Category Archives: France

by | 29 December 2023 · 5:21 am

Tolls of the Treaty of Trianon

From Budapest: Portrait of a City Between East and West, by Victor Sebestyen (Knopf Doubleday, 2023), Kindle pp. 268-270:

All day throughout Hungary on Friday, 4 June 1920 church bells tolled a dirge, black flags flew over public buildings, traffic came to a standstill in the centre of Budapest for long periods, newspapers appeared with black borders and funeral services were held in churches. It was the day the Treaty of Trianon was signed – still regarded 100 years later ‘as the most devastating tragedy in the nation’s history…a live issue now from which Hungary has not recovered’, according to the philosopher Miklós Haraszti, who under the post-Second World War Communist regime was a dissident leader and in the 1970s the last political prisoner in the country. Trianon ‘was the vivisection of the nation…the death certificate of the 1,000-year realm of King Stephen’.

Hungary was the biggest loser from the First World War – around a third of its territory was handed over to successor states to form new nations, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Large slices of Hungary were given over by the Great Powers to existing states: the whole of Transylvania, part of historic Hungary for hundreds of years, was given to Romania. Half of the population was lost and millions of Hungarians became ‘foreigners’ in new countries overnight. Towns and cities with deep Hungarian roots were renamed: Kassa became Košice in Slovakia, Kolozsvár in Transylvania became Cluj: Temesvár in Romania was now Timişoara; Pozsony became the Slovak capital, Bratislava. As Horthy remarked on the day the treaty was signed: ‘They dismembered the Germans, the Bulgarians and the Turks too. But from them they only took only one or two fingers. From the Hungarians they took his hands and feet.’

The peacemakers of the new world order – particularly the French, who pushed hardest in the Trianon talks – believed they were acting in the interests of self-determination for peoples who had been long held subject. The Hungarians thought they were victims of an ahistorical act of vindictive punishment. The Hungarian army was limited to no more than 35,000 troops and was allowed no heavy artillery, tanks or an air force. Hungary – like Germany – was forced to pay enormous reparations. The French President, Georges Clemenceau, declared that Hungary would be ‘permanently deprived of the means of making war’.

For long afterwards in kindergartens and schools, during church services and in the press, the notion that the lost territories could be restored was kept alive. The slogan taught to children – and often used as a greeting when people met socially – was: ‘No, No Never’ – meaning ‘No, it can never happen’. The saying modulated daily life in Hungary between the wars. The legacy of Trianon defined life in Horthy’s Hungary….

Rump Hungary became a homogeneous state in a way it had never been in 1,000 years. Only 10 per cent of the population were not ethnic Magyars or did not use Hungarian as their native tongue. Trianon, as Paul Lendvai, the best historian of 1920s and 1930s Hungary, noted, ‘was the breeding ground for the transformation of nationalism from an ideology of liberation to one of distraction’. A hundred years later, in the 2020s, the best-selling items of tat in cheap market stalls are pre-Trianon fridge magnets and plastic flags with Greater Hungary maps.

The post-Trianon shock determined the Horthy regime’s revisionist policies. It drove public opinion to an ever more extreme nationalism and further isolated the country from its neighbours. After the peace treaty, ‘Hungary became the quintessential have-not state, ready to ally itself with the Devil himself to undo the injustices perpetrated at Trianon.’ All politics was seen through the prism of the infamous treaty.

Leave a comment

Filed under France, Germany, Hungary, military, nationalism, Romania, Slovakia, U.S., war, Yugoslavia

by | 24 December 2023 · 8:50 am

Bishop and Vicar in Navajo Country

From Death Comes for the Archbishop, by Willa Cather (Project Gutenberg, 2023; Knopf, 1927), Book 7, Chapter 3:

Although Jean Marie Latour and Joseph Vaillant were born in neighbouring parishes in the Puy-de-Dôm, as children they had not known each other. The Latours were an old family of scholars and professional men, while the Vaillants were people of a much humbler station in the provincial world. Besides, little Joseph had been away from home much of the time, up on the farm in the Volvic mountains with his grandfather, where the air was especially pure, and the country quiet salutary for a child of nervous temperament. The two boys had not come together until they were Seminarians at Montferrand, in Clermont.

When Jean Marie was in his second year at the Seminary, he was standing on the recreation ground one day at the opening of the term, looking with curiosity at the new students. In the group, he noticed one of peculiarly unpromising appearance; a boy of nineteen who was undersized, very pale, homely in feature, with a wart on his chin and tow-coloured hair that made him look like a German. This boy seemed to feel his glance, and came up at once, as if he had been called. He was apparently quite unconscious of his homeliness, was not at all shy, but intensely interested in his new surroundings. He asked Jean Latour his name, where he came from, and his father’s occupation. Then he said with great simplicity:

“My father is a baker, the best in Riom. In fact, he’s a remarkable baker.”

Young Latour was amused, but expressed polite appreciation of this confidence. The queer lad went on to tell him about his brother and his aunt, and his clever little sister, Philomène. He asked how long Latour had been at the Seminary.

“Have you always intended to take orders? So have I, but I very nearly went into the army instead.”

The year previous, after the surrender of Algiers, there had been a military review at Clermont, a great display of uniforms and military bands, and stirring speeches about the glory of French arms. Young Joseph Vaillant had lost his head in the excitement, and had signed up for a volunteer without consulting his father. He gave Latour a vivid account of his patriotic emotions, of his father’s displeasure, and his own subsequent remorse. His mother had wished him to become a priest. She died when he was thirteen, and ever since then he had meant to carry out her wish and to dedicate his life to the service of the Divine Mother. But that one day, among the bands and the uniforms, he had forgotten everything but his desire to serve France.

Suddenly young Vaillant broke off, saying that he must write a letter before the hour was over, and tucking up his gown he ran away at full speed. Latour stood looking after him, resolved that he would take this new boy under his protection. There was something about the baker’s son that had given their meeting the colour of an adventure; he meant to repeat it. In that first encounter, he chose the lively, ugly boy for his friend. It was instantaneous. Latour himself was much cooler and more critical in temper; hard to please, and often a little grey in mood.

During their Seminary years he had easily surpassed his friend in scholarship, but he always realized that Joseph excelled him in the fervour of his faith. After they became missionaries, Joseph had learned to speak English, and later, Spanish, more readily than he. To be sure, he spoke both languages very incorrectly at first, but he had no vanity about grammar or refinement of phrase. To communicate with peons, he was quite willing to speak like a peon.

Though the Bishop had worked with Father Joseph for twenty-five years now, he could not reconcile the contradictions of his nature. He simply accepted them, and, when Joseph had been away for a long while, realized that he loved them all. His Vicar was one of the most truly spiritual men he had ever known, though he was so passionately attached to many of the things of this world. Fond as he was of good eating and drinking, he not only rigidly observed all the fasts of the Church, but he never complained about the hardness and scantiness of the fare on his long missionary journeys. Father Joseph’s relish for good wine might have been a fault in another man. But always frail in body, he seemed to need some quick physical stimulant to support his sudden flights of purpose and imagination. Time and again the Bishop had seen a good dinner, a bottle of claret, transformed into spiritual energy under his very eyes. From a little feast that would make other men heavy and desirous of repose, Father Vaillant would rise up revived, and work for ten or twelve hours with that ardour and thoroughness which accomplished such lasting results.

The Bishop had often been embarrassed by his Vicar’s persistence in begging for the parish, for the Cathedral fund and the distant missions. Yet for himself, Father Joseph was scarcely acquisitive to the point of decency. He owned nothing in the world but his mule, Contento. Though he received rich vestments from his sister in Riom, his daily apparel was rough and shabby. The Bishop had a large and valuable library, at least, and many comforts for his house. There were his beautiful skins and blankets—presents from Eusabio and his other Indian friends. The Mexican women, skilled in needlework and lace-making and hem-stitching, presented him with fine linen for his person, his bed, and his table. He had silver plate, given him by the Olivares and others of his rich parishioners. But Father Vaillant was like the saints of the early Church, literally without personal possessions.

In his youth, Joseph had wished to lead a life of seclusion and solitary devotion; but the truth was, he could not be happy for long without human intercourse. And he liked almost everyone. In Ohio, when they used to travel together in stagecoaches, Father Latour had noticed that every time a new passenger pushed his way into the already crowded stage, Joseph would look pleased and interested, as if this were an agreeable addition—whereas he himself felt annoyed, even if he concealed it. The ugly conditions of life in Ohio had never troubled Joseph. The hideous houses and churches, the ill-kept farms and gardens, the slovenly, sordid aspect of the towns and country-side, which continually depressed Father Latour, he seemed scarcely to perceive. One would have said he had no feeling for comeliness or grace. Yet music was a passion with him. In Sandusky it had been his delight to spend evening after evening with his German choir-master, training the young people to sing Bach oratorios.

Nothing one could say of Father Vaillant explained him. The man was much greater than the sum of his qualities. He added a glow to whatever kind of human society he was dropped down into. A Navajo hogan, some abjectly poor little huddle of Mexican huts, or a company of Monsignori and Cardinals at Rome—it was all the same.

Leave a comment

Filed under democracy, economics, education, France, Germany, labor, migration, military, religion, U.S.

by | 16 December 2023 · 10:49 am

Liszt’s Languages

From Budapest: Portrait of a City Between East and West, by Victor Sebestyen (Knopf Doubleday, 2023), Kindle pp. 130-131:

The concert at the Pesti Vigadó (House of Merriment), a splendid Baroque building that had miraculously survived the [1838] flood, on 12 February 1839 was a huge success; tickets changed hands for fantastical prices and an enormous sum was raised for flood victims. Liszt played for an hour and a half without a break – Beethoven, Schumann, some of his own pieces – and then conducted the orchestra until late into the night….

From then on he returned frequently to Hungary and eventually he was made the first head of the Hungarian Academy of Music, where for years he wielded vast influence in music and the arts generally in Hungary. He was given a grand mansion on Pest’s principal avenue, Andrássy út, where he lived for around three months of the year during the winter. The civic authorities and ambitious politicians from the Reform Movement were using him cynically, and Liszt was willing to be used. The height of his national acclaim – or of absurd hypocrisy, depending on one’s view – was a ceremony in January 1840 when he was made an honorary citizen of Pest and with great solemnity ‘was presented with a sword [a sabre] of honour: a souvenir from the martial race to its noble-hearted and world-famous son’, as the official programme for the event portentously declared. Many people had not yet realized it – neither his admirers nor his few critics – but Liszt could barely speak a word of Hungarian. This became obvious to everyone during the sword ceremony. He could have spoken German, which would at least have been understood by almost everyone in the Pest of those days. But the point about the event – and the National Theatre itself, where at that time German was not allowed to be spoken on stage during a performance – was to emphasize the critical importance of Hungarians speaking Hungarian. He ended up making an impassioned Hungarian nationalist speech in French. ‘At the very climax of his Hungarianization…his alien reality was revealed most fully,’ one of his critics wrote angrily.

Liszt had tried a few times to learn Hungarian and employed as language tutor a young academic reputed to be a brilliant teacher who had managed to get several dignitaries from the court in Vienna to at least utter a few sentences in Magyar. But, as he once admitted, he gave up the effort after five lessons when he encountered the word for unshakeability – tántorithatatlanság. Many of those trying to learn the language would have lost the will to carry on well before then. Liszt wrote to a newspaper after the National Theatre debacle: ‘Notwithstanding my lamentable ignorance of the Hungarian language, I am and shall remain until my end, a Magyar heart and soul.’

And he meant it. To a Hungarian friend in 1842, while on a Europe-wide concert tour, he wrote: ‘Sometimes my heart beats faster even at the sight of a postal stamp from Pest. It gives me such pleasure to be in your company. What is loud applause and endless acclaim worth compared to what all of you give me? Everywhere else I play for the audience, but in Hungary I play for the nation. And this is a noble and great thing, to make emotional contact in this manner with a nation such as ours.’

Leave a comment

Filed under Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, language, music, nationalism

by | 17 September 2023 · 5:43 am

Cold War Gymnastics

From Nadia Comaneci and the Secret Police: A Cold War Escape, by Stejarel Olaru (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 46-48:

More than two decades later, in 2001, Nellie Kim was to recall the Montréal Games and her clash with Nadia Comăneci in an interview with Jean-Christophe Klotz, the presenter of Les Grands Duels du Sport on the Franco-German Arte channel. Even after so many years the disappointment Kim had felt at the time obviously still rankled when she said that while Nadia was a great gymnast and almost perfect, she was by no means superior to anybody in the Soviet team. ‘I can’t say that she was better than we were. Her routines were as difficult as those of Turishcheva, Korbut and myself. On a few apparatuses she was better than Turishcheva and Korbut, but on others, not quite. But the press turned her into the “goddess of gymnastics”,’ she said, suggesting that it was not so much Nadia’s performance that had counted, but the influence of Western journalists, who deliberately exaggerated her prowess.

Kim’s opinion is only partly justified. Given that the Cold War was still at its height, Western journalists must have felt a bias towards anybody able to rock the myth of Soviet sporting invincibility. This had been the case of Olympic, World and European champion Věra Čáslavská, who at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics was done an injustice by the judges: the Czechoslovak gymnast had been forced to share the top of the podium with Larisa Petrik of the U.S.S.R. and had bowed her head and turned it to the right when the Soviet national anthem was played. Čáslavská was protesting not at the unfairness of the scoring to which she had fallen victim during the competition, but at the fact that her country had fallen victim to an invasion by the Soviet army just weeks before.

And the Western journalists loved her for it. But four years later, they also fell in love with little Soviet gymnast Olga Korbut at the Munich Olympics, recognising even then the decisive rôle she was to play in gymnastics. They dubbed her ‘the darling of Munich’, so captivating was her performance, which gives us to believe that regardless of political circumstances or personal sympathies, the international press was still able to preserve its objectivity in the face of obvious talent.

By the time of the 1976 Montréal Olympics, Romania had indeed gained its own separate image internationally, as Czechoslovakia had in 1968. The country was part of the Communist bloc, but a number of past political gestures on the part of Nicolae Ceauşescu had created the impression that Romania distanced itself from and sometimes even defied Moscow, an impression that was also bolstered by Bucharest’s closer and closer ties with Washington and other Western capitals. Which is why the sympathy towards Nadia Comăneci on the part of both press and public could be viewed as all the more genuine.

But political circumstances could have no influence on how Nadia’s performance was judged, where technique and artistic elements that were all that counted, and journalists could not award points in place of the judges. It was the fullness of Nadia’s performance that was her secret, and it distinguished her from the Soviets, as Cathy Rigby remarked in her commentary for ABC: ‘Oh look at that amplitude!’ Nadia controlled her body in a way that stood out, without any tremor to betray hesitation, and with the ambition to control her balance to the utmost degree. She was fast, but at the same time elegant and certain, which made some of her movements seem unreal. The elements in the routines that won her scores of ten were achieved with flawless poise, seamlessly combined, in a style that Nadia was to make uniquely her own.

The International Gymnastics Federation’s scoring code for the uneven parallel bars now includes the Comăneci Salto and Comăneci Dismount, named after the moves Nadia pioneered at Montréal. In the first, ‘the gymnast begins in a support position on the high bar. She casts away from the bar and performs a straddled front somersault and regrasps the same bar’ – an element deemed to be of an extremely high level of difficulty. In the second, the ‘gymnast begins in a handstand on the high bar and then pikes her feet onto the bar and does a sole circle swing around the bar. She then releases the bar first with her feet and then with her hands as she performs a half-twist immediately into a back somersault dismount.’ Such moves are only a few of those that were to inspire future generations of gymnasts, leading them to tackle elements of increasing complexity and even risk. In Munich in 1972, Olga Korbut had done the same thing. Likewise, Japanese gymnast Mitsuo Tsukahara revolutionised gymnastics with the spectacular vault that now bears his name. To this day, each generation of gymnasts takes inspiration from the daring of their predecessors.

The impact around the world of Nadia Comăneci’s achievements at Montréal was remarkable. The popularity of the sport suddenly increased, and Nadia became an inspiration not only for younger gymnasts and even those of her generation, but also for countless little girls who dreamed of becoming like her. Some of those little girls went on to become champions, such as Mary Lou Retton, who watched Nadia at Montréal on television and was electrified by her refinement and natural grace.

Leave a comment

Filed under Canada, France, Germany, Mexico, nationalism, philosophy, Romania, USSR, war

by | 2 August 2023 · 3:15 am

Two Old Opium Smokers in Vietnam

From Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam, by Andrew X. Pham (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), Kindle pp. 162-164:

Grandpa Pham smelled of plum candy and Chinese medicine.

It was an odor that made me nauseous and hungry all at once.

His opium smoke.

I served as the footman of Grandpa’s opiate dreams. As his family went through the process of closing doors, shutting windows, keeping the confidence, I knelt at the door of Grandpa Pham’s study, a servant awaiting his wishes, witnessing the rite that came to be the center of his existence. In the seasons before Saigon fell, Grandpa was many years into his pipes, his grown children’s wages keeping him in the habit. I brought him the accoutrements of his ceremony and he arranged them on the straw mat: an oil lamp, matches, crisp unwrinkled newspaper, a bowl with a spoonful of steamed rice, a kettle of lotus tea, porcelain cups, a water-smoke pot, and old-fashioned Chinese brick pillows. He produced a cough-drop tin rattling with loose nuggets of black opium.

He smoked with an old friend, both of them Hanoi expatriates so wizened and emaciated it was difficult to tell them apart in the gloom of their conspiracy—hovering over their opium, their instrument of sedition from the world. Those Nationalist bastards, one cheroot figure said to the other, sold nine American bullets out of ten, no wonder we are still fighting this war. The other figure protested, though without much passion, It’s good for the economy, all the foreign money pouring in. Impotent to the world, they were still supreme patriarchs of their extended families. This, their War Room: two ancients sipping tea in cement air. Saigon is too hot, too corrupt, nothing but barbarians, said one. Yes, yes, Hanoi is the true soul of Vietnam, agreed the other. Shirtless in the heat, they sat on a handwoven straw mat, propping themselves with one arm locked at the elbow like a tent pole, a knee up near their chins. The room was bolted tight against ill winds. Their liver-spotted hide, the texture of week-old tofu-skin, did not sweat but drooped, flaccid on their chests and bellies, stretched taut over the ridges of their spines. The Americans are generous with their aid, but the French, they knew how to live well, one observed. True, the other nodded, true, they built the most beautiful mansions in Hanoi. The two jurors reached into a bowl, clawed a few grains of leftover rice, and wedged these between their gum and cheek like chewing tobacco. The newspaper was smoothed out, folded, and torn into two perfect squares. Starting with one corner, they rolled the papers into tapered pipes, overlapping the layers tightly. They took the moistened rice out of their mouths, pressed it into a paste, and glued the pipes. With tinker deftness, they fit the pipes to the water-smoke pot. Every practiced motion carried the serene precision of a ritual even as they talked. The Japanese were the true bastards, weren’t they? All that killing and the famines. Yes, yes, but that was war and so is this. No, for the Northerners, it is war. For the Americans, it is politics. For the Southerners, it is business. A precious opium nugget was placed on the pot they shared. Ah, but wasn’t Hanoi beautiful in winter? Yes, persimmon winters. They lay their bones down on the mat, on their sides facing each other, heads on brick pillows, the opium between them. Don’t you remember that one hot summer, so hot catfish died and floated in the creek? Yes, but wasn’t the monsoon wind blowing off Ha Long Bay magical? They worked themselves back through the years to the good memories, and when they were ready, they touched the flame to the opium and, with great sighs, began to feed from their paper pipes. They perