The History Thread!

I'm guessing he didn't see a point in training future officers for a skill and a sport that didn't look like they'd see much use in modern warfare. I'm reminded of the US Cavalry soldiers in WWII who were upset that they weren't being deployed with their horses in the Pacific but still stubbornly brought their saddles to the Philippines hoping they could find new mounts over there.

But why couldn't he have just kept them as sports for those who weren't planning on graduating into the Army, like say, foreign exchange students?

It'd be extraneous to the institute's goal. But if you really wanted an answer, go find a biography of the man, or his stated rationales for doing so.

I doubt anyone goes to Westpoint for it's fencing program. It might have just been money he didn't feel like spending on activities he didn't think fell inside Westpoint's purview anymore.

Sabre'd.

edited 31st Jul '15 8:43:34 AM by Parable

Ooh, am I a verb now?

Only if you ninja me two more times.

Well. It's nice to have a goal in life.

I'm suddenly imagining this as a game of Total War Shogun 2, where Parable is a geisha and Sabre is a shinobi.

And I'm probably one of the foreign officers who's secretly a woman.

edited 31st Jul '15 9:31:56 AM by RatherRandomRachel

Quartz: how the rest of the world is taught regarding the American Revolution. A bunch of crowdsourced responses, with a general consensus that if it's taught at all, it's mostly as a footnote to the world-shaking French Revolution.

edited 31st Jul '15 9:30:31 AM by SabresEdge

I'd play it.

The views across the world about the American Revolution don't surprise me. After listening to people talk back and forward about history, I've gotten the impression that the general public of any given country doesn't learn about events much further beyond their borders unless they were heavily involved in it. I kinda speculate that if the French Revolution hadn't spread into the French Revolutionary/Napoleonic Wars, it wouldn't have gotten as much attention in Poland or Hungary.

I'm still not surprised it isn't given any attention in India, but I did find it interesting considering I just got done reading Jawaharlal Nehru's The Discovery of India and he mentions the America and French Revolutions as inspirations for the Indian Independence movement. I also caught at least one reference to Abraham Lincoln.

This comment also interested me though:

Because it's amusing since almost right up to the Declaration of Independence, the Colonials were mad at Parliament and thought the king was on their side. Their petitions and letters among themselves indicate that they had hoped George III would intervene on their behalf to give them fair treatment since Parliament wasn't. It was only after the Proclamation of Rebellion the king issued that they turned en masse against him. They even toned down the anti-British, but amped up the anti-royal, rhetoric in the Declaration of Independence hoping to not overly offend the people who had supported them in back in the UK. A negative reference to the Scottish was taken out entirely.

Remnants of 5th-century building where foreigners may have met found in Nara

edited 31st Jul '15 10:21:22 AM by rmctagg09

To be honest, I don't even remember the American Revolution being taught at all, either in History (or Government & Politics^note  Which even had a substantial portion about US Politics) all the way to A2. I do remember a lot on Nazi Germany (pre-WW2), something on US Slavery which I don't remember anything about and that's about it.

If we hear anything about it — as is also the case with the War Of 1812 — we hear about it from the US POV.

The American Revolution was taught to me at university level, but that is because of its importance in the context of what would happen after, although it does provide a useful case study on various things related to such struggles.

The American Civil War we did much more on, especially because of how much there is and how much can be studied of it - especially the political aspects which are honestly some of the most easy to study because of how much is there

And in the same vein, "Tudors, Edwardians, Victorians" are just as likely to get you blank stares in the US unless you have a handy Brit nearby. We're not taught to think of history in reference to those terms and ages. This just further convinces me that for most countries, their general education on histories of other countries begins when it starts majorly intersecting with their own.

To use an example from home: Canada isn't mentioned in US history until WWII except for during the Revolution, the War of 1812, and their influence/interference with the Underground Railroad/Civil War.

This bring me back to Nehru's book, which he wrote as a response to the general attitude of the British who ruled over India, who seemed to be utterly convinced Indians were a gaggle of backwards hicks with no history worth mentioning until the British came along and civilized them.

edited 31st Jul '15 10:40:09 AM by Parable

"I've gotten the impression that the general public of any given country doesn't learn about events much further beyond their borders unless they were heavily involved in it."

Pretty much. Heck, my school books covered a wide range of topics, but every other chapter was about a chapter in Brazillian history. Literally. Half of the chapters in one of the books I got were about Brazillian history and they always arranged like this something else-brazil-something else-Brazil. Ad Infinitum.

It pissed me off to be honest.

As for Anti-US bias... well, I have certainly have seen a lot of that. Particularly in the final years of middle school and high school. But mostly on my geography teachers, who seemed to get worse every next year. Next to them my History teachers were downright tame.

To be fair to the world, I remember only having one extremely general world history class in 9th grade. Elementary school was local and state history (memories of California Gold Rush-themed reading and history units), middle school got us roughly introduced to things like the African empires, feudalism/renaissance/enlightenment/industrial revolution, Imperial China (I remember basing a group presentation by punning on "dynasty"—they tend to end by dying nastily), and the basics of the American Revolution and the Civil War, but if you weren't lucky it'd be possible that your only exposure to world events post-1914 would be one survey class at the beginning of your high school career. Some schools around here had AP European History, and it was always my profound regret that we did not—although the gruelingly in-depth AP US History made up for it.

