History of Class in America

History Book Club

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

History of Class in America

Wednesday, April 26, 2017: History of Class in America   We’ve often bragged that Americans started out resisting the class structure.  Our Revolutionary War ancestors looked with disdain on King George III and the whole British system of landed gentry and the ponderous trappings of the aristocracy.

            However-- our Founding Fathers included men like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, owners of much land and many slaves.  Aristocrats in our new world.

            Also, before and after we fought to separate ourselves from Great Britain, indentured servants were coming to young America, to fill the bottom rungs of society.

            The campaign and election of Donald Trump made me take a hard look at the subject of “Class” in America. 

            Perhaps we have been able to shield ourselves from a lot of the hereditary system of Great Britain, but society has a natural selection process whereby some people migrate upward and voilà!  — There they are at the top. 

            It may be their wealth, either personally acquired or inherited, it may be their brains, their musical or athletic ability, perhaps a record of solid achievements, or their natural human manipulation skills, including a clever tongue. 

            Of course, none of those qualities guarantees that a person will be accepted in the rarefied atmosphere at the top.   Society has a rather brutal way of separating out newcomers, parvenus, social climbers and nouveau riche, and it’s not always what we might consider fair.

            In America, many of us find we gravitate to the great middle class, and membership there is not so technical.  It seems that if you feel you are “middle class”, there you are! You can fall on hard times, of course, lose your job, maybe fall into illness and drugs, and end up in the lowest reaches of society.

            Below the “Middle Class” we have the “Working Class”.  The dividing line between “Middle” and “Working” is not always clear.  In my observation, many people make up their minds that they are in either one, and few will argue. There are gradations that help to give an indication of where one fits on the social ladder, like income, education, and work history.

            The phenomenon of Trump’s election was that he recognized that there was a vast swath of America that felt “left out” by the events of the past decade.  Mostly white working class, with high school education, or less, they felt that voters in selecting a black man for President, had ignored them.  Perhaps they just sat out the elections of 2008 and 2012. Certainly many who had a record of voting Republican were turned off by the elitism of Mitt Romney. 

            These same working class whites felt that America had bypassed them with jobs. A president eager to cope with global warming and cleaning up the environment had waged a war on coal mining, and that deeply affected men in many states.  That black president seemed to welcome all ethnic groups, and to them, that didn’t seem right. When Donald Trump told them he’d bring back coal mining jobs, they were listening.  When he told them he’d build a wall to keep the Mexicans out, and start deporting all those who were here illegally, they listened.

            When he said he’d keep out the Muslims. And destroy ISIS, they were on his side.

            Many of these men have a feeling that “the government” is working to take away their guns, and this brings up the vague sense of suspicion of African Americans and Hispanics.  “A black president wants to take away my gun?” 

            Donald Trump knew just what to do to win these men, and their women, to his side.

Nancy Isenberg WHITE TRASH, The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America; Illustrated. New York: Viking. 2016.  $28. 460 pp.

            The term “White Trash” is a turn-off to many.  Few of us would like to be put in that category. However, Nancy Isenberg, a professor of American History at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, LA, set out to study what has happened to the bottom class of white Americans, from the days when British officials sent poor people to the New World simply to get rid of them.       

             Isenberg tells the history of the people who came to America as castoffs from Europe, sent to the New World because no one knew what else to do with them. Others came among the thousands of working class people looking for a fresh start. Thousands of poor Irish families came to escape starvation in the Irish potato famine of the middle 19^th century.  Poor German and eastern European Jews, came to escape the pogroms and terrible mistreatment in their native countries.

            As time went on, most of these people migrated into the American Middle Class, and some made it to become part of a new American upper class, not by virtue of birth and parentage, but by hard work and brains.

            Some of course migrated downward, part of the natural filtration, where some cannot hold a job, some lack intelligence or drive, or just bad luck, and there they are…. Like unpopped popcorn in the bottom of the bag.

            In 17th-century Virginia, people denounced indentured servants as society’s “offscourings,” a term for fecal matter. A century later, the lowest class were called “useless lubbers” of “Poor Carolina,” a place the author calls the “first white trash colony.” In the early 19th century, landowners described the landless rural poor as foolish “crackers”, idle, vagabond “squatters”, “sandhillers”, “clay-eaters” or “mudsills”.   The book includes photos of these people, some with pale faces, probably from eating clay and dirt, half the size of normal people from worms, other diseases and poor nutrition.

