The Mother Tongue by Bryson

History Book Club

The History of Languages

Wednesday, June 27, 2018

Wednesday, June 27, 2018: The History of Languages. Can you understand the English spoken by Chaucer? [WHAN that Aprille with his shoures soote; The droghte  of Marche hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich  licour,]  Choose any language and learn how it grew from its ancient roots, how it absorbed other languages, how it spread, and its variations in use in the world today. Did you know that only one in 40 Italians spoke Italian in 1861?  What language is most widely spoken in the world today? How are languages changing in modern times? *[Suggested by Sam Coulbourn]

A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Bryson, Bill, The Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. 2001.

            Bill Bryson was born in Des Moines, IA in 1951. He attended Drake University but dropped out after two years and went backpacking in Europe. He got a job at a psychiatric hospital in England, where he met a nurse there. They married and returned to Des Moines, where he completed his bachelor’s degree at Drake. Then the couple returned to England where they have lived since.  He has written several books, worked as a journalist and educator.

            Bryson starts his story of the English language with the Cro-Magnons and their cave drawings, then came the Basques and their language Euskara, which pre-dates the Neolithic languages spoken in Stone Age Europe.

            Those were the days of the Indo-Europeans, but Bryson suggests that there may never have been such a language. At any rate, it branched into Celtic, Germanic, Greek, Indo-Iranian, Slavonic and Thraco-Illyrian, which further branched to Latin, Faroese, Parthian, Armenian, Hindi, Lithuanian, Sanskrit and Portuguese.

            From the Germanic branch came English, Frisian, Flemish, and Dutch. He devotes a chapter to the First Thousand Years, which I think is the heart of the story of the English language.

            Today in Schleswig-Holstein, where Germany connects to Denmark, even today you can hear people talking in what sounds like a lost dialect of English. “Veather ist cold” and “What ist de clock?” According to a professor of German at nearby Kiel University, this is very close to the way people spoke in Britain 1000 years ago. This area of Germany, called Angeln, was once the home of the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes who crossed the North Sea to displace the native Celts.

            Nearby, in marshy northern Holland and western Germany live a group whose dialect is even more closely related to English. These are the Frisians.  In about 450 A.D., following the withdrawal of Roman troops from Britain, these Angles and Frisians, as well as Saxons and Jutes, began an exodus to England. They dominated most of the British Isles, except for Wales, Scotland and Cornwall, which remained Celtic strongholds.

            Although the new nation was dominated by the Saxons, it became known as England, after the Angles. These early tribes were functionally illiterate, so there is no written account of this period.

            It must have been a blow to the Celts, overrun by primitive, unlettered warriors, because they were far more literate, sophisticated people.

            For the next several centuries, what was to become the English language grew, swallowing up Celtic, Angle, Saxon languages, and then adding Norman, and French… then discarding loads of words, but steadily adding Latin, French and Scandinavian words. Shakespeare came along and single-handedly added thousands of words, like: barefaced, critical, leapfrog, monumental, castigate, majestic, obscene, frugal, radiance, dwindle, and many more.  Other bright lights of England, like Ben Jonson, Thomas More and Isaac Newton, added more.

            At this point Bryson notes how many languages have similar words, like bruder in German, biradar in Farsi, bhrata in Sanskrit, bhrathair in Gaelic, all meaning brother in English.

            Over 300 million people speak English in some fashion, and it seems as if all the rest of the world wish they spoke English. English has invaded other languages mercilessly.  For years the French resisted introduction of English words into their language, but no more.  There are more students of English in China than there are people in the United States.

            English is richer in vocabulary –the Oxford English Dictionary lists 650,000 words. English speakers have 200,000 words in common use; German, 184,000 and French 100,000.

            English is more flexible than other popular languages.  It is not so rigid in word ordering.

            And, English is comparatively simple to spell.  There are fewer consonantal clusters, singsong tonal variations and it is generally free of gender.

            Germans talk about ein image problem or das Cash Flow, Austrians eat Big Mäcs, Japanese spread a blanket and have a pikunikku, drink kohi (coffee) or miruku (milk), speak through a maiku (microphone), shop in a depaato (department store), and put on meeku (make-up). Poles watch telewizja and French shop at le drugstore.

            Some Americans today bemoan the fact that English is becoming extinct, in danger of being crowded out by millions who speak Spanish, or Chinese. They have sought to enact legislation declaring English the official language of the U.S.A.