So, it's okay if you lot missed out on the US Revolution. Chances are good we missed out on your countries as well outside of relatively brief glances. (Heck, we spent more time on Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece, for Development of Western Civilization.)

And even that general class didn't cover everything. After the Sunni-Shia split, what happened in Southwest Asia never came up. The Ottoman Empire didn't exist in our books until WWI.

For that matter I'm not entirely sure the Austro-Hungarian Empire existed until the events leading up to WWI either.

And those studies into Ancient Greece covered the cultures and political structures of Athens and Sparta, mostly Athens, followed immediately by Alexander. I don't recall hearing anything about Greek colonization of the Mediterranean, or the Persian or Peloponnesian Wars.

I am especially embarrassed to admit that our neighbors across the Americas are ignored entirely if my memory is correct.

edited 31st Jul '15 6:21:08 PM by Parable

Lets see here... in Highschool here, there are two world history classes, 1 and 2, being paleolithic up to the renaissance and renaissance up to more or less modern day (it mostly ended a bit after WW 2, lack of time). There were the first civilizations, from the Nile to the Yangtze, the various fertile crescent civs to spring up, up until Persia, where the focus turns to Greece, starting at Troy into Greece-Persia war, the Peloponnesian war, Alexander's father taking over Greece after, The Great's short empire, then the focus goes to Rome, kingdom to republic to empire, with a more brief look at feudal society for lack of time. Then, perspective in painting, Da Vinci, and the rest of the renaissance. As well, there was a bit about some important stuff in Africa and a bit in China.

Second time it was mostly about colonization of the new world and how the enlightenment lead to U.S., then going into more or less US centric history for the rest of it, touching on important events if the US wasn't involved, going into more detail if we were.

I live the Philippines, and back in elementary school, I had to learn about the Philippine-American War, Balangiga Massacare included, and relating to what I asked years ago about Americans being taught that piece of history, I brought it up with my father, and he's not too happy about the fact Americans only learn it in college.

We learn about the war in high school now. It's generally summarized as Vietnam before Vietnam and a lesson in why getting into the imperial game was stupid and wrong of the United States. I distinctly remember the sub-heading of that portion of my history book saying "Freedom for the Philippines, or Freedom from the Philippines?" like the whole thing was one big nightmare we were glad to get rid of.

And honestly, I was disappointed to learn we even had colonies. That was supposed to be something other countries did. Big blow to my Bald Eagle ego.

I point you to Liberia here.

We learned about that the same year. It's one of the few African related subjects we did learn about.

edited 31st Jul '15 11:41:46 PM by Parable

Wait, they do now in high schools in the US?

edited 1st Aug '15 5:02:01 AM by HallowHawk

I learned about it as well as other conflicts and bits of history that are apparently disturbingly absent from so many history educations.

Ok for you more scholarly types. I have a hard one for you. I am trying to source two painfully expensive books. The Sword and the Crucible by Alan Williams ISBN-13: 978-9004227835 ISBN-10: 9004227830

And

The Knight and the Blast Furnace: A History of the Metallurgy of Armour in the Middle Ages & the Early Modern Period By Alan Williams ISBN-13: 978-9004124981 ISBN-10: 9004124985

Now these books are expensive because of limited print editions and apparently not many libraries carry them. Anyone know any other way short of shelling out around half a grand US I can get a chance to read these?

edited 1st Aug '15 9:58:01 AM by TuefelHundenIV

Reading the descriptions of your history classes makes me happy for the Swedish education system. We went from Mesopotamia to Egypt to Greece to Rome to the Middle Ages (during which Byzantium sadly enough got barely a paragraph) to the Arabs to the Renaissance to the Age of Exploration to the Enlightenment to the Revolutions to Industrialization to the World Wars to the Cold War. Swedish history was covered separately.
The big gaping hole in my history classes was Asian history, followed by Pre-Columbian history and Sub-Saharan history, (though those could be excused by the scarcity of good sources). In a way this actually helped kickstart my interest in Asian history due to the knowledge that there were all these massive realms existing for centuries without even getting mentioned. I used to be interested in Byzantium for similar reasons but all the rabid Byzantium fanboys on the Paradox Forums put an end to that.

As for local biases I might mention that the "Dark Ages" as a historical term is basically unheard of in Sweden (as Sweden wasn't part of the European community at the time, Sweden hadn't even been part of Rome anyway and the early Middle Ages were anything but dark for Scandinavia). You will however see the "Viking Age" talked about a lot more than in America. As for the American Revolution it was taught as the second of the three chapters of the Enlightnement where The Enlightenment Philosophers—>The American Revolution—>The French Revolution. I suspect it was the shortest of the three.

edited 4th Aug '15 4:00:11 PM by Druplesnubb