            What to do about this “White Trash”?  The latter part of the 19^th century produced solutions that amounted to eugenics.  Sterilization of people to prevent their breeding a “generation of imbeciles”.  Race, as always is involved here, although Isenberg tries to focus her history of class to whites, there is often the suggestion of “contamination” by people of so-called “lesser races”, that is, not white.

            Isenberg, a professor at a leading southern university, seems to find that the majority of the lowest rung of whites live in the South.  As a native of Texas, I’ve seen this before.  There seems to be a feeling that the south retains the poor sharecropper and the descendants of the indentured servants and prisoners brought to America from Europe.

            Reconstruction, in the decades following the Civil War, saw the freed slaves pitted against poor whites by demagogues who sought to stir up trouble.  Just a casual suggestion that the newly freed blacks were going to murder whites and rape their women was enough to fill the Ku Klux Klan with angry, ignorant whites, ready to lynch Negroes. 

            There were not a few subtle suggestions floated in the air in the 2016 election season, aimed at creating suspicion about our black President, and his supporters seeking to take guns away, and aiming to flood the country with welfare cases and Muslims, and giving sanctuary to undocumented aliens.

            What to do about the “White Trash”?   For starters, it may be time to quit separating people by skin color, and calling any group “Trash” is not helpful to resolving anything. 

            Now, let us look at “Class” from the inside.

J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis; New York: HarperCollins, 2016.

            This best-seller is a fascinating memoir about hillbillies living in Kentucky, then migrating to find factory jobs in Ohio, but always coming back to the hills for family celebrations.

            J.D. Vance tells about his family:  his Mother, who started with prescription drugs and went downhill on opiates.  Working in a hospital, she was stealing drugs from patients, and one day in her mixed-up world she thought it would be good to go rollerblading through the emergency room.  She had a continual stream of boyfriends, and a daughter, and J.D.  Critical to this family were her parents, Mamaw and Papaw, who lived nearby. But not in the same house.  These two were elaborate cussers, but god fearing and hardworking, and provided young J.D. and his sister the only stability they knew.

            J.D. is one who manages to get away from the grinding poverty of his childhood. He joins the Marines, and then goes to college and on to Yale Law School.  Still, he has the bad dreams and can never escape the scars of his early life.

            The Rust Belt town to which his family escaped is Middletown, Ohio, where Obama is viewed with suspicion, Reagan just a memory. People love the military, but cannot name a single military leader, like they once could of George S. Patton. The space age is old news, and no one knows any astronauts any more. Recessions have hastened the downward trajectory of Middletown.

            Vance doesn’t mention his name, but it is clear to see that this city is just waiting for Donald Trump to show up with his promises and message of hope.

-end-

                            HISTORY BOOK CLUB TOPICS FOR 2017

Wednesday, May 31, 2017: Famines in the World.  Famines have killed millions over the centuries.  In modern times there have been disastrous famines in Somalia, Congo, South Sudan, all over West Africa. The Irish Potato Famine of 1845-49 killed over a million and sent many to America.  Famines in Russia, Korea, China, Japan, Poland, England, Iceland, France, Italy, Sweden, Finland and India all have legends attached to them.     [Suggested by Linda Burkell and Walt Frederick]

Wednesday, June 28, 2017:  History of English/British Colonialism It started in the latter part of the 15^th Century with plantations in Ireland. Read how the United Kingdom grew to become the greatest Empire in the history of the world.  If you wish, home in on British slave trade, and how the U.K. colonized the New World, bringing slaves to grow sugar and cotton. Then Napoleonic Wars and Britain’s seizure of French Colonies. America and Canada.  Colonization of Asia in Hong Kong, Malaya, Australia, New Zealand, India, Burma. Africa, and more for you to discover. [Suggested by Richard Heuser]

Wednesday, July 26, 2017:euser]

 Treasure Hunts in History. This is your opportunity to find a treasure and discover the hunt for it, whether it is the quest for gold in California, diamonds in Africa, the hunt for the pharaohs buried in the pyramids, the hunt to discover a cure for polio or yellow fever, the terracotta army buried with Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor of China, the search for the source of the Nile, the discovery of Neanderthal man… This topic is for you to imagine!  [Suggested by Walt Frederick]

Wednesday, August 31, 2017: Gloucester and the Sea.  euser]

Gloucester has throughout four centuries cast its lot with the North Atlantic, remaining a maritime port for better or worse. The maritime culture of Cape Ann is the mix of a noble maritime heritage; ubiquitous sea influences that reach as far as the quarries behind Rockport and into the haunted tracks of Dogtown Common; seductive but capricious natural splendors; and untidy independence that repels some but converts other visitors into lifetime devotees. We plan to invite Chester Brigham, author of Gloucester’s Bargain with the Sea, to join us.  Read this or any other book about the maritime history of Gloucester. [Suggested by Richard Ver

U.S. Power Today

History Book Club

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

What Made the U.S. So Powerful?