            Bryson warns that the danger of another language crowding out English is not the real problem.  More and more Americans show that they are unable to grow a useful vocabulary, use educated grammar and spelling, or express themselves intelligently.   If you use Facebook or other such social media, note when a popular topic comes up for wide discussion  and many chime in the comment: How many comments reflect a low level of fluency in what must be the native language of people?

            Author Bryson ends his book with his greatest worry about the future of English…not that the various strands will drift apart, but that they will grow indistinguishable.  What a sad loss that would be.

           

Old World Language Family Tree

           

           

           

* MORE HINTS: The languages of Africa are divided into six major language families: Afroasiatic languages are spread throughout Western Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa and parts of the Sahel. Austronesian languages are spoken in Madagascar.

North American languages include those spoken in Canada and the United States while those of Mexico belong to Meso-America. When the Europeans came to North America there were perhaps 300 to 400 languages spoken by several million native people.

           

           

-END-

HISTORY BOOK CLUB TOPICS FOR 2018

Wednesday, July 25, 2018:  Immigration to America. How did we all get here?  Read about the history of immigration, at any stage – from first settlers to the great immigration waves of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries; victims of the Irish Potato famine, Jews fleeing persecution in Europe, Europeans suffering poverty in their countries, Africans brought here as slaves, Chinese brought here to build railroads; Fugitives of war everywhere; Mexicans and Central Americans coming to pick crops. Read about immigration policies and national drives to keep out or encourage immigration. [Suggested by Walt Frederick.]

Joe McCarthy

Wednesday, August 29, 2018.  Fighting the U.S. Constitution.  Times and events when the Americans and even Presidents went against the freedoms in our Constitution. E, g, Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, Indian Removal Act under Jackson, Mexican American War, suspension of Habeas Corpus under Lincoln, Red Scare in 1920, McCarthyism in 1950’s, and Patriot Act 2001.  [Suggested by William Tobin]

Wednesday, September 26:  Religion and Politics in America. Religious impact in American political events. E.g.: Puritan Exceptionalism, justification of Slavery through the Bible, Abolition Movement, treatment of Native American Christianization movement, Justification of Imperialism’s Christianization mission. [Suggested by William Tobin]

Massachusetts 54^th Infantry Regiment (Afro-American) at Fort Wagner, SC

Wednesday, October 24, 2018.  (vice Oct. 31):  African American Warriors and their place in American History. From the American Revolution, during the Civil War to Korean War. E.g.: Contraband to Massachusetts 54th, Buffalo Soldiers and Native American Wars, Spanish American War and Truth about Battle of San Juan Hill, World War I and use of African American soldiers with French combat troops, World War II and Segregated all African American combat units: Armor, Transport, Tuskegee Airmen, Desegregation and Korean War.  [Suggested by William Tobin]

Wednesday, November 28, 2018: Guns in American History. E.g. American Revolution and the Minutemen; Going West with new technology: six guns, repeating rifles, Twentieth Century automatic weapons after World War I, : pistols, rifles, Tommy guns, The St. Valentine’s Massacres of 1929 and 2018. Control vs. freedom of gun use. and Machine Gun laws, mass shootings in America: rifles, pistols, military style weapons, Guns laws in 21st century America. [Suggested by William Tobin]

December 2018: No meeting.

Wednesday, January 30, 2019: Horses in History. The clattering of hooves pierced the dark stillness of the Austrian night. It is the fall of 1855. The gilded Ambruster Dress Carriage, a beautiful vehicle trimmed in glimmering black paint and shiny gold leaf showed that Emperor Franz Joseph was arriving. Read any book about horses, from Caligula to Triple Crown, from Richard III to Pony Express, from mythology (Pegasus) to literature (Arabian Nights) or music (Von Suppé’s Light Cavalry Overture), from battle tactics (Genghis Kahn, Templars, conquistadors, light cavalry of Napoleon) to transportation and military logistics, from money making business of breeding to prestige and rivalry of kings and sheikhs, from fundamental needs in agriculture to the vanity of Derby fashion. [Suggested by Janos Posfai]

Propaganda: How can we detect it?

History Book Club

A History of Public Relations

Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Wednesday, May 30, 2018:  A History of Public Relations. Managing the news, propaganda, image-building. Hitler’s Joseph Goebbels. Ancient persuasive techniques. How information, false. Tainted or factual, can be used to elect leaders, start wars, and more. [Suggested by Sam Coulbourn]

A HISTORY OF PROPAGANDA

Taylor, Philip M., Munitions of the Mind: A history of propaganda from the ancient world the present era. Third Edition. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2003.

