was a wreck.  The reforms instituted, beginning in the middle 1700's changed that, instituting the privately owned, solitary vessels -- registered ships for the flota.  Which helped enormously with Spain's wreckage of a national budget as well.

They had to have a 'military' navy starting around 1800, in great degree due to the pressures of Bolívar and the Independence struggles of the colonies. Bolívar in Venezuela did the most for expansion for Spain's 'military' navy.  As you point out, the navy was indeed a wreck -- they weren't able to do much even against Morgan.  But his activities did quite a bit to spur Spain to do more.

IMHO Ferdinand VII lost Spanish America almost single-handedly.  It’s hard to disagree with Oman’s view of him as “a coward and a cur.”  He was obsessed with crushing any form of liberalism, while completely lacking the military resources to do so.

[Zorral]

Like so many Spanish monarchs FVII was, if not the drooling idiot his predecessor was, utterly incompetent to rule.  Certainly not interested -- probably incapable -- of doing any actual work, which ruling is.  At one point Partner observed while reading this history of Bourbon Spain -- "It sure does look as though men who have unlimited funds and money just don't work but just play (which for FVII and his predecessor was centered around their compulsion/addiction to sex)."

[illrede]

21 hours ago, Zorral said:

 

Currently I'm  reading The Story of Russia (2022) by Orlando Figes. A less large book than many who attempt these matters, less than half the size of Simon Montifiore's really wonderful Romanovs -- and Figes starts at the start -- long before the Mongolian incursions and conquest, and gets Putin and Ukraine in it as well at the end.

 

Small world. Watching football playoffs last weekend, sat down in another man's reclining chair, rested my left hand on a coffee table, and there that book was. A very comfortable size indeed.

 

2 hours ago, SeanF said:

IMHO Ferdinand VII lost Spanish America almost single-handedly.  It’s hard to disagree with Oman’s view of him as “a coward and a cur.”  He was obsessed with crushing any form of liberalism, while completely lacking the military resources to do so.

I've encountered opinions on him from every angle, from then-contemporary hearsay on down, and I've yet to see a dissenting opinion (other than the brief window when he was a political cypher and maneuvering against the Royal Favorite meant foisting every virtue on him). A feckless malignant nuisance with no bottom. His Neapolitan Bourbon namesake at the time apparently had something same faults but at least one guy expounding on it then did make a point of noting that if wasn't a King, Ferdinand of Naples would be decent country squire and a good guy to know.

 

It is odd how the post-Louis XIV family courts ended up quality-wise, from a stronger start.