Wednesday, March 29, 2017: What made America powerful? Was it our geography, size, natural resources, protection of two oceans, our choice of immigrants, our leaders?  [Suggested by Janos Posfai]

            As we stop to examine our country, and to find out what made America the most powerful economic engine in the world; the country that used its power to end the stalemated trench war in 1917 in World War I and then in 1941 dove in to fight a truly World War in the Pacific and the Atlantic, and then created a cold war balance of power with the Soviet Union… here in 2017 where are we? 

            Are we still the most powerful?  Do we have the ingredients still to defend weak and oppressed countries?  Do we have the will to be a force for good in the world?

            We can congratulate ourselves that we “won” the cold war by wearing the Soviet Union down until it collapsed, and with it the specter of a communist world.

            Now, here we are, with a tremendous nuclear arsenal and the mightiest defense establishment in the world.  Since the USSR imploded, we have seen the rise of groups of bearded men in robes, appearing all over the Islamic world, but also popping up in our world to carry out acts of terrorism. 

            Will all the elements we have for becoming so powerful give us the capability to continue to be a world leader?

            America has just elected a man who is so different from all the men who have led America since Franklin D. Roosevelt; who defies all the normal measures of presidential ability--- is he the secret weapon we need to carry on in the world today, or is he merely a sad example of the tendency of our “mature” democracy to pick a leader who is so much like so many of us?

How did the United States of America become so powerful?

            Even before our industrial revolution had picked up momentum after the Civil War, Secretary of State William Seward pushed the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867, initiated a treaty with Hawaii that would bind the islands’ economy to that of the U.S., and attempted to buy naval bases in the Caribbean and a treaty with Colombia that would allow the U.S. to build a canal through the province of Panama, to connect the Caribbean with the Pacific Ocean.

            The ingredients were all here--- a country rich in natural resources, and a growing work force which included many skilled workers from all over Europe.  Three decades after the country was ripped apart by a Civil War, the Industrial Revolution was transforming America.  This was a time when America’s industrial capacity was becoming too big for its domestic market, and the U.S. became eager for more overseas sales.  This meant many more ships, sailing to many more ports in the world.

            At this very time, several leading newspaper publishers were finding their way toward building circulation by creating a “Yellow Press” with sensational stories that stirred national pride and urged foreign adventures.  One thing led to another, and American naval ships were steaming down to Cuba to right the wrongs of Colonial Spain, and then across the Pacific to “provide democracy” to another Spanish colony, the Philippine Islands.

           

            Alfred Thayer Mahan was president of the Naval War College in Newport, RI in 1890 when he published “The Influence of Sea Power Upon History”.  It was a book that arrived just at the right time when both merchant ships and warships were improving their mobility and endurance, shifting from coal to oil-fired boilers, from reciprocating engines to steam turbines; warships were gaining more powerful explosive ordnance and heavier and more protective armor.

            Kings, emperors and presidents read Mahan’s book, and ordered their admirals to do so as well. The idea of creating coaling and then fueling bases around the world was catching on, in order for warships to respond to threats to merchant shipping wherever they occurred.

            Japan had only recently come out of isolation and built a strong navy, which had defeated a fleet of the Russian Empire in a battle that caught the attention of the world. Japan had also defeated the Russians in land battles as both nations fought for territories in Manchuria and Korea. President Theodore Roosevelt offered his services to convene peace talks between Japan and Russia. Even though Japan was the winner of the war, both countries were exhausted and Russia was in turmoil with the Revolution of 1905.  Roosevelt showed the world American leadership as he managed to get both sides to settle this dispute in a month of meetings in August 1905 at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, ME. The sides signed a peace treaty in September and both nations ratified it in October 1905. Roosevelt was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for his work here.

            Roosevelt’s solution did not satisfy the Japanese and created ill feelings which festered all the way to Pearl Harbor in 1941.