            Philip Taylor has painted the picture of propaganda from the very earliest days of recorded history, because the idea of using words and images to shape the minds of countrymen, enemies or allies has been around that long. 

            Propaganda often conveys the idea of dirty tricks, or hidden persuaders or mind manipulators….  Brain washing, or Orwellian Big Brother.

            Propaganda, however, is not necessarily bad.   It is the intention behind it which needs scrutiny. Propaganda forces us to think and do things we might not otherwise have done. It distorts our view of the world. It thickens the fog of war.  Propaganda becomes the enemy of independent thought.

            We are all propagandists to a degree, just as we are all recipients of propaganda. Taylor describes the picture of multifaceted images as “the glass onion.”

            The Vatican gave us the word propaganda in the 17^th century, and it simply means “propagation” in Latin.  Faced with Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation, the Roman Catholic church established an organization “The Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith.”, or propaganda fidei.

            I just slipped through Taylor’s history up until World War II.  It appears that propaganda, as a weapon of warfare really came of age at this time.

  

Crowds greet Hitler with "Heil"

            Hitler and the Nazis developed it to its lethal extreme. Hitler had learned the importance of controlling the “truth” in war and peace.  He mapped out his plans for this in Mein Kampf, and he learned well from his failures in the 1920s, so when he finally rose to power in 1933 he was ready for action. 

            In Mein Kampf Hitler laid out his plans.  He hated the post-World War I German Flag, so he designed his own black and red and white flag with the hooked crosses or swastika at its center. He developed the “Heil Hitler” salute as he created the concept of loyalty not only to the Reich, but to the Nazi party and to its leader.

            He also stage managed huge parades and mass demonstrations, torchlight parades with thousands marching precisely, and shouting party slogans—Blut und Boden (Blood and Soil).

            Coupled with all of this was to play on the fears and suspicions of the people.  Knowing that many in Germany were suspicious of Jews, he exploited this, and we all know how this ended with the extermination of some 6,000.000 Jews.

            Hitler also knew how to lie and taught in his book how to tell a really big lie, and keep telling it, relying upon the gullible masses to accept it. “The greater the lie, the more effective it is as a weapon,” he wrote.

            Hitler avoided trying to convince the influential people and intellectuals. He aimed his propaganda at the uneducated masses. 

             “Toward whom must propaganda be directed,” he asked, “toward the scientific intelligentsia or toward the uneducated masses?” His answer was, “It must always and exclusively be directed toward the masses. The teachability of the great masses is very limited, their understanding small, and their memory short.

Left to right, Hitler, Goering, Goebbels and Hess

            Hitler’s man for propaganda was Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945), and Goebbels was a master orator and propagandist, expert in making Hitler larger than life to the German people.      

    

            Goebbels was equally expert in shaping “reality” for enemies and allies. He received unlimited funds to carry out his work of stirring up hatred, distrust and fear. He combined propaganda with terror, he used threats and bribes, arranging kidnappings and beatings, as the Nazis prepared the ground in Austria and the Sudetenland for Anschluss.

            The Nazis did the same in France, and all the other countries they conquered. They coopted local leaders to become their visible enforcers. In Norway, their “man” was Vidkun Quisling, and for the rest of time, “Quisling” will mean a collaborator and traitor.

            The following is from "What Is Propaganda?" by Ralph D. Casey, published in July 1944 by the American Historical Association. It gives an example of Goebbels’ work:

            A few Londoners are drinking ale in their neighborhood pub. The time is July 1940. The French have signed Hitler’s armistice terms, but Britain is still holding out. The pub keeper turns the dials of the tavern radio to tune in on “Lord Haw-Haw,” the Berlin broadcaster, and the voice booms out:

“England is ripe for invasion. ... You might as well expect help from an army of mastodons as from the United States. ... You are on a doomed ship. ... Whether or not the people of Britain want to see their fields turned into graveyards and their cities into tombs is a matter for themselves and Mr. Churchill. Perhaps if the British people could speak, they would ask for peace. But since the official voice of England asks not for peace but for destruction, it is destruction we must provide.”

            And also: An American sits at home tinkering with his short-wave set and he picks up an English-language broadcast beamed to North America from Germany.

