tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/military-history-11481/articlesMilitary history – The Conversation2024-03-14T16:25:45Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2256252024-03-14T16:25:45Z2024-03-14T16:25:45ZUkraine war: a warning for Kyiv’s western allies from the failed Polish uprising of 1830-31<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581600/original/file-20240313-26-eed233.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C3%2C1016%2C678&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Polish forces triumphed over a larger Russian force at the Battle of Stoczek, February 1831.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Maciej Szczepańczyk/Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/us-preparing-new-weapons-package-ukraine-officials-2024-03-12/">has been reported</a> that the US president, Joe Biden, has managed to scrape together US$300 million (£235 million) as an emergency measure to supply the Ukraine military with at least some ammunition as it struggles to hold the line against better-supplied Russian forces. </p>
<p>The news should stand as a reminder of just how urgent the situation is for Ukraine, which is begging its western allies to stand firm and maintain the levels of support that had given its army the edge over the invaders in the summer of 2022. After a few months of significant successes on the battlefield, growing shortages of weaponry stymied Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive in the late spring of 2023. The conflict has developed into a <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-the-west-is-at-a-crossroads-double-down-on-aid-to-kyiv-accept-a-compromise-deal-or-face-humiliation-by-russia-223747">war of attrition</a>, giving Russia – which has a far larger population from which to recruit – the advantage if things don’t change soon.</p>
<p>There are valuable parallels to be had by considering the Polish uprising of 1830-1831. On <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/November-Insurrection">November 19 1830</a>, Polish insurgents rose to free their nation from the sovereignty of the autocratic Russian tsar, Nicholas I. This was not simply a nationalist uprising. As with the current war in Ukraine, ideological principles were at stake with implications for all of Europe. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-the-west-is-at-a-crossroads-double-down-on-aid-to-kyiv-accept-a-compromise-deal-or-face-humiliation-by-russia-223747">Ukraine war: the west is at a crossroads – double down on aid to Kyiv, accept a compromise deal, or face humiliation by Russia</a>
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<p>The officer cadets who led the revolt had been outraged by the tsar’s suggestion that Polish troops might be used to suppress <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Revolutions-of-1830">liberal revolutions</a> in France and Belgium. Poland itself was partitioned between Russia, Austria and Prussia. </p>
<p>Russia’s share, the Congress Kingdom of Poland, was technically a constitutional monarchy, with a liberal constitution: the <a href="https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldhistory2/chapter/the-napoleonic-code/#:%7E:text=The%201804%20Napoleonic%20Code%2C%20which,secular%20character%20of%20the%20state.">Napoleonic Code</a>, a free press and an elected assembly (the Sejm). </p>
<p>Yet the tsar held supreme power – he could dissolve the Sejm, veto legislation and send Polish troops to crush foreign revolutions. Nicholas’s own contempt for constitutional government manifested itself in the growth of an oppressive police state. The Poles rose in defence of their liberties.</p>
<p>As with Ukraine in 2022, liberal sentiment across Europe quickly rallied to their cause and <a href="https://www.porta-polonica.de/en/atlas-of-remembrance-places/german-polish-enthusiasm-1830">support for the Polish</a> was widespread. </p>
<p>The military history of the war also offers instructive parallels with the current war in Ukraine. The tsar’s determination to crush the insurrection and impose his will on the Poles in 1830 is a reminder of how deeply-rooted Russia’s <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/09/08/etched-in-stone-russian-strategic-culture-and-future-of-transatlantic-security-pub-82657">strategic goals</a> in eastern Europe are. </p>
<p>It is, therefore, most unlikely that the current autocrat in the Kremlin – who has often <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-rues-soviet-collapse-demise-historical-russia-2021-12-12/">lamented the loss of empire</a> with the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s – will be sated with minor territorial gains in Ukraine. The resistance offered by the Poles, on the other hand, was redolent of the early successes won by Ukrainian arms in 2022.</p>
<h2>David v Goliath</h2>
<p>The odds seemed stacked heavily in Russia’s favour. A Polish army of 40,000 faced an invading Russian force of 120,000. Yet, as accounts by participants such as the Polish cavalryman <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/History_of_the_Late_Polish_Revolution.html?id=QEQCAAAAYAAJ&redir_esc=y">Joseph Hordynski</a> reveal, the skill and professionalism of Polish soldiers was enough to stall the Russian advance. </p>
<p>At battles such as <a href="https://securityanddefence.pl/The-canon-provider-starts-his-career-General-Jozef-Dwernicki-and-the-cavalry-battle,103157,0,2.html">Stoczek</a>, (February 14 1831), <a href="https://dbpedia.org/page/Battle_of_Bia%C5%82o%C5%82%C4%99ka">Białołęka </a>(February 24-25 1831) and <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/60867/pg60867-images.html#CHAPTER_XIII">Debe-Wielke</a> (March 30 1831) the Poles either defeated the Russians or fought them to a standstill. </p>
<p>Hordynski describes effective use of <a href="https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA528264.pdf">combined arms tactics</a>, skilful use of terrain, feigned retreats and ambushes. Russian forces seemed ponderous and uncoordinated in comparison, again echoing the <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-ill-fated-invasion-ukraine-lessons-modern-warfare">battlefields of 2022</a>. </p>
<p>In another parallel with the current conflict in Ukraine, widespread popular support fuelled Polish resistance. This extended even to areas outside Congress Poland, such as Lithuania, where <a href="http://museum.by/en/node/58511">Countess Emilia Plater</a> led insurgent forces against the Russians. Then, as now, the Russians faced attacks <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/ukrainian-attacks-within-russia-challenge-putins-war-narrative">in areas they had thought secure</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Painting of Emilia Plater in a skirmish at Šiauliai by Wojciech Kossak." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581610/original/file-20240313-20-aaibav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581610/original/file-20240313-20-aaibav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581610/original/file-20240313-20-aaibav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581610/original/file-20240313-20-aaibav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581610/original/file-20240313-20-aaibav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581610/original/file-20240313-20-aaibav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581610/original/file-20240313-20-aaibav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lithuanian resistance fighter Countess Emilia Plater led a small military unit during the uprising – she is now a national heroine in Poland and Lithuania.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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<p>And yet the Polish uprising was crushed within a year. It is the circumstances of that defeat that perhaps demand the most scrutiny at this moment, as the war in Ukraine settles into a relentless attritional struggle, where Russia’s material advantages threaten to overwhelm Ukraine. </p>
<p>The Russian military performance improved in 1831, and they won an important victory at <a href="https://dbpedia.org/page/Battle_of_Ostro%C5%82%C4%99ka_(1831)">Ostrołęka</a>, (May 16 1831). The resolve of Polish leadership wavered; General Józef Chłopicki and his successor General Jan Skrzynecki favoured reaching a negotiated settlement with the tsar. </p>
<p>While Polish battlefield tactics were bold, their national strategy was defensive and conciliatory. The uprising lost its impetus. By September 1831, the Russians had closed on Warsaw. The defending army withdrew, finally crossing into Prussia in defeat. </p>
<h2>Waning support</h2>
<p>The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/zelenskyy-rejects-talks-with-putin-he-already-demonstrated-dialogue-format-in-port-of-odesa/ar-BB1jLaWb">showing no such inclination towards a negotiated peace</a> that would, as in 1831, effectively equate to a Russian victory.</p>
<p>Yet there is another aspect of Poland’s defeat that suggests troubling parallels. The widespread popular sentiment in support of the uprising across Europe did not result in any meaningful material aid for the Polish cause. The preoccupations of domestic politics and narrow national self-interest combined to deny the Poles the means of sustaining their struggle. </p>
<p>The British were distracted by the debates over the <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/houseofcommons/reformacts/overview/reformact1832/">reform bill</a>. In Vienna, the Austrian government was initially content to see Russia weakened but later, fearing the contagion of revolution, closed its border and handed over Polish refugees to the Russian authorities. </p>
<p>France’s government and new king, Louis-Philippe, presiding uneasily over a divided nation, settled on a policy of non-intervention. Prussia opted for pragmatism and opened its borders to Russian troops, allowed arms and provisions to cross its frontiers to alleviate Russian logistical weaknesses and arrested German volunteers travelling to join the Polish army. </p>
<p>Today, the wavering of international support for Ukraine echoes this situation. The Papacy <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/pope-says-ukraine-should-have-courage-white-flag-negotiations-2024-03-09/">calls for capitulation</a> thinly veiled as negotiation, while in the US House of Representatives, Republicans <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/americas/20240214-us-house-speaker-johnson-blocks-vote-ukraine-israel-taiwan-aid-passed-senate-donald-trump-republicans">block further aid to Ukraine</a>. European nations are also struggling to <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-to-ukraine-half-is-better-than-nothing-when-it-comes-to-ammunition/">deliver the munitions promised to Ukraine</a>. </p>
<p>Ukraine cannot prevail without international support. Will its allies provide it – or will they abandon them, as they did the Poles in 1831?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225625/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gervase Phillips does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Waning support from Poland’s allies meant the war descended to an attritional struggle, giving Russia the advantage it needed to win.Gervase Phillips, Principal Lecturer in History, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2084552023-06-29T20:01:31Z2023-06-29T20:01:31ZFriday essay: the forgotten female soldiers who fought long ago – and why their stories matter today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534509/original/file-20230628-17-azrnz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4000%2C2000&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">(Clockwise from left): American civil war soldier Frances Hook; 19th century Dahomey women soldiers; defending a besieged German city in 1615; 18th century British soldier Hannah Snell and Union soldier Frances Clayton. Sources: </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons, Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbuettel</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On the Swedish island of Björkö lie the remains of Birka, a significant Viking trading post. Birka is studded with burial chambers, stuffed with clues about their occupants – amber, textiles, gold, silver and many other treasures. One particular chamber caught the eye of 19th-century archaeologists, who labelled the grave Bj.581. This grave contained weapons: a sword, an axe, a spear, a battle knife, two shields and 25 arrows, and the remains of two horses. </p>
<p>Clearly, this was the grave of a warrior. No one really looked closely at the skeleton in this grave to confirm it was male but for 100 years, the record held that the warrior in Bj.581 was a man.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533952/original/file-20230626-202639-ca7ga3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533952/original/file-20230626-202639-ca7ga3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533952/original/file-20230626-202639-ca7ga3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533952/original/file-20230626-202639-ca7ga3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533952/original/file-20230626-202639-ca7ga3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533952/original/file-20230626-202639-ca7ga3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1228&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533952/original/file-20230626-202639-ca7ga3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1228&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533952/original/file-20230626-202639-ca7ga3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1228&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An 1889 sketch of the archaeological grave labelled Bj581.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the early 1970s, bone analysis suggested the skeleton was female. DNA analysis published in 2018 confirmed the bones were those of a woman, with two X chromosomes.</p>
<p>The team conducting the DNA analysis also examined the relationship between the skeleton and the contents of the grave, drawing the same conclusion as all previous investigations: “the person in Bj.581 was buried in a grave full of functional weapons and war-gear […] outside the gate of a fortress”. If it looks like a warrior, and is armed like a warrior, it must be a warrior.</p>
<p>Critics were unconvinced. Had the authors of the study got the wrong skeleton? Had another skeleton been mixed up in the grave? (No, the evidence is firm on both points.) In spite of these sceptics, the story of this skeleton took off around the world, precisely because it challenged so many assumptions about women, combat and the history of war.</p>
<p>Women have long fought in wars, but their contribution is often erased. The military historian John Keegan famously wrote in 1993 that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>warfare is […] the one human activity from which women, with the most insignificant exceptions, have always and everywhere stood apart […] Women […] do not fight. They rarely fight among themselves and they never, in any military sense, fight men. If warfare is as old as history and as universal as mankind, we must now enter the supremely important limitation that it is an entirely masculine activity.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But it turns out history is full of examples of women on the frontlines: women who fought in their own right, women who dressed as men in order to fight, and women who faced great danger supporting male troops in the teeth of battle. Women have survived and even thrived as part of the machine of war – but are rarely part of military history. Why have their stories been forgotten?</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534472/original/file-20230628-30373-mwwsk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534472/original/file-20230628-30373-mwwsk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534472/original/file-20230628-30373-mwwsk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534472/original/file-20230628-30373-mwwsk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534472/original/file-20230628-30373-mwwsk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534472/original/file-20230628-30373-mwwsk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=633&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534472/original/file-20230628-30373-mwwsk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=633&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534472/original/file-20230628-30373-mwwsk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=633&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An engraving depicting Gesche Meiburg, one of the women who helped to defend besieged Braunschweig in 1615.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbuettel.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A convenient amnesia</h2>
<p>The amnesia about women in combat is a convenient, if not deliberate, forgetting. When Western governments were forced by the 1970s feminist movement to consider the question of whether women should be allowed to fight, they often pointed to the all-male battlefields of the past, even if this history was inaccurate. </p>
<p>Decision-makers refused to see a history in which so-called women camp “followers” were following so closely they were actually on the battlefield, providing food and drink and supporting artillery fire. </p>
<p>They didn’t see women in the thick of battle, fighting alongside men – most often disguised as men, occasionally in their own right, and sometimes (but rarely) even leading those men.</p>
<p>Women were a commonplace feature on battlefields. They also fought in sieges, which for long periods of time were far more common than pitched battles. In the Kingdom of Dahomey (now Benin), from the late 18th century, an all-female regiment of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahomey_Amazons">crack troops</a> existed for 100 years.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533953/original/file-20230626-20-pk9ejp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533953/original/file-20230626-20-pk9ejp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533953/original/file-20230626-20-pk9ejp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533953/original/file-20230626-20-pk9ejp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533953/original/file-20230626-20-pk9ejp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533953/original/file-20230626-20-pk9ejp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533953/original/file-20230626-20-pk9ejp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533953/original/file-20230626-20-pk9ejp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dahomey women soldiers photographed around 1890.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Suppressing this history helped perpetuate the exclusion of women from combat. This, in turn, stopped them taking on military leadership roles, which required combat experience – and these roles have been a crucial route to political and societal leadership. But perhaps more importantly, excluding women from combat served as a potent reminder that despite what the feminist movement told the world, women were not equal. </p>
<p>Women, it was long argued, were simply too fragile to fight. They would be uniquely and horrifyingly susceptible to violence on the battlefield. And men would be too distracted by their presence to fight properly; women would disrupt the essential bond between men, between brothers, that allowed for battlefield excellence. </p>
<p>The exclusion of women soldiers from combat was only overturned in Australia in 2011 and in the United States in 2013. In the United Kingdom, all combat roles were finally opened to women in 2018. The exclusion of women from combat for so long was justified by a dominant view of history that presented women as having rarely demonstrated an aptitude or interest in fighting. But that history is wrong.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534216/original/file-20230627-29-9zpqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534216/original/file-20230627-29-9zpqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534216/original/file-20230627-29-9zpqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534216/original/file-20230627-29-9zpqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534216/original/file-20230627-29-9zpqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534216/original/file-20230627-29-9zpqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534216/original/file-20230627-29-9zpqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534216/original/file-20230627-29-9zpqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A female American soldier tackles an obstacle course while training in 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Robin Trimarchi/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
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<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-i-want-to-serve-on-the-front-line-despite-challenges-for-women-at-war-3622">Why I want to serve on the front line, despite challenges for women at war</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A ‘very good-looking corporal in our regiment’</h2>
<p>One of the most common, and intriguing, ways for women to enter combat was in male disguise. Women who dressed as men to become soldiers are known to have fought in the armies and navies of Russia, England, the Netherlands, France, various German states, and both sides of the American Civil War. </p>
<p>Around 119 cross-dressing women are documented as having served in Holland between 1550 and 1840; around 40 in <em>ancien regime</em> France; between 30 and 70 in Revolutionary France; 22 in the Prussian army during the wars against Napoleon in the early 19th century; and more than 60 in Britain between 1660 and 1832.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534252/original/file-20230627-27-rjhwty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534252/original/file-20230627-27-rjhwty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534252/original/file-20230627-27-rjhwty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=866&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534252/original/file-20230627-27-rjhwty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=866&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534252/original/file-20230627-27-rjhwty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=866&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534252/original/file-20230627-27-rjhwty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1088&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534252/original/file-20230627-27-rjhwty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1088&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534252/original/file-20230627-27-rjhwty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1088&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ann Mills served on board the Royal Navy’s Maidstone frigate dressed as a man.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wellcome Collection</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While these women were motivated to fight for many reasons – including safety, as life in the military was often more safe for a woman than life outside it – one of their primary motives was patriotism.</p>
<p>During the American Civil War, (1861–65), between 250 and 1,000 women fought. (The reason for the variation in all these numbers is that it is impossible to know how many disguised women fought – by definition we only know about the ones who were uncovered, not those whose masquerade was never challenged). There are multiple accounts of soldiers finding women’s bodies among the dead on both sides of the conflict. </p>
<p>One Union Soldier remarked of a Confederate soldier, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’ve picked up a great many wounded rebs [rebels …] among these were found a female dressed in mens clothes & a cartridge box on her side […] she was shot in the breast & through the thy and was still alive &; as gritty as any reb I ever saw".</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Part of the reason for the large number of disguised women during the Civil War is that all traditional forms of service for women (such as nursing or laundry) were reserved for men. The only way for a woman to join the war effort was to fight. More than 2 million men served in the Union Army and between 750,000 and a million men were in the Confederate forces over the course of the war.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-the-confederate-flag-so-offensive-143256">Why is the Confederate flag so offensive?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Both sides were fighting a bitterly contested war with an almost insatiable need for manpower. This seems to have reduced the need for physical checks of soldiers, and as fighters were drawn from the general population, experience and skill were not the prerequisites they might otherwise have been. </p>
<p>One Union soldier described a new recruit encountered on a long march: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>we enlisted a new recruit on the way to Eastport. The boys all took a notion to him. On examination, he proved to have a Cunt so he was discharged.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533966/original/file-20230626-64693-pa09h8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533966/original/file-20230626-64693-pa09h8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533966/original/file-20230626-64693-pa09h8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533966/original/file-20230626-64693-pa09h8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533966/original/file-20230626-64693-pa09h8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533966/original/file-20230626-64693-pa09h8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1214&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533966/original/file-20230626-64693-pa09h8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1214&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533966/original/file-20230626-64693-pa09h8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1214&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Illinois soldier Frances Hook also known as Private Frank Miller, Frank Henderson and Frank Fuller, pictured circa 1861 and 1865.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At least eight disguised women fought at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Antietam">Battle of Antietam</a>, where on the bloodiest day of the conflict, 30,000 were killed; this number may have been more, because investigations of a grave site near another battle found a female skeleton among the men. Her identity remains unknown. </p>
<p>Of the eight fighters at Antiteam, one woman had an arm amputated; one was shot in the neck. Another survived that battle, and the Battle of Fredericksburg, where she was promoted to sergeant only to give birth a month later. </p>
<p>There are confirmed accounts of five women fighting at Gettysburg. One lost her leg and two marched in the famous Confederate Army infantry assault called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickett%27s_Charge">Pickett’s Charge</a>. One of these anonymous women could be heard screaming in agony from her wounds on the battlefield. She would not have been alone. The Confederate Army lost more than half of the soldiers who fought that day to injury or death: 6,555 men.</p>
<p>Pregnancy of officers should have been a giveaway that there were disguised women in the ranks. And yet, one memo read, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The general commanding directs me to call your attention to a flagrant outrage committed in your command […] an orderly sergeant […] was to-day delivered of a baby – which is in violation of all military law and the army regulations. No such case has been known since the days of Jupiter. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Another soldier wrote to his wife, regaling her with the story of the “very good looking corporal in our regiment” who had fallen ill, before “this same good looking corporal had been relieved of a very nice little boy and that the corporal and the boy was doing first rate”. </p>
<p>His wife wrote back: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think it was quite a grand thing about that corporal what a woman she must have been […] she must have been more than the common run of woman or she could never stood soldiering especially in her condition.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533967/original/file-20230626-24-7wjt71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533967/original/file-20230626-24-7wjt71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533967/original/file-20230626-24-7wjt71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533967/original/file-20230626-24-7wjt71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533967/original/file-20230626-24-7wjt71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533967/original/file-20230626-24-7wjt71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533967/original/file-20230626-24-7wjt71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533967/original/file-20230626-24-7wjt71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, alias Lyons Wakeman.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Women recorded their own experiences in letters home, and some were unafraid of a soldier’s life. Sarah Rosetta Wakeman (Private Lyons Wakeman) wrote to her parents about fighting and marching with a typical soldier’s bravado. “I don’t fear the rebel bullets and I don’t fear the cannon…” </p>
<p>After a battle, she explained, “I had to face the enemy bullets with my regiment. I was under fire about four hours and laid on the field of battle all night.”</p>
<p>Women soldiers in the Civil War, despite extensive documentation (and photographs), were not officially recognised by Americans later on. In fact, their existence was totally denied. In 1909, the investigative journalist Ida Tarbell wrote to the adjutant general of the US Army asking whether his department had a record of the number of women who enlisted and served in the Civil War. </p>
<p>Tarbell received the following reply: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have the honour to inform you that no official record has been found in the War Department showing specifically that any woman was ever enlisted in the military service of the United States […] during the period of the civil war. It is possible, however, that there may have been a few instances of women having served as soldiers for a short time without their sex having been detected, but no record of such cases is known to exist in the official files. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The office of the adjutant-general was either lying or lazy: they did have records of women’s military service, including discharge records and pension records.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534508/original/file-20230628-21-azrnz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534508/original/file-20230628-21-azrnz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534508/original/file-20230628-21-azrnz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1314&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534508/original/file-20230628-21-azrnz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1314&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534508/original/file-20230628-21-azrnz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1314&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534508/original/file-20230628-21-azrnz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1651&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534508/original/file-20230628-21-azrnz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1651&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534508/original/file-20230628-21-azrnz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1651&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Frances Clayton enlisted in the Union Army under the name Jack Williams.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The playbook of patriarchy</h2>
<p>Suppressing the memory of women’s combat wasn’t limited to the period after the American Civil War. The many examples of female combat during the 20th century included 800,000 to a million women who fought for the Red Army during World War II. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534203/original/file-20230626-33184-bzl1g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534203/original/file-20230626-33184-bzl1g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534203/original/file-20230626-33184-bzl1g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534203/original/file-20230626-33184-bzl1g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534203/original/file-20230626-33184-bzl1g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534203/original/file-20230626-33184-bzl1g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1015&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534203/original/file-20230626-33184-bzl1g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1015&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534203/original/file-20230626-33184-bzl1g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1015&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Russian civil war poster, circa 1917-1921.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet officialdom chose to believe that women may have fought when their countries were desperate, as the Soviets were, or in rare exceptions cross-dressed as men, but as they were “exceptional”, their experiences were simply discounted. </p>
<p>In essence, keeping women out of combat became part of the of the playbook of patriarchy – at a time when the feminist movement was breaking down all the barriers to female employment in every other imaginable category. (The US had female astronauts in training 30 years before it allowed women in combat).</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534255/original/file-20230627-16-evdjnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534255/original/file-20230627-16-evdjnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534255/original/file-20230627-16-evdjnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534255/original/file-20230627-16-evdjnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534255/original/file-20230627-16-evdjnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534255/original/file-20230627-16-evdjnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1075&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534255/original/file-20230627-16-evdjnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1075&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534255/original/file-20230627-16-evdjnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1075&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Roza Shanina, a graduate of the Soviet Union’s Central Women’s Sniper Training School, during WWII.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The contribution of women to warfare isn’t just important in historical terms. There is a strong link between authoritarianism and the suppression of gender equality. The right to engage in combat is no different from any other right. </p>
<p>Before his 2016 election, it was <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/11/01/president-trump-would-be-a-disaster-for-women-in-the-military-sexism-clinton-election/">widely reported</a> Donald Trump was opposed to women in combat. One <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/11/03/trump-voters-dont-like-women-in-military-combat-roles-that-may-have-consequences-for-the-use-of-force/">study</a> showed the two strongest factors associated with opposing the deployment of a co-ed unit into combat were support for Trump and support for the Republican Party. </p>
<p>Moreover, women’s demonstrated capacity in combat serves as a profound reminder of their overall social equality; it is harder to take away women’s rights if they are equal on every level with men. </p>
<h2>Ukraine today</h2>
<p>Today, we are sitting at the crest of a major change, whereby generations of women will move through the military with no ceiling on their progression and no rules telling them what they cannot do. The consequences of this change are already visible in places like Ukraine. </p>
<p>The first Russian invasion in 2014 caused Ukraine to reassess its use of women in the military. In 2018, all positions were opened to women. By 2021, there were 57,000 women in the Ukrainian military, about 22.8% (vastly exceeding most other countries). Ukrainian women were ready to fight when Russia invaded last year, and there has not been much fuss about it. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533964/original/file-20230626-98865-zpv5wg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533964/original/file-20230626-98865-zpv5wg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533964/original/file-20230626-98865-zpv5wg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533964/original/file-20230626-98865-zpv5wg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533964/original/file-20230626-98865-zpv5wg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533964/original/file-20230626-98865-zpv5wg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533964/original/file-20230626-98865-zpv5wg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533964/original/file-20230626-98865-zpv5wg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A female Ukrainian soldier poses for a photo against a Kherson sign on November 11, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dagaz/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>They have taken on all roles, including leadership positions. They are fighting an enemy that has resolutely kept women out of combat, despite significant recruitment issues (and a long, if now ignored, history of female combat). Ukraine is far from a perfect place for gender equality in wider society. But as it becomes normal for women to fight, and as they become heroes of the war, things may change.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-attitudes-to-women-in-the-military-are-changing-as-thousands-serve-on-front-lines-198195">Ukraine war: attitudes to women in the military are changing as thousands serve on front lines</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The conflict between Ukraine and Russia also underlines the argument that authoritarian governments, whatever their diversity, have one thing in common: they suppress women’s rights. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hyper-masculine style has relied on traditional views about gender. Domestic violence was decriminalised in Russia in 2017, and now is only punishable as a crime when the abuse is so severe it requires hospitalisation. Russian women are still barred from a list of 100 professions. </p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, the Russian military facing off against Ukraine has no combatant women in it – even when Putin had to forcibly conscript men to fight in 2022, he did not mobilise women. Indeed, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_combat">list</a> of nations that admit women into combat roles remains almost exclusively a list of democracies with high levels of gender equality. Allowing women in combat roles is a key measure of gender equality.</p>
<p>As time goes on, in these countries at least, women will get more and more chances to demonstrate their leadership in the crucible of combat – and to bring back that leadership into society.</p>
<p><em>Sarah Percy is the author of <a href="https://www.hachette.com.au/sarah-percy/forgotten-warriors-a-history-of-women-on-the-front-line">Forgotten Warriors: a History of Women on the Front Line</a>, published by Hachette.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208455/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>I am the author of a book from which this essay is drawn but this will be clearly credited.</span></em></p>Fighting in sieges, an army of crack female troops, cross-dressing as male soldiers: women have survived and thrived as part of the war machine. But they’re rarely included in military histories.Sarah Percy, Professor of International Relations, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1972352023-02-21T12:23:20Z2023-02-21T12:23:20ZThe last invasion of Britain wasn’t in 1066<p>It was an unusually warm and sunny morning when the people of Fishguard in north Pembrokeshire, Wales, arose on <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/A_Brief_Narrative_of_the_French_Invasion/i9RW-kLV7ToC?hl=en&gbpv=0">February 22 1797</a>. Little could they have realised that over the next three days, their local area would play host to what is now described as the “last invasion of Britain”. </p>