            In 1906 the San Francisco School Board was making noise heard nationally about demanding segregated schools for Japanese students.  Anti-Japanese sentiment was running high here, after Japan had just shown the world that its navy was powerful enough to defeat the Russians at Tsushima.  Roosevelt, now acutely tuned in to the need for good relations with Japan, addressed the School Board decision directly, because he was concerned that this might provoke tensions with Japan.

JO2 [Journalist Second Class] Mike McKinley, Cruise of the Great White Fleet; Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington Navy Yard, Washington, DC; April, 2015

            Roosevelt decided on a dramatic show of American power, by sending a large fleet of American warships on a cruise around the world.  There were plenty of voices at the time suggesting that this was a stupid trick that might leave the United States without adequate naval defenses in the Atlantic, but Teddy saw that the time was right to demonstrate American power, particularly to the Japanese. Off they went, leaving Hampton Roads, VA December 16, 1907.

This cruise was a wonderful move to gain the support of the American people for our Navy, and for building four more battleships that Teddy wanted.

            After one day at sea the Great White Fleet commander, Rear Admiral Robley “Fighting Bob” Evans, announced that, instead of just sailing to San Francisco, as had been announced, the fleet would continue across the Pacific, into the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean, and return home around the world. 

            The fleet was made up with newly constructed battleships, commissioned since the end of the Spanish-American War. They were USS Kearsarge (BB-5), USS Kentucky (BB-6), USS Illinois (BB-7), USS Alabama (BB-8), USS Maine (BB-10), USS Missouri (BB-11), USS Ohio (BB-12), USS Virginia (BB-13), USS Georgia (BB-15), USS New Jersey (BB-16), USS Rhode Island (BB-17), USS Connecticut (BB-18), USS Louisiana (BB-19), USS Vermont (BB-20), USS Kansas (BB-21) and USS Minnesota (BB-22).

                People have compared Donald Trump to Teddy Roosevelt, because he is a self-promoting, aggressive man, impetuous, and believing in swift action.  The difference, however, is that Teddy was a voracious reader (and writer) of history, had served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, where he had pushed to build a new fleet of battleships.  He had also proven himself as the leader of a cavalry unit named “The Roughriders” in the war in Cuba.

            A senator from Maine registered his disapproval of this round-the-world boondoggle by threatening to withhold the funds, but that didn’t bother Teddy.  He replied that he already had the money and dared Congress to “try to get it back.”

            Just before Christmas 1907 the fleet made their first port call in Port of Spain, Trinidad. It was not a hit with the sailors. All there was to do was “look at the flowers and visit a leper colony.” One sailor complained that the beer was so warm it tasted like boiler water.

            On January 6, 1908 the fleet crossed the Equator, and 12,000 sailors became members of King Neptune’s honorable realm.  Three days later the fleet pulled in to Rio de Janeiro, and the sailors found a liberty port that could handle 14,000 red-blooded young Americans. However, the first night ashore, in a bar filled with local longshoremen and American sailors, a longshoreman three a beer bottle at another local, but it hit a sailor from USS Louisiana, and all hell broke loose. 

            After that, the rest of the port visit was a fine example of how young Americans can be good ambassadors. The visit was not good for Admiral Evans, though.  He came down with an attack of gout, and suffered with it until he was forced to turn over command of the fleet in San Francisco.

            From Rio the fleet sailed down to the Strait of Magellan.  A Chilean cruiser met them and escorted them through the treacherous, windy and foggy waters, without damage.  They visited Chilean ports and then sailed on to Peru.  There was plenty of work for the sailors on this cruise. Every two weeks they had to replenish the coal on board. A battleship carried 2000 tons of coal, and this took several days of hard labor to load, with sailors hoisting 500-lb. coal sacks.  Then, it took two or more days to clean the ship, because the coal dust was everywhere.

            There were also drills and exercises, and the fleet spent a month in Baja California conducting gunnery exercises.  For their spare time, the ships had player pianos, phonographs, billiard tables, and they showed silent films.

            The fleet arrived in San Francisco on May 6, 1908 and that was a spectacular celebration with many thousands lining the hills around the city to greet the ships. There was a 48-hour ball at the Fairmont Hotel, and parties everywhere. Two battleships were relieved by two others, USS Nebraska (BB14) and USS Wisconsin (BB9), and Maine and Alabama were sent home, because of their voracious appetite for coal.

            On July 7^th, the fleet, now commanded by Rear Admiral Charles Sperry, headed across the Pacific to Hawaii, where there were more parties.  Next, on August 9^th came Auckland, NZ, and then Sydney, Australia. Melbourne rolled out the red carpet as only the Aussies know how, so that many sailors would have liked to have stayed here for life.

            The fleet then sailed to Manila in the Philippines, but there was a cholera epidemic, so no liberty.  After that the fleet sailed through a typhoon on their way to Japan.  The Japanese pulled out all the stops welcoming the Americans.  Of all the stops around the world, the Japanese visits were the most important, and turned out very well for relations between the two countries.

            Next came Amoy, China, then south again into the Indian Ocean. In Sri Lanka the fleet received a huge gift of tea from Sir Thomas Lipton. They celebrated Christmas 1908 at sea enroute the Red Sea.  An earthquake had destroyed much of Messina, Italy, so two battleships were sent there to aid the survivors, while the other ships visited other Mediterranean ports for more celebrations.

            The fleet arrived home in Hampton Roads on February 22, 1909, met by Teddy Roosevelt, who had only two weeks left before he turned over the government to William Howard Taft. The trip took 14 months, sailing over 42,000 miles.

            The trip was a diplomatic success, particularly with Japan. The combination of U.S. industrial and economic power, combined with a President who knew how to apply that power, and Americans ready and able to play their part in demonstrating that power announced to the world that the United States was ready for a new role in the world.

-end-

           

                     

HISTORY BOOK CLUB TOPICS FOR 2017

Wednesday, April 26, 2017: History of Class in America   We’ve often bragged that Americans started out resisting the class structure, but our Founding Fathers included men like Thomas Jefferson, owners of much land and slaves. At the same time, indentured servants arrived in young America, to fill the bottom rungs of society. [Suggested by Sam Coulbourn]

Wednesday, May 31, 2017: Famines in the World.   Famines have killed millions over the centuries.  In modern times there have been disastrous famines in Somalia, Congo, South Sudan, all over West Africa. The Irish Potato Famine of 1845-49 killed over a million and sent many to America.  Famines in Russia, Korea, China, Japan, Poland, England, Iceland, France, Italy, Sweden, Finland and India all have legends attached to them.     [Suggested by Linda Burkell and Walt Frederick]

Wednesday, June 28, 2017:  History of English/British Colonialism It started in the latter part of the 15^th Century with plantations in Ireland. Read how the United Kingdom grew to become the greatest Empire in the history of the world.  If you wish, home in on British slave trade, and how the U.K. colonized the New World, bringing slaves to grow sugar and cotton. Then Napoleonic Wars and Britain’s seizure of French Colonies. America and Canada.  Colonization of Asia in Hong Kong, Malaya, Australia, New Zealand, India, Burma. Africa, and more for you to discover. [Suggested by Richard Heuser]

Wednesday, July 26, 2017:  Treasure Hunts in History. This is your opportunity to find a treasure and discover the hunt for it, whether it is the quest for gold in California, diamonds in Africa, the hunt for the pharaohs buried in the pyramids, the hunt to discover a cure for polio or yellow fever, the terracotta army buried with Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor of China, the search for the source of the Nile, the discovery of Neanderthal man… This topic is for you to imagine!  [Suggested by Walt Frederick]

Wednesday, August 31, 2017: Gloucester and the Sea. Gloucester has throughout four centuries cast its lot with the North Atlantic, remaining a maritime port for better or worse. The maritime culture of Cape Ann is the mix of a noble maritime heritage; ubiquitous sea influences that reach as far as the quarries behind Rockport and into the haunted tracks of Dogtown Common; seductive but capricious natural splendors; and untidy independence that repels some but converts other visitors into lifetime devotees. We plan to invite Chester Brigham, author of Gloucester’s Bargain with the Sea, to join us.  Read this or any other book about the maritime history of Gloucester. [Suggested by Richard Verrengia]

Tales from days in the Soviet Union

HOW WE CELEBRATED "INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY" IN THE USSR...

                                                  Peter and Paul Fortress, from across the Neva

Here are a couple of stories from the days when I served as Naval Attaché in the Soviet Union 1981-83.  

Women’s Day in Leningrad—Fats took the day off!

                We took the Midnight Red Arrow from Moscow to Leningrad, arriving on schedule at 8:25 a.m. A driver met us at the train station and drove us to the American Consulate, where we stowed our bags and jumped into our car, all set for a day of work.

            One of the things we did a lot of was "Order-of-Battle".  We had to report ships in port, including boats and ships that just moved around the canals and rivers of the USSR.  The information we provided was correlated with information from agents, from satellite imagery, and electronic intelligence intercept to maintain a picture of the Naval Order of Battle of the USSR.  This meant taking a lot of long, long walks in some pretty crappy, snowy places.          

One of our favorite walks was along the Neva River at Schmidt’s Bank, in Leningrad.  Here hundreds of boats and often warships and submarines tied up.  Many of the smaller, lighter draft boats were awaiting a schedule to move up the canals that cut across Russia. Here we could see these boats and ships, and Red Fleet ships, and also ships under construction in the many shipyards of Leningrad. 

Whenever we would take these walks, we tried to take along our cameras and collect photos of interesting things.  Photography in this area was forbidden, however.

            The KGB assigned an elderly “goon” that attachés named “Fats.”  He and some of his associates generally were around to follow us wherever we walked, or drove, and to make our job harder, or impossible.  They wore the red armbands of “Druzhniki,” or “concerned citizens.”  Sort of like elderly volunteers who operate as school crossing guards, except these were assigned to look after the foreign “spies.”  The Soviets considered all foreign diplomats spies—they hadn’t changed their attitude toward foreigners in centuries.

            One day, March the 8^th, 1983 to be exact, it was International Women’s Day.  Now, in fact, the Soviets didn’t give much of a hoot about women’s rights, except the right of old women to stand in the street all day long in the winter, smashing ice with a heavy iron rod.

            But this day, as we arrived to do our job of collecting intelligence in Leningrad, there was NO KGB.  They had the day off!

            I was traveling with my assistant, Pierce Crabtree,  a big, burly former Navy football player. With no KGB to bother us, we went wild photographing shipyards and ships and everything we could see.  We were driving a Soviet version of a Land Rover, called a “Niva.”  We thought this would be a great day to check out some radar installations near the Czars’ summer palace at Petrodvorets.  However, somewhere between Kipen’ and Ropsha, we got stuck in the snow. 

            If the KGB had been around, we would not have been able to get that far.  Now, free to travel, we had gone and gotten ourselves in trouble.  The snow was pretty deep.

Fortunately, along came a bus full of Russians.  The driver and some of the passengers got out and helped push us out of the snowbank. 

Canal in downtown St. Petersburg, near the Hermitage

The Day we took the head photographer to Leningrad.   There were many communist Africans in Moscow, but one day we took our leading enlisted photographer, a black Air Force Sergeant, to Leningrad (Now re-named St. Petersburg) with us.  He had processed thousands of rolls of film for us back at our Embassy, and we thought he would enjoy visiting this very interesting city in the north.  However, when the KGB saw us with a black man in our car, they went nuts.  They acted as if we had a secret weapon.

            They normally would follow our car with another car full of goons.  But this day, they had four cars, switching off amongst one another.  These were all Soviet Zhigulis, the Russian version of the Fiat, made in a huge factory built with the help of the Italian Fiat company in a city named Tolyatti (after Italian Communist Togliatti) several hundred miles southeast of Moscow.

            Often I would make notes about what I wanted to observe on our drive that day, and I would write these on water-soluble rice paper, which I could easily pop in my mouth if we should be apprehended. This special paper would dissolve at once.

            When, with the four cars of goons following us I thought we would get hauled out, I decided it was time to swallow my notes.  However, when you are scared, which I was, your mouth dries up so much that you can’t even dissolve the paper.

            We were driving next to one of the many canals that run through Leningrad, and since our surveillance was not in sight at the moment, I thought it would be a good time to stop and throw the mouthful of rice paper in the canal.  I think it was the Griboyedova Canal.

            Wrong!  As I should have suspected in icy, frozen Leningrad, there was just ice in the canal.  Foiled! My mouthful of paper just rested on the ice.

            At any rate, we never got apprehended.   The Sergeant had a good ride around town.

            I would make a lousy spy.

 

China's Ming Dynasty

History Book Club

Wednesday, February 22, 2017

China—Pick Your Dynasty!

Wednesday, February 22, 2017: Pick your favorite Chinese dynasty. Whether it’s Xia dynasty, Shang, Chou (Zhou), Qin, Han, Sui, Tang, or any of the others, you’ll learn Chinese history. [Suggested by Walt Frederick].

Keay, John, China, a History, London, UK: Harper Press, 2009.

            Thank you, Walt Frederick, for your very interesting approach to China. John Keay leads in to China, by starting with the China that exists today. New economic resurgence has swept over China, emphasizing some features, and air-brushing out others, for an audience both domestic and foreign.

             Gone are the cadres of farmers, marching militantly to work, the relentless propaganda, the little red books and the huge portraits of Chairman Mao Zedong.  It’s a new China, with lightning-fast rail service, new cities popping up, and bright young people filling up the lecture halls at MIT, 

Harvard, CalTech, Oxford and Tsinghua. And of course, in many, many ways, there’s the old China.

            As we delve into the history of China, we quickly learn how much we don’t know that we should.  How do you pronounce “Qin” dynasty or “Shaanxi” province? 

Ming Dynasty (1368 – 1644)

            I chose to go back in time, to 1368, which marked the beginning of a brilliant era for China, the Ming Dynasty. 

            Zhu Yuanzhang, a penniless orphan joined a rebel band, then quickly gained a leadership role. More and more joined and then the band, now an army, invaded and captured Nanjing in 1356. That would remain his base and stronghold for the next 40 years.

            Zhu was ugly and ignorant, but he was a good listener and a quick learner. He began a four-day battle with a neighboring warlord in 1363, and when he won, ever more armies and navies flocked to his side. By 1366 he had control over the whole Yangzi basin and had emerged as the obvious heir to the Yuan empire. In 1368 he made a formal declaration of his own dynasty, which would be called Ming, meaning brilliant or effulgent. In that year his forces entered Dadu, the capital of the previous emperor, Yuan Shundi, who had fled north to inner Mongolia. For the first time in centuries, China had a Chinese emperor. He renamed Dadu Beiping, a Pinyin rendering of “North Pacified”.

            By 1371 only Yunnan (adjacent to Myanmar) remained in Mongol hands.  In 1382 it was overrun, and when it was a bright 11-year-old Muslim boy was captured, castrated and renamed Zheng He. He became a favorite of the new emperor. Soon this Yunnanese Muslim eunuch would command China’s greatest maritime enterprise.

            Zhu Yuanzhang, the Ming Emperor, grew more and more paranoid and his rule became worse than the Yuan Mongols before him. Not a day would pass when there was not a mass execution, and frequently Zhu would witness a severe beating, perhaps to death, of some staff member. In 1393 a long-serving general offered a word of complaint and he was immediately executed.

            Zhu died in 1398 and was buried on a mountain near his capital of Nanjing. The empire sighed in relief.

            The new Emperor Yongle in 1403 announced that he was sending a fleet to the western ocean. Admiral Zheng He, the Muslim eunuch, would command China’s first armada. The first voyage sailed in 1405. In all, the Chinese made seven voyages, each lasting about two years, and all commanded by Zheng He. These voyages included 100 to 300 ships and some 27,000 men. Fifty or so ships, called “Treasure ships” were huge—three to five times the size of those sailed by Columbus or Vasco da Gama, and displacing 20,000 to 30,000 tons.

            This armada sailed down the China coast, visiting Champa (now Viet Nam), the Philippines, Malacca, Sumatra, into the Indian Ocean to Calicut in India, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Djofar (now part of Oman) and other ports in modern Kenya. People in this vast area saw Chinese power and mercantile excellence, but except for some conflicts in Viet Nam, there was no combat or attempt to conquer territory.

            At this time the Ming Court carried out a huge tribute enterprise, with land trains or caravans crossing from Herat, Samarkand, Burma, Korea and Tibet, one after another, bringing precious metals, jewels, spices, ostriches, elephants, rhinoceros, giraffes. They returned with silks, silver and paper money.

            All of this trade generated great respect and appreciation for the Chinese.

            In 1436 the Ming Zhengtong emperor ascended the throne. He was eight years old, and loved to play with soldiers. When he became 21 his tutor, Wang Zhen, a eunuch, became his head of security.

            In July 1449 Esen, the Mongol leader, launched a large-scale invasion of China. They crushed a poorly-supplied Chinese army just inside the Great Wall.

            Wang Zhen determined it was time for the young emperor to go to war.  Emperor Zhengtong appointed his half-brother as regent and with a hastily formed army of 500,000, with the eunuch as a field marshal, marched west to Datong, near the border with Mongolia in Shanxi province.

            The Chinese entered Datong with little opposition, but reports began to come in of fierce warfighting by the Mongols, with many Chinese deaths. After two days they abandoned the city and gave up the idea of invading Mongol territory. The army began a march back to Beijing, but became mired in heavy rain. The generals wanted to halt and send the Emperor back to Beijing for his safety, but Wang Zhen overruled them. The Minister of War, who was afraid of horses, kept falling off his horse.

            As the Chinese army camped at the post station of Tumu, Esen’s cavalry of about 20,000 descended upon the Chinese and killed many thousands, while many others escaped in disarray. All the generals were killed; Wang Zhen was killed by his own officers. Esen’s troops captured the Emperor and attempted to use him as ransom to invade Beijing, but the general in charge at Beijing rejected the offer, saying that the country was more important than an emperor’s life.  Esen kept Emperor Zhengtong for four years, then released him.

            That whole mess is called the Tumu incident.

            Reading about the Ming Dynasty it appears that eunuchs played a large part in government. At times they were forbidden to hold jobs, but often they ruled segments of the Imperial court with an iron hand.

            As the Ming Dynasty entered the 16^th century, there was a time when Chinese ports were closed to foreign trade, but there was much black market trade. Finally, China began to welcome trade from the Portuguese, the Dutch, English and Japanese.  The Portuguese built a base in what would become Hong Kong in 1514, and in 1557 obtained Macau nearby.  The British gained Hong Kong as a Crown Colony as a result of the Opium Wars during the Qing Dynasty in 1842.

            The Grand Canal of China, connecting Beijing with Hangzhou near Shanghai, 1100 miles long, was first built in the Fifth century B.C., but it was restored in the Ming Dynasty and was very heavily used to send rice and other grains and foodstuff north, and building materials south.      

            The Ming Dynasty began a slow decline in the second half of the 16^th century, until China was ripe for change to the Qing Dynasty in 1644. Like the Yuan Dynasty before it, at the beginning there were strong leaders and the country began to prosper, and toward the end, there were rebellions, many earthquakes and climate change which produced years of cold summers and poor crops. The people believed that the Ming court had lost the “Mandate of Heaven.”

                     

HISTORY BOOK CLUB TOPICS FOR 2017

Wednesday, March 29, 2017: What made America powerful? Was it our geography, size, natural resources, protection of two oceans, our choice of immigrants, our leaders? This is not intended to be a "feel good" topic. You are invited to lift up the carpet and examine "powerful". E.g.: The Spanish-American War....   [Suggested by Janos Posfai]

Wednesday, April 26, 2017: History of Class in America   We’ve often bragged that Americans started out resisting the class structure, but our Founding Fathers included men like Thomas Jefferson, owners of much land and slaves. At the same time, indentured servants arrived in young America, to fill the bottom rungs of society. [Suggested by Sam Coulbourn]

Wednesday, May 31, 2017: Famines in the World [Suggested by Linda Burkell and Walt Frederick]

Wednesday, June 28, 2017:  History of English/British Colonialism It started in the latter part of the 15^th Century with plantations in Ireland. Read how the United Kingdom grew to become the greatest Empire in the history of the world.  If you wish, home in on British slave trade, and how the U.K. colonized the New World, bringing slaves to grow sugar and cotton. Then Napoleonic Wars and Britain’s seizure of French Colonies. America and Canada.  Colonization of Asia in Hong Kong, Malaya, Australia, New Zealand, India, Burma. Africa, and more for you to discover. [Suggested by Richard Heuser]

Wednesday, July 26, 2017:euser]

 Treasure Hunts in History. This is your opportunity to find a treasure and discover the hunt for it, whether it is the quest for gold in California, diamonds in Africa, the hunt for the pharaohs buried in the pyramids, the hunt to discover a cure for polio or yellow fever, the terracotta army buried with Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor of China, the search for the source of the Nile, the discovery of Neanderthal man… This topic is for you to imagine!  [Suggested by Walt Frederick]

Wednesday, August 31, 2017: Gloucester and the Sea.  euser]

Gloucester has throughout four centuries cast its lot with the North Atlantic, remaining a maritime port for better or worse. The maritime culture of Cape Ann is the mix of a noble maritime heritage; ubiquitous sea influences that reach as far as the quarries behind Rockport and into the haunted tracks of Dogtown Common; seductive but capricious natural splendors; and untidy independence that repels some but converts other visitors into lifetime devotees. We plan to invite Chester Brigham, author of Gloucester’s Bargain with the Sea, to join us.  Read this or any other book about the maritime history of Gloucester. [Suggested by Richard Verrengia]