“The German government and the German people have only the friendliest of feelings for the United States, the home of so^. many American citizens of German descent.” The words of the radio speaker are honeyed words. “Let it be said for once and all,” the broadcaster continues, “that a German victory in this war is no threat to English democracy—and certainly not to American democracy.”

The propaganda voice of appeasement. Here is the strategy of attempting to hypnotize a people with an assertion of the “peaceful intentions” of the Nazi war machine.

             

            As for using propaganda, the leaders of the Soviet Union were also expert at all aspects of this art. In totalitarian states, it’s what you expect.  

            Many years after World War II (over 30) I experienced Soviet propaganda during my two-year tour of duty in Moscow.  I had been reading Pravda and other Soviet newspapers and listening to Radio Moscow for years as I studied Russian, and I felt I had a real appreciation for the stultifying effect of this on the Russian people.  Of course, it wasn’t a fair judgement for me, because I always had other sources of information available to me. It was interesting to see how Soviet citizens were able to read between the lines in their papers.

            Great Britain, of course, was not a totalitarian country, but Taylor describes the expertise of the British at white and black propaganda, at censorship, and the skill of leaders like Winston Churchill in their speeches, their writings, and all the other methods they used to fight and win this war.

            With Britain at war with Nazi Germany, Churchill tried desperately to enlist the United States of America or his side, but we had a strong vein of isolationism in our country. President Franklin D. Roosevelt saw that we needed to assist our European allies, but several powerful Republican Senators and many voters were bitterly opposed to our intervention in Europe’s war.  When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, isolationism became unpopular, and our government leaped into action with overt and covert propaganda, or as some of it was called, “information”.

            When we finally went to war, after Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Hollywood swung into action, producing hundreds of documentaries, cartoons and feature-length films that carried American propaganda themes, to rally Americans, and to shape opinions of other viewers, wherever the films were shown.

            Here we are today with a daily torrent of information and misinformation sprayed at us in television broadcasts, print media, on-line publications and social media, all aimed at influencing us to buy this or vote for or against this plan or this person.

            We hear and see daily information about our government in action all over the world. We hear about Robert Mueller, pursuing an investigation into possible Russian collusion with Donald Trump’s campaign for President, and we see Trump’s efforts to discredit the law enforcement agencies.

            We hear and see that the nuclear deal with Iran was bad and that now the United States has withdrawn from it.

            We think we have an understanding of the science of Global Warming, and now the United States has withdrawn from a world-wide effort to take the first steps to mollify the effects of it.

            We are faced with a new and very aggressive member of the club of nuclear armed nations, and now we see our President engaged in a high-stakes exercise to limit that, with the not quietly veiled threat of pre-emptive strike against that country.

            Our President calls news reports from papers and television networks that we have generally considered reliable as “fake news”.

            What can we believe? How can we discern propaganda right in our face?  

            Quoting again from "What Is Propaganda?" by Ralph D. Casey in 1944 is this handy guide:

            l. Is it really propaganda? Is some individual or group consciously trying to influence opinion and action? Who? For what purpose?

            2. Is it true? Does a comparison of independent reports show that the facts are accurate? Does such a comparison show that the suggestions made are soundly based?

            There are other tests that can be applied by the thinking citizen:

            a. Which fact or set of facts in a piece of promotion are important and relevant? Which are irrelevant?

            b. If some individual or group is trying to influence opinion and action, is the effort selfish or is it unselfish?

            c. Will action resulting from the propaganda benefit the individual or group responsible for it?

            d. Or will it benefit those who act upon the suggestion given in the propaganda? Or will it benefit both?

            e. What is likely to be the effect of the action or of the opinion that the propaganda is trying to set in motion?

            All these points boil down to some very simple questions: What is the source of the propaganda? What is its authority? What purposes prompted it? Whom will it benefit? What does it really say?

-END-

HISTORY BOOK CLUB TOPICS FOR 2018

Languages of Italy

Wednesday, June 27, 2018: The History of Language. Can you understand the English spoken by Chaucer? [WHAN that Aprille with his shoures soote; The droghte  of Marche hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich  licour,]  Choose any language and learn how it grew from its ancient roots, how it absorbed other languages, how it spread, and its variations in use in the world today. Did you know that only one in 40 Italians spoke Italian in 1861?  What language is most widely spoken in the world today? How are languages changing in modern times? [Suggested by Sam Coulbourn]

MORE HINTS: The languages of Africa are divided into six major language families: Afroasiatic languages are spread throughout Western Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa and parts of the Sahel. Austronesian languages are spoken in Madagascar.

North American languages include those spoken in Canada and the United States while those of Mexico belong to Meso-America. When the Europeans came to North America there were perhaps 300 to 400 languages spoken by several million native people.

Wednesday, July 25, 2018:  Immigration to America. How did we all get here?  Read about the history of immigration, at any stage – from first settlers to the great immigration waves of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries; victims of the Irish Potato famine, Jews fleeing persecution in Europe, Europeans suffering poverty in their countries, Africans brought here as slaves, Chinese brought here to build railroads; Fugitives of war everywhere; Mexicans and Central Americans coming to pick crops. Read about immigration policies and national drives to keep out or encourage immigration. [Suggested by Walt Frederick.]

Wednesday, August 29, 2018.  Fighting the U.S. Constitution.  Times and events when the Americans and even Presidents went against the freedoms in our Constitution. E, g, Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, Indian Removal Act under Jackson, Mexican American War, suspension of Habeas Corpus under Lincoln, Red Scare in 1920, McCarthyism in 1950’s, and Patriot Act 2001.  [Suggested by William Tobin]

Wednesday, September 26:  Religion and Politics in America. Religious impact in American political events. E.g.: Puritan Exceptionalism, justification of Slavery through the Bible, Abolition Movement, treatment of Native American Christianization movement, Justification of Imperialism’s Christianization mission. [Suggested by William Tobin]

Massachusetts 54^th Infantry Regiment (Afro-American) at Fort Wagner, SC

Wednesday, October 24, 2018.  (vice Oct. 31):  African American Warriors and their place in American History. From the American Revolution, during the Civil War to Korean War. E.g.: Contraband to Massachusetts 54th, Buffalo Soldiers and Native American Wars, Spanish American War and Truth about Battle of San Juan Hill, World War I and use of African American soldiers with French combat troops, World War II and Segregated all African American combat units: Armor, Transport, Tuskegee Airmen, Desegregation and Korean War.  [Suggested by William Tobin]

Wednesday, November 28, 2018: Guns in American History. E.g. American Revolution and the Minutemen; Going West with new technology: six guns, repeating rifles, Twentieth Century automatic weapons after World War I, : pistols, rifles, Tommy guns, The St. Valentine’s Massacres of 1929 and 2018. Control vs. freedom of gun use. and Machine Gun laws, mass shootings in America: rifles, pistols, military style weapons, Guns laws in 21st century America. [Suggested by William Tobin]

December 2018: No meeting.

·          

Yangtze River Patrol

History Book Club

The U.S. Navy in Asia

Wednesday, March 28. 2018

Wednesday, March 28, 2018:  The U.S. Navy in Asia. The Asiatic Squadron. The Yangtze Patrol. Patrolling the Philippine Islands, “China Sailors”, World War II, The Seventh Fleet. [Suggested by Walt Frederick]

Tolley, RADM Kemp; Yangtze Patrol: The U.S. Navy in China, Annapolis, MD: Bluejacket Books, U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1971

            Kemp Tolley spins out the sea stories one after another as be tells the story of the United States Navy in China for a century, from 1854 to 1946.

            China in the 19^th century was really the wild west, and European governments staked out territory all over China, paying off local officials and then conducting trade from one end of the country to the other.  Before the age of rails, trade moved by the rivers, as it had for centuries.

            China, a land whose culture was flourishing long before these Europeans, was now in effect a colony of European nations, a humiliating condition for a proud people.

            As European nations worked out treaties with Chinese officials, their navies followed, and they rented out storage sheds (godowns) and built housing and clubs and playing fields for the crews, and even horse race tracks.

            Where our American businessmen and missionaries went, the Navy followed, with small, shallow draft gunboats that could sail up the Yangtze River from Shanghai all the way to Chungking, 1700 miles inland.

            Shanghai, (Above the Sea) on the coast, was built on the mouth of the Whangpoo River, and in the middle of the 19^th century there were 3,000,000 Chinese and some 50,000 Europeans and Americans living there.

            Just upstream was Chinkyiang (to Pacify the River), the first treaty port on what foreigners called the Yangtze, but Chinese called this marvelous waterway various names at different locations.