<p>The story began during the summer before. French military leader General Louis Lazare Hoche and Irish revolutionary Theobald Wolfe Tone had planned a French expedition to Ireland. They wanted to assist the Society of United Irishmen, an organisation seeking Irish independence, in driving the British out of Ireland. But plans were abandoned due to stormy weather. </p>
<p>Hoche was undeterred, however, and put together another expedition. This time though, he wanted to rouse the British into rebellion against the crown. One of the French armies, the <em>Légion Noire</em>, was led by an Irish-American, Captain William Tate, who had gained military experience during the American War of Independence.</p>
<p>Tate was sent with four ships to Bristol, then Britain’s <a href="https://www.bristolmuseums.org.uk/stories/bristol-transatlantic-slave-trade/">main port in the transatlantic slave trade</a>. While there, his soldiers were supposed to goad Bristolian sailors into mutiny before spreading insurrection and chaos to London.</p>
<p>For several days in February 1797, blustery winds prevented Tate’s fleet from sailing up the Bristol Channel. Eventually, they gave up and searched for an alternative landing place. Heading west, they reached Pembrokeshire on Wednesday, February 22.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A coloured lithograph depicts two tall ships moored in a bay. The nearby coastline is dotted with figures and two rowing boats head to shore." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510044/original/file-20230214-22-npu8oh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510044/original/file-20230214-22-npu8oh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510044/original/file-20230214-22-npu8oh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510044/original/file-20230214-22-npu8oh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510044/original/file-20230214-22-npu8oh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=579&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510044/original/file-20230214-22-npu8oh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=579&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510044/original/file-20230214-22-npu8oh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=579&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A lithograph first published in May 1797 and later coloured showing French troops landing at Carreg Wastad in February 1797.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">James Baker/National Library of Wales</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tate’s army of 1,400 men, which consisted of 600 soldiers and 800 prison inmates, <a href="https://viewer.library.wales/5195668#?c=&m=&s=&cv=&manifest=https%3A%2F%2Fdamsssl.llgc.org.uk%2Fiiif%2F2.0%2F5195668%2Fmanifest.json&xywh=-848%2C0%2C3843%2C3120">disembarked below Carreg Wastad Point</a> near Fishguard. Overnight, he set up headquarters in a nearby vacated farm and, as planned, his ships departed. Next, Tate sent his soldiers out to collect supplies and announce the arrival of the French liberators from English oppression. It was from that point that everything fell apart.</p>
<p>Tate’s starving soldiers assaulted local people, ransacking their houses. Legend has it that some cooked geese in butter which is said to have resulted in serious food poisoning and may have contributed to subsequent French casualties.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Very old, yellowing and tattered pages of a Welsh language Bible." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509432/original/file-20230210-17-yqpyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509432/original/file-20230210-17-yqpyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509432/original/file-20230210-17-yqpyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509432/original/file-20230210-17-yqpyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509432/original/file-20230210-17-yqpyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509432/original/file-20230210-17-yqpyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509432/original/file-20230210-17-yqpyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A close-up of a Bible still on display at St Gwyndaf’s church near Fishguard. French soldiers had ripped it up when they tried to get a fire going in the church.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rita Singer</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Throughout the night, locals whose houses had been raided sought shelter with neighbours and word of the French invasion spread. Thomas Knox, a local commander, was attending a party nearby when he heard what had happened. He was slow to gather his men due to a lack of military experience. By Thursday, he had assembled the Fishguard Fencibles, but lacking resources and feeling overwhelmed, he retreated south towards Haverfordwest to wait for reinforcements.</p>
<p>Much more decisive was John Campbell, Lord Cawdor, who was at his country estate 60 miles away. He marched two local militias to Fishguard and on the way picked up Knox and the Fencibles. They finally reached the town late on Thursday. Their combined strength never amounted to more than 700 men. But there were several factors that eventually tipped the scales in favour of the Welsh defence force.</p>
<p>Against French expectations, the people of Pembrokeshire did not welcome the invaders. Several civilians armed themselves with <a href="https://museum.wales/collections/online/object/0bc9a9df-6487-3709-a774-324771d24c14/Welsh-costume-illustration/">pitchforks and scythes</a> and small skirmishes occurred between individual farmers and soldiers across the area. Plundering cottages, some of the French soldiers happened upon barrels of wine salvaged from a Portuguese shipwreck. They got uproariously drunk and became incapacitated as a result.</p>
<p><a href="https://archive.org/details/fishguardinvasio00jame">Local legend</a> has it that Jemima Nicholas, a cobbler, singlehandedly rounded up 12 drunk soldiers and locked them up in St Mary’s church in Fishguard. Unfortunately, it is impossible to verify this story due to a lack of contemporary sources.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, morale collapsed among the French soldiers as they found themselves marooned on hostile territory. Cut off from reinforcements or rescue, Tate saw no other choice but to send two officers to Fishguard seeking conditions of surrender.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Exterior of pub building with Royal Oak in large letters. The words 'last invasion of Britain peace treaty was signed here in 1797' are written above the door" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509154/original/file-20230209-26-6fi0q5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509154/original/file-20230209-26-6fi0q5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509154/original/file-20230209-26-6fi0q5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509154/original/file-20230209-26-6fi0q5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509154/original/file-20230209-26-6fi0q5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509154/original/file-20230209-26-6fi0q5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509154/original/file-20230209-26-6fi0q5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Royal Oak pub is situated on Fishguard’s main square.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/204808">ceridwen/Geograph CC BY-SA 2.0</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is said the treaty was signed in the building that is now the Royal Oak pub. Lord Cawdor bluffed his way through negotiations, not letting on that the Welsh troops were outnumbered. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="An old memorial stone with the words " src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509435/original/file-20230210-28-u2011t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509435/original/file-20230210-28-u2011t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509435/original/file-20230210-28-u2011t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509435/original/file-20230210-28-u2011t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509435/original/file-20230210-28-u2011t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509435/original/file-20230210-28-u2011t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509435/original/file-20230210-28-u2011t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The memorial stone of Jemima Nicholas at St Mary’s Church, Fishguard.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rita Singer</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To ensure a successful surrender the next morning, Cawdor encouraged the townspeople to witness the French assemble on <a href="https://archive.org/details/b22013179/page/n25/mode/2up?q=french">nearby Goodwick beach</a> from the hill above. He wanted the distant crowd to appear to the invading French like thousands of soldiers to discourage them from attempting one last desperate fight. According to <a href="https://archive.org/details/fishguardinvasio00jame/page/164/mode/2up?q=red">legend</a>, it was mostly the women’s traditional red flannel shawls that gave the civilians their military appearance.</p>
<p>Over the next century, Jemima became known as <em>Jemima Fawr</em> (Jemima the Great) and was part of the folk culture around the invasion. During the centenary celebrations, enough money was collected for a stone to be placed in her memory at St Mary’s churchyard.</p>
<p>For the bicentenary in 1997, Fishguard held a full-blown reenactment. <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_west/8583515.stm">Yvonne Fox</a>, a local woman, played the role of heroic Jemima and did so until her death in 2010. Fishguard continues to <a href="https://www.westerntelegraph.co.uk/news/20242818.parade-goodwick-parrog-marks-last-invasion-britain/?fbclid=IwAR2wjQ1VTC1LFbY1-m9Wmg9b9JjsW4XF_npIRHy2x2XUonfGJPo4kPOaSDs">commemorate the invasion</a> to this day. </p>
<p>Another lasting legacy was the creation of the <a href="https://lastinvasiontapestry.co.uk">Last Invasion Tapestry</a> by local women, which tells the entire tale in Welsh and English. It is 30 metres long, took four years to complete and is housed at Fishguard town hall.</p>
<p>Naturally, Jemima the Great and the red-cloaked women of Pembrokeshire take pride of place in the design.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197235/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rita Singer receives funding from the European Regional Development Fund through the Ireland Wales Cooperation Programme as part of the Ports, Past and Present project team. She has also received funding from the DAAD, AHRC and NLHF.</span></em></p>The last invasion of Britain involved bungled military plans, sozzled soldiers and a legendary Welshwoman wielding a pitchfork.Rita Singer, Post-Doctoral Research Associate and Project Coordinator, Aberystwyth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1914832022-10-03T12:08:13Z2022-10-03T12:08:13ZRussia has mobilized for war many times before – sometimes it unified the nation, other times it ended in disaster<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487582/original/file-20221001-18-a9do3r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C73%2C5455%2C3563&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Russian citizen being called up for duty.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/russian-citizens-are-being-sent-to-their-units-after-news-photo/1243596949?adppopup=true">Sefa Karacan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Vladimir Putin’s <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/what-does-russias-partial-mobilization-mean">mobilization of 300,000</a> additional Russian soldiers to fight in Ukraine has gotten off to a rocky start.</p>
<p>Nominally aimed at calling up reserve forces with prior combat experience, early reports suggest a broader dragnet and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/world/europe/russia-draft-ukraine-putin.html">widespread resistance</a> against the call-up. Recruitment offices have <a href="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/09/26/russian-enlistment-officer-shot-recruitment-centers-torched-as-kremlin-admits-mobilization-errors-a78886">been torched</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/24/world/europe/protests-putin-russia-war.html">protests against the action</a> have dotted Russian cities, and droves of men have reportedly <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/russia-turkey-partial-mobilization-ukraine/">fled the country</a> to avoid being enlisted.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.american.edu/cas/faculty/elohr.cfm">scholar of Russian history</a>, I see this latest move by Putin in the context of past mass mobilizations undertaken by Russia throughout its history. Sometimes it has worked, bolstering a force while legitimizing conflict in the eyes of the public and instilling national unity. But it can also backfire, as the Russian president may find to his cost.</p>
<h2>Turning the fortunes of war</h2>
<p>Putin most often uses World War II <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/putin-speech-ukraine-invasion-soviet-union/629825/">as his historical reference point</a>. The Soviet Union suffered <a href="https://www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers/student-resources/research-starters/research-starters-worldwide-deaths-world-war">tremendous losses</a> during the Nazi invasion but countered by conducting the <a href="https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/operation-barbarossa">most extensive mobilization</a> that the world had ever seen and probably will ever see. </p>
<p>As well as mobilizing the entire economy for wartime production and putting women to work in factories in unprecedented numbers, the Soviet Union also mobilized 34 million soldiers, building one of the largest armies ever assembled. This total mobilization led Nazi Germany to suffer four-fifths of its total wartime casualties on the Soviet front and was the <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/stalinism-at-war-9781350153516/">single most important reason Germany was defeated</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A poster shows a woman in a red dress gesticulating in front of pointed bayonets." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487584/original/file-20221001-12-g9syux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487584/original/file-20221001-12-g9syux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487584/original/file-20221001-12-g9syux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487584/original/file-20221001-12-g9syux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487584/original/file-20221001-12-g9syux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1084&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487584/original/file-20221001-12-g9syux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1084&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487584/original/file-20221001-12-g9syux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1084&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A World War II Soviet military recruitment poster.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/world-war-ii-soviet-military-recruitment-poster-by-irakly-news-photo/52778857?adppopup=true">Laski Diffusion/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It also served to turn the fortunes of a Soviet state that had entered the war weakened by Josef Stalin’s campaign to force farmers into <a href="https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1929-2/collectivization/">state-run collective farms</a>, a <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/red-famine-anne-applebaum-ukraine-soviet-union/542610/">deadly famine that resulted</a> and waves of police repression that had <a href="https://news.stanford.edu/2010/09/23/naimark-stalin-genocide-092310/">killed millions of citizens</a>.</p>
<p>Victory gave the Soviet Union a new legitimacy at home and abroad that helped it survive and even thrive as a great power for 45 more years. The powerful Red Army that was assembled swept through half of Europe and brought the Russian Empire’s borders further west than any tsar had done.</p>
<h2>A legitimizing, unifying force</h2>
<p>The success of this mobilization and the great Soviet victory have been <a href="https://iupress.org/9780253057624/the-future-of-the-soviet-past/">central to Putin’s worldview</a>. He decreed <a href="https://www.state.gov/disarming-disinformation/vladimir-putins-historical-disinformation/">draconian penalties</a> for any attempt to question Soviet conduct in World War II, like the brutal annexation of the Baltic states, mistakes by Stalin and his generals, or occupation policies in Eastern Europe. Putin also obsessed about Ukrainian nationalist partisans who fought against Stalin during the war, conflating them with contemporary Ukrainians who simply desire sovereignty.</p>
<p>Putin seems to have hoped to recreate the unifying, legitimizing results of the great World War II effort.</p>
<p>Indeed, mass mobilizations have periodically unified the nation at other times. In 1612, a <a href="https://www.rbth.com/multimedia/romanovs/2017/08/18/the-1612-battle-for-moscow-how-the-russian-state-prevailed_824862">mass rising led to a successful war</a> to expel Catholic Polish invaders, ending a period of internal strife and leading to broad unity in favor of the new Romanov dynasty and its autocratic rule. </p>
<p>Two hundred years later, in 1812, Russia mobilized against a foreign invader, Napoleon, and <a href="https://evergreen.noblenet.org/eg/opac/record/3766810?locg=1">won a decisive victory</a> that brought Russian troops to Paris and made Russia a great power in Europe. It also ended Tsar Alexander I’s dalliance with liberal reforms. Russia <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/84/2/503/55936?redirectedFrom=fulltext">became known as the “gendarme of Europe</a>,” the active enforcer of an international alliance against constitutional liberalism.</p>
<h2>Resentment and military disaster</h2>
<p>But while these mobilizations for war unified the country and brought legitimacy to the regime, others did the opposite. </p>
<p>From 1768 to 1774, Catherine II, Russia’s greatest conqueror, launched a <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/702542/pdf">massive war against the Ottoman Empire</a> that led to the conquest of much of modern southern Ukraine and Crimea.</p>
<p>But to win, Cossacks – irregular military groups living in Russia’s borderlands – and peasants bore the brunt. Formerly relatively free to choose the conditions of their service to the tsar, Cossacks were locked into the regular Russian army and sent to the front in large numbers. Peasants felt the twin burdens of ever tightening bonds of serfdom and wartime conscription.</p>
<p>The two groups joined together in a revolt that so seriously threatened the state that Catherine had to <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/slavic-review/article/autocratic-politics-in-a-national-crisis-the-imperial-russian-government-and-pugachevs-revolt-17731775-by-john-t-alexander-russian-and-east-european-series-vol-38-bloomington-and-london-indiana-university-press-for-the-international-affairs-center-1969-xii-346-pp-850-paper/7271B685CC256EF6117A35221F447147">rush a peace settlement with the Ottoman Empire</a> to bring the army home to crush the rebels.</p>
<p>In 1904, Russia underestimated the rising power of Japan and <a href="https://guides.loc.gov/chronicling-america-russo-japanese-war">stumbled into a war with that country</a>. A subsequent call-up of university students and young men for a very unpopular war proved to be a major cause of the revolution that ensued in 1905. Only when the tsar withdrew from the war and conceded a parliament and constitution was order restored. </p>
<p>Despite an effective <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/422972?journalCode=jmh">mobilization of millions of soldiers</a> at the beginning of World War I, Russia incurred massive losses as Germany and Austria-Hungary drove deep into Russian territory. Street protests against food shortages in February 1917 spurred a broad coalition of elected members of parliament and military commanders to overthrow the tsar. They thought a legitimate, popular government would inspire more fighting spirit among the troops.</p>
<p>The leaders of the new government doubled down on the war effort, ordering a <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/slavic-review/article/1917-revolution-as-demobilization-and-state-collapse/E9C85596FBF6C8E74ED87ABDAEC7563E">major new mobilization of troops</a>, calling up people who had been previously exempt, such as heads of households, older men and ethnic minorities. There were even orders to send to the front soldiers who had previously been kept in reserve garrisons because of suspect loyalties or subpar fighting qualities. </p>
<p>On paper, the Russian army swelled to 10 million men, the largest it had been through the entire war to date. With more troops and more weapons than the enemy and newfound legitimacy, the government overestimated popular support for the war and launched an offensive. But after a couple weeks of advances, the unreliable recent recruits were the first to desert, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/slavic-review/article/1917-revolution-as-demobilization-and-state-collapse/E9C85596FBF6C8E74ED87ABDAEC7563E">starting an avalanche of 2 million desertions</a> that both destroyed the army and, as armed soldiers went back to their villages, started the agrarian revolution when peasants drove noble landlords out of the countryside and seized the land for themselves. </p>
<p>Fearing counterrevolution, the new government disbanded much of the police force but was unable to create a new one to replace it. The army was pinned down at the front and losing numbers fast as soldiers went home to claim land. It could not protect the state from the small Bolshevik faction of the communist movement, which conducted a successful armed coup in October 1917. The summer offensive has gone down in history as one of the worst military gambles ever.</p>
<h2>Putin’s great gamble?</h2>
<p>Putin appears to look toward World War II, missing the lessons of the earlier Great War.</p>
<p>The mobilization to fight World War I drew support from national representatives and from a relatively free press. While the population was weary of war by 1917, few questioned the legitimate need to defend the country against the German invaders.</p>
<p>Putin’s war in Ukraine is very different. It is widely seen as unnecessary, <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/russian-public-opinion-ukraine-war-putin-approval-rating-by-andrei-kolesnikov-and-denis-volkov-2022-09">public support is tepid</a>, and there is no free press or freely elected representatives to give it legitimate support.</p>
<p>The mobilization of 1917 provides a stark lesson that larger armies are not necessarily stronger ones, and adding large numbers of unreliable soldiers to an army can be an enormous gamble.</p>
<p>The usually cautious military observer <a href="https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1572782241624854528">Michael Kofman</a> responded to Putin’s mobilization by declaring that Putin now has staked his regime on the outcome of the war. It is already clear that this war will not be a unifying, legitimizing event like World War II. But it remains to be seen whether this mobilization will go down the 1917 road to military dysfunction and revolution.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191483/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eric Lohr has received funding from the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research Fellowship (2012) and the Kennan Institute for Russian studies fellowship (2005). He has served as director of American University's Carmel Institute for Russian History and Culture (2011-12; 2019-20), an organization that provided scholarships for students to study Russian language and previously included film screenings and cultural events at the Russian Embassy. This past activity in no way influences his scholarship or political views.</span></em></p>A historian looks back at the success – and failure – of mass mobilization efforts by Russia and the Soviet Union.Eric Lohr, Professor of Russian History, American UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1792292022-04-25T11:18:05Z2022-04-25T11:18:05ZNational service in Britain: why men who served don’t think we should bring it back<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458001/original/file-20220413-28-jfotpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C69%2C799%2C550&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">National Service recruits in the RAF.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205125567">Imperial War Museum / Non Commercial License</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ukraine compelling all men aged 18-60 to stay in the country and fight the Russian invasion is a reminder of the reality of military conscription in many countries in Europe and around the world. </p>
<p>In recent decades, military service in Britain has been voluntary, with conscription regarded as a characteristic of less liberal, more militaristic nations. But this hasn’t always been the case – during the second world war and for a decade and a half after, around 2.3 million men completed two years of national service under the National Service Act.</p>
<p>Politicians, <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/sky-views-bring-back-national-service-but-lets-do-it-differently-11846370">journalists</a> and other <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2015/05/17/europe/harry-national-service/index.html">public figures</a> have periodically called for a return to national service. Some have cited anxieties about the supposed lack of discipline among the degenerate “youth of today”. </p>
<p>My research team <a href="https://talkinghumanities.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2018/08/07/national-service-it-was-no-laughing-matter">has interviewed</a> over 100 ex-national servicemen – mainly from working-class backgrounds across five different regions in Britain: the Glasgow area, north-east England, the West Midlands, south Wales and south-east England. We wanted to find out how conscription shaped their feelings about masculinity, class and British character. Our research shows that among those who experienced national service, there is not a strong sentiment to bring it back. Nonetheless, most viewed national service as a positive time in their life.</p>
<p>Interviewees frequently stated that national service “made a man” of them – usually meaning that it made them more independent and mature – and helped them in their later careers. They did not believe that national service made them more aggressive or eager to engage in military combat. They had seen and heard enough of war to know that it was not glamorous. Their fears only increased with the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the 1950s, a development that worried many interviewees and strengthened their belief in the futility of war. As one former recruit said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I wonder what attitude I’d have if I had had to go to Korea. I’d be frightened to death, I think. I didn’t join the army to fight, you know what I mean! </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="National service recruits relaxing and laughing off duty" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457999/original/file-20220413-20-8d5mqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C43%2C790%2C756&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457999/original/file-20220413-20-8d5mqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457999/original/file-20220413-20-8d5mqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457999/original/file-20220413-20-8d5mqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457999/original/file-20220413-20-8d5mqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457999/original/file-20220413-20-8d5mqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457999/original/file-20220413-20-8d5mqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ex-servicemen looked back fondly on their national service, but not all think it should be brought back.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205125568">Imperial War Museum / Non Commercial License</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Should it be brought back?</h2>
<p>Some agreed that national service should be reintroduced as a way of instilling social discipline, but the majority doubted that this was feasible for various reasons. They considered young people more ethnically and religiously diverse in contemporary Britain, suggesting this would make them less likely to agree to such an imposition by the state. Most important, young people had not been subject to the same disciplines of family, school and community life as the national service generation.</p>
<p>A minority did think that a kind of compulsory community service remained a good idea. But not to teach people how to fight in the “national interest” – instead, to instil in them the importance of the common good. As one man said about his time in the RAF (Royal Air Force):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It taught me that … you’ve gotta keep together. We live in a community, you know. If you let yourself divide and rule, you know, and you’re picked off -– this is what the governments are very fond of doing -– dividing and ruling –- there’s always some bugger they’re picking off … you realise that we’re all part of a world together.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>People imagine that reintroducing conscription would not only instil social discipline but also unquestioning loyalty to the nation above all else. This ex-serviceman’s words are a useful reminder that a sense of community responsibility and unthinking patriotism are different things.</p>
<h2>Conscription in Britain</h2>
<p>Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, Britain waged successful wars of imperial expansion without resorting to formal methods of conscription, because informal methods worked well. There was often a ready stream of recruits wanting to escape poverty. </p>
<p>When extra soldiers and sailors were required, during the Napoleonic wars especially, men could be violently forced into military service and stolen from their communities by the “<a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/press-gang-9781852855680/">press gang</a>”, who used physical force to recruit men against their will – this was known as “impressment”.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A poster with an image of a framed portrait of Lord Roberts of Kandahar, and text reading He did his duty, will YOU do YOURS?" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459459/original/file-20220425-21-4ezr5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459459/original/file-20220425-21-4ezr5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459459/original/file-20220425-21-4ezr5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459459/original/file-20220425-21-4ezr5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459459/original/file-20220425-21-4ezr5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1055&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459459/original/file-20220425-21-4ezr5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1055&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459459/original/file-20220425-21-4ezr5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1055&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A poster from the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1435">Imperial War Museum / Non-Commercial Licence</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the late Victorian period, the National Service League called for more formal schemes of conscription. Conscription <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9781137274137">was introduced</a> by the state during the first world war but not until 1916, when numbers of volunteers failed to meet the insatiable demand required by industrialised warfare. </p>
<p>There was no political will to extend conscription into peacetime and it was phased out after “the war to end war” was over. Reintroduced in 1939 to meet the Nazi threat, conscription continued after the second world war. The National Service Act was passed in 1947, introducing peacetime conscription that compelled all young men aged 18-30 to undertake two years of military service.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Historical military service act proclamation, white background with blue text reading THE MILITARY SERVICE ACT, 1916, APPLIES TO UNMARRIED MEN WHO, ON AUGUST 15th, 1915, WERE 18 YEARS OF AGE OR OVER AND WHO WILL NOT BE 41 YEARS OF AGE ON MARCH 2nd, 1916." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457993/original/file-20220413-1403-ffc2bx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457993/original/file-20220413-1403-ffc2bx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457993/original/file-20220413-1403-ffc2bx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457993/original/file-20220413-1403-ffc2bx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457993/original/file-20220413-1403-ffc2bx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1197&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457993/original/file-20220413-1403-ffc2bx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1197&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457993/original/file-20220413-1403-ffc2bx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1197&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Military Service Act 1916 introduced conscription during the first world war.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/28449">Imperial War Museum / Non-Commercial Licence</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Under the act, young men had to undertake six weeks of basic training – involving a quite brutal disciplinary shock – until being assigned generally mundane tasks. Stories about having to paint coal white and cutting grass with nail scissors <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/20/national-service-consctiption-britain-richard-vinen-review">were apocryphal</a>, but contained more than a grain of truth. </p>
<p>Some men avoided service on medical grounds or because their other occupations (coal miners, merchant sailors) were considered vital. Others postponed their service until they finished apprenticeships or university degrees. Most of those who did serve stayed in Britain, though some saw active service abroad – 280 died in the Korean war. </p>
<p>After a long campaign in the Daily Mirror and years of criticism by Labour politicians such as Barbara Castle, conscription was eventually phased out in 1960, though it had been running down for some years. Most military leaders did not want conscripted men – they were never that keen – and most important, the public was no longer willing to accept the sacrifices demanded by national service.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179229/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter James Gurney receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust</span></em></p>An expert who has spoken with ex-national servicemen explains what they think about bringing it back today.Peter Gurney, Chair Professor of British Social History, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1700732021-10-21T19:01:15Z2021-10-21T19:01:15ZThe horse bit and bridle kicked off ancient empires – a new giant dataset tracks the societal factors that drove military technology<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427637/original/file-20211020-15-1njjnw4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C45%2C5565%2C3629&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ancient military innovations – like the bit and bridle that enabled mounted horseback riding – changed the course of history.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Assyrian_reliefs_in_the_British_Museum#/media/File:Assyrian_king_Ashurbanipal_on_his_horse_thrusting_a_spear_onto_a_lion%E2%80%99s_head._Alabaster_bas-relief_from_Nineveh,_dating_back_to_645-635_BCE_and_is_currently_housed_in_the_British_Museum,_London.jpg">Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin/British Museum via WikimediaCommons </a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Starting around 3,000 years ago, a wave of innovation began to sweep through human societies around the globe. For the next millennium the continued emergence of new technologies had a dramatic effect on the course of human history. </p>
<p>This era saw the advancement of the ability to control horses with bit and bridle, the spread of <a href="https://doi.org/10.21237/C7clio11145895">iron-working techniques through Eurasia</a> that led to <a href="https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1143/armour-in-ancient-chinese-warfare/">hardier and cheaper weapons and armor</a> and new ways of killing from a distance, such as with <a href="http://services.cambridge.org/af/academic/subjects/history/history-science-and-technology/science-and-civilisation-china-volume-5-part-6?format=HB&isbn=9780521327275">crossbows</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/1291833">catapults</a>. On the whole, warfare became much more deadly. </p>
<p>During this era, many societies were consumed by the crucible of war. A few, though – <a href="https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/peter-turchin/figuring-out-the-past/9781541762688/">the Achaemenid Persian Empire, the Roman Empire and Han China</a> – not only survived, but thrived, becoming megaempires encompassing tens of millions of people and controlling territories of millions of square miles.</p>
<p>So what drove this cascade of technological innovation that literally changed the course of history? </p>
<p>We are <a href="https://peterturchin.com/">a complexity scientist</a>, Peter Turchin, and <a href="https://evolution-institute.academia.edu/DanielHoyer">a historian</a>, Dan Hoyer, who have been working since 2011 with a multidisciplinary team to build and analyze a large database of past societies. In a new paper published in PLOS One on Oct. 20, 2021, we <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258161">describe the main societal drivers of ancient military innovation</a> and how these new technologies changed empires.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427631/original/file-20211020-19094-6ud2kl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A map of the world showing the extent of large empires in Eurasia, Africa and the Americas." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427631/original/file-20211020-19094-6ud2kl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427631/original/file-20211020-19094-6ud2kl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427631/original/file-20211020-19094-6ud2kl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427631/original/file-20211020-19094-6ud2kl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427631/original/file-20211020-19094-6ud2kl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427631/original/file-20211020-19094-6ud2kl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427631/original/file-20211020-19094-6ud2kl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In the year A.D. 1, many areas of the world were dominated by massive empires each encompassing millions of people.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_in_1_CE.png#/media/File:World_in_1_CE.png">Javierfv1212/WikimediaCommons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A database for human history</h2>
<p>The store of knowledge about the past is truly enormous. The trick is to translate that knowledge into data that can be analyzed. This is where Seshat comes in.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://seshatdatabank.info">Seshat Databank</a> is named after Seshat, an ancient <a href="https://ancientegyptonline.co.uk/seshat/">Egyptian goddess of wisdom, knowledge and writing</a>. Founded in 2011 as a collaboration among the Evolution Institute, the Complexity Science Hub Vienna, the University of Oxford and many others, Seshat aimed to first systematically gather as much knowledge about humanity’s shared past as possible. Then our team formatted that information in a way that allows researchers to use big-data analytics to look for recurrent patterns in history and test the many theories aiming to explain such patterns.</p>
<p>The first step in this process was to develop a conceptual scheme for coding historical information ranging from military technology to the size and shape of states to the nature of ritual and religion. The database <a href="http://seshatdatabank.info/databrowser/">includes over 400 societies</a> across all world regions and ranges in time from roughly 10,000 B.C. to A.D. 1800.</p>
<p>In order to trace the evolution of military technologies, we first broke them down into six key dimensions: hand-held weapons, projectiles, armor, fortifications, transport animals and metallurgical advances. Each of these dimensions was then further divided into more specific categories. Altogether we identified <a href="http://seshatdatabank.info/methods/code-book/">46 such variables</a> among the six technological dimensions. </p>
<p>For example, we distinguish types of projectile weapons into slings, simple bows, compound bows, crossbows and so on. We then coded whether or not each historical society in the Seshat sample wielded these technologies. For example, the earliest appearance of <a href="http://seshatdatabank.info/browser/CnWeiWS">crossbows in our database</a> is around 400 B.C. in China. </p>
<p>Of course, humanity’s knowledge of the past is imprecise. Historians may not know the exact year crossbows first appeared in a particular region. But imprecision in a few cases is not a serious problem given the staggering amount of information in the database and when the goal is to discover macrolevel patterns across thousands of years of history.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427822/original/file-20211021-23-lcky5u.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A map of Africa and Eurasia showing how military technologies spread." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427822/original/file-20211021-23-lcky5u.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427822/original/file-20211021-23-lcky5u.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=304&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427822/original/file-20211021-23-lcky5u.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=304&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427822/original/file-20211021-23-lcky5u.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=304&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427822/original/file-20211021-23-lcky5u.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427822/original/file-20211021-23-lcky5u.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427822/original/file-20211021-23-lcky5u.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Seshat Databank places technological innovation in specific societies at specific times, as seen in this map showing the spread of mounted cavalry through time from its origins in the Eurasian steppes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0258161">Peter Turchin and Daniel Hoyer</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Competition and exchange drive innovation</h2>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258161">In our new paper</a>, we wanted to find out what drove the invention and adoption of increasingly advanced military technologies around the globe during the era of ancient megaempires.</p>
<p>Utilizing the massive amount of historical information collected by the Seshat team, we ran a suite of statistical analyses to trace how, where and when these technologies evolved and what factors seemed to have had the largest influence in these processes.</p>
<p>We found that the major drivers of technological innovation did not have to do with attributes of states themselves, like population size or the sophistication of a governance. Rather, the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258161">biggest drivers of innovation</a> appear to be the overall world population at any given time, increasing connectivity among large states – along with the competition that such connections brought – and a few fundamental technological advances that set off a cascade of subsequent innovations. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427866/original/file-20211021-13-1gyumy0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Pieces of bronze with many holes and a cross brace that acts as a bit." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427866/original/file-20211021-13-1gyumy0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427866/original/file-20211021-13-1gyumy0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427866/original/file-20211021-13-1gyumy0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427866/original/file-20211021-13-1gyumy0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427866/original/file-20211021-13-1gyumy0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427866/original/file-20211021-13-1gyumy0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427866/original/file-20211021-13-1gyumy0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The invention of horse bits and other bridle parts – like this one from 7th- to 8th-century B.C. Italy – gave people more effective control of horses, which had knock-on effects for the development of mounted warfare.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/255363">Walter C. Baker/New York Metropolitan Museum of Art</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Let’s illustrate these dynamics with a specific example. Around 1000 B.C., nomadic herders in the steppes north of the Black Sea <a href="https://doi.org/10.2993/0278-0771-36.3.554">invented the bit and bridle</a> to better control horses when riding them. They combined this technology with a powerful recurved bow and iron arrowheads to deadly effect. Horse archers became <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S174002280900312X">the weapon of mass destruction of the ancient world</a>. Shortly after 1000 B.C., thousands of metal bits suddenly appeared and spread within the Eurasian steppes.</p>
<p>Competition and connection then grew between the nomadic people and the larger settled states. Because it was hard for farming societies to resist these mounted warriors, they were forced to develop <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/ca/academic/subjects/history/east-asian-history/history-chinese-civilization-2nd-edition?format=PB&isbn=9780521497817">new armor and weapons like the crossbow</a>. These states also had to build <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/war-and-state-formation-in-ancient-china-and-early-modern-europe/F81552218F82BDF65C54DF0BC08759D0">large infantry armies</a> and mobilize more of their populations toward such collective efforts as maintaining defenses and producing and distributing enough goods to keep everyone fed. This spurred the development of <a href="https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/tekb6">increasingly complex administrative systems</a> to manage all these moving parts. Ideological innovations – <a href="https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/2v59j">such as the major world religions of today</a> – were also developed as they helped to unite larger and more disparate populations toward common purpose. </p>
<p>Within this cascade of innovation we see the origins of the world’s first megaempires as well as the rise and spread of world religions practiced by billions of people today. In a way, these critical developments can all be traced back to the development of the bit and bridle, which allowed riders better control of horses. Each step in this line has been long understood, but by employing the full range of cross-cultural information stored in the Seshat databank, our team was able to trace the dynamic sequence tying all these different developments together. </p>
<p>Of course, this account gives a greatly simplified explanation of very complex historical dynamics. But our research exposes the key role played by the intersocietal competition and exchange in the evolution both of technology and of complex societies. Although the focus of this research was on the ancient and medieval periods, the gunpowder-triggered military revolution had analogous effects in the modern era.</p>
<p>Perhaps most importantly, our research shows that history is not “<a href="https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/09/16/history/">just one damn thing after another</a>” – there are indeed discernible causal patterns and <a href="https://doi.org/10.25162/historia-2018-0006">empirical regularities</a> through the course of history. And with Seshat, researchers can use the knowledge amassed by historians to separate theories that are supported by data from those that are not.</p>
<p><em>This story was co-authored by Daniel Hoyer, a researcher and project manager at the Evolution Institute and a part-time professor at George Brown College.</em></p>
<p>[<em>Understand new developments in science, health and technology, each week.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/science-editors-picks-71/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=science-understand">Subscribe to The Conversation’s science newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170073/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Turchin receives funding from the program “Complexity Science,” which is supported by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency FFG under grant #873927. </span></em></p>Did ancient technological advancements drive social innovation, or vice versa? Studying cause and effect in the ancient world may seem like a fool’s errand, but researchers built a database to do just that.Peter Turchin, Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of ConnecticutLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1551402021-04-23T01:44:23Z2021-04-23T01:44:23ZEndless itching: how Anzacs treated lice in the trenches with poetry and their own brand of medicine<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396455/original/file-20210422-13-ndzwj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C4%2C990%2C740&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://tiaki.natlib.govt.nz/#details=ecatalogue.135565">Royal New Zealand Returned and Services' Association Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, NZ (Tiaki reference number 1/4-009458-G)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>We think we know a lot about Australian and New Zealand soldiers’ health in the first world war. Many books, novels and television programs speak of wounds and war doctors, documenting the work of both Anzac nations’ medical corps. </p>
<p>Often these histories begin with front-line doctors — known as <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5229383/">regimental medical officers</a> — who first reached wounded men in the field. The same histories often end in the hospital or at home.</p>
<p>Yet, much of first world war medicine began and ended with the soldiers themselves. Australian and New Zealand soldiers (alongside their British and Canadian counterparts) cared for their own health in the trenches of the <a href="http://anzaccentenary.vic.gov.au/westernfront/history/index.html">Western Front</a> and along the cliffs of <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/encyclopedia/gallipoli">Gallipoli</a>. </p>
<p>This “vernacular” medicine spread from solider to soldier by word of mouth, which they then recorded in diaries and letters home. It spread through written texts, such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-comfort-of-reading-in-wwi-the-bibliotherapy-of-trench-and-hospital-magazines-158880">trench newspapers and magazines</a>, and through constant experimentation. </p>
<p>Soldiers presented a unique understanding of their experiences of illness, developed their own health practices, and formed their own medical networks. This formed a unique type of medical system.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/flies-filth-and-bully-beef-life-at-gallipoli-in-1915-39321">Flies, filth and bully beef: life at Gallipoli in 1915</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What was this type of medicine like?</h2>
<p>Soldiers’ vernacular medicine becomes clear when looking at one significant example of war diseases — infestation with body lice — which caused <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(16)30003-2/fulltext">trench fever</a> and <a href="https://www.who.int/ith/diseases/typhusfever/en/">typhus</a>. </p>
<p>The men’s understandings of the effect of lice on the body often contrasted to that of medical professionals. </p>
<p>Soldiers described lice as a daily nuisance rather than vectors of disease. The men sitting in the trenches were preoccupied with addressing the immediate and constant discomfort caused by lice, whereas medical researchers and doctors were more concerned with losing manpower from lice-borne disease.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/life-on-us-a-close-up-look-at-the-bugs-that-call-us-home-25754">Life on Us: a close-up look at the bugs that call us home</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>Many men focused on the endless itching, which some said drove them almost mad. </p>
<p>Corporal George Bollinger, a New Zealand bank clerk from Hastings, <a href="https://ndhadeliver.natlib.govt.nz/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE16663681&dps_custom_att_1=emu">said</a>: “the frightful pest ‘lice’ is our chief worry now”.</p>
<p>Australian Private Arthur Giles shuddered when he wrote home about the lice, <a href="https://transcripts.sl.nsw.gov.au/page/giles-papers-9-may-1914-13-may-1919-arthur-clyde-giles-page-84">noting it</a>: “makes me scratch to think of them”.</p>
<h2>Soldiers experimented</h2>
<p>Soldiers’ reactions to lice, as a shared community, inspired them to experiment and share practical ideas of how to manage their itchy burdens. This included developing their own method of bathing.</p>
<p>When New Zealand Corporal Charles Saunders descended the cliffs to the beaches around Anzac Cove, <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1030011851">he would</a> “dive down and nudge a handful of sand from the bottom and rub it over [his] skin”, letting “the saltwater dry on one in the sun”. He also rubbed the sand across his uniform hoping to kill some of the lice eggs in the seams of his shirt and pants. </p>
<p>In some locations, fresh water was scarce and reserved for drinking. Without access to water, soldiers’ extermination methods became more offbeat, creative and original. </p>
<p>Men sourced <a href="https://www.aucklandartgallery.com/explore-art-and-ideas/artwork/4522/keatings-powder-poster">lice-exterminating powders</a>, such as Keating’s and Harrison’s, from patent providers — retail pharmaceutical sellers in the UK or back home in Australia and New Zealand — and rubbed various oils over their bodies. </p>
<p>Yet, one of the most popular extermination methods was “chatting” — popping the louse between the thumbnails.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Soldiers delousing clothing outside tents" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396453/original/file-20210422-17-l1c12p.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C0%2C1097%2C659&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396453/original/file-20210422-17-l1c12p.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396453/original/file-20210422-17-l1c12p.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396453/original/file-20210422-17-l1c12p.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396453/original/file-20210422-17-l1c12p.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396453/original/file-20210422-17-l1c12p.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396453/original/file-20210422-17-l1c12p.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Five soldiers delousing (‘chatting’) their infested clothing outside their tents.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C1000712">Australian War Memorial (photograph C00748)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>An Australian bootmaker, Lieutenant Allan McMaster, <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C92857">told his family</a> in Newcastle it was “amusing indeed to see all the boys at the first minute they have to spare, to strip off altogether and have what we call a chating [sic] parade”. </p>
<p>Corporal Bert Jackson, an orchardist from Upper Hawthorn in Melbourne, <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C92683">took his</a> “shirt off and had a hunt, and then put it on inside out”. He said that if he “missed any, the beggars will have a job to get to the skin again”. </p>
<h2>Soldiers shared their knowledge</h2>
<p>These soldiers shared their practices via their own medical networks, such as trench newspapers.</p>
<p>For instance, soldiers wrote humorous poems that also educated their fellow men. Australian Lance Corporal TA Saxon <a href="http://digital.sl.nsw.gov.au/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?embedded=true&toolbar=false&dps_pid=IE3673775">joked about</a> lice-exterminating powders in his poem A Dug-Out Lament:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] They’re in our tunics, and in our shirts,</p>
<p>They take a power of beating,</p>
<p>So for goodness sake, if you’re sending us cake, Send also a tin of Keating. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396451/original/file-20210422-23-j8lt9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Chatting by the Wayside" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396451/original/file-20210422-23-j8lt9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396451/original/file-20210422-23-j8lt9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=868&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396451/original/file-20210422-23-j8lt9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=868&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396451/original/file-20210422-23-j8lt9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=868&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396451/original/file-20210422-23-j8lt9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1090&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396451/original/file-20210422-23-j8lt9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1090&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396451/original/file-20210422-23-j8lt9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1090&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Soldiers shared cartoons and jokes about delousing via magazines and newspapers, such as this one in March 1918.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (Q91/244, FL3509202)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One image from the trench newspaper “Aussie: the Australian soldiers’ magazine” came with <a href="http://digital.sl.nsw.gov.au/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?embedded=true&toolbar=false&dps_pid=IE3508591">the caption</a> “Chatting by the Wayside” that drew on the well-trod joke about the double meaning of the word chatting.</p>
<h2>What can we learn?</h2>
<p>Reflecting on these often-overlooked aspects of the past helps us rethink medicine today.</p>
<p>For marginal groups in particular, access to professional health care can, and has often been, an expensive, alienating, or culturally foreign and abrasive task. So even in today’s globalised world, networks of non-professional medicine are as active as ever.</p>
<p>With many people isolated and at the mercy of much conflicting information, informal medical networks (often found on social media) present an opportunity to allay fears and swap information in a similar manner to how Anzac soldiers communicated via trench newspapers. </p>
<p>Perhaps some forms of vernacular medicine are occurring right under our noses.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-comfort-of-reading-in-wwi-the-bibliotherapy-of-trench-and-hospital-magazines-158880">The comfort of reading in WWI: the bibliotherapy of trench and hospital magazines</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155140/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Georgia McWhinney received funding from the Federal Government of Australia. </span></em></p>Anzac soldiers wrote poetry about body lice, shared treatment tips and experimented with new ways of bathing.Georgia McWhinney, Honorary Postdoctoral Associate, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1582702021-04-05T19:19:42Z2021-04-05T19:19:42ZMyanmar’s brutal military was once a force for freedom – but it’s been waging civil war for decades<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393194/original/file-20210401-17-wbsofw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C15%2C5184%2C3430&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Every March 27, the Myanmar military celebrates its anniversary with a parade. The day of the 2021 parade, soldiers killed at least 90 pro-democracy protesters.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/march-27-2021-military-vehicles-march-in-a-formation-during-news-photo/1231981232?adppopup=true">Xinhua/Zhang Dongqiang via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With great fanfare – but few guests – Myanmar’s armed forces recently celebrated their <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/3/27/myanmar-coup-leaders-put-on-show-of-force">76th anniversary</a> in the nation’s capital of Naypyitaw. </p>
<p>Only Russia, China, Thailand and a handful of other Asian countries sent representatives to attend the March 27, 2021, parade showing off Myanmar’s modern war machines – mostly imported from <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Myanmar-Coup/Myanmar-embraces-Russian-arms-to-offset-China-s-influence">Russia and China</a> over the past decade, to the tune of US$2.4 billion. </p>
<p>The Myanmar military has been terrorizing civilians since a <a href="https://theconversation.com/myanmar-coup-how-the-military-has-held-onto-power-for-60-years-154526">coup two months earlier</a>. On the day of the parade, soldiers killed over 90 people for protesting military rule, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/27/world/asia/myanmar-protests.html">including a 5-year-old boy and three teenagers</a>. An estimated <a href="https://aappb.org">564 people</a> have been killed in Myanmar since the Feb. 1 coup.</p>
<p>One of Asia’s poorest countries, Myanmar spends twice as much on defense as it does on <a href="https://www.mmtimes.com/news/govt-spend-more-health-education-funds-agri-lacking.html">education and health combined</a>. With <a href="https://www.globalfirepower.com/country-military-strength-detail.php?country_id=myanmar&fbclid=IwAR1uhlfS7Xwh1N4K1NXhAKN0wL8lD2s7rDskIgEgGO-PzTZx31yrGY9rof8">half a million soldiers</a>, at least on paper, Myanmar has the world’s 38th strongest military, according to Global Fire Power, which ranks 140 nations on their capability to wage war.</p>
<p>Myanmar’s military wasn’t always a repressive force. It began as an <a href="https://newint.org/features/2008/04/18/history">adored liberating force founded to end colonial rule</a>. </p>
<h2>History of the Burma army</h2>
<p>Burma’s first national army came out of World War II and <a href="https://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/burma601/timeline.html">the quest for independence</a>.</p>
<p>Led by a group called the “30 comrades” who <a href="https://www.irrawaddy.com/opinion/commentary/man-behind-burma-independence-army.html">received military training from the Japanese</a>,“ the Burma Independence Army allied itself with Japan to fight the British. Everyday people sold their gold to support this revolutionary force.</p>
<p>The Burma Independence Army forced the British out in 1941. The Japanese then occupied Burma, fighting <a href="https://history.army.mil/brochures/burma42/burma42.htm">Britain, the U.S. and other Allied forces from this strategic location in Southeast Asia</a>.</p>
<p>Soon, though, Burma’s army <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aung-San#ref86513">wanted Japan out of Burma</a>, too. So did many Burmese people. Thousands of members of ethnic and religious minorities from rural border areas joined the army. </p>
<p>Historically, these minority groups had kept their distance from the country’s Buddhist majority, called Bamar, and from each other. The British <a href="https://thegeopolitics.com/british-rule-and-partition-in-south-asia-blueprint-of-two-refugee-crises/">maintained and strengthened these ethnic divisions</a> as a tactic to maintain their colonial rule.</p>
<p>But during the 1940s resistance movement against the Japanese, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Women-in-Modern-Burma/Than/p/book/9781138687332">everyone was united behind Burma’s army</a>, my research finds – including women. </p>
<p>In 2007 I interviewed the <a href="https://www.igi-global.com/pdf.aspx?tid%3D114701%26ptid%3D91277%26ctid%3D17%26t%3Dwomen+in+modern+burma%26isxn%3D">first five women soldiers who joined Burma’s struggle for independence</a>. </p>
<p>"When the resistance movement began, we were ready to give everything, including our lives,” Daw Khin Kyi Kyi, then in her 80s, told me.</p>
<p>The women attended military training, traveled to villages near army camps to explain why the army was now fighting against the Japanese, and convinced locals to offer food and shelter to the soldiers. The women also enlisted locals to spy on Japanese troops.</p>
<h2>Civil war begins</h2>
<p>The Japanese surrendered to the Allied forces in 1945 and withdrew from all occupied territories, including Burma. </p>
<p>That put Burma back in British hands, with promises of full sovereignty.</p>
<p>Before the British would grant Burma independence, however, they demanded that the country’s Bamar leadership prove that its many minority groups also wanted independence as one nation. Burma’s revolutionary army leader Aung San convened a summit in the town of Panglong with the leaders of various ethnic groups to negotiate the foundations of a unified, independent Burma.</p>
<p>However, <a href="https://minorityrights.org/minorities/karen/">the Karen</a>, a mostly Christian population from the country’s southeast, had previously been promised British help in establishing their own free state. Karen leaders refused to join the 1947 <a href="https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/faq/panglong-agreement">Panlong Agreement</a>. </p>
<p>Burma became independent in 1948. The next year, elite Karen troops staged an armed revolt against the new national government. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393282/original/file-20210402-13-18yyr4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black-and-white image of a guard hut and a wooden sign reading 'give me liberty or give me death'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393282/original/file-20210402-13-18yyr4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393282/original/file-20210402-13-18yyr4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393282/original/file-20210402-13-18yyr4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393282/original/file-20210402-13-18yyr4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393282/original/file-20210402-13-18yyr4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393282/original/file-20210402-13-18yyr4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393282/original/file-20210402-13-18yyr4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A sign marking the independence movement of the Karen National Liberation Army, in eastern Myanmar, July 1988.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/karen-people-walk-towards-a-sign-saying-give-me-liberty-or-news-photo/860546768?adppopup=true">Pornvilai Carr/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ever since, Myanmar’s military, called Tatmadaw, has essentially existed solely to fight against Myanmar’s minorities. </p>
<h2>Myanmar’s war economy</h2>
<p>For about a decade after independence, Burma had a democratic government. But the army was more powerful. Between <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-16546688">1962 and 2010, Burma was a military dictatorship</a>. Military rule endured through <a href="https://www.npr.org/2013/08/08/209919791/as-myanmar-opens-up-a-look-back-on-a-1988-uprising">occasional uprisings, show elections</a> and several coups in which one set of generals overthrew another.</p>
<p>Civil war is costly, so Myanmar developed a war economy. At first, it funded its battles with rice exports and loans from the U.S. and Soviet Union. Over time, Burma’s military entrenched itself in the global economic system.</p>
<p>In 1962, the military junta regime established <a href="https://burma.irrawaddy.com/article/2017/06/24/137302.html">Burma Trade Limited</a> in central London as its “legitimate” international brokerage. The military also mined and sold jade, mostly in areas that were home to repressed ethnic minorities and profited from a lively <a href="https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/power-money-economics-and-conflict-burma">opium trade</a> in Burma.</p>
<p>This military-controlled economy enriched Burma’s generals, but the money did not translate into national economic growth. In 1987, the United Nations rated Burma among the world’s “<a href="https://www.mm.undp.org/content/myanmar/en/home/presscenter/articles/2013/05/ldcgraduation.html">least developed countries</a>.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393281/original/file-20210402-23-ckx16q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Children in white tops and green pants hang on the outside of a very crowded bus; other children sit on top of the bus" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393281/original/file-20210402-23-ckx16q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393281/original/file-20210402-23-ckx16q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393281/original/file-20210402-23-ckx16q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393281/original/file-20210402-23-ckx16q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393281/original/file-20210402-23-ckx16q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393281/original/file-20210402-23-ckx16q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393281/original/file-20210402-23-ckx16q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A bus headed to Mandalay, Myanmar, in the late 1980s or early 1990s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/on-the-road-to-mandalay-in-maymyo-birmanie-sur-la-route-de-news-photo/947436940?adppopup=true">Robert Tixador/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Burma’s name was changed to Myanmar in 1989.</p>
<h2>Sanctions and boycotts</h2>
<p>Today, Myanmar’s economy is almost entirely controlled by the military, from telecommunications to drugs. The military’s sprawling business networks – which <a href="https://www.justiceformyanmar.org/stories/myanmars-military-cartel-corruption-by-design">some rights groups call “cartels”</a> – have protected the generals from attempts to democratize. </p>
<p>In 2008, for example, the Myanmar military assented to a new Constitution officially giving 75% of seats in Parliament to civilian politicians and reserving 25% for army representatives. </p>
<p>Unofficially, though, the military largely continued to run the nation. That included unrelenting repression of minority groups, including the Karen – who have <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-politics-ethnic-explainer/explainer-truce-over-as-myanmars-karen-insurgents-brace-for-battle-with-junta-idUSKBN2BO4G6">maintained their insurgency for seven decades</a> – and the Rohingya Muslims. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Elections in 2015 were supposed to mark a turning point in this quasi-democratic system. Aung San Suu Kyi, daughter of the revolutionary Aung San and leader of a prior democratic uprising, and her National League for Democracy <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-33547036">won in a landslide</a>. </p>
<p>Suu Kyi faced criticism for failing to stand up to the military, particular in its assaults on the Rohingya. Even so, she was deposed in the February 2021 coup and is now detained in an unknown location. Some dissidents are fleeing into to Karen territory and other rebel-held ethnic areas to escape <a href="https://www.myanmar-now.org/en/news/myanmar-army-soldiers-defect-to-knu-to-side-with-anti-coup-protesters">the military.
</a></p>
<p>As the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2021/3/28/myanmar-protests-continue-a-day-after-more-than-100-killed">death toll in Myanmar mounts</a>, international pressure is growing for <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-know-how-to-cut-off-the-financial-valve-to-myanmars-military-the-world-just-needs-the-resolve-to-act-158220">countries to impose harsher sanctions</a> on the junta and for companies to cease trade. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/05/business/japan-kirin-myanmar-intl-hnk/index.html">Japan’s Kirin beer</a> and <a href="https://www.livemint.com/news/world/german-company-halts-supply-of-myanmar-bank-note-components-11617187349429.html">a German company that supplies the Myanmar mint</a> are among those that have cut ties with Myanmar. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, civil disobedience inside the country continues. Choking off the military’s funding could give the protesters and deposed civilian government a fighting chance.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158270/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tharaphi Than does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What began in the 1940s as a revolutionary army created to liberate Myanmar from British colonial rule soon turned repressive. The country has been a military dictatorship on and off since 1962.Tharaphi Than, Associate Professor, Department of World Cultures and Languages, Northern Illinois UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1539712021-02-17T13:21:52Z2021-02-17T13:21:52ZHow the National Guard became the go-to military force for riots and civil disturbances<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384553/original/file-20210216-13-1dg02bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C49%2C6645%2C4383&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Virginia National Guard troops in front of the U.S. Capitol building, Feb. 5, 2021.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/virginia-national-guard-troops-walk-down-the-capitol-steps-news-photo/1230985766">Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://www.stripes.com/news/us/5-000-national-guard-troops-will-remain-in-dc-beyond-mid-march-1.659837">Pentagon has approved leaving 5,000 troops</a> deployed indefinitely to protect the U.S. Capitol from domestic extremist threats, down from about 26,000 deployed after the Jan. 6 insurrection.</p>
<p>The National Guard is a federally funded <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/03/us/what-is-national-guard-trnd/index.html">reserve force</a> of the U.S. Army or Air Force based in states. These part-time citizen soldiers typically hold civilian jobs but can be activated by state governors <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-the-president-really-order-the-military-to-occupy-us-cities-and-states-139844">or the president</a> to respond to natural disasters, health emergencies or violent protests, or to support military operations overseas. Although many Americans are <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/optics-matter-national-guard-deployments-amid-unrest-have-a-long-and-controversial-history">skeptical of any military response</a> to civilian unrest, the National Guard is widely seen as a <a href="https://www.hsdl.org/?abstract&did=467769">reliable peacekeeping force</a>. </p>
<p>It wasn’t always this way. The National Guard has a complicated history of responding to civil disturbances.</p>
<h2>History of the National Guard</h2>
<p>The modern National Guard evolved from Colonial-era militias. </p>
<p>Because of post-Revolutionary fears over the cost and potential tyranny of a <a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI_S8_C12_1_1/">standing army</a>, the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-1/section-8/clause-15-16/the-militia-clauses">Constitution</a> authorized citizens to form militias that would “execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.” </p>
<p>Subsequent <a href="https://constitution.org/1-Activism/mil/mil_act_1792.htm">militia acts</a> confirmed state authority over the militia with responsibility as a national military reserve for defense and peacekeeping. By the 19th century, local militias were almost everywhere, but they varied widely in <a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803229709/">mandate and quality</a>.</p>
<p>In the South, militias – <a href="https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/slave-patrols/">once used to hunt down escaped slaves</a> – continued to <a href="https://theconversation.com/theres-a-history-of-white-supremacists-interpreting-government-leaders-words-as-encouragement-137873">enforce white supremacy</a> after the Civil War, <a href="https://muse-jhu-edu.ezproxy.csbsju.edu/article/380947">attacking Republican politicians and killing Black voters</a>. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, in fits and starts, New York’s militias were becoming <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Rise-National-Guard-Evolution-1865-1920/dp/0803264283">well funded, trained and regulated</a>, as, increasingly, were <a href="https://www-jstor-org.ezproxy.csbsju.edu/stable/27553270?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">those in the Midwest</a>.</p>
<h2>National Guard and labor wars</h2>
<p>By the late 19th century, state and local militias were regularly being used to respond to civil disorder. </p>
<p>Still, when more than 100,000 workers across the U.S. protested wage cuts by walking off the job for up to six weeks in what was called the <a href="https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Great_Railroad_Strike_of_1877">Great Labor Strikes of 1877</a>, state and city officials throughout the country hesitated to call out their militias to reopen the railroads. </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/641532">my historical research</a>, officials feared that militiamen might sympathize with the workers’ uprising. Secretary of War George McCrary was among them. In a <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=tysXAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA266&lpg=PA266&dq=%22this+fact+alone+renders+the+local+militia+unreliable+in+such+an+emergency%22&source=bl&ots=E8bS2RYDRb&sig=ACfU3U10BNcacjosfCCgzcyew-6MGIs7vA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwil6Pjvh-juAhWGB80KHe1mDSoQ6AEwAXoECAQQAg#v=onepage&q=%22this%20fact%20alone%20renders%20the%20local%20militia%20unreliable%20in%20such%20an%20emergency%22&f=false">report that year</a>, he argued that the Army was more dependable in strikes than local militias. </p>
<p>“Uprisings enlist in a greater or less degree the sympathy of the communities in which they occur,” he argued, calling local militia “unreliable in such an emergency.” </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384616/original/file-20210217-21-bfqwyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white illustration of militia in city streets" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384616/original/file-20210217-21-bfqwyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384616/original/file-20210217-21-bfqwyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384616/original/file-20210217-21-bfqwyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384616/original/file-20210217-21-bfqwyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384616/original/file-20210217-21-bfqwyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384616/original/file-20210217-21-bfqwyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384616/original/file-20210217-21-bfqwyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 6th Baltimore Regiment, a Maryland militia, on strike duty in 1877.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8a/Harpers_8_11_1877_6th_Regiment_Fighting_Baltimore.jpg/696px-Harpers_8_11_1877_6th_Regiment_Fighting_Baltimore.jpg">Harper's Weekly magazine</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The state militias also lacked uniform <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Rise-National-Guard-Evolution-1865-1920/dp/0803264283/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1613260967&sr=1-1">discipline, centralized command structure and tactical training</a>.
Many militiamen <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=lsgscx5TyyoC&pg=PA156&lpg=PA156&dq=%22lessons+learned+the+ing+and+strike+duty,+1894-1916%22&source=bl&ots=ag3pISCgrG&sig=ACfU3U1oOUiCbEQdUtHlbrXWkYnHzPILFg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjCjavOjujuAhUFU80KHTCDAPMQ6AEwBXoECAgQAg#v=onepage&q=%22lessons%20learned%20the%20ing%20and%20strike%20duty%2C%201894-1916%22&f=false">hated being deployed on labor strike or riot duty within their own communities</a>. They did not want to be seen as pawns of big business, and unions increasingly prohibited their members from joining militias.</p>
<p>The 1877 labor strikes highlighted <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=nHsJBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA183&lpg=PA183&dq=%22local+militia+unreliable%22&source=bl&ots=p3mR4h8Zw2&sig=ACfU3U3FCTkKQ6DAj2I_o8PYX2AOFHoJlw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjn7szfkdbuAhWRK80KHVkbCOoQ6AEwAHoECAMQAg#v=onepage&q=%22local%20militia%20unreliable%22&f=false">the need for well-trained state militias</a> with clear mandates. State legislatures began to ramp up funding for militias, which came to be called the National Guard. </p>
<p>Over the next half-century, the Guard’s role as a viable federal reserve to the U.S. Army, <a href="https://history.army.mil/news/2016/160500a_natDefAct1916.html">under the control of the War Department</a>, became <a href="https://history.army.mil/documents/1901/Root-NG.htm">federally codified</a>. Between 1900 and 1915, the U.S. government invested US$60 million for National Guard training, weapons and soldier pay. </p>
<h2>Racial uprisings</h2>
<p>By the 1960s, the National Guard had an annual budget nearing <a href="https://www.nationalguard.mil/About-the-Guard/Historical-Publications/Annual-Reports/FileId/134540/">$950 million</a>. Between 1965 and 1971, the Army National Guard was deployed <a href="https://www.gao.gov/assets/210/203694.pdf">260 times</a> to maintain order during urban and anti-war civil disturbances such as those following the death of Martin Luther King Jr. </p>
<p>But the National Guard was still predominantly white and male, and its discipline and training again came under scrutiny during the era’s racial uprisings. </p>
<p>In 1967, inexperienced National Guard troops with as little as <a href="https://www.gao.gov/assets/210/203694.pdf">six hours of riot training</a> were deployed to racial uprisings by Black residents in <a href="https://detroithistorical.org/learn/encyclopedia-of-detroit/uprising-1967">Detroit</a> and in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/nyregion/newark-riots-50-years.html">Newark</a>, New Jersey. Rather than keep the peace, they responded with lethal force. Of 43 deaths in Detroit’s five days of protests, <a href="https://www.freep.com/story/news/detroitriot/2017/07/23/victims-detroit-riot-1967/499550001/">Guardsmen were responsible for at least nine</a>. One victim was 4-year-old Tonia Blanding, who was killed on July 26, 1967, when <a href="https://www-jstor-org.ezproxy.csbsju.edu/stable/2784247?seq=5#metadata_info_tab_contents">Guardsmen shot into her apartment building</a> based on rumors of snipers. </p>
<p>In Newark, then-police director Dominick Spina condemned the untrained Guardsmen for creating a “<a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/national-advisory-commission-civil-disorders-kerner-report-1967/">state of hysteria</a>” in his city during demonstrations in July 1967 following rumors that a Black man had been killed in police custody. </p>
<p>President Lyndon B. Johnson formed the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, known as the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/us/kerner-commission-report.html">Kerner Commission</a>, to investigate 1967’s civil unrest. The commission’s report urged the federal government to develop guidelines governing riot control and <a href="http://www.eisenhowerfoundation.org/docs/kerner/Kerner_C12.pdf">fund research into such alternatives</a> to lethal weapons as tear gas and sound cannons, which were pursued.</p>
<h2>Deaths at Kent State</h2>
<p>On May 4, 1970, National Guardsmen responded to student anti-war protests at <a href="https://www.kent.edu/may-4-1970">Kent State University</a> in Ohio. When the soldiers ran out of tear gas, students threw bricks and bottles at them. The soldiers opened fire, killing four students and injuring nine.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384554/original/file-20210216-19-1ktdd57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black-and-white image of three running young people, chased by a dozen armed soldiers" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384554/original/file-20210216-19-1ktdd57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384554/original/file-20210216-19-1ktdd57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384554/original/file-20210216-19-1ktdd57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384554/original/file-20210216-19-1ktdd57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384554/original/file-20210216-19-1ktdd57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384554/original/file-20210216-19-1ktdd57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384554/original/file-20210216-19-1ktdd57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">After the Kent State killings, students at the University of New Mexico flee the National Guard on May 4, 1970.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com.mx/detail/fotografía-de-noticias/following-the-may-4-1970-shooting-of-students-fotografía-de-noticias/526095104?adppopup=true">Steven Clevenger/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/04/kent-state-massacre-marked-start-of-americas-polarization">Americans supported the Guard’s actions</a> at Kent State, while others were anguished. President Richard Nixon’s <a href="https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED083899.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1OYAUxWVXtSsUbSHlCO67UY0VLqfMz9VgUXpfwLm12RhWVNEUhD-ThbLM">Commission on Campus Unrest</a> argued in its September 1970 report that “even if the guardsmen faced danger, it was not a danger that called for lethal force.” </p>
<p>“The Kent State tragedy must mark the last time that … loaded rifles are issued to guardsmen confronting student demonstrators,” the report concluded.</p>
<h2>Making a modern Guard</h2>
<p>The outcry over civilian deaths in Detroit, Newark, Kent State and elsewhere resulted in <a href="https://www.gao.gov/assets/210/203694.pdf">changes to the National Guard</a>.</p>
<p>Guardsmen were given more protective equipment and trained in nonlethal methods of crowd control. In the past 50 years, the National Guard has also grown into a more diverse force. Today, nearly <a href="https://download.militaryonesource.mil/12038/MOS/Reports/2018-demographics-report.pdf">20% of the Guard members are women and 25% are people of color</a>. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Today, government leaders and civilians see the National Guard as a reliable force for emergency responses of all kinds, from disaster relief to delivering COVID-19 vaccinations.</p>
<p>But the future may hold more troubles. Recent investigations into <a href="https://theconversation.com/police-soldiers-bring-lethal-skill-to-militia-campaigns-against-us-government-153369">white supremacist infiltration of the military and police</a> prompted closer scrutiny of National Guard troops. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/19/us/politics/national-guard-extremist-pentagon.html">Two members were removed from duty</a> protecting the presidential inauguration because of links with extremist organizations.</p>
<p><em>A caption in this story has been corrected to reflect that the photo was taken of students fleeing the National Guard at the University of New Mexico.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153971/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shannon M. Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Some 5,000 National Guardsmen will stay in Washington to protect the Capitol into March, according to the Pentagon. The Guard is seen as a reliable peacekeeping force – but it wasn’t always that way.Shannon M. Smith, Associate Professor of History, College of Saint Benedict & Saint John's UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1494352020-12-31T00:12:59Z2020-12-31T00:12:59ZLeft to ruin: we must preserve our forgotten wartime defences<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373252/original/file-20201207-15-1i3dsh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=193%2C126%2C3814%2C2504&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fort Drummond at Mount Saint Thomas, NSW.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alexander Lee</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Australia built a number of coastal defences to help protect the country from any enemy attack during the second world war. Now, almost 80 years later, some of the physical remnants of those historic facilities lie forgotten and decaying.</p>
<p>These monuments to the nation’s home defence are in desperate need of preservation. While their condition varies greatly, too many have faded into obscurity.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-happens-now-weve-found-the-site-of-the-lost-australian-freighter-ss-iron-crown-sunk-in-wwii-115848">What happens now we've found the site of the lost Australian freighter SS Iron Crown, sunk in WWII</a>
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<h2>In defence of Wollongong</h2>
<p>For example, if you take a drive through the city of Wollongong today you could be forgiven for thinking the city played no role in the war. There is little indication this city was once heavily defended against a much-feared Axis attack. </p>
<p>If you take a 15-minute drive south of the city centre you’ll find some remnants of the city’s home defences. The well-developed Port Kembla Heritage Park, with its cluster of tank traps and ruined gun instalments, alludes to the history of a city that was once extremely important to Australia’s war effort.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374133/original/file-20201210-14-nx3mfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Small concrete pyramids designed to stop tanks." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374133/original/file-20201210-14-nx3mfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374133/original/file-20201210-14-nx3mfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374133/original/file-20201210-14-nx3mfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374133/original/file-20201210-14-nx3mfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374133/original/file-20201210-14-nx3mfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374133/original/file-20201210-14-nx3mfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374133/original/file-20201210-14-nx3mfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The pyramid tank traps at Port Kembla.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/yewenyi/1180069069/">Brian Yap/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This site, known as <a href="https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/heritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?ID=2700585">Breakwater Battery</a>, was the first, smallest and weakest of three interconnected strongpoints designed to defend the industry of the Illawarra region of New South Wales from attack.</p>
<p>But this raises the question: where are the other two stronger points of Wollongong’s defensive network? </p>
<h2>Our hidden defences</h2>
<p>These sites still exist but are hidden. If you head to the leafy suburb of Mount Saint Thomas or Hill 60 Park in Port Kembla, you will find the more impressive remnants of the city’s defences. </p>
<p>Mount Saint Thomas and Hill 60 Park once hosted the military centres of <a href="https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/heritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?ID=2700709">Fort Drummond</a> and the <a href="https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/heritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?ID=5052361">Illowra Battery</a> respectively.</p>
<p>Dug into the hillside in both locations are impressive concrete casemates that once housed powerful naval guns. Hundreds of men and huge amounts of Australia’s limited wartime resources were dedicated to building and staffing these sites in the wartime period from 1941-1942.</p>
<p>The Illowra Battery, sitting right on the coast, was designed to replace Breakwater Battery as the pivot of local defences. It was strengthened over time with barbed wire, radar and tunnels deep in the hillside.</p>
<p>In the case of Fort Drummond, the 9.2-inch coastal guns were originally slated to be installed in Darwin in the Northern Territory, but were diverted south to strengthen the defences of Wollongong.</p>
<p>The prioritisation of the defence of Wollongong over Darwin, which was <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/E84294">bombed</a>, shows just how important protecting this southern region was. </p>
<p>The three strong points were designed to operate in concert to defend the region from an attack on Australia’s manufacturing core.</p>
<p>The industrial Illawarra was an economic behemoth for wartime Australia, producing everything from bullets to aircraft parts. It exported the materials of war across the British Empire, as far away as England and Singapore, and alongside Newcastle (in NSW) was the heart of Australian industry. </p>
<p>Yet, despite their important role in the war, these monuments are now overgrown, slowly being reclaimed by nature.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374141/original/file-20201210-23-tfqh35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An overgrown site of one of the coast al defences." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374141/original/file-20201210-23-tfqh35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374141/original/file-20201210-23-tfqh35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374141/original/file-20201210-23-tfqh35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374141/original/file-20201210-23-tfqh35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374141/original/file-20201210-23-tfqh35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374141/original/file-20201210-23-tfqh35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374141/original/file-20201210-23-tfqh35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Illowra Battery exterior: the entrance is heavily overgrown and the path to the site is undeveloped.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alexander Lee</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/lest-we-forget-our-other-heroes-of-war-fighting-for-freedom-at-home-38428">Lest we forget our other heroes of war, fighting for freedom at home</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Kept in the dark</h2>
<p>In the 1960s and early 1970s, the dark tunnels of Fort Drummond were converted to mushroom farms, not military history attractions.</p>
<p>As for Hill 60, instead of being developed as a tourist attraction the place has appeared on lists of the most <a href="https://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/4815089/8-of-the-most-haunted-places-in-the-illawarra-and-south-coast/">haunted places in the Illawarra</a>.</p>
<p>Reports five years ago that Hill 60 would be <a href="https://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/3272312/plan-to-reopen-port-kemblas-wartime-tunnels/">redeveloped</a>, opening the tunnels, adding signage and highlighting the area’s Aboriginal history, have come to nothing. </p>
<p>Such stories of neglect are repeated at other defence sites across Australia.</p>
<p>Significant sites in <a href="https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/ghostly-network-of-concrete-bunkers-once-home-to-sydneys-coastal-defence-in-wartime/news-story/26232d5453d3dddb4061c8a28d7083ea">Sydney</a>, <a href="https://apps.des.qld.gov.au/heritage-register/detail/?id=602559">Brisbane</a>, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-01/inside-adelaides-remaining-world-war-bunkers/10562188">Adelaide</a> and <a href="https://www.newcastleherald.com.au/story/4077142/fort-wallace-revealed-photos/">Newcastle</a> are dilapidated and eroding.</p>
<p>Even in areas of historical significance to Australia, where the country’s colonial history has been well preserved, such as the Sydney suburb of <a href="https://www.sydney.com/destinations/sydney/sydney-east/la-perouse/attractions/bare-island-fort">La Perouse</a>, the nearby second world war artillery battery sites and lookout posts are <a href="https://www.tracesofwar.com/sights/8059/Battery-Henry-Head.htm">neglected</a>.</p>
<p>Considering these sites are often in idyllic locations and — by necessity at the time they were built — boast impressive ocean views, it is odd their value, even as tourist sites, remains unrealised.</p>
<p>There are other sites across Australia that have received investment in preservation, such as <a href="https://fortlytton.org.au/">Fort Lytton</a> in Brisbane and <a href="https://www.newcastle.nsw.gov.au/fort-scratchley/fort-scratchley-home">Fort Scratchley</a> in Newcastle. These are now tourist destinations. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-cowra-breakout-remembering-and-reflecting-on-australias-biggest-prison-escape-75-years-on-120410">The Cowra breakout: remembering and reflecting on Australia's biggest prison escape 75 years on</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>With relatively small investments the neglected sites could be made more accessible. The public would then be able to learn and understand their history and significance.</p>
<p>Signposting, basic repairs and publicising these important relics of our wartime history would be easy first steps to revive public interest in these locations. </p>
<p>The educational and touristic values of Australia’s second world war defences are readily apparent. All they require is a little bit of attention after so many decades of neglect.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374144/original/file-20201210-18-e2qpr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Plenty of graffiti just inside the coastal defence site." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374144/original/file-20201210-18-e2qpr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374144/original/file-20201210-18-e2qpr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374144/original/file-20201210-18-e2qpr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374144/original/file-20201210-18-e2qpr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374144/original/file-20201210-18-e2qpr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374144/original/file-20201210-18-e2qpr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374144/original/file-20201210-18-e2qpr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Inside the Illowra Battery graffiti covers the walls next to the tunnels, visible behind metal bars.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alexander Lee</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149435/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Mitchell Lee receives funding from the Australian Government's Research Training Program Scholarship for his Higher Education by Research studies.</span></em></p>Some of our coastal defences are in desperate need of preservation and could be transformed into tourist attractions.Alexander Mitchell Lee, PhD Candidate, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1260682019-12-02T06:00:24Z2019-12-02T06:00:24ZCan wars no longer be won?<p>Kurdish forces seized control of the Syrian town of Kobani in January 2015 after a four-month battle with Islamic State fighters. Footage of their triumph was relayed around the world. A global audience witnessed Kurdish troops indulge in raucous celebrations as they <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2015/jan/27/kurdish-fighters-isis-syria-kobani-video">raised their flag</a> on the hill that once flew the IS black banner.</p>
<p>And so it came as something of a shock when, in October 2019, President Donald Trump granted Turkey <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/18/trumps-turkey-deal-hands-power-to-ankara-and-leaves-syrian-kurds-for-dead">carte blanche</a> to seize territory held by the Kurds. Consequently, what once appeared an emphatic victory for the Kurds has since descended into yet another dismal defeat. </p>
<p>This is not an unusual tale. Victories have also been proclaimed in the recent wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, only for violence to continue unabated. </p>
<p>The spectre of these apparently endless wars gives us cause to consider whether the notion of “victory” has any purchase or meaning in respect of contemporary warfare. Having spent the best part of the last decade thinking about this very question, I have come to believe that the idea of victory in modern war is nothing more than a myth, albeit an enduringly dangerous one.</p>
<p>As I argue in my <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/victory-9780198832911?cc=gb&lang=en&">new book</a>, it’s high time for us to think again, and more deeply than we have done before, about what victory in war means today.</p>
<h2>The view from Washington</h2>
<p>The three most recent occupants of the White House offer very different views on the issue of victory. President Trump has made it both the cornerstone of his rhetoric and the lodestar of US foreign and security policy. “You’re going to be so proud of your country,” <a href="https://societyandspace.org/2017/02/28/we-will-win-again-we-will-win-a-lot-the-affective-styles-of-donald-trump/">he assured the audience</a> at a campaign rally in 2016: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We’re going to start winning again: we’re going to win at every level, we’re going to win economically […] we’re going to win militarily […] we’re going to win with every single facet, we’re going to win so much, you may even get tired of winning, and you’ll say ‘please, please, it’s too much winning, we can’t take it anymore’. And I’ll say, ‘no, it isn’t’. We have to keep winning, we have to win more, we’re going to win more.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cVC8bsfTyCY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trump begins the ‘winning so much’ part of the speech at 50 minutes.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Victory also loomed large in President George W. Bush’s statements on world politics. Delivering a <a href="https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/iraq/iraq_strategy_nov2005.html">keynote speech</a> on the Iraq War in 2005, for example, Bush used the word “victory” 15 times while standing in front of a sign that read “Plan for Victory” and pitching a document entitled “Our National Strategy for Victory in Iraq”.</p>
<p>Sandwiched between Presidents Bush and Trump, President Barack Obama took a very different view. Convinced that the idiom of victory was a retrograde way to talk about how modern wars end, he sought to excise it from US strategic discourse. The term “victory” is unhelpful, <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/07/23/nightline_interview_with_president_obama_transcript_97608.html">he explained</a>, because it evokes crude associations with conquest and triumphalism.</p>
<p>The disagreement between Trump and Bush on the one hand, and Obama on the other, runs deeper than a mere difference in rhetorical style (or lack thereof). It reflects profound uncertainties about the appropriateness of the language of victory to modern war. </p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption"></span>
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<p><strong><em>This article is part of Conversation Insights</em></strong>
<br><em>The Insights team generates <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218">long-form journalism</a> derived from interdisciplinary research. The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.</em> </p>
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<p>Since the early 20th century, the view has emerged that, when it comes to the mechanised mass slaughter of modern warfare, nobody wins. As Aristide Briand — prime minister of France for periods either side of the first world war — <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/1962-04-01/thoughts-tomorrow">put it</a>: “In modern war there is no victor. Defeat reaches out its heavy hand to the uttermost corners of the Earth and lays its burdens on victor and vanquished alike.” </p>
<p>Bao Ninh, a veteran of the North Vietnamese Army and the author of one of the most moving war novels of the 20th century, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/122077/the-sorrow-of-war-by-bao-ninh/">The Sorrow of War</a>, made much the same argument, but <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/122077/the-sorrow-of-war-by-bao-ninh/">in simpler terms</a>: “In war, no one wins or loses. There is only destruction.” </p>
<h2>Victory is dead …</h2>
<p>Irrespective of whatever Presidents Bush and Trump might believe, it is certainly tempting to say that there can be no such thing as victory in modern war. It is easy to believe that war is so ghastly and so destructive that it can never result in anything that could reasonably be called a victory. Any successes achieved on the battlefield, it might be argued are likely to be both so tenuous and bought at such a bloody cost that the mere idea of calling them “victories” appears ironic.</p>
<p>But this can only be part of the story. It is too glib to declare victory in modern war an untenable proposition on the grounds that it can only be purchased at a terrible cost in human lives and suffering. The value of a victory may be diminished by a steep price tag, but not entirely negated by it. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302992/original/file-20191121-542-14xif0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302992/original/file-20191121-542-14xif0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=328&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302992/original/file-20191121-542-14xif0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=328&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302992/original/file-20191121-542-14xif0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=328&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302992/original/file-20191121-542-14xif0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302992/original/file-20191121-542-14xif0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302992/original/file-20191121-542-14xif0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tyne Cot Cemetery in Belgium is the largest Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in the world and is the resting place of more than 11,900 servicemen of the British Empire from WWI.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/soldier-great-war-tyne-cot-belgium-165207269?src=d9f8a3dc-621e-4beb-8560-67308aa67c2e-2-76">Shutterstock/Wim Demortier</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For instance, while the second world war produced a truly barbaric body count, and boasts the cold war among its legacies, it also halted Nazism in its tracks. This, it goes without saying, must count for something. More recently, while the 1991 Gulf war arguably created more problems than it solved, it also successfully reversed Iraqi aggression in Kuwait. </p>
<p>My point here is a simple one: although victory can be hideously costly in modern war, and it invariably accomplishes far less than it is intended to achieve, it is not an entirely vacuous concept. </p>
<p>This brings us to the first of three twists in our tale. What is out of date here is not actually the general concept of victory itself, but the notion that victory is the product of decisive battles. The nature of modern warfare is not conducive to clear cut endings. Instead of yielding an emphatic victory for one side and, conversely, an incontrovertible defeat for the other, modern armed conflicts are prone to descend into protracted, drawn out endgames.</p>
<p>So it can sometimes be difficult to discern not only which side has won a given war but whether that war can even be deemed over in the first place. The words of Phil Klay, a writer who served in Iraq several years after President Bush had already declared “mission accomplished”, captured something of <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/311509/redeployment-by-phil-klay/9780143126829/">this confusion</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Success was a matter of perspective. In Iraq it had to be. There was no Omaha Beach, no Vicksburg Campaign, not even an Alamo to signal a clear defeat. The closest we’d come were those toppled Saddam statues, but that was years ago.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What this suggests is that victories no longer assume the form that they are expected to assume or that they had assumed in the past. If victory has historically been associated with the defeat of the adversary in a climactic pitched battle, this vision is now a relic from a bygone era. This is not how wars end in the 21st century. </p>
<h2>Was victory ever really alive?</h2>
<p>There is, then, plenty of evidence to support the view that, when it is spoken about in terms of decisiveness achieved through success in pitched battle, victory has little relevance to contemporary armed conflict. </p>
<p>But this is where we encounter the second twist in our tale. Some scholars claim that the vision of victory associated with decisive battle did not suddenly become problematic with the advent of the “war on terror”, nor even with the birth of modern warfare. Rather, they argue, it has <em>always</em> been problematic. </p>
<p>The historian Russell F. Weigley is the <a href="http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=22005">leading proponent</a> of this view. He contends that the idea of decisive victory through battle is a romantic trope left over from the only time in history when wars were routinely decided by a single clash of arms: the long century bookended by the battles of Breitenfeld (1631) and Waterloo (1815). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302997/original/file-20191121-554-1lm5rdb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302997/original/file-20191121-554-1lm5rdb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=274&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302997/original/file-20191121-554-1lm5rdb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=274&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302997/original/file-20191121-554-1lm5rdb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=274&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302997/original/file-20191121-554-1lm5rdb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=344&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302997/original/file-20191121-554-1lm5rdb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=344&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302997/original/file-20191121-554-1lm5rdb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=344&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Battle of Waterloo, 1815, by William Sadler.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sadler_(painter)#/media/File:Battle_of_Waterloo_1815.PNG">Wikipedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Spectacular but also unique to this period of history, the set-piece battles of this era, Weigley argues, have had a distorting effect upon how war has been understood ever since. The pomp and drama of these clashes was such that they captured the imagination of military historians and the general public alike. Ignoring the fact that that attrition, raiding, and siege craft, rather than grand battles, have historically been the principal means by which wars have been waged, historians (and their readers) have been culpable of buying into (and perpetuating) a kind of Hollywood vision of war that mistakes an exception to the norm. </p>
<p>This excessively battle-centric understanding of warfare has taken root in the popular imagination. Most contemporary representations of war – in literature, media, art and film – envision it as a sequence of battles leading up to and culminating in a decisive set-piece clash of the kind that the 2015 footage from Kobani ostensibly captured. This reflects a distortion of the historical record. In actual fact, very few wars down the centuries have pivoted on battles. Most have hinged on harrying, manoeuvring and the denial of access to vital resources. So far as we fail to see this, a proclivity to “boy’s own history” is to blame.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yzK0GBEkFxc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The idea of decisive victory predicated on success in battle is simply a historical curio that, one interlude aside, has seldom had much relevance to the material realities of war. </p>
<h2>Long live victory!</h2>
<p>So should this be the end of the matter? Obama and all the other critics of victory have, it seems, been vindicated. It is not merely that victory, couched in terms of decisiveness and indexed to success in pitched battle, has little relevance to the vagaries of contemporary warfare, it is that (one period around the 17th century aside) it has <em>never</em> had any salience. </p>
<p>This brings us to the third and final twist in our tale. While it is true that the idea of decisive victories achieved through pitched battle may be regarded as a product of lazy history writing, this should not be taken to mean that it is of no importance to how warfare is understood and practised. Even if it is just a myth, the idea of victory through decisive battle still bears significant clout. Chimerical though it may be, it still functions as a kind of regulative ideal, guiding people’s understanding, not so much of how wars actually end, but of how they <em>ought</em> to end.</p>
<p>Decisive victories may well be a rare beast, historically speaking, but they are also widely posited as the goal toward which all militaries should strive. This argument can be derived from the writings of, among others, the controversial historian Victor Davis Hanson.</p>
<p>Hanson, whose most <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-classicist-who-sees-donald-trump-as-a-tragic-hero">recent book</a> is a letter of support for the Trump presidency, is better known for writing <a href="http://victorhanson.com">several works</a> dedicated to making the case that the idea of decisive victory through battle continues to carry moral weight in Western political culture, even though a long time has passed since it was germane in a military sense. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303460/original/file-20191125-74593-1glnpe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303460/original/file-20191125-74593-1glnpe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=268&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303460/original/file-20191125-74593-1glnpe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=268&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303460/original/file-20191125-74593-1glnpe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=268&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303460/original/file-20191125-74593-1glnpe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303460/original/file-20191125-74593-1glnpe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303460/original/file-20191125-74593-1glnpe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Franz Matsch, Triumphant Achilles, 1892.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Triumph_of_Achilles_in_Corfu_Achilleion.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hanson traces the idea of decisive victory through battle to classical Greek civilisation and argues that it reflects the longstanding belief that the best way for communities to settle intractable disputes is to send citizen armies to face one another across an open battlefield and there fight it out. By confronting one another in a kill-or-be-killed scenario, societies commit to testing, not only their valour and military prowess, but also the values they fight for in the crucible of combat. Any outcomes that arise from such contests, must, it follows, be respected as the verdict of battle. </p>
<p>There is plenty of evidence to support this view. The history of Western thinking about war from the classical world to the present day is marked by both a repugnance for the adoption of tactics that circumvent the opportunity for pitched battle, and a readiness to sneer at any victories won by those means as somehow less worthy.</p>
<p>In ancient Greece, Odysseus was scorned for his predilection for overcoming his enemies <a href="https://www.didaskalia.net/issues/8/32/HecubaKardanStreet.pdf">by guile</a> rather than by hand-to-hand combat. In Persia, King Cyrus was similarly <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/history.1.i.html">lambasted</a> for relying on trickery to overcome his foes “rather than conquering [them] by force in battle”. In the fourth century BC, Alexander the Great valorised victories won by direct confrontation in pitched battles. He <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3LpxR8SBw4gC&pg=PT176&lpg=PT176&dq=alexander+%2B+parmenio+%2B+I+choose+to+regret+my+good+fortune+rather+than+be+ashamed+of+my+victory&source=bl&ots=M-JOlSUY_H&sig=ACfU3U0MD-0-6S4rvnPUIj5IFZdYLGoIYA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjU_aCO2-nlAhVtRBUIHZrxAh4Q6AEwA3oECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=alexander%20%2B%20parmenio%20%2B%20I%20choose%20to%20regret%20my%20good%20fortune%20rather%20than%20be%20ashamed%20of%20my%20victory&f=false">responded with contempt</a> when his adviser, Parmenio, proposed launching a night-time ambush on their foes: “The policy you are suggesting is one of bandits and thieves … I am resolved to attack openly and by daylight. I choose to regret my good fortune rather than be ashamed of my victory.” </p>
<p>Beyond the classical world, knights in the middle ages were wont to burnish their victories by exaggerating the importance of battles and downplaying the part played by more humdrum modes of warring (such as raiding) in delivering them. These views also carried over into the canon of modern strategic thought. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303462/original/file-20191125-74580-1ttk5xd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303462/original/file-20191125-74580-1ttk5xd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303462/original/file-20191125-74580-1ttk5xd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303462/original/file-20191125-74580-1ttk5xd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303462/original/file-20191125-74580-1ttk5xd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=662&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303462/original/file-20191125-74580-1ttk5xd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=662&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303462/original/file-20191125-74580-1ttk5xd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=662&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Battle of Crécy between the English and French in the Hundred Years’ War.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Battle_of_crecy_froissart.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The survival of this way of thinking into the present era is evident in the approbation that greets the use of those modes of fighting (such as the use of guerrilla tactics, terrorism, and drones) that preclude the finality of a decisive victory on the battlefield being achieved by either side. This reflects, I think, a lingering sense that any mode of belligerency that is not geared toward producing victory through the kind of fair fight that a battlefield contest is believed to represent must, in some sense, be morally problematic. </p>
<p>And so even though the ideal of decisive victory is best understood as nothing more than a myth, it still matters. It still shapes how we understand, think about and indeed approach war. As such, it continues to guide our thinking about what war can achieve, when it should be employed, by what means it should be conducted and how and when it should be concluded. To imagine that it can simply be struck from our vocabulary, as Obama apparently assumed, is as naive as it is foolish. But recognising this also reveals some unsettling realities. </p>
<h2>‘Mowing the lawn’</h2>
<p>The ideal of decisive victory, then, is a myth, albeit an enduringly powerful one that continues to shape how we think about war. And this myth poses some dangers. </p>
<p>It’s a myth that tempts us to think that war can still be a conclusive way of settling disputes between societies. It invites us to believe that societies can resolve their conflicts by simply fighting them out, with the winner taking all and loser honourably accepting its defeat as the verdict of battle. The problem with this vision is, of course, that it promises too much. War is too blunt an instrument to deliver such a clean ending. In a way, then, this belief sells us a false bill of goods – one that comes at a terrible cost in blood and treasure. One need only look to the plight of the Kurds in Kobani for proof of this. </p>
<p>To our detriment, we appear to be both stuck with and trapped by the language of victory. </p>
<p>The Israeli strategic doctrine known as “mowing the lawn” provides an intriguing <a href="https://besacenter.org/mideast-security-and-policy-studies/mowing-grass-israels-strategy-protracted-intractable-conflict/">counterpoint to this</a>. Whereas Israeli strategists traditionally focused on procuring decisive battlefield victories against rival state armies, recent experiences in Gaza have led them to adopt a different approach. </p>
<hr>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/islamic-state-has-survived-100-000-bombs-and-missiles-and-is-still-active-99407">Islamic State has survived 100,000 bombs and missiles and is still active</a>
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<p>Instead of supposing that the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) should aim to vanquish its enemies once and for all in direct combat, it is directed toward the pursuit of more modest, contingent objectives. The doctrine counsels that the IDF must treat the threat from Israel’s enemies in the same way that a gardener approaches the mowing of their lawn: that is, as a recurrent task that can never be fully completed but must instead be returned to at regular intervals. </p>
<p>As such, it reflects a hard-won acceptance of the fact that Israel will not achieve a final victory over its foes any time soon. In its place, it proposes that the best Israel can hope for is provisional gains – namely, the degradation and short-term containment of its enemies – that require constant and recurrent consolidation.</p>
<p>There are clearly very serious problems with this position — problems that I do not wish to deflect from or in any way minimise — but it does raise some interesting possibilities for how we think about victory. Specifically, it provokes us to reflect on what victory might look like if we ceased indexing it to notions of decisiveness and conclusiveness. </p>
<p>How might we reconfigure our understanding of victory so that it is coupled to provisional rather than final outcomes? This would presumably involve reframing it in partial and contingent rather than comprehensive terms. There is much to be said for this. But above all else, it would reconnect how we think about victory with the realities of modern warfare and a more sober assessment of the kind of goods it can deliver.</p>
<p>My point is not to persuade states to ape Israel’s strategic posture. It is, rather, to encourage reflection on the conundrum that victory in modern war poses.</p>
<h2>What does winning mean today?</h2>
<p>Thinking about contemporary armed conflict in terms of victory is problematic because modern warfare is not configured in such a way as to produce what we might regard as a clear-cut victory for one side and an emphatic defeat for the other. Construed this way, victory appears more mythical than real. </p>
<p>But even if it is a myth, it colours how we approach contemporary armed conflict today, tempting us to believe that clean endings are still a possibility – when they are evidently not. Victory is, in this sense, a red herring.</p>
<p>One solution to this conundrum would be to strike victory from our vocabularies. That is, to simply cease talking about it or in its terms. Yet this is easier said than done. As President Obama discovered, the language of victory is very difficult to circumvent or evade. Just when you think it’s dead, it comes back with even greater force behind it.</p>
<p>The dilemma, then, is clear. Victory: can’t live with it, can’t live without it. The challenge arising from this is to rethink what we mean by victory. If, as the historian Christopher Hill <a href="https://libcom.org/files/%5BChristopher_Hill%5D_The_World_Turned_Upside_Down_R%28Bookos.org%29.pdf">once wrote</a>, every generation must rewrite its history anew, the ever-changing nature of war demands that every generation must also rethink its understanding of military victory.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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</ul>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cian O'Driscoll received funding from the Independent Social Research Foundation and Economic and Social Research Council for this work. He is the author of Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Just War.</span></em></p>Wars don’t produce winners and losers – they never really did.Cian O'Driscoll, Professor of Politics, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1260102019-11-07T19:02:59Z2019-11-07T19:02:59ZFriday essay: a short, sharp history of the bayonet<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299637/original/file-20191031-26419-16xbj60.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=81%2C172%2C5381%2C3202&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A British Pattern 1907 bayonet with leather scabbard.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Even the sound of a bayonet could be frightening. The audible whetting of blades in the enemy’s trenches could puncture a night’s rest with premonitions of steely death. The sight of gleaming blades, too, turned the stomach of many a soldier. For all the sheer, witless terror it could produce in those who heard, saw and perhaps felt its cold steel, there was no weapon more visceral than the bayonet.</p>
<p>It might have been a moment of inspired panic that brought the bayonet into existence. The bearer of a musket – maybe a soldier, maybe a hunter – having fired his weapon and missed his target, found himself at the mercy of a fast-approaching assailant.</p>
<p>With no time to reload, he plunged the handle of a dagger into the muzzle, converting it from firearm to elongated knife or pike. Perhaps he had missed his target altogether and expected to be assaulted at any moment, or perhaps his wounded quarry had disappeared into a thicket and needed to be chased at speed. </p>
<p>As time was of the essence, it could not be squandered in the cumbersome act of reloading. Shoved snugly inside the muzzle of a firearm, even a short dagger could deliver a lethal strike.</p>
<p>From its first use somewhere in southwestern France sometime in the first half of the 17th century, the genius of the invention spread far and wide. History has it that the first acknowledged military use of the bayonet was at Ypres in 1647. It also reveals that, for all its genius, the days of the “plug bayonet” were numbered. While the wooden handle was plugged in the musket, the weapon could not be fired. Worse than that, over-vigorous use might damage the barrel, or the blade might break while wedged firmly inside. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300399/original/file-20191106-88368-102v3gq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300399/original/file-20191106-88368-102v3gq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300399/original/file-20191106-88368-102v3gq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=664&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300399/original/file-20191106-88368-102v3gq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=664&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300399/original/file-20191106-88368-102v3gq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=664&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300399/original/file-20191106-88368-102v3gq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=834&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300399/original/file-20191106-88368-102v3gq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=834&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300399/original/file-20191106-88368-102v3gq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=834&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Russian grenadier with bayonet in 1732.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Over time, ways were found to attach blades to the outside of barrels, whether running alongside, on top or beneath them. The blades could be short and dagger-like. Or they could be as long as swords, so that when attached to long-barrelled weapons they could deliver their bearer the advantage of reach. In cross-section, they might be broad and thin like a carving knife, round like a stiletto, or star-shaped.</p>
<p>In their countless variations, bayonets appeared on many a battlefield in Europe and other parts of the world, until in the last decades of the 19th century they appeared to have met their match. The American Civil War and the Franco–Prussian War seemed to teach one incontrovertible lesson – that advances in military technology had rendered the humble bayonet obsolete. In the face of machine-gun fire or a bombardment of artillery, the infantryman with a fixed bayonet might never see his killer, let alone plunge the cold steel into him. </p>
<p>Yet while machine-guns, mortars and artillery might serve to mow down the serried ranks of the enemy or blow them apart, ultimately even positions strewn with corpses had to be occupied and claimed. It remained the infantrymen’s vital role to make contested territory their own. If the very sight of fixed bayonets did not persuade any surviving defenders to surrender, then the bayonets might still have work to do.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299639/original/file-20191031-187907-awfnp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299639/original/file-20191031-187907-awfnp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299639/original/file-20191031-187907-awfnp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299639/original/file-20191031-187907-awfnp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299639/original/file-20191031-187907-awfnp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299639/original/file-20191031-187907-awfnp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299639/original/file-20191031-187907-awfnp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299639/original/file-20191031-187907-awfnp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The War for the Union, 1862 – A Bayonet Charge (Harper’s Weekly, Vol. VII)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A 20th century revival</h2>
<p>The 20th century proved that declarations of the bayonet’s demise had been premature. It remained standard issue for infantrymen all over the world, even if its shape and use varied.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300400/original/file-20191106-88382-1dnc35e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300400/original/file-20191106-88382-1dnc35e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300400/original/file-20191106-88382-1dnc35e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300400/original/file-20191106-88382-1dnc35e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300400/original/file-20191106-88382-1dnc35e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300400/original/file-20191106-88382-1dnc35e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300400/original/file-20191106-88382-1dnc35e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300400/original/file-20191106-88382-1dnc35e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A German bayonet from the first world war.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Russians clung fanatically to their faith in the socket bayonet. The Japanese reintroduced a sword bayonet in 1897, inspired by a French weapon. Where stealth was of the essence, as it was in night attacks in the Russo–Japanese War, the bayonet delivered silent death. Americans, too, insisted that their infantry carry long bayonet blades – an intimidating 40 centimetres – on their belts, ready to be fixed when the need arose. In time and with experience, though, the Germans opted for shorter knife bayonets of 25 or 30 centimetres.</p>
<p>In Britain, and all her Dominions, the so-called “Pattern 1907” bayonet was preferred. Over the centuries, the fundamentals of the bayonet had barely changed, and the Pattern, too, consisted of a blade, a guard with crosspiece and muzzle ring, and a wooden hilt. Along much of the length of the blade ran a groove, a fuller. It reduced the weight of the weapon and also allowed air to pass into the wound, making it easier to extract the blade.</p>
<p>While most of the standard weapons of the British Empire’s armies were manufactured in Britain, Australia, like India, manufactured its own Pattern 1907 bayonets in both wars.</p>
<p>In the first world war they were made in a factory in Lithgow, while those from the second world war were stamped with 13 (for Orange Arsenal) or 14 (for Munitions Australia). The wooden grips were stamped with “SLAZ”, an abbreviation of their British maker, Slazenger, active in the sporting goods business back to the 1880s. </p>
<p>Kept normally in a scabbard attached to the soldier’s belt, when fixed to the standard-issue Short Magazine Lee Enfield rifle, the Pattern 1907 extended the soldier’s reach by more than 40 centimetres.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299638/original/file-20191031-187938-a1fbhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299638/original/file-20191031-187938-a1fbhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299638/original/file-20191031-187938-a1fbhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299638/original/file-20191031-187938-a1fbhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299638/original/file-20191031-187938-a1fbhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299638/original/file-20191031-187938-a1fbhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299638/original/file-20191031-187938-a1fbhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299638/original/file-20191031-187938-a1fbhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australian soldiers guard the jetty in Bowen during world war one.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Australia’s willing killers</h2>
<p>Bayonets were standard equipment in the first world war, even as the accelerated development of military technology enforced the trend to mechanised, industrial killing. Australians earned themselves a reputation for using their bayonets with relish. Well trained and drilled in their use, they plunged, parried and stabbed with great vigour at Gallipoli and on the Western Front. The Australians, as the historian Bill Gammage has put it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>by reputation and probably in fact, were among the most willing to kill. They had an uncomplicated attitude towards the Hun, conditioned largely by propaganda and hardly at all by contact, and they hated him with a loathing paralleled, at least in the British Army, only by some other colonial troops. Accordingly many killed their opponents brutally, savagely, and unnecessarily.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299636/original/file-20191031-187934-1oyiy5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299636/original/file-20191031-187934-1oyiy5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299636/original/file-20191031-187934-1oyiy5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299636/original/file-20191031-187934-1oyiy5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299636/original/file-20191031-187934-1oyiy5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299636/original/file-20191031-187934-1oyiy5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299636/original/file-20191031-187934-1oyiy5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299636/original/file-20191031-187934-1oyiy5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australian infantry in the trenches with bayonets during World War One.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Frank Hurley/Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was not only the Germans who became acquainted with the Pattern 1907. At Gallipoli Albert Jacka won Australia’s first VC of the war by shooting five Turks and bayonetting two others. Another Australian, Nigel Ellsworth, noted that in advance of a night attack on Turkish lines:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>one can’t buy a place in the main firing trench, and men are known to have refused for their positions during the fighting. They stand up in the trenches &; yell out ‘Come on, we’ll give you Allah’ & … let some Turks actually get into our Trenches then tickle them up with the bayonet.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>‘Steel has an unearthly terror’</h2>
<p>Archie Barwick, a farmer from New South Wales, spoke of being transported into a state of “mad intoxication” when he took to the Turks with fixed bayonet. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I can recollect driving the bayonet into the body of one fellow quite clearly, & he fell right at my feet & when I drew the bayonet out, the blood spurted from his body. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>A New Zealand officer writing home from Gallipoli claimed that the Turks “redoubled” their fire over the New Zealanders’ positions at night. It was “the one hope of deterring the dreaded bayonets of our men … steel has an unearthly terror for them”.</p>
<p>In a similar vein, another Australian wrote boastfully to his family of the short work he made of Germans: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>They get it too right where the chicken gets the axe … I … will fix a few more before I have finished. It’s good sport father, when the bayonet goes in their eyes bulge out like a prawns.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If there was a danger in the over-zealous use of the bayonet, it was that the weapon might be driven so far and firmly into the opponent’s body that it was difficult to extract it. The Queenslander Hugh Knyvett recalled a case where a fellow Australian drove his bayonet through a German and into a hardwood beam, from which it could not be withdrawn. The blade had to be released from the rifle, “leaving the German stuck up there as a souvenir of his visit”. </p>
<p>By the latter stages of the first world war, the Australians’ skill had manifested in the use of a particular lethal movement with the bayonet known as the “throat jab”. </p>
<p>It is well illustrated in William Longstaff ’s iconic painting <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/ART03028">Night Attack by 13th Brigade at Villers- Bretonneux</a>, which shows an Australian holding aloft his Lee Enfield, bayonet attached, and thrusting it into a German’s exposed throat. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299635/original/file-20191031-26419-fxoe55.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299635/original/file-20191031-26419-fxoe55.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299635/original/file-20191031-26419-fxoe55.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299635/original/file-20191031-26419-fxoe55.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299635/original/file-20191031-26419-fxoe55.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299635/original/file-20191031-26419-fxoe55.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299635/original/file-20191031-26419-fxoe55.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299635/original/file-20191031-26419-fxoe55.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Night attack by 13th Brigade at Villers- Bretonneux.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian War Memorial</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In recalling his own role in that battle in the night from 24 April to Anzac Day, Walter Downing wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Bayonets passed with ease through grey-clad bodies, and were withdrawn with a sucking noise … Many had tallies of twenty and thirty and more, all killed with the bayonet, or bullet, or bomb. Some found chances in the slaughter to light cigarettes, then continued the killing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Still, in reality the bayonet’s role in the first world war was more prominent in the telling than on the battlefield. Sober analysis showed that the vast majority of deaths and casualties were put down to machine-guns and artillery. As for the Australians themselves, more than half of those admitted to field hospitals in France suffered injuries from shells and shell-shock, and more than a third from bullets. The combined tally from bombs, grenades and bayonets was just over 2%. </p>
<h2>The fear of cold steel</h2>
<p>After the war, even former combatants voiced their awareness of the bayonet’s shortcomings. It might have been helpful for certain mundane tasks like opening tins, chopping firewood or perhaps roasting meat over a fire, but in a charge across open land in the sights of German machine-gunners, it was at best an unwelcome burden.</p>
<p>In close quarters, too, it had its drawbacks. Fixed in readiness to the end of a Lee Enfield and lugged along a trench, its most likely victim was a comrade in arms, who might receive a prod to the buttocks or a poke in the eye.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300406/original/file-20191106-88399-zu7dut.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300406/original/file-20191106-88399-zu7dut.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300406/original/file-20191106-88399-zu7dut.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300406/original/file-20191106-88399-zu7dut.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300406/original/file-20191106-88399-zu7dut.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300406/original/file-20191106-88399-zu7dut.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300406/original/file-20191106-88399-zu7dut.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300406/original/file-20191106-88399-zu7dut.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Pattern 1907 bayonet with hooked quillon.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian War Memorial</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nonetheless, by 1939, the bayonet still had its place in every army. The true value of the bayonet was in the soldier’s mind, not at the end of his rifle.</p>
<p>That was true in two ways. While the greatest threat to the 20th century soldier was the bomb or the bullet delivered anonymously from afar, the most animating of fears was that of “cold steel” inserted into his body in a mortal duel, the most intimate form of combat death. </p>
<p>The most feared weapons in war are not necessarily the most dangerous. One reason why field hospitals counted relatively few casualties caused by bayonet wounds may well have been that many a soldier turned and ran before taking his chances against a surging line of men, bayonets glistening, and in all likelihood adorning their advance with the kinds of cries or yells designed to curdle blood. </p>
<p>In those circumstances, only in the rarest cases would bayonet steel clash with steel. Unlike the arrival of the bullet or the shell, the bayonet’s advent was seen, possibly heard, and with judicious retreat was probably avoidable. As one soldier of the second world war put it, “If I was that close to a Jerry, where we could use bayonets, one of us would have already surrendered!” </p>
<p>More crucial, though, than the psychological effect of the bayonet on the enemy was its impact on the men who wielded it. To take the lives of fellow human beings required not just weapons, but a mentality that tolerated the act of killing and even facilitated it.</p>
<p>In this war, as in the last, at military training schools across the world, instructor sergeants taught their charges to lunge, thrust and parry. Bayonets in hand, recruits were exhorted to plunge their weapons into swinging sacks of sawdust or bags of straw, aiming for those parts marked as weak and vulnerable. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300405/original/file-20191106-88428-18pm0qv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300405/original/file-20191106-88428-18pm0qv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300405/original/file-20191106-88428-18pm0qv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300405/original/file-20191106-88428-18pm0qv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300405/original/file-20191106-88428-18pm0qv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300405/original/file-20191106-88428-18pm0qv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300405/original/file-20191106-88428-18pm0qv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300405/original/file-20191106-88428-18pm0qv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">British soldiers practising with bayonets in the first world war.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To ramp up the level of realism, some British recruits practised “in abattoirs, with warm animal blood thrown in their faces as they plunged home their bayonets”.</p>
<p>Confidence in the use of the bayonet, it was believed, would give infantry the courage to advance from their positions and confront the enemy directly. They developed was what some called “the spirit of the bayonet”, <em>l’esprit de la baïonnette</em>. More crudely, it was a “lust for blood”. Although the statistics insisted it was unlikely that the bayonet would be the cause of death, it was crucial because it engendered in its bearer the desire to advance and to kill.</p>
<h2>A mental reflex</h2>
<p>Ideally the effect of such training, then, was not just to acquire the strength and skills akin to those of a fencer or swordsman. It was to develop a mental reflex perhaps best understood as the form of associative learning that psychologists term “classical conditioning”. </p>
<p>Just as Pavlov’s dog was conditioned to salivate on the appearance of a metronome – an artefact the dog had been trained to associate with the presentation of food – so in the mind of the infantryman the command to fix bayonets would trigger a hyper-aggressive state. </p>
<p>At that point it might even have seemed to the soldier that all agency had shifted to his bayonet, which would tug him into wild acts of violence, as if he had “no choice but to go along with its spirit”. As one infantryman put it, the “shining things leap from the scabbards and flash in the light … They seem alive and joyous; they turn us into fiends, thirsty for slaughter.”</p>
<p>If any soldiers in the second world war were entitled to the view that the march of military technology had rendered the bayonet obsolete, it was the parachutists and mountain troops Hitler sent to invade the island of Crete in May 1941. </p>
<p>Superbly trained and equipped, they had proved to themselves and the world that warfare had entered a new era. Germany’s armed forces, the Wehrmacht, had demonstrated that in the modern age, death could be delivered anonymously and at a distance, above all from the skies. The age of intimate killing was over.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300401/original/file-20191106-88368-1uxoxtu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300401/original/file-20191106-88368-1uxoxtu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300401/original/file-20191106-88368-1uxoxtu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300401/original/file-20191106-88368-1uxoxtu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300401/original/file-20191106-88368-1uxoxtu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300401/original/file-20191106-88368-1uxoxtu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300401/original/file-20191106-88368-1uxoxtu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300401/original/file-20191106-88368-1uxoxtu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Australian army’s rising sun badge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Or so it seemed. In Crete they were to confront Australians and New Zealanders who, like their fathers, were deeply familiar with the spirit of the bayonet. On the upturned brims of their slouch hats, the Australians displayed their allegiance to a powerful tradition in the form of the Rising Sun badge, a semi-circle of glistening bayonets radiating from a crown.</p>
<p>Like the Anzacs of the Great War, the Anzacs of 1941 were well trained in the use of the Pattern 1907 – they could lunge and stab with all the skill and deadliness of their forebears. When the order was given to fix bayonets, these Anzacs of 1941, too, would be expected to spill blood.</p>
<p><em>NB: Bayonets were used in charges as recently as in the Falklands War, the Second Gulf War and in Afghanistan. In many parts of the world to this day, training for infantrymen introduces them to the “spirit of the bayonet”</em>.</p>
<p><em>This is an edited extract from <a href="https://www.booktopia.com.au/battle-on-42nd-street-peter-monteath/book/9781742236032.html">Battle on 42nd Street - War in Crete and the Anzacs’ bloody last stand</a> by Peter Monteath (NewSouth Books).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126010/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Monteath receives funding from Flinders University. </span></em></p>There is no weapon more visceral than the bayonet. It encourages an intimate form of killing, and during WW1, Australia troops plunged, parried and stabbed with great vigour.Peter Monteath, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1175722019-07-25T17:47:00Z2019-07-25T17:47:00ZA World War II battle holds key lessons for modern warfare<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276386/original/file-20190524-187172-1ffg2x5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C798%2C737&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Members of the 1st Marine Division land on Guadalcanal on Aug. 7, 1942.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GuadLandingsLunga.jpg">U.S. Marine Corps</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Between Aug. 7, 1942, and Feb. 9, 1943, U.S. forces sought to capture – and then defend – the Pacific island of Guadalcanal from the Japanese military. What started as an amphibious landing quickly turned into a series of massive air and naval battles. The campaign marked a major turning point in the Pacific theater of World War II. It also revealed important lessons about the nature of warfare itself – ones that are particularly relevant when <a href="https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf">planning for conflict</a> in the 21st century.</p>
<p>Specifically, the Guadalcanal campaign shows how the old saying “the best defense is a good offense” can be turned upside-down – with a strong defense becoming an effective offensive weapon. The Japanese sought to find weaknesses, but kept running up against American power on land, on the sea and in the air. </p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=7sjhifoAAAAJ&hl=en">As scholars</a> and military professionals, we see Guadalcanal as teaching enduring lessons about the importance of integrating planning, training and technology to generate options that confound an adversary. We are not alone. The Chinese Navy’s official magazine recently published an article <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/why-chinas-navy-studying-battle-guadalcanal-50107">analyzing the Guadalcanal campaign for lessons useful in future wars</a>. </p>
<p><iframe id="bS1TG" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/bS1TG/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Defense as offensive strategy</h2>
<p>In early August 1942, the United States landed Marines and other troops on Guadalcanal, taking much of the island and capturing its airfields. Initially, it was an offense-as-defense strategy, part of a larger effort to capture the Solomon Islands, so Japan couldn’t use them as a base for attacking Allied naval forces in the Pacific. </p>
<p>Japanese resistance took a heavy toll, especially on the U.S. Navy, which lost 29 ships and thousands of sailors. But the Japanese efforts did more lasting damage to its own military, expending pilots, aircraft and ships Japan simply could not replace fast enough to sustain the war. The U.S., by contrast, had a vast population and enormous industrial potential, and was able to replace its losses and even reinforce its positions. </p>
<p>Realizing the Japanese had committed to retaking Guadalcanal no matter the cost, the U.S. <a href="https://warontherocks.com/2015/10/how-the-u-s-army-remains-the-master-of-landpower/">strategy</a> shifted to defense-as-offense, or what is called a “<a href="https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/cost-imposing-strategies-a-brief-primer">cost imposition</a>” campaign. It’s most often seen as a business strategy, but can be <a href="https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/Article/1737468/thinking-differently-about-the-business-of-war/">applied to military efforts</a> too. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276392/original/file-20190524-187189-1en1f0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276392/original/file-20190524-187189-1en1f0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276392/original/file-20190524-187189-1en1f0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276392/original/file-20190524-187189-1en1f0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276392/original/file-20190524-187189-1en1f0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276392/original/file-20190524-187189-1en1f0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276392/original/file-20190524-187189-1en1f0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276392/original/file-20190524-187189-1en1f0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">U.S. military construction and repair crews were able to keep Henderson Field on Guadalcanal open, and even expand it during the course of the multi-month battle.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Henderson_Field_-_Guadalcanal_-_11_April_1943.jpg">U.S. Navy</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In general, cost imposition involves making it very expensive – in personnel, equipment and time – for an adversary to achieve a particular goal. This presents the enemy with a <a href="https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/cost-imposing-strategies-a-brief-primer">serious dilemma</a>: Giving up means certain defeat, of course, but continuing to compete decreases the likelihood of winning.</p>
<p>At Guadalcanal, the Japanese fell prey to the “<a href="https://www.behavioraleconomics.com/resources/mini-encyclopedia-of-be/sunk-cost-fallacy/">sunk costs fallacy</a>,” deciding that because they had <a href="https://www.behavioraleconomics.com/resources/mini-encyclopedia-of-be/sunk-cost-fallacy/">spent so much already</a>, they should just keep going. They found their battleships matched not only against the U.S. warships and planes, but also bulldozers, as U.S. Marines repaired key airfields in between barrages of shelling from Japanese ships offshore. </p>
<p>While the Japanese Navy expended round after round of ammunition, American planes were still able to take off and land, conducting repeated raids that sank or damaged the Japanese warships.</p>
<h2>Drone swarms, advance bases and cyber defense</h2>
<p>Today, the United States faces a complex mix of threats. Global powers like Russia and China use politics and economics as well as military strength to achieve their goals. Terrorists and hackers spread fear, uncertainty and <a href="https://theconversation.com/weaponized-information-seeks-a-new-target-in-cyberspace-users-minds-100069">social discord</a> within the U.S. All of that puts the U.S. at risk of ending up on the wrong side of cost-imposition efforts from adversaries big and small. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.naval-technology.com/features/future-aircraft-carriers-us-china/">Expensive aircraft carriers</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-went-wrong-with-the-f-35-lockheed-martins-joint-strike-fighter-60905">advanced aircraft</a> can be threatened by much cheaper missiles wielded by extremists. Hackers can threaten military bases and weapons – as well as civilian infrastructure like power plants.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qW77hVqux10?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A U.S. Navy system to launch a swarm of small drones is tested.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In our view, the U.S. military therefore needs a new approach to defense strategy. First, the country needs <a href="https://www.military.com/defensetech/2018/07/23/marines-test-new-drone-swarms-single-operator-can-control.html">entirely new classes</a> of <a href="https://mwi.usma.edu/era-drone-swarm-coming-need-ready/">cheap, disposable drones</a> that engage targets on land, at sea and in the air. For example, <a href="https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2018/07/20/the-corps-wants-15-suicide-drones-swarming-from-the-hands-of-one-front-line-marine/">low-cost drone swarms</a> could help U.S. Marine forces threaten enemy naval and ground assets, while <a href="https://news.usni.org/2018/06/04/marines-forward-deploy-portable-drone-killing-system">counter-drone systems</a> protect U.S. forces. Like Guadalcanal’s bulldozers, they would offer a cheap way to keep the enemy under threat.</p>
<p>Second, Guadalcanal also highlights the importance of being able to rapidly build and defend advance bases. Into the future, the U.S. Marine Corps will need to be able to construct and repair airfields. They’ll also need to be able to use those locations as airplane, drone and missile bases to attack enemy forces. </p>
<p>In addition, those bases can block the enemy from <a href="https://mca-marines.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Cuomo.pdf">using key terrain</a>, and give the U.S. <a href="https://warontherocks.com/2015/04/distributed-maritime-operations-an-emerging-paradigm/">multiple options</a> if a strike is needed. Those factors again raise the cost of conflict and competition for a potential adversary. </p>
<h2>Education matters, too</h2>
<p>A further lesson from the Guadalcanal campaign is that it’s vital to integrate new technology into training, so Marines and sailors know how to use new capabilities. In early August 1942, the U.S. Navy suffered one of its <a href="https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily/wwii/first-battle-of-savo-island-the-u-s-navys-worst-defeat/">worst-ever defeats</a> in the Battle of Savo Island. American and allied forces lost four cruisers, while the Japanese Navy suffered little damage. </p>
<p>The U.S. had a significant technological advantage, but didn’t use it: radar. Few ship captains and crews understood how radar worked, much less how to use it in battle. One captain, Howard Bode of the USS Chicago, <a href="http://www.aferguson.net/magindexes/default.asp?mag=mhq&author=Denis%20Warner">ordered his ship’s radar turned off</a>, for fear it would reveal his position. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Crew of the USS Chicago repair damage from a Japanese torpedo during the Battle of Savo Island.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/research/histories/ship-histories/danfs/c/chicago-ii.html">U.S. Navy</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Later on, in the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands in October 1942, the U.S. ships again did not use their radars. The Japanese used their searchlights to spot American aircraft at night, controlling the battle in the darkness and sinking one U.S. aircraft carrier and severely damaging another.</p>
<p>The lesson remains important in the 21st century: Failing to experiment with new capabilities, whether radar in the 1940s or cyber operations and drone swarms today, diminishes battle readiness. That’s why the Marine Corps University created <a href="https://warontherocks.com/2019/01/welcome-to-fight-club-wargaming-the-future/">war-gaming fight clubs</a> and <a href="https://warontherocks.com/2018/08/diverging-from-the-arbitrary-the-gray-scholars-and-innovation-in-the-u-s-marine-corps/">training programs</a> that let students imagine future conflicts and experiment with how to respond. </p>
<p>Battles can be won before the first shot is fired, if future leaders prepare in classrooms and training for what they might face and how they might find advantages when conflict comes – whether online, in space or elsewhere.</p>
<p>[ <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=thanksforreading">Thanks for reading! We can send you The Conversation’s stories every day in an informative email. Sign up today.</a></em> ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117572/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benjamin Jensen receives funding from the Carnegie Corporation and the Koch Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Bowers serves on active duty in the U.S. Marine Corps. The views in this article are his own and the co-author’s.</span></em></p>A defender that can hold out while inflicting greater losses on its attacker can wear down an adversary – reducing the threat of additional attacks.Benjamin Jensen, Associate Professor of International Relations, Marine Corps University; Scholar-in-Residence, American University School of International ServiceWilliam Bowers, Brigadier General, U.S. Marine Corps; President, Marine Corps UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1151262019-04-09T20:04:10Z2019-04-09T20:04:10ZAdventurous identities: intersex soldiers and cross-dressing women at war<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268264/original/file-20190409-2901-zqnsuz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A copy of an engraving of Count Casimir Pulaski published in 1871.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A documentary from the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47842307">Smithsonian Institute</a>, examining new DNA and physical anthropology evidence, suggests the famous cavalry officer Casimir Pulaski (1745-1779) might have been a woman, or intersex.</p>
<p>Pulaski is a hero of the struggles for Polish and American independence. He is credited with saving George Washington’s life in battle and with establishing the first American cavalry force. According to the documentary, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47842307">DNA testing has confirmed a female-appearing skeleton is indeed Pulaski’s</a>. This new evidence is the first hint that Pulaski – who seems to have lived as male from childhood – was anything other than a cisgendered man.</p>
<p>We may never know if Pulaski was intersex (that is, his body didn’t fit neatly into either male or female categories) and did not question his gender. Or if he was, in fact, born female but chose to live as a man. </p>
<p>In either case, Pulaski would be the most senior military officer we know of to have female anatomical characteristics before the late 20th century. But he certainly wouldn’t have been the only one on the battlefield.</p>
<p>The history of intersex men and women is one that requires more research. The lives of intersex people have often been made invisible throughout history. I hope that when more evidence comes to light Pulaski can be claimed as an inspirational intersex hero.</p>
<p>We know quite a bit, however, about women dressing as men and joining the military in the 18th and 19th centuries. There were famous women such as the British marine <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Snell">Hannah Snell</a> (c.1723-1792) who, disguising herself as James Gray, signed up to fight in Scotland against the Jacobite invasion of 1745. Snell was later wounded trying to capture a French colony in India. </p>
<p>After revealing her gender, she was granted a pension by the king and made a living performing military exercises on stage. She also briefly kept a pub called “The Female Warrior”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268265/original/file-20190409-2918-1mbe67e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268265/original/file-20190409-2918-1mbe67e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268265/original/file-20190409-2918-1mbe67e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=708&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268265/original/file-20190409-2918-1mbe67e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=708&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268265/original/file-20190409-2918-1mbe67e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=708&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268265/original/file-20190409-2918-1mbe67e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=890&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268265/original/file-20190409-2918-1mbe67e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=890&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268265/original/file-20190409-2918-1mbe67e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=890&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A portrait of Hannah Snell, circa 1750.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In contrast to Snell’s self-promoting confidence, the Anglo-Irish military physician James Barry (c.1789-1865) kept the secret of his female birth all his life. Dressing as a man, Barry completed medical studies in Edinburgh and went on to have a long and distinguished career. Only after Barry’s death was his sex discovered.</p>
<p>“William Brown” was the name taken by a black woman from Edinburgh who served aboard HMS Queen Charlotte from 1804 until after 1816, through the end of the Napoleonic Wars. She exhibited <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Female-Tars-Women-Aboard-Ship/dp/1591145724">“all the traits of a British tar</a> (slang for a sailor) and takes her grog with her messmates”, according to a contemporary report. </p>
<p>The discovery of Brown’s sex by her crew doesn’t seem to have interrupted her career: she re-enlisted on the same ship after news broke that she was female.</p>
<p>Then there is the story of Jeanne Baré, who was not a soldier, but became the first woman known to have circumnavigated the globe (1766-69). She dressed in men’s clothes to work as an assistant to Philibert Comerçon (she may also have been Commerçon’s mistress), who was the botanist to French admiral and explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268275/original/file-20190409-2909-1m02ulj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268275/original/file-20190409-2909-1m02ulj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268275/original/file-20190409-2909-1m02ulj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268275/original/file-20190409-2909-1m02ulj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268275/original/file-20190409-2909-1m02ulj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268275/original/file-20190409-2909-1m02ulj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1205&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268275/original/file-20190409-2909-1m02ulj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1205&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268275/original/file-20190409-2909-1m02ulj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1205&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of Jeanne Barret (1740-1807) by Cristoforo Dall'Acqua (1734-1787).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Baré was found out when the ships made it to Tahiti. While she had passed as a man with the crew, her disguise didn’t fool the Tahitians, who pointed her out to Bougainville.</p>
<p>Why would women disguise themselves as men and join the army and navy? One major reason was that men were paid far better than women. For a working-class woman, despite the dangers of a military or naval career, the money might have looked too good to pass up.</p>
<p>There were prohibitions against women wearing men’s clothing in the period, but prosecutions were relatively rare. The army and the navy were desperate for recruits and tended not to inquire too closely. As Snell’s career shows, being brazen about one’s cross-dressing adventures might be a ticket to a comfortable life.</p>
<p>Young women might also be inspired by the many popular ballads narrating the military and naval careers of cross-dressing women. One, The Ballad of Jack Monroe, exists in several surviving versions:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>She went into the tailor shop<br>
And dressed in men’s array,<br>
And went into a vessel<br>
To convey herself away.<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>For women as well as men, joining the army or navy might be a rare opportunity to see the world. For an adventurous spirit, living in disguise may have added to the excitement. </p>
<p>But for many of these cross-dressing adventurers, there must have been one further reason: they just felt more comfortable, more like themselves, fighting and living not only alongside men, but as men.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115126/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Olivia Murphy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New evidence suggests the 18th-century cavalry officer Casimir Pulaski was a woman or intersex. While we know little of intersex soldiers, there is a fascinating history of women dressing as men to fight.Olivia Murphy, Postdoctoral research fellow in English, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1060132018-11-08T12:42:16Z2018-11-08T12:42:16ZHow German PoWs staged their greatest World War I escape from a camp now part of a British university<p>Today, <a href="https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/about/campuses/suttonboningtoncampus.aspx">Sutton Bonington campus</a>, part of the University of Nottingham, houses the schools of bioscience and veterinary medicine. But a century ago, during World War I, it was home to a prisoner of war (PoW) camp for German military personnel captured by the British on the Western front. And it was the site of <a href="http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscripts/2015/08/24/putting-the-camp-into-campus/">a great escape</a>, when Germans managed to flee the camp on September 25, 1917. </p>
<p>At the outbreak of war in 1914 the government took over buildings and sites around the country to convert into PoW camps. Sutton Bonington was a group of buildings completed in 1915 for the Midland Dairy Institute, an agricultural college, but it was taken over by the War Office before the institute’s staff and students could move in. Barbed wire fencing and some additional huts were added to the site and around 600 German military officers moved in.</p>
<p>German officers who were made prisoners of war, by contrast with ordinary soldiers and sailors, were not allowed to work. Many became extremely bored, and sought to relieve the tedium by playing sports such as football and tennis, putting on concerts and plays, and planning how to escape. The preferred escape option was to tunnel under the barbed wire, and to disappear into the countryside beyond.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/german-prisoners-held-comedy-nights-in-british-war-camps-we-recreated-one-98192">German prisoners held comedy nights in British war camps – we recreated one</a>
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<p>Two attempts to tunnel out at Sutton Bonington failed, but the third succeeded, and at 1.30am on September 25, 1917, 22 men slipped, slithered and pulled their way along a tunnel, which was less than a metre high. They emerged into a field of turnips, and were hidden from the guards in the sentry posts by a ridge running through a nearby field. It helped their cause that the moon had set before they started, that the search lights were out because of concerns about Zeppelin raids, and that it was not raining.</p>
<p>In terms of simple numbers, no other breakout was as successful. Usually only two or three men were involved with a tunnel project. The 22 from Sutton Bonington made it the largest breakout in Britain of World War I. </p>
<h2>Best laid plans</h2>
<p>The men planned to split into groups of four, preferably with an English speaker in each one, and to head for different ports along the east coast. They had maps and a compass with them, as well as food supplies which had arrived in the camp from Germany the previous day. The absconders hoped to stow away on board a vessel passing through the English channel, and return to Germany, re-join their regiment and re-engage with the war.</p>
<p>The breakout was discovered at 4.30am when a policeman patrolling the village of Plumtree came upon Herman Genest walking alone but wearing a German officer’s uniform. He arrested him, took him to the nearest police station, and from there saw him returned to the camp at Sutton Bonington. Genest had been free for approximately three hours. </p>
<p>His arrest led to a roll call at Sutton Bonington which confirmed that 22 men were missing. All police, special constables, and other groups concerned with law and order in the area were ordered from their beds to find the Germans.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>Listen to The Anthill podcast on remembering World War I <a href="https://theconversation.com/anthill-31-world-war-i-remembered-podcast-106498">here</a>, or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.</strong></em></p>
<hr>
<p>Within hours they were reeled in. My own research into the episode has uncovered that three of the German men, claiming to be seeking work in one of Nottingham’s munitions factories, were arrested at Trent Bridge. Two more, including the leader Otto Thelan, were arrested at Tollerton at 11am, and two others later in the day. Also arrested that day was Karl von Müller, a German naval hero from the early days of the war, who was found by children when he was blackberrying at Tollerton. </p>
<p>The rest were picked up over the ensuing days with the last four German officers captured at Brimington Woods, near Chesterfield. A police sergeant found them on September, 30, “and immediately upon being challenged they admitted their identity”, according to a report a few days later in the Derby Daily Telegraph.</p>
<h2>Getting out was unlikely</h2>
<p>The experiences of these men were typical of other German prisoners who tried to escape during World War I. They were expected to wear their uniforms in camp, but this made them conspicuous if they managed to escape. They had to walk because catching trains was too problematic, and they normally travelled at night and hid in barns and hay stacks during the day. They carried food, but could struggle to find enough liquid, and if they reached the coast there was no guarantee of a passage across the Channel. </p>
<p>Escape was a romantic ideal rather than a rational expectation. Gunter Pluschow, who escaped from another PoW camp at Donington Hall, in Leicestershire, was <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/britain-at-war/8317792/Story-of-sole-German-PoW-to-escape-captivity-in-Britain-disclosed-after-94-years.html">the only German</a> to make it home in World War I, largely because he managed to adopt a disguise and stow away on board a cargo ship at Harwich. </p>
<p>The Sutton Bonington camp was used for PoWs until February 1919 when those remaining were moved to Oswestry in Shropshire. The site was then cleared and cleaned, including the removal of the huts and barbed wire, and returned to the Midland Dairy Institute, which formally opened in October 1919. In 1946 the institute joined the University of Nottingham as the faculty of agriculture.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106013/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Beckett receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>In September 1917, 22 German World War I prisoners held at a camp just outside Nottingham, managed to escape.John Beckett, Professor of English Regional History, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1064982018-11-07T15:49:29Z2018-11-07T15:49:29ZAnthill 31: World War I remembered – podcast<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244311/original/file-20181107-74787-avhemd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">shutterstock</span> </figcaption></figure><p>It was supposed to be the war to end all wars, and the sheer destructiveness of World War I was unprecedented for its time. More than 30 countries were involved, 65m men volunteered or were conscripted to fight and millions of civilians contributed to the war effort. Around 16m people died. And many of those who survived came home from the war psychologically and physically scarred for life. </p>
<p>This year marks the centenary of the end of the conflict and this episode of The Anthill podcast is focused on stories from the Great War, and the way it is being remembered 100 years later. </p>
<p>First, our host Annabel Bligh talks to Sean Lang, senior lecturer in history at Anglia Ruskin University, about how the Armistice came about at 11am on November 11, 1918 – and why it wasn’t actually the end of the fighting. </p>
<p>Next, we travel up to Scotland to hear from Neil McLennan, senior lecturer in education at the University of Aberdeen, about how he <a href="https://theconversation.com/owen-sassoon-and-graves-how-a-golf-club-in-scotland-became-the-crucible-for-the-greatest-war-poetry-80229">came across the letter which proved</a> that three of the great World War I poets – Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sasson and Robert Graves – actually met at a golf club near the Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh. McLennan and Paul Ferguson, associate professor of audio engineering at Edinburgh Napier University, also explain the genesis of a special concert they are organising to mark the centenary of the Armistice – involving musicians from all over the world.</p>
<p>And finally we hear what life was like for the men who refused to fight during the conflict. Lois Bibbings, professor of law, gender and history at the University of Bristol, explains how the clause which allowed men to object on the grounds of conscience was introduced when conscription began in Britain in 1916. Aled Eirug, senior lecturer at the school of management at Swansea University, whose grandfather was a conscientious objector in World War I, explains what life was like for some of the men who chose to go to work camps set up by the Home Office. And we hear from Ingrid Sharp, professor of German cultural and gender history at the University of Leeds, on the few men who refused to join the military in Germany, and how <a href="https://theconversation.com/life-was-even-tougher-for-the-german-conscientious-objectors-of-world-war-i-26715">life was even tougher for them</a>.</p>
<p>We’re always keen to hear what our listeners think about The Anthill. So we’ve created a short survey to gather your feedback and help us plan future podcasts at The Conversation. You can <a href="https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/NFYDXJK">find the survey here</a>. And you can always email us at podcast@theconversation.com too – we’d love to hear from you. </p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-anthill/id1114423002?mt=2"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233721/original/file-20180827-75984-1gfuvlr.png" alt="Listen on Apple Podcasts" width="268" height="68"></a> <a href="https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly90aGVjb252ZXJzYXRpb24uY29tL3VrL3BvZGNhc3RzL3RoZS1hbnRoaWxsLnJzcw%3D%3D"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233720/original/file-20180827-75978-3mdxcf.png" alt="" width="268" height="68"></a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-conversation/the-anthill"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233716/original/file-20180827-75981-pdp50i.png" alt="Stitcher" width="300" height="88"></a> <a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/Technology-Podcasts/The-Anthill-p877873/"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233723/original/file-20180827-75984-f0y2gb.png" alt="Listen on TuneIn" width="318" height="125"></a></p>
<p><a href="https://radiopublic.com/the-anthill-GOJ1vz"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-152" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233717/original/file-20180827-75990-86y5tg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=268&fit=clip" alt="Listen on RadioPublic" width="268" height="87"></a> <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/265Bnp4BgwaEmFv2QciIOC?si=-WMr1ecDTsO_6avrkxZu8g"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237984/original/file-20180925-149976-1ks72uy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=268&fit=clip" width="268" height="82"></a> </p>
<hr>
<p><strong><em>Credits:</em></strong></p>
<p><em>Thank you to City, University of London’s Department of Journalism for letting us use their studios to record The Anthill.</em> </p>
<p><em>Picture source: <a href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/flowers-red-poppies-blossom-on-wild-652631032">Shutterstock, A_Lesik</a></em></p>
<p><em>YouTube: British Army, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDS3TxtGaQ0">The Last Post for Remembrance</a></em> </p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB4cdRgIcB8&t=14s">Channel 4 Dulce Et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen: Read by Christopher Eccleston</a></em></p>
<p><em>Church bells by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T36p5Z8tWcg">Hereford District</a>.</em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpKmLcxvxVs&t=31s">The Lads of Quintinshill, 1915</a> by Thoren Ferguson</em></p>
<p><em>Armistice by Thoren Ferguson, courtesy of Neil McLennan and Paul Ferguson.</em></p>
<p><em>Free Music Archive: David Hilowitz, <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/David_Hilowitz/Time_Passing_I/David_Hilowitz_-_Film_Cue_103_-_Time_Passing_I">Time Passing I</a></em> </p>
<p><em>The Anthill theme music is by Alex Grey for Melody Loops</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106498/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
A podcast on World War I – from a meeting between the three great war poets, to what happened to conscientious objectors in both Britain and Germany.Annabel Bligh, Business & Economy Editor and Podcast Producer, The Conversation UKGemma Ware, Head of AudioJane Wright, Commissioning Editor, Arts & Culture, The Conversation UKLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/828012017-10-22T22:02:27Z2017-10-22T22:02:27ZCould the Charge of the Light Brigade have worked?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191249/original/file-20171021-14009-qfeioz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Charge of the Light Brigade happened 163 years ago, but historians still debate who was to blame for the military fiasco.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11314070">William Simpson</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Middle East tensions. Russian soldiers in Crimea. Western nations’ warships in the Black Sea. Those descriptions sound like Russia’s 2014 <a href="https://theconversation.com/now-crimeas-in-the-bag-where-next-for-putin-and-russia-24521">takeover of Crimea</a>.</p>
<p>But they also applied 150 years earlier during The Crimean War between Russia and a British-French-Turkish alliance. That war is largely forgotten now, apart from its famous nurse <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2920984/">Florence Nightingale</a>.</p>
<p>However, another of its features also remains in our memories: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_of_the_Light_Brigade">The Charge of the Light Brigade</a>. That was a small engagement that ended the inconclusive <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Balaclava">Battle of Balaclava</a> on Oct. 25, 1854. But it became infamous for its brave soldiers, incompetent leaders and senseless bloodshed. It quickly inspired a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzCOL6ewpPw">magnificent poem</a> by Lord Tennyson and later a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPTvqNuqiPY">colourful movie</a>.</p>
<h2>The ‘Valley of Death’</h2>
<p>During the charge, Lord Cardigan’s light cavalry brigade attacked Russian cannons in “the valley of death.” The brigade defeated the gunners, but was counter-attacked by roughly 2,160 Russian light cavalry. It lost 469 of its 664 cavalrymen. Outnumbered 11-to-1, the 195 survivors retreated.</p>
<p>The British leaders immediately blamed each other for the fiasco.</p>
<p>The British army commander, Lord Raglan, had issued notoriously vague orders to his cavalry commander, Lord Lucan: <em>“Lord Raglan wishes the cavalry to advance rapidly to the front, and to try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns.”</em></p>
<p>But which cavalry: the Light Brigade alone or the Heavy Brigade too? Which guns: those in the valley or those on the adjacent Causeway Heights?</p>
<p>The Light Brigade rode smaller, faster horses. In battle it typically charged enemy troops who were disorganised or retreating. The Heavy Brigade had larger, stronger horses. It could overpower lighter cavalry or charge against infantry lines. Either unit could charge cannons, but normally from their defenceless flanks, not head-on into their gunfire.</p>
<p>Raglan complained the Lucan had ineptly misinterpreted his orders. The charge was supposed to target Russian cannons on the heights, not in the valley. Lucan in turn complained that Raglan’s orders had been unclear and unwise.</p>
<p>For his part, Cardigan complained the Heavy Brigade should have charged too, to support his men. That brigade actually had started to advance. But Lucan halted it once he saw the cannon fire’s intensity.</p>
<p>The leaders’ bickering ignited two ongoing historical debates. Which leader(s) deserved the blame for the disastrous charge? And could it have succeeded if it had followed one of the other alternatives?</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/M4gTt6rptTU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The battle scene as depicted in the movie “The Charge of the Light Brigade”</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To answer those questions, I collaborated with history student David Connors and history professor <a href="https://brocku.ca/humanities/departments-and-centres/history/faculty-staff/john-bonnett">John Bonnett</a> on an interdisciplinary <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01615440.2014.979273?journalCode=vhim20">study</a>.</p>
<h2>Using math to analyse the battle</h2>
<p>We began by building a mathematical model of the charge. Our model was adapted from earlier research on naval combat involving <a href="https://doi.org/10.1287/opre.1040.0195">cruise missiles</a> or <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/jors.2013.115">aircraft carriers</a>.</p>
<p>This study is an example of “digital humanities” research. It uses math and computers to investigate a humanities topic. Other examples include studies of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/picketts-charge-what-modern-mathematics-teaches-us-about-civil-war-battle-78982">1863 Battle of Gettysburg</a> and the <a href="http://dr.library.brocku.ca/handle/10464/9377">1942 Battle of the Coral Sea</a>. In those projects I likewise collaborated with historians to get results that neither of us could have obtained on our own.</p>
<p>For our project on the Battle of Balaclava, we initially calibrated the model with historical troop strengths and losses. This ensured it reproduced the actual charge by the Light Brigade along the valley.</p>
<p>We then adjusted the model to represent three alternative charges: the Light Brigade against the heights; both brigades against the heights; and both brigades along the valley. For each alternative, the model estimated the British losses and survivors.</p>
<h2>Bad odds under all scenarios</h2>
<p>For example, suppose the Light Brigade had charged the cannons on the heights. Our model estimated British losses would have been 19% higher than the historical ones. The 106 survivors would have been outnumbered 41-to-1 by the 4,400 Russian infantry and cavalry there.</p>
<p>Next, suppose instead that both brigades had charged the heights, as Raglan had intended. British losses would have been 51% higher. The 661 survivors would have been outnumbered 7-to-1.</p>
<p>Finally, suppose both brigades had charged along the valley. British losses would have been 22% higher. The 794 survivors would have been outnumbered 3-to-1.</p>
<p>These results have several implications. First, any of the charges would have overrun the targeted guns. The challenge was to also defeat the Russian troops behind them.</p>
<p>Second, all the alternative charges would have increased Britain’s already-high losses. The historical charge Lucan executed was the “least bad” by that measure.</p>
<p>Third, Raglan’s intended charge by both brigades against the heights would have been the worst. That scenario has the highest losses and too few survivors to beat the Russian soldiers. It’s fortunate that Lucan misunderstood his orders.</p>
<p>Most intriguingly, the charge that Lucan started but then half-cancelled is the only one that might have worked. Sending both brigades along the valley would have put the most survivors into melee and at the best odds.</p>
<p>Fighting while outnumbered 3-to-1 would have been tough. But earlier that day, the Heavy Brigade had defeated the lighter Russian cavalry despite being outnumbered 2-to-1 and attacking uphill. Aided by their momentum, a charge by both brigades might have won again.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191250/original/file-20171021-13948-1lvgiq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191250/original/file-20171021-13948-1lvgiq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191250/original/file-20171021-13948-1lvgiq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191250/original/file-20171021-13948-1lvgiq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191250/original/file-20171021-13948-1lvgiq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191250/original/file-20171021-13948-1lvgiq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191250/original/file-20171021-13948-1lvgiq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Officers and men of the 13th Light Dragoons, survivors of the Charge of the Light Brigade.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_of_the_Light_Brigade#/media/File:Fenton13ltdragoons.jpg">Roger Fenton</a></span>
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<p>These results matter because a successful charge could have turned the battle into a Russian defeat. That might have discouraged Russia’s later attack at Inkerman and thereby hastened the allied siege of nearby Sevastopol.</p>
<p>Conversely, an even worse charge might have led to a decisive Russian victory. They could have captured Balaclava’s port and forced the allies to abandon the Sevastopol siege. This could have allowed Russia to win the war.</p>
<p>As it was, the battle was only a minor victory for Russian. It made the allies’ siege more difficult, but didn’t stop it. They captured Sevastopol 11 months later, after heavy casualties on all sides. </p>
<p>That capture eventually forced Russia to surrender by signing the Treaty of Paris in 1856. Alas, the treaty settled very little. It instead led to new rivalries and more European wars in subsequent decades.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Theirs not to make reply,</p>
<p>Theirs not to reason why,</p>
<p>Theirs but to do and die:</p>
<p>Into the valley of Death</p>
<p>Rode the six hundred.</p>
<p>from the poem <strong>The Charge of the Light Brigade</strong> by Alfred Lord Tennyson</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82801/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael J. Armstrong does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Charge of the Light Brigade was brave but fruitless. Could it have worked if the feuding British leaders had interpreted their orders differently?Michael J. Armstrong, Associate professor of operations research, Brock UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/818532017-08-01T11:15:20Z2017-08-01T11:15:20Z‘Cheese-eating surrender monkeys’? It’s time to give the French Army the credit it deserves<p>When marking the centenary of the terrible events of 1917, some of the most devastating of World War I, it is perhaps understandable that the British have focused their attention on the <a href="http://passchendaele2017.org/en/evenementen/herdenkingsplechtigheid-100-jaar-slag-bij-passendale-op-tyne-cot-cemetery/">Passchendaele offensive</a>
and the Americans on their <a href="http://www.worldwar1centennial.org/">entry into the war against Germany</a>. Unfortunately, their desire to commemorate the heroism of their own service personnel often has an ugly flip-side: the denigration of the courage and skill of their French allies. </p>
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<p>This attitude is best captured in the phrase “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”, coined in a 1995 episode of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZUKEVU-TwM">The Simpsons</a> and popularised by journalist Jonah Goldberg in <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150130235956/http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/204434/cheese-eating-surrender-monkeys-hell/jonah-goldberg">a 1999 column for The National Review</a>. It suggested, among other things, that the French “surrendered Paris to the Germans [in 1940] without firing a shot”. </p>
<p>Doubtless the piece was satirical in intent, but the seriousness of the underlying prejudice became all too obvious in 2003; witness the invective directed at the French <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/feb/16/iraq1">by US and British politicians and media</a> following France’s (retrospectively, wise) decision not to support military intervention in Iraq. </p>
<p>If the British and Americans are serious about remembrance, then let’s remember France’s military performance fairly.</p>
<h2>Be fair on the French</h2>
<p>From August 1914 to early 1917, it was the French Army that bore the brunt of the fighting on the Western Front – and with astonishing stoicism. In one two-week period – <a href="http://www.firstworldwar.com/battles/frontiers.htm">August 16-31, 1914</a> – they suffered 210,993 casualties. By comparison, British casualties numbered 164,709 in the opening month – July 1916 – of the Somme offensive. </p>
<p>The French Army also adapted effectively to the challenges of trench warfare, perfecting artillery “barrage” fire and pioneering innovative platoon-level infantry tactics, centred on automatic weapons and rifle grenades. While the first day of the Somme – <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36585199">July 1, 1916</a> – was a disaster for the British, the French took all of their objectives. </p>
<p>In early 1917, 68 French divisions suffered <a href="http://ww1centenary.oucs.ox.ac.uk/war-as-revolution/mutiny-on-the-aisne/">mutinies</a>.
But the soldiers taking part in what were effectively <a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2014/12/23/1329450/-Rebellion-in-the-Trenches-The-French-Army-Mutiny-of-1917">military strikes</a> neither refused to defend their trenches nor abandoned France’s war aims. The army itself rallied magnificently from this near collapse and played a pivotal role in the Allied victory of 1918. From <a href="http://military.wikia.com/wiki/Hundred_Days_Offensive">July to November 1918</a>, French troops captured 139,000 German prisoners. In the same period, the American Expeditionary Force captured 44,142 Germans. </p>
<p>In the interwar years, the French invested heavily in massive defensive fortifications, the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Maginot-Line">Maginot Line</a>, along the Franco-German frontier. This decision has often been <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/the-story-of-the-maginot-line-2015-4">derided</a> as indicative of a defeatist attitude. Yet France had a smaller population than Germany and could not hope to match its field army in size. Fortresses could make good the deficiency. The <a href="http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/why-frances-maginot-line-wasnt-stupid-idea-20638">key point of the Maginot Line</a> was to protect France’s industrial heartland from a rapid German offensive and funnel a German invasion through Belgium. It worked. </p>
<p>The German Army won the ensuing campaign in May and June 1940, through its audacious <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/fall_france_01.shtml">“sickle cut” through the Ardennes Forest</a>, which was thought impassable by Allied commanders. This cut off the British, French and Belgian armies to the north and doomed them to defeat. </p>
<p>French strategic planning must bear much of the blame for this catastrophe, yet this was an Allied defeat, not simply a French one. The Dutch and Belgians had been reluctant to risk their neutrality and so there was little coordination before the Germans struck. And the British clearly assumed that France was to bear the main brunt of any land fighting. </p>
<p>The British Expeditionary Force of 1940 had a maximum strength of just 12 divisions. In 1918, it had numbered 59. Small wonder that the Nazi propaganda machine used to taunt their enemies with claims that the British were <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/8206267">“determined to fight to the last Frenchman”</a>. </p>
<h2>The Dunkirk ‘miracle’</h2>
<p>Although their generals were outclassed in 1940, French troops fought courageously and skilfully. For example, at the Battle of Gembloux – <a href="http://military.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_of_Gembloux_(1940)">May 14-15, 1940</a> – elements of the French First Army checked the vaunted German <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/blitzkrieg_01.shtml">“Blitzkrieg”</a> and won enough time for their comrades and allies to withdraw. Without such tenacious rearguard actions, there would have been no <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Dunkirk-evacuation">“Miracle of Dunkirk”</a> and the war might have been lost in 1940.</p>
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<p>Having crossed the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Meuse-River">Meuse River</a>, the German Panzer divisions only had to advance 150 miles to the Channel coast to trap the bulk of the Allied forces – 1.8m French soldiers were captured, and 90,000 killed or wounded. </p>
<p>In the opening phase of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Operation-Barbarossa">Operation Barbarossa</a>, the German invasion of the Soviet Union the following year, the Red Army suffered nearly 5m casualties, including 2.5m who surrendered. The Russians also lost 600,000 square miles of territory. Yet, as Charles De Gaulle observed to Stalin, in the aftermath of this colossal defeat, the Soviets still had 5,000 miles of Eurasia into which they could retreat. The French did not lack courage in 1940; they lacked space. </p>
<p>The French military contribution to Allied victory in World War II did not end in 1940. There were 550,000 Free French soldiers under arms in 1944 and they made a major contribution to the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/liberation-of-paris-the-hidden-truth-434403.html">liberation of Western Europe</a>. In particular, <a href="https://warontherocks.com/2014/08/warchives-are-wwii-stereotypes-about-the-french-military-wrong/">Operation Dragoon</a> – the invasion of southern France in August 1944 – was effectively a Franco-American operation, with limited British involvement. </p>
<p>Many of the French soldiers involved were recruited in France’s African colonies, but this was no different to the British reliance on <a href="https://swarajyamag.com/magazine/how-india-bailed-out-the-west-in-world-war-ii">2.6m Indian soldiers</a> to support their empire’s global war effort. By all accounts, the French units serving in Italy and Western Europe between 1943 and 1945, fought well, in the best traditions of the French Army. </p>
<p>Cheese-eating surrender monkeys? It’s time to think again.</p>
<p></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81853/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gervase Phillips does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The French Army’s efforts in the world wars have long been maligned. Its soldiers deserve better.Gervase Phillips, Principal Lecturer, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/808542017-07-20T09:41:10Z2017-07-20T09:41:10ZWhat happened to the French army after Dunkirk<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178089/original/file-20170713-11780-dtkewf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">French POWs being led away from the battlefield in May 1940. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Bundesarchiv_Bild_101I-055-1592-05A%2C_Frankreich%2C_französische_Kriegsgefangene.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in May 1940 from Dunkirk by a flotilla of small ships has entered British folklore. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5013056/">Dunkirk</a>, a new action film by director Christopher Nolan, depicts the events from land, sea and air and has revived awe for the plucky courage of those involved. </p>
<p>But the story of the French army after Dunkirk is altogether less glorious, and perhaps because of that, less widely remembered. Of the 340,000 allied soldiers evacuated by boat from Dunkirk, <a href="https://www.reseau-canope.fr/cnrd/ephemeride/1183">123,000 were French</a> – but thousands more were not rescued and were taken prisoner by the Germans. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.lefigaro.fr/livres/2017/07/13/03005-20170713ARTFIG00204--dunkerque-1940-au-dela-du-film-de-christopher-nolan-un-livre-poignant.php">French media coverage</a> of the premiere of Nolan’s film has presented the events as a British story in which French soldiers were involved, not a shared wartime narrative. </p>
<p>Operation Dynamo (the code name for the Dunkirk evacuation) took place between May 26 and June 4, 1940. The Germans entered Paris on June 14, but fighting continued in the east of France until June 24. General Charles De Gaulle made his now famous radio broadcast, calling on the French public not to accept defeat, on the BBC on June 18 from London, but very few of his compatriots are likely to have heard it on that date. </p>
<p>It is estimated that between <a href="http://archives.ecpad.fr/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/bataille.pdf">50,000 and 90,000 soldiers</a> of the French army were killed in the fighting of May and June 1940. In addition to the casualties, 1.8m French soldiers, from metropolitan France and across the French empire, were captured during the Battle of France and made prisoners of war (POWs). </p>
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<p>That early summer of 1940 in France was also marked by a mass exodus. At least <a href="https://blog.oup.com/2007/07/wwii_france/">six million civilians</a> took to the roads to escape the advancing German troops, with frightening World War I stereotypes of German brutality at the forefront of their minds. They moved south and west through France, although most returned home following the June 22 armistice with Nazi Germany. </p>
<p>Such mass population movement both helped and hindered the French army. It made moving men and equipment much more difficult on crowded roads and railways. However, for the ordinary soldier who could procure civilian clothes, it allowed them to slip away from their units and rejoin their families. </p>
<h2>Colonial troops massacred</h2>
<p>The French army of 1940 included soldiers from across its empire in north, west and central Africa, the French West Indies and Indochina. These troops found it more difficult to disappear into the crowds. There were <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521730617">numerous massacres of west and central African troops</a> in eastern France by the German army, who after separating them from their white officers, shot them. </p>
<p>There were 120,000 colonial prisoners of war captured during the Battle of France. They were housed in different camps from their white, metropolitan French counterparts, all on French soil and French run, because of Nazi racial fears of them mixing with German civilians. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178401/original/file-20170717-6075-1j00drb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178401/original/file-20170717-6075-1j00drb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178401/original/file-20170717-6075-1j00drb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178401/original/file-20170717-6075-1j00drb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178401/original/file-20170717-6075-1j00drb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178401/original/file-20170717-6075-1j00drb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178401/original/file-20170717-6075-1j00drb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Colonial POWs from the French empire under guard by German soldiers, June 1940.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">RaBoe/Wikipedia</span></span>
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<p>French POWs were sent to camps in Germany where they were quickly set to work on farms, in industry, mines and on the railways, to replace German men away fighting. The POWs lived and worked alongside the German population, leading to both tensions and friendships. The fate of these POWs became central to the propaganda of the French collaborationist government, based in Vichy. </p>
<p><a href="http://museedelaresistanceenligne.org/media3104-Affiche-iLa-RelA">Numerous government programmes</a> tried to encourage young French men and women to sign up for work in Germany in exchange for the return of a POW to France. But, most prisoners – about one million – only returned to France <a href="http://www.cheminsdememoire.gouv.fr/fr/le-retour-des-prisonniers-de-guerre-en-1945">following the end of the war in May 1945</a>. They were often greeted by widespread indifference, even sometimes hostility because of their supposed links and sympathies to the Vichy regime. In reality, they were no more pro-Vichy than many other parts of French society.</p>
<h2>A difficult history for France</h2>
<p>The very swift German victory in May and June 1940 and the humiliating armistice that followed, meant that post-war French society and the state sought to minimise and forget the defeat, preferring to concentrate on more glorious stories of the Resistance and the Free French. There was an unsuccessful campaign in the French press in 2015 for a state commemorative event and memorial to honour the war dead from France and its then empire, who the campaign labelled as “<a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2015/05/08/les-soldats-morts-pour-la-france-en-1940-meritent-une-commemoration_4629979_3232.html">the first Resistance fighters</a>”. Former French president, François Hollande, increased the number of state commemorative events for key moments from France’s 20th century history, but still ignored the events of 1940.</p>
<p>Despite official silences, the fighting of the summer of 1940 has been the subject of French novels and films ever since. Robert Merle’s 1949 novel <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058740/">Weekend at Dunkirk</a> was adapted into a successful feature film, with an audience of three million on its release in 1964. The protagonist, Julien, is a French soldier desperate to make it onto one of the boats of the British evacuation in a town shattered by bombing. Claude Simon’s 1960 novel, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Flanders_Road.html?id=MqZRQgAACAAJ&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y">The Flanders Road</a>, painted a picture of an outdated French army, ground down by months of a phoney war, fighting against a much better equipped, more modern German enemy. </p>
<p>For French POWs, Dunkirk and those battles of May and June 1940 marked the beginning of five years of humiliation and hardship, before many returned to a country that wanted to forget them and their fighting experiences.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80854/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nina Wardleworth does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>How French memories of the Dunkirk evacuation differ from those of the British.Nina Wardleworth, Teaching Fellow in French, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/768452017-05-09T13:27:50Z2017-05-09T13:27:50ZWhat South Korea’s election might mean for the long peace in East Asia<p>After an <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-koreas-next-president-faces-a-belligerent-north-and-a-confused-us-77126">election</a> triggered by its last president’s impeachment, South Korea has a new leader, the Democratic Party’s <a href="http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/news/2017/04/03/0200000000AEN20170403002100315.html">Moon Jae-in</a>. After the scandal that brought down his predecessor, he campaigned largely against corruption and on economic issues – but he was also forced to explain how he would handle his country’s northern neighbour.</p>
<p>During the last weeks of the election campaign, North Korea ramped up its missile tests and even hinted at an upcoming nuclear test. Experts and <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/04/us-is-more-vulnerable-as-north-korean-missile-tech-advances-general-says.html">military officials</a> said that the recent tests indicated that the country’s missile capabilities are advancing fast, and that Pyongyang could soon be able to fit a nuclear warhead onto an intercontinental ballistic missile. </p>
<p>As a result, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/donald-trump-us-north-korea-new-war-mi6-chief-john-sawers-china-us-president-effective-experience-a7675876.html">some are concerned</a> that a devastating war on the Korean peninsula might be in the offing. Should such a conflict erupt, it could turn out to be more intensive than any war the region has seen, even though the US and South Korea can <a href="http://www.france24.com/en/20170502-usa-thaad-missile-defence-system-operational-south-korea">reportedly</a> intercept at least some North Korean missiles with their newly deployed <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-us-america-anti-missile-thaad-defense-system-south-north-korea-spying-donald-trump-military-a7713251.html">Terminal High Altitude Area Defence</a> (THAAD) system.</p>
<p>And yet, for almost four decades, East Asia has been more peaceful than Europe, the Americas, or any other continent, at least if peacefulness is measured by the number of conflict fatalities per head of population. So why is this the case – and might recent events on the Korean Peninsula put an end to this remarkably stable era?</p>
<p>One <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Long-Peace-of-East-Asia/Kivimaki/p/book/9781472422293">recent study</a> found that one of the main reasons East Asia remains overwhelmingly peaceful is that almost all its states believe their number one job is to foster economic development at home. Most of them have duly pursued growth and development with something bordering on obsession. This naturally makes them reluctant to fight wars, which would by definition disrupt the economic interdependence that has helped make them <a href="http://www.korea.net/AboutKorea/Economy/The-Miracle-on-The-Hangang">so wealthy so fast</a>.</p>
<p>There is <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Long-Peace-of-East-Asia/Kivimaki/p/book/9781472422293">clear evidence</a> to back up this hypothesis: after World War II, those East Asian countries where the regime did not consider development a top priority saw on average more than 300 times as many conflict fatalities per million people as countries that put development first. After the 1970s, most countries became “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developmentalism">developmentalist</a>”, and North Korea is now a glaring exception.</p>
<h2>Easing the tension</h2>
<p>Broadly speaking, the rest of East Asia now operates under a norm of military non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries. This is a stark contrast with the practice before the end of the Vietnam War, when wars in Korea, Laos, Cambodia, the Philippines, China, and elsewhere saw other countries offer ideologically driven support to both governments and their opponents.</p>
<p>The effect of this support is evident <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Long-Peace-of-East-Asia/Kivimaki/p/book/9781472422293">in the data</a>. After World War II, two-thirds of East Asia’s conflict fatalities were caused by conflicts that started out as civil wars but were then internationalised when outside powers interfered – and in these wars, the internationalisation intensified killings by a factor of 20. </p>
<p>As the years went by, the norm changed. Since the late 1970s, East Asian powers have supported each other against insurgencies (such as the Philippines’ <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10357718.2016.1269147?scroll=top&needAccess=true&journalCode=caji20">Mindanao conflict</a>) but haven’t lent military support to the opponents of fellow governments. Some of this can be chalked up to the establishment of the <a href="http://asean.org/">Association of South-East Asian Nations</a>, which provides a vital forum for resolving disputes. Also crucial was China’s metamorphosis into a developmentalist country that respected others’ sovereignty, another transition that <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/5237748.stm">began in the late 1970s</a>.</p>
<p>But today, North Korea’s human rights violations and nuclear weapons programme are putting the norm of non-interference under severe strain, as is the US’s increasingly interventionist stance. The disastrous conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria have taught authoritarian regimes that “sovereignty” is no longer respected as an absolute concept. North Korea’s leaders have duly invoked the threat of external intervention to justify harsh domestic policies. The threat from “imperial powers” is a handy pretext for cracking down on internal subversion and disobedience. </p>
<p>Clearly, the rest of the world’s approach to the north in recent years has done little to undermine this propagandist premise. And this is where Moon might make a difference. </p>
<p>For one, he has clearly signalled that he intends to pivot away from vague plans for regime change in North Korea, towards strategies for security and peace that don’t necessarily involve deposing the Kim regime. Instead of punishing and isolating North Korea, Moon would like to lull it into the same development-fixated mindset that has gripped the rest of East Asia for the last several decades.</p>
<p>Moon doesn’t believe that outside powers can or should force North Korea to democratise. Instead, he believes in dialogue, and the slow development of north-south relations. That could be a good fit with the businessman-like approach preferred by Donald Trump, who now says he’s <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/05/01/politics/donald-trump-meet-north-korea-kim-jong-un/">open to to direct dialogue</a> with the Kim government – that is, provided this recent turn in Trump’s rhetoric overrides the more hawkish elements in his administration.</p>
<p>If a catastrophic war on the Korean peninsula is to be averted, Moon will have to use all the political and diplomatic tools at his disposal. Fortunately, East Asia’s decades of successful, peaceful economic integration and developmentalism offer him a clear set of norms by which to abide. For all that the situation seems to be getting closer to outright conflict, a less interventionist South Korean approach to the north may be in the offing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76845/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Timo A Kivimäki does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Since the late 1970s, East Asia has seen fewer deaths in conflict than any other continent. Can it keep the peace?Timo A Kivimäki, Professor of International Relations, University of BathLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/742522017-04-21T03:11:11Z2017-04-21T03:11:11ZHow a more divided Turkey could change the way we think about Gallipoli<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165773/original/image-20170419-6367-1w7skz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been a central figure in linking the Gallipoli campaign with Islamic conceptualisations of the Turkish nation.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/erdogan-declares-victory-in-his-pursuit-of-one-man-rule-76032">win for the “yes” side</a> in Turkey’s recent referendum on the powers of the president has fundamental implications for parliamentary democracy in the country, and for <a href="http://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/68400">relations between Turkey and the west</a>. </p>
<p>For Australia, the referendum has an additional significance: by <a href="https://theconversation.com/turkeys-constitutional-referendum-experts-express-fear-for-a-divided-country-76289">entrenching the power</a> of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, it will influence the future of Australian commemoration activities at Gallipoli.</p>
<p>The numbers of Australians, along with other westerners, visiting Turkey has recently <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/40e72eda-54b1-3bc3-9d57-800cd3f62752">declined dramatically</a>. This is a consequence of ongoing political instability in the country following last year’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/turkey-struggles-to-make-sense-of-a-surreal-failed-coup-detat-62596">attempted coup d'état</a> and a <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/turkey-tourism-industry-statistics-worst-summer-terrorism-isis-coup-a7159731.html">series of terror attacks</a>. The Australian government also <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-06/terrorists-may-target-anzac-day-commemorations-government-says/8422232">recently warned of</a> potential attacks targeting the Gallipoli battlefields on Anzac Day.</p>
<p>A significant decline in this pilgrimage activity will likely have a wider impact on the way Australia understands Gallipoli. This is particularly the case given the continued resonance of an Anzac narrative <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14775085.2013.846229?src=recsys&journalCode=rjto20">characterised by a historical empathy</a> for Turkey’s perspective on the war.</p>
<h2>Links with political Islam</h2>
<p>The Gallipoli campaign has, in recent years, become part of the culture wars in Turkey associated with the rise of political Islam. This has seen Gallipoli increasingly referred to in relation to an Islamic jihad, and as an invasion of crusaders into the house of Islam.</p>
<p>Approximately 1 million Turks visit the battlefields each year. And an estimated 10% of the Turkish population have at some stage <a href="https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=5137145">engaged in</a> some kind of <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/a-century-later-turkeys-president-strives-to-reframe-a-nation-building-battle/article24109806/">martyr tourism</a> at Gallipoli.</p>
<p>Erdoğan has been a central figure in linking the Gallipoli campaign with Islamic conceptualisations of the Turkish nation. He has said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[The] crusades were not [finished] nine centuries ago in the past! Do not forget, [the] Gallipoli [campaign] was a crusade.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Following the failed coup, Erdoğan also evoked the memory of Gallipoli. Recreated scenes of the Ottoman victory in the land battles against Anzac soldiers <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/erdogan-harnesses-spirit-of-gallipoli-to-tighten-his-grip-9j2n9cfqj">played on large screens</a> in Taksim Square as he addressed cheering pro-government crowds.</p>
<p>The vision was taken from a controversial TV commercial originally produced for the centennial commemorations of the Gallipoli battle. Its use of various Islamic symbols <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkish-president-erdogans-gallipoli-prayer-stirs-debate.aspx?pageID=238&nID=81350&NewsCatID=338">was widely interpreted</a> as breaking with traditional secular ways of remembering the campaign.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pTp900r8CGQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A Centennial Epic: Çanakkale.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How the shift is taking place</h2>
<p>Significant shifts in Turkish memory of Gallipoli are not unprecedented. Since the 1930s there has been a few turning points in how the campaign is understood.</p>
<p>First, and most significant, was the victory of the Ottoman Imperial Army in being “Turkified”. Arab, Kurdish, Greek, Armenian and Jewish soldiers and officers were <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14623528.2016.1262500">cleansed from the official narrative</a>. This also involved de-emphasising Germany’s role as the Ottomans’ allies in the first world war. </p>
<p>The official nationalist narrative has glorified the military leadership of Colonel Mustafa Kemal (later Atatürk) in the battles against British and Anzac forces. This has linked the collective memory of Gallipoli with the independence movement that led to the formation of the secularist Turkish nation-state in 1923.</p>
<p>The historiography of Gallipoli is now potentially undergoing another major change. The classical Turkish view of Gallipoli may be being replaced by an Islamic-oriented narrative.</p>
<p>Turkish pilgrims once were told the same historical tales by the guides that also took Australian and New Zealand visitors around the battlefields. But now, the vast majority of locals visit through bus tours that are <a href="https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=5137145">arranged by Islamist municipal administrations</a> for their residents, free of charge. </p>
<p>In contrast to local guides embedded in the tourism industry, those who lead the bus tours are more likely to express an Islamic narrative of Gallipoli.</p>
<p>This trend is apparent in an <a href="http://en.dunyatimes.com/article/nearly-20000-scouts-march-for-fallen-soldiers-of-canakkale-war-93174.html">increasing popular march</a> that re-enacts the mobilisation of the legendary 57th Regiment to defend the highlands from Anzac troops. This involves approximately 20,000 young boys and girls from scouts and other paramilitary organisations. And it is common for participants to wear t-shirts remembering their ancestors who fought at Gallipoli.</p>
<p>It’s hard to know precisely what the consequences of these new commemorative rituals will be for the collective memory of Gallipoli. From <a href="http://www.academia.edu/540300/Enchanting_Pasts_The_Role_of_International_Civil_Religious_Pilgrimage_in_Reimagining_National_Collective_Memory">fieldwork research</a> on the Anzac pilgrimage, the motivations and meanings taken away from the battlefields are often different from that which politicians and social commentators have often assumed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74252/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Gallipoli campaign has, in recent years, increasingly become part of the culture wars in Turkey associated with the rise of political Islam.Brad West, Associate Professor, School of Communication, International Studies and Languages, University of South AustraliaAyhan Aktar, Chair Professor, Istanbul Bilgi UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/624612016-07-18T19:59:18Z2016-07-18T19:59:18ZDallas and Baton Rouge shooters: A reminder of the troubled history of black veterans in America<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130972/original/image-20160718-2133-17zojlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A black U.S. Marine gives salute.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/marine_corps/16622403271">U.S. Marine Corps</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The recent shooting deaths of eight police officers in two separate incidents has shocked the nation and left us searching for answers.</p>
<p>On Sunday morning, Gavin Long engaged in a shootout with police in Baton Rouge that left three officers dead and three injured. Long was also killed. </p>
<p>Just 10 days earlier, on the night of July 7, Micah Xavier Johnson drove to a Black Lives Matter protest in downtown Dallas, Texas, determined to kill white police officers. He killed five policemen and wounded seven others before he was killed after a long standoff with law enforcement. </p>
<p>While we may never fully know what caused Johnson and Long to commit such horrific crimes, the fact that they were both African-Americans and served in the military has received <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-baton-rouge-police-shooting-20160717-snap-story.html">significant attention</a>.</p>
<p>Johnson has been variously described as “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/07/09/dallas-attacker-was-an-army-veteran-who-targeted-white-police-officers-officials-say/?utm_term=.6179af9fd902">demented</a>,” a “<a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_POLICE_SHOOTINGS_DALLAS_GUNMAN?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT">disgrace</a>” and filled with hatred. Initial reports suspect Long suffered from <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/17/baton-rouge-gunman-gavin-e-long-cosmo-setepenra-marines">“paranoia” and “mental instability.”</a> </p>
<p>African-Americans have a long and proud history of participation in the United States armed forces. Black soldiers have fought in every war from the American Revolution to the present. <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Torchbearers_of_Democracy.html?id=0ROwDrcmHssC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false">I have written about</a> their important role in World War I. They are powerful symbols of black patriotism and respectability, and demonstrate how in spite of slavery, Jim Crow and institutionalized discrimination, African-Americans have been willing to fight for their country and die for its ideals.</p>
<p>Micah Johnson and Gavin Long violently disrupt this narrative. Their actions speak to a rarely acknowledged aspect of the history of African-American veterans – one of injustice, disillusionment, trauma, racial militancy and undignified death. Johnson, Long and their troubled humanity remind us that the history of black servicemen and women has been fraught with tension.</p>
<h2>The meaning of service</h2>
<p>Johnson and Long were dedicated soldiers. Johnson’s mother, Delphine Johnson, said that her son, like so many black servicemen before him, “<a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/07/11/exclusive-parents-of-dallas-cop-killer-micah-johnson-speak-out-for-first-time-since-attack/">loved his country</a>” and wanted to protect it. Johnson served in the United States Army Reserves for six years, enlisting out of high school in 2009. He completed a tour of duty in Afghanistan with the 420th Engineer Brigade before receiving an honorable discharge in 2015. </p>
<p>Long was a former U.S. Marine who served for five years – including one year in Iraq as a data specialist. He achieved the rank of sergeant until his discharge in 2010. He received several awards during his time in the Marines, including <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/19/us/baton-rouge-shooting.html?_r=0">a good conduct medal</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130958/original/image-20160718-1906-18poeuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130958/original/image-20160718-1906-18poeuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130958/original/image-20160718-1906-18poeuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130958/original/image-20160718-1906-18poeuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130958/original/image-20160718-1906-18poeuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130958/original/image-20160718-1906-18poeuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130958/original/image-20160718-1906-18poeuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gold medal service for black Marines who were treated unfairly in segregated boot camps.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/marine_corps/7486605958">US Marine Corps</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Like Long and Johnson, black men and women have joined the military for various reasons throughout American history. While love of country has been an important motivation, other factors such as the opportunity for freedom, the desire for adventure and the promise of gainful employment have also <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=zXF1bhMrO5MC&printsec=frontcover&dq=african+americans+in+the+military&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwim2aqn1ffNAhWKVh4KHV5oBVMQ6AEIIjAB#v=onepage&q=african%20americans%20in%20the%20military&f=false">been meaningful</a>. More than just patriotic symbols, black servicemen and women, like all individuals, possess complex identities that have shaped their military experiences.</p>
<h2>Disillusionment and trauma</h2>
<p>These experiences have not always been positive. </p>
<p>According to his family, Johnson returned home from Afghanistan a different person. “The military was not what Micah thought it would be,” Johnson’s mother <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/07/11/exclusive-parents-of-dallas-cop-killer-micah-johnson-speak-out-for-first-time-since-attack/">has stated</a>, adding, “He was very disappointed, very disappointed.” In her words, he became “a hermit” and resentful toward the government. </p>
<p>After his discharge, Long also seems to have become <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/17/baton-rouge-gunman-gavin-e-long-cosmo-setepenra-marines">isolated and aggrieved</a>. He divorced his wife, changed his name to “Cosmo Setepenra,” accused the government of placing him under surveillance and in numerous online videos decried systematic racism against African-Americans, including the July 5 police <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/19/us/baton-rouge-shooting.html">killing of Alton Sterling</a> in Baton Rouge. </p>
<p>Johnson’s mother <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/07/11/exclusive-parents-of-dallas-cop-killer-micah-johnson-speak-out-for-first-time-since-attack/">said</a> that “it may be that the ideal that he thought of our government, of what he thought the military represented, it just didn’t live up to his expectation.” </p>
<p>In the longer historical context of African-Americans in the armed forces, Johnson would not be alone. For much of its history, the military has been <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Strength_for_the_Fight.html?id=B13CGJMiyOIC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false">a deeply racist institution</a>. Black soldiers, having to endure often virulent discrimination and abuse, naturally questioned the value of risking their life for a nation that refused to respect both their American identity and basic humanity. </p>
<p>Studies have shown that black soldiers suffer from <a href="http://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/treatment/cultural/ptsd-minority-vets.asp">higher rates</a> of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) than their white counterparts. However, many black veterans suffer the added trauma of their disillusioning experiences in the armed forces and the cognitive dissonance between the ideals and reality of the United States, especially in regards to race. African-American veterans have often questioned how they could fight for freedom and democracy abroad while still confronting racism at home.</p>
<p>It is fair to ask: How did serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then seeing videos of police killing unarmed black people, possibly affect Long and Johnson’s respective psyches? Both men may not have served in combat, but they would not be immune from the psychological traumas of being black soldiers and the need to make sense of this conflicted identity at a time of heightened racial tensions.</p>
<h2>Black radicalism and the specter of violence</h2>
<p>That Long and Johnson apparently exhibited a stronger sense of racial militancy following their discharge should not be surprising. </p>
<p>Black veterans constitute an important part of the history of black radicalism in the United States. While Long and Johnson appear to have had <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-police-shooter-idUSKCN0ZX0WC">no formal affiliations and likely acted alone</a>, examples abound of African-American veterans participating in and leading militant organizations committed to black freedom and racial justice.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130963/original/image-20160718-2127-tsqdd1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130963/original/image-20160718-2127-tsqdd1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130963/original/image-20160718-2127-tsqdd1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130963/original/image-20160718-2127-tsqdd1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130963/original/image-20160718-2127-tsqdd1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130963/original/image-20160718-2127-tsqdd1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130963/original/image-20160718-2127-tsqdd1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Black soldiers of the 369th infantry return from World War I.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/5506534232">U.S. National archives</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Following World War I, many disillusioned black veterans joined groups such as the African Blood Brotherhood and, most notably, Marcus Garvey’s <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=0ROwDrcmHssC&printsec=frontcover&dq=torchbearers+of+democracy&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiq-PO-7PfNAhWGmR4KHQCyCJkQ6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q=torchbearers%20of%20democracy&f=false">Universal Negro Improvement Association</a>. Former soldiers played a significant role in the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s. Ernest Thomas, a veteran of World War II, founded the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=8H9Me8LZ488C&printsec=frontcover&dq=deacons+of+defense&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj1mPv-4vrNAhUEKx4KHV0qDugQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=deacons%20of%20defense&f=false">Deacons of Defense</a> that provided armed protection for southern civil rights activists. The Black Panther Party was cofounded by <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=CJX_JX9jENgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=bobby+seale&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiR9L7fo_XNAhVG1B4KHSU-BH4Q6AEIIzAB#v=onepage&q=bobby%20seale&f=false">Bobby Seale</a>, who served three years in the United States Air Force until he was dishonorably discharged for fighting. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130970/original/image-20160718-2110-4yttnk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130970/original/image-20160718-2110-4yttnk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130970/original/image-20160718-2110-4yttnk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130970/original/image-20160718-2110-4yttnk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130970/original/image-20160718-2110-4yttnk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=739&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130970/original/image-20160718-2110-4yttnk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=739&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130970/original/image-20160718-2110-4yttnk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=739&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Black Panther Party cofounders Bobby Seale and Huey Newton.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party#/media/File:Black-Panther-Party-armed-guards-in-street-shotguns.jpg">Wiki Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The connection among African-American veterans, black militancy and the specter of violence is also not new. Historical fears of radicalized black soldiers and veterans sparking racial conflict – especially in the South – and killing white people <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Black_Flag_Over_Dixie.html?id=WRC9QOdYDYcC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false">date back to the Reconstruction era</a> and continued following <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Seeing_Red.html?id=rc-uwLkQmFAC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false">World War I</a> and <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=fJyJl6OT16AC&printsec=frontcover&dq=world+war+2+black+veterans&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjHoI2n9ffNAhUBYT4KHbOHDKsQ6AEISjAI#v=onepage&q=world%20war%202%20black%20veterans&f=false">World War II</a>. </p>
<p>The Dallas and Baton Rouge shootings also invoke memories of more modern incidents. In 1973, a disgruntled black Navy veteran, Mark Essex, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=TfEDmROcZwEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=mark+essex&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwje3aHWpPXNAhXCrB4KHZszCI4Q6AEIIjAB#v=onepage&q=mark%20essex&f=false">murdered nine people</a>, including five police officers, in New Orleans. Essex’s rampage ended when law enforcement trapped him on a hotel roof and filled his body with over 200 bullets. Micah Johnson met a similarly grisly fate when he was cornered by Dallas police in a parking garage and killed by a robot-delivered bomb.</p>
<p>Should we mourn for Micah Johnson and Gavin Long? Did their lives matter? Do their violent actions erase the meaning of their years of military service? Do we ignore their humanity?</p>
<p>The actions of Micah Johnson and Gavin Long are inexcusable. They do not represent the Black Lives Matter movement. They certainly do not represent the millions of black veterans, past and present, who served their country and as civilians have made valuable contributions to society. </p>
<p>But there is also no denying that Johnson and Long speak to a more unsettling historical reality, that for many black veterans the nation they swore to protect and defend has ultimately failed them by not sufficiently protecting and defending black people.</p>
<p>This makes them American tragedies.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62461/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chad Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The men who killed police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge were black veterans. A historian explains black veterans’ long struggle to live with inequality in their military service, and back home.Chad Williams, Associate Professor of African and Afro-American Studies, Brandeis UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/594152016-05-27T10:53:29Z2016-05-27T10:53:29ZJutland: Why World War I’s only sea battle was so crucial to Britain’s victory<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123090/original/image-20160518-8717-f2p0j4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">British battlecruiser HMS Indefatigable sunk during the Battle of Jutland. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jutland#/media/File:HMS_Indefatigable_sinking.jpg">Imperial War Museums/Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Modern understanding of World War I is dominated by the immense human cost of the war on land with its trenches, artillery and machine guns – but the war was won by sea power. </p>
<p>In August 1914 Britain, the greatest naval power of the age, controlled the oceans, cutting Germany off from global resources. Without imported raw materials and food Germany could only fight for a year or two before facing starvation and industrial failure. </p>
<p>To break the crippling blockade, Imperial Germany’s High Seas Fleet had to defeat the British Grand Fleet, based at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands, which closed the North Sea to German shipping. Outnumbered and outgunned, it never attempted to do so. </p>
<p>The two fleets met for the only time on May 31 1916, almost two years after the war began, in the largest surface naval battle in history – the <a href="http://www.battle-of-jutland.com/">Battle of Jutland</a>. The Germans had sailed north, planning to cut off and destroy a fraction of the Grand Fleet. The British, forewarned by radio intelligence, steamed south planning to catch the entire High Seas Fleet. </p>
<h2>What happened at Jutland</h2>
<p>The fleets met off the western coast of Denmark. The British force of 150 ships, including 37 battleships, was one-third larger than the German fleet.</p>
<p>The action began in the mid-afternoon and involved a series of relatively short artillery and torpedo exchanges which were restricted by poor visibility. Fighting continued until after midnight when the Germans managed to disengage and – after a chaotic night of action – retreat to base. </p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Jutland explained.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The battle <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Dreadnought_Gunnery_and_the_Battle_of_Ju.html?id=rk2QAgAAQBAJ&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y">exposed serious failings</a> in the British Battle Cruiser Fleet, the advanced scouting force of the Grand Fleet, where poor gunnery and signalling practice was compounded by the careless handling of high explosive ammunition, resulting in the destruction of three battleships. By contrast, the Grand Fleet comprehensively outgunned the German battle fleet in two brief gunnery exchanges, forcing the German Admiral Reinhard Scheer into dangerous emergency manoeuvres to turn away from the battle.</p>
<h2>Comparisons with Trafalgar</h2>
<p>The result of the action has been contested ever since. Both sides measured the action against Nelson’s defeat of the Napoleonic fleet in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, the ultimate naval victory. The Kaiser <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Rd-OCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA377&lpg=PA377&dq=the+magic+of+Trafalgar+kaiser&source=bl&ots=DZPJ4u4vm2&sig=t2HaE_P4cBS1KYEpqaxTmm3s0gM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjvjsve4uXMAhWMA8AKHbwtAYEQ6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q&f=false">declared Jutland</a> had broken “the magic of Trafalgar”, while many in Britain were shocked by the failure to repeat Nelson’s triumph. </p>
<p>These analogies missed the fundamental issue. Both Jutland and Trafalgar maintained Britain’s command of the oceans and the economic blockade, which was its primary strategic weapon. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123091/original/image-20160518-2472-eb8adw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123091/original/image-20160518-2472-eb8adw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123091/original/image-20160518-2472-eb8adw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123091/original/image-20160518-2472-eb8adw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123091/original/image-20160518-2472-eb8adw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123091/original/image-20160518-2472-eb8adw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123091/original/image-20160518-2472-eb8adw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jellicoe: immortalised in London’s Trafalgar Square.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABust_of_Jellicoe_in_Trafalgar_Square.jpg">Mike Peel/wikimedia.org</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1805, Nelson had faced an enemy of markedly inferior skill: at Jutland Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, commander of the Grand Fleet, faced a highly capable and resolute enemy, whose ships and men were <a href="https://theconversation.com/maths-swayed-the-battle-of-jutland-and-helped-britain-keep-control-of-the-seas-59760">equal to his own</a>. He could not afford to take risks in pursuit of a “decisive” victory because, unlike Nelson, he commanded Britain’s only modern battle fleet.</p>
<p>As Winston Churchill <a href="http://www.abebooks.co.uk/world-crisis-1916-18-part-CHURCHILL-Winston/14842642411/bd">famously observed</a>, Jellicoe was the only man on either side “who could have lost the war in an afternoon”. But Jellicoe did not have to win, he had ensure he did not lose – and his cautious professionalism was perfectly suited to the occasion. That said, he did seek try to destroy the enemy, twice outmanoeuvring Scheer and cutting off his route home. With a little luck, and more capable subordinates, Jellicoe might have achieved a truly stunning success – but he would not take excessive risks to secure one. </p>
<p>Having listened to the Kaiser’s bombastic claims of victory, after the battle Scheer decided he would not risk another such encounter. He knew that while German tactical skill and resilience at Jutland had been impressive, it did not amount to strategic success. </p>
<h2>Who won?</h2>
<p>German propaganda claimed victory, because <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/firstworldwar/battles/jutland.htm">they had sunk more British ships</a> – six big ships to two – and killed 60% more British sailors; the toll was 6,094 killed and 674 wounded. </p>
<p>These numbers were irrelevant: the British remained on the battlefield the next day, ready to fight, while Scheer had turned and fled on three occasions, limping home with much of his fleet heavily damaged. He did not attempt to engage the Grand Fleet again. This was the real test of victory. </p>
<p>The Grand Fleet anchored a British economic blockade that was slowly strangling the German war effort. Unable to break the blockade, the German High Command resorted to unrestricted <a href="http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/germany-resumes-unrestricted-submarine-warfare">submarine warfare</a>, sinking all British and neutral merchant ships within a self-proclaimed “war zone” without making provision for the safety of passengers and crew.</p>
<p>This gross violation of international law brought the United States into the conflict alongside Britain and France in April 1917. This made the economic blockade much tighter, leaving Germany to stake everything on a military victory on the Western Front in the spring of 1918. In October 1918 the High Seas Fleet <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Xw6vBq5mUUoC&pg=PA512&lpg=PA512&dq=October+1918+the+High+Seas+Fleet+collapsed+in+mutiny&source=bl&ots=qvBF8MxB4N&sig=Cp3-0aSGZCibQWJyyugvgbN-XJ0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjovpTI4-XMAhVjLMAKHSpWCgwQ6AEIMTAD#v=onepage&q=October%201918%20the%20High%20Seas%20Fleet%20collapsed%20in%20mutiny&f=false">collapsed in mutiny</a> and helped bring down Germany’s Imperial regime.</p>
<p>Although a library of books and articles have dissected British tactical and technological failings at Jutland – and they were significant – the British won the battle, and that victory settled the outcome of the World War I.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59415/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Lambert does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Both sides claimed victory after the German and British fleets met off the coast of Denmark, 100 years ago.Andrew Lambert, Laughton Professor of Naval History, Department of War Studies, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/597602016-05-24T12:36:27Z2016-05-24T12:36:27ZMaths swayed the Battle of Jutland – and helped Britain keep control of the seas<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123406/original/image-20160520-4475-17n8maj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AHMSDreadnought_gunsLOCBain17494.jpg">Bain via Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you’re about to fight a battle, would you rather have a larger fleet, or a smaller but more advanced one? One hundred years ago, on May 31 1916, the British Royal Navy was about to find out if its choice of a larger fleet was the correct one. At the Battle of Jutland – as the major naval battle of World War I is known in English – these choices were unusually influenced by mathematics.</p>
<p>In a technological arms race, the usual choice is to build the most advanced weapons systems of the highest possible quality. Britain faced exactly such a decision at the beginning of the 20th century. After 50 years of evolution in naval technology, in 1906 Britain launched a revolutionary ship, <a href="http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/civilwar/p/cwturningpts.htm">HMS Dreadnought</a>, which incorporated the biggest guns, the toughest armour and a new steam turbine engine in a single battleship. All previous battleships were rendered obsolete, and a new naval arms race was on.</p>
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<p>A year later, Britain <a href="https://pure.york.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/weight-of-shell-must-tell%28186a432d-44bc-4f9b-8ee5-6f6245e1ad44%29.html">had to decide</a> what kind of ships to build next. Should the Royal Navy follow the thinking of Admiral of the Fleet Sir John “Jacky” Fisher and build small numbers of ships even more advanced than Dreadnought? Bravely, a naval committee – including Captain (later Admiral) John Jellicoe – decided to build more of the same, and put as many big guns on the water as possible.</p>
<h2>Lanchester’s ‘N-square law’</h2>
<p>The decision clearly depends on the relative merits – a trade-off – of numbers and quality, and this was the subject of a radical new body of thought in the decades leading up to World War I. The argument is a mathematical one: if two fleets are equipped with long-range guns, all firing on the enemy and causing damage in proportion to their number, then the fleet which wins is determined by the individual effectiveness multiplied not by the number of ships but by its square. For example, a ship would have to be four times as powerful to take on two opponents in a fair fight.</p>
<p>This conclusion is most famously due to British engineer Frederick Lanchester, <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/math/0606300">who used calculus</a> to derive it in the winter before World War I – and developed the “N-square law”. But it was arrived at independently in many countries, and the version more familiar to Jellicoe and his committee <a href="http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1905-01/american-naval-policy">came from American Commander Bradley Fiske</a>. It used tables of numbers – what we would think of today as spreadsheets.</p>
<p>Either way, the lesson is stark: to make its numbers count, the larger fleet must fight together, undivided, with all its guns firing. Then even a small numerical advantage will lead to its higher-quality opponent’s annihilation.</p>
<p>By 1916, Britain’s Royal Navy had built a weapon, the Grand Fleet, which could annihilate the German High Seas Fleet, but only if it was wielded in the correct manner. The man who had to do this was Jellicoe, now admiral. In 1916, Jellicoe <a href="http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/hismeth/2016/00000049/00000002/art00002">wrote to Lanchester</a>: “Your N-square law has become quite famous in the Grand Fleet”.</p>
<h2>In the right place</h2>
<p>If the N-square law is due to calculus, then the conditions to create it stem from geometry. The fleet has to be positioned in such a way that all its guns are firing on an enemy, with implications for how a fleet should be commanded. The British Grand Fleet had to be re-organised from its rectangular travelling formation into a single straight fighting line, ideally firing out of the dawn or dusk gloom and curving round an enemy fleet silhouetted against a low sun.</p>
<p>Astonishingly, this was exactly the outcome Jellicoe achieved at 7pm on May 31 1916. But in manoeuvring the fleet into this position, three large British ships <a href="http://www.battle-of-jutland.com/jutland-gains-losses.htm">had been sunk</a> as well as several smaller cruisers, at the cost of over 5,000 British lives. By contrast, the more carefully built German ships stayed afloat, though with their ability to continue the battle heavily degraded.</p>
<h2>Steady tactics</h2>
<p>What happened next has caused controversy ever since. The German fleet dramatically turned tail and ran for home – as it had to if it were to avoid annihilation. The British also then made a turn away, to avoid German torpedoes, and contact between the fleets was lost. </p>
<p>Both sides sustained losses, but the British still retained control of the North Sea. <a href="http://www.battle-of-jutland.com/jutland-battle.htm">Many thought Jellicoe</a> was too cautious and should have given chase to the Germans. Mathematically, it is clear that Jellicoe executed a well-calculated playing of the odds, accepting battle only under perfect circumstances.</p>
<p>War at sea is starker than on land. There is nowhere to hide, and an inferior fleet must expect to be destroyed utterly. The central fact about Lanchestrian calculus is that once the desired fleet geometry has been achieved, nothing is left to chance. The irony for Jellicoe was that by creating the Lanchestrian conditions for which the British fleet had been built, he ensured that the Germans would decline the fight. </p>
<p>The British lost more ships at Jutland, but this does not diminish the significance of the British strategic victory. As <a href="https://pure.york.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/weight-of-shell-must-tell%28186a432d-44bc-4f9b-8ee5-6f6245e1ad44%29.html">our research</a> has shown, in building a fleet suited to the new calculus of war, and then wielding it correctly, Jellicoe ensured British mastery at sea, which laid the foundation for the war-winning actions on land of 1917-18.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59760/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Calculus helped determined the outcome of World War I’s biggest naval battle, 100 years ago.Niall MacKay, Professor of Mathematics and Head of the Department of Mathematics, University of YorkA. Jamie Wood, Senior Lecturer, Departments of Biology and Mathematics, University of YorkChristopher Price, Lecturer in History, York St John UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/569772016-04-24T20:52:20Z2016-04-24T20:52:20ZWill tourism transform the way Australians remember the Vietnam War?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117023/original/image-20160331-28462-1c446cu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Cu Chi tunnels may be the most popular of the 'war tourism' attractions in Vietnam.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.dreamtime.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1990, when the Hawke government flew <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/ww1/the-anzac-evolution-20140418-36wbj.html">58 first world war veterans</a> to Turkey for the 75th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings, Australia’s Anzac commemoration was transformed.</p>
<p>The subsequent emergence of the Gallipoli pilgrimage directly provided thousands of Australians with an <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9558.2008.00328.x/abstract">alternative way</a> of experiencing and understanding the Anzac legend. Indirectly, it altered the way Australians understand Gallipoli. </p>
<p>The internationalising of its remembrance and the accounting of former foes facilitated a more inclusive historical culture and a resurgence of popular interest and participation in <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-anzac-legend-has-always-been-about-branding-40300">Anzac Day</a>.</p>
<p>Historians and social commentators <a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2015/december/1448888400/mark-mckenna-and-stuart-ward/anzac-myth">typically explain</a> this cultural transformation by emphasising the distinctive social and political circumstances around Gallipoli. But might the rise of heritage tourism and the increasing ease of international travel lead to more of Australia’s foreign military experiences being better understood?</p>
<h2>Sites of war tourism</h2>
<p>The Vietnam War is an interesting example to consider in regard to this question. This is particularly so with 2016 marking the 50th anniversary of the <a href="http://vietnam-war.commemoration.gov.au/combat/battle-of-long-tan.php">Battle of Long Tan</a>. Various <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/travel/vietnam-war-revisited-on-50th-anniversary-of-long-tan/news-story/6e2537d7019fd9918cd3351b24fbc055">veteran and battlefield tours</a> are set to take place. </p>
<p>My <a href="https://www.routledge.com/products/9781472455116">soon-to-be-published research</a> on war tourism in Vietnam can provide insights into what the effect of tourism on Australians’ remembrance of the war might be.</p>
<p>As Vietnam began to open itself up to tourism and foreign investment in the 1990s, the Vietnamese ambassador to the United States, Le Van Bang, felt <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1995-04-27/news/9504270100_1_vietnamese-veteran-vietnam-war-family-altar">compelled to emphasise</a> that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Vietnam is a country, not a war. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Vietnamese are eager for their country to be known for more than its military conflict. But the <a href="https://www.lonelyplanet.com/vietnam/central-vietnam/demilitarised-zone-dmz">Demilitarised Zone</a>, the <a href="http://www.stripes.com/news/pacific/40-years-after-release-pows-at-hanoi-hilton-reflect-on-experience-1.207382">“Hanoi Hilton” prison</a> for captured enemy soldiers, and the <a href="http://www.lonelyplanet.com/vietnam/ho-chi-minh-city/sights/museums-galleries/war-remnants-museum">War Remnants Museum</a> are among the most popular places to visit for international tourists.</p>
<p>Western tourists travelling to Vietnam today for the first time also express their surprise at how welcoming locals are and at their lack of antagonism in relation to the war. This is <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14443050609388071#.Vv21vxN94vo">similar to Gallipoli</a> in the 1990s.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117024/original/image-20160331-15137-2j8kpt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117024/original/image-20160331-15137-2j8kpt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117024/original/image-20160331-15137-2j8kpt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117024/original/image-20160331-15137-2j8kpt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117024/original/image-20160331-15137-2j8kpt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117024/original/image-20160331-15137-2j8kpt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117024/original/image-20160331-15137-2j8kpt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117024/original/image-20160331-15137-2j8kpt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cu Chi offers tourists a way of engaging with history that is vastly different to austere museums.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.dreamtime.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Part of the reason Western tourists are welcome in Vietnam is related to social memory. The conflict is understood within a romantic narrative in which sacrifices are seen as contributing to a united and modern country.</p>
<p>Among the various war tourism sites, the <a href="https://www.lonelyplanet.com/vietnam/around-ho-chi-minh-city/cu-chi-tunnels">Cu Chi tunnels</a>, located less than an hour’s drive from Ho Chi Minh City, are perhaps the most popular. Much like the pilgrimage experience at Gallipoli, a visit to Cu Chi offers tourists a way of engaging with history that is vastly different to the austere museum genre that dominates in Western countries.</p>
<p>Rather than being a hands-off experience, visitors at Cu Chi get to move through the tunnel network, walk in the jungle, see where booby traps were hidden, view how the Viet Cong reused American bombs and, for those who desire, shoot the rifles used in the war.</p>
<h2>Developing memory</h2>
<p>It is tempting to interpret the Cu Chi tour as catering for tourists and trivialising bloodshed. But this reading fails to comprehend the <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520222670">high level</a> of domestic tourism and the serious historical significance that Cu Chi has as part of North Vietnam’s victory.</p>
<p>Approximately 41% of Vietnam’s population is <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2010.html">under the age of 25</a>. The memory-building here is seen as a way to establish national unity.</p>
<p>For Western tourists, Cu Chi is also far from a war “theme park”. Interviews I have conducted with Americans, Australians and Europeans clearly show that they overwhelmingly come to a greater appreciation of the lived experience of soldiers on both sides.</p>
<p>Imagining themselves where Vietnamese and Western soldiers died forces them to rethink their prior understanding of the conflict – particularly from films, commemorations and memorials where the Vietnamese are mere backstage actors.</p>
<p>More than 300,000 Australians <a href="http://vietnamtourism.gov.vn/english/index.php/items/9968">visit Vietnam</a> annually. With the ongoing growth of tourism, it is likely that tourists’ experiences at Cu Chi and other war-related sites in Vietnam will increasingly influence how we commemorate this conflict, and encourage Australians to see it from both sides of the frontline.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/56977/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brad West does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Might the rise of heritage tourism and the increasing ease of international travel lead to more of Australia’s military experiences overseas being better understood?Brad West, Associate Professor, School of Communication, International Studies and Languages, University of South AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.