            Next upstream was Nanking (now Nanjing) (Southern capital), then Wuhu, and next Kiukiang (Nine rivers meeting at one place), now called Jiujiang,

            Next was Hankow (now Wuhan) (At the mouth of the Han river), 600 miles inland. Then Shasi (now Shashi) (The market on the sand), and then Changsha (Sand Spit), actually 85 miles from the Yangtze.

            Next upstream was I Chang (now Yichang) (Can be prosperous), 400 miles upstream of Hankow,1000 miles from the mouth.

            Finally, deep in the province of Szechwan, and above beautiful but treacherous gorges which made river traffic dangerous, was Chungking (now Chongqing) (Happy Again), the World War II headquarters of Chiang Kai Shek and his Nationalist Army.

Map of Yangtze River in China

            American merchantmen beat a path to China with clipper ships in the early 1800s, and our government soon began to send U.S. Navy ships over to protect U.S. interests and American citizens.  The industrial revolution urged Americans to find new markets, there was brisk business in shipping tea and carrying Chinese coolies to America to work on railroads and gold mines. With some five million tons of sailing merchantmen, America was becoming as powerful as England on the high seas.

            China in those days was filthy, smelly and loaded with diseases.  Each city and town had its taotai, who was the head man, connected loosely at least to Peking and the Emperor. The local taotai had the authority to punish anyone, even to execute them. This man worked in concert with a cast of characters who could get anything for you, for a price.

            There were occasional revolutions, uprisings and riots here and there.  There were local firebrands who would periodically start trouble with the foreigners, and the navy gunboats would show up, fire some rounds into the crowd, perhaps land a platoon of Marines, and quiet things down.

            American Navy activity began with shallow draft gunboats, because that was all that could sail over the shallow parts of the river. These boats had side paddle wheels, and when they appeared in various ports the Chinese were thrilled because they had not often seen boats belching smoke before. 

            It was in 1853 when Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay in Japan and demanded that the Japanese grant America the privilege of entering Japan to conduct trade.  We had already made arrangements up and down the coast of China, and this opened up Japan to the western world.  Britain, Russia, France and Holland followed soon after.

            Perry often sailed into Shanghai, but he didn’t like China.  It was dirty and disorganized, there was graft and corruption.  In Japan, everything was clean and orderly.

            I joined the Navy in 1953, just a few years after the last “River rat” had come home from duty in China, and we heard many tales of these men because it was a world of wonder for a sailor. The gunboats spent much time in port, so there was plenty of time for sailors to explore the Chinese cities on the Yangtze. Wherever there were sailors, there were bars and girls, and some men took up life ashore with a Chinese girl.  Aboard ship they could hire boys to cook their breakfast, and to do their chores. 

            When the Yangtze patrol started in the middle of the 19^th century, it was different. Sailors arose at the firing of a reveille gun at sunrise, and went up on deck to begin holystoning, which involved using a large stone attached to a mop handle to scrub the teak decks until they were shining. Then at four bells, 8 o’clock they had breakfast, which included spirits of one-third of a half pint. Then the men washed up and got on their uniforms for inspection, at 10 a.m. At noon was dinner, with more grog, and then work al afternoon.

CDR Kemp Tolley (1908-2000)

            When Tolley gets to the early 1930s you sense that he is not writing history any longer but telling his own story on the Yangtze Patrol.  There are the sailors with the Russian girl friend back in Shanghai, the young naval officers sweating out operating a gunboat in the Yangtze with only six inches of water under the keel, or heading up into the gorges toward Chungking against raging currents, offloading coal to reduce the draft, hiring coolies in a junk to carry the excess coal… or trying to manage paying the crew and purchasing food and supplies with a collection of Chinese yuan, British pounds, Mexican silver,  and American greenbacks and goldbacks.

            In between, there’s the occasional riot or revolution, sandwiched with elegant little parties with officers and their ladies, and businessmen and wives, from Britain, France, Holland, Russia, Japan and Germany. There’s wheeling and dealing, with a whole string of shady characters, Chinese and foreign.

            Tolley’s detailed account of the voyage of USS Palos up the Yangtze to Chungking in 1934, pitting her old, coal-fired boilers and creaking hull against roaring, rock-strewn  rapids is a tale of marvelous seamanship, facing danger that had wrecked many ships and killed thousands.
   
            The end really came slowly for the Yangtze River Patrol, but Tolley reports the Japanese attack on USS Panay in 1938 in vivid detail. The attack was a monumental screwup by the Japanese, and it showed terribly poor communication between the otherwise efficient Imperial Japanese Navy and Army.  They didn't want to get America in their war just yet.  That was to come in 1941.

           

            I first sailed into Hong Kong in 1958, and much of what one reads of life along the Yangtze River was still lurking in the shadows: the little Chinese boys who, if a sailor tossed a Hong Kong dollah (worth 10 cents) into the water near the ship, would dive in and collect it.  There was the No Squeak Shoe Company, where sailors would have shoes made to order during a week in port--- shoes that would dissolve in salt water after leaving port.   And Mary Soo, a venerable legend, with an unknown number of women operating out of small sampans, who would paint the hulls of weather-beaten U.S. Navy ships in return for all the garbage from the galley…  And the chief petty officers or sailors who were especially skilled at cumshaw, and could arrange for little men to come aboard and repair a sheet metal ventilator for a can of ham…. and always, the sleazy, shady characters who could get you just about anything, for a few HK dollars.

            This book is truly a delightful story.

           

Mary Soo's sampan, 1957

S.W. Coulbourn

HISTORY BOOK CLUB TOPICS FOR 2018

Wednesday, April 25, 2018:  A look at the world and times of Jane Austen. Rockport Public Library is celebrating “Austen in April”.  Read about the life of Austen, or focus upon England in the early 1800s, the Royal Navy at that time, the gentle English world Jane lived in. Feel free to read Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, or any of her novels to gather a sense of Jane and her world. [Suggested by Christiann Guibeau]

Wednesday, May 30, 2018:  A History of Public Relations. Managing the news, propaganda, image-building. Hitler’s Joseph Goebbels. Ancient persuasive techniques. How information, false. Tainted or factual, can be used to elect leaders, start wars, and more. [Suggested by Sam Coulbourn]

Wednesday, June 27, 2018: The History of Language. Can you understand the English spoken by Chaucer? [WHAN that Aprille with his shoures soote; The droghte  of Marche hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich  licour,]  Choose any language and learn how it grew from its ancient roots, how it absorbed other languages, how it spread, and its variations in use in the world today. Did you know that only one in 40 Italians spoke Italian in 1861?  What language is most widely spoken in the world today? How are languages changing in modern times? [Suggested by Sam Coulbourn]

Wednesday, July 25, 2018:  Immigration to America. How did we all get here?  Read about the history of immigration, at any stage – from first settlers to the great immigration waves of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries; victims of the Irish Potato famine, Jews fleeing persecution in Europe, Europeans suffering poverty in their countries, Africans brought here as slaves, Chinese brought here to build railroads; Fugitives of war everywhere; Mexicans and Central Americans coming to pick crops. Read about immigration policies and national drives to keep out or encourage immigration. [Suggested by Walt Frederick.]

Wednesday, August 29, 2018.  Fighting the U.S. Constitution.  Times and events when the Americans and even Presidents went against the freedoms in our Constitution. E, g, Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, Indian Removal Act under Jackson, Mexican American War, suspension of Habeas Corpus under Lincoln, Red Scare in 1920, McCarthyism in 1950’s, and Patriot Act 2001.  [Suggested by William Tobin]

Wednesday, September 26:  Religion and Politics in America. Religious impact in American political events. E.g.: Puritan Exceptionalism, justification of Slavery through the Bible, Abolition Movement, treatment of Native American Christianization movement, Justification of Imperialism’s Christianization mission. [Suggested by William Tobin]

Massachusetts 54^th Infantry Regiment (Afro-American) at Fort Wagner

Wednesday, October 24, 2018.  (vice Oct. 31):  African American Warriors and their place in American History. From the American Revolution, during the Civil War to Korean War. E.g.: Contraband to Massachusetts 54th, Buffalo Soldiers and Native American Wars, Spanish American War and Truth about Battle of San Juan Hill, World War I and use of African American soldiers with French combat troops, World War II and Segregated all African American combat units: Armor, Transport, Tuskegee Airmen, Desegregation and Korean War.  [Suggested by William Tobin]

Wednesday, November 28, 2018: Guns in American History. E.g. American Revolution and the Minutemen; Going West with new technology: six guns, repeating rifles, Twentieth Century automatic weapons after World War I, : pistols, rifles, Tommy guns, The St. Valentine’s Massacres of 1929 and 2018. Control vs. freedom of gun use. and Machine Gun laws, mass shootings in America: rifles, pistols, military style weapons, Guns laws in 21st century America. [Suggested by William Tobin]

December 2018: No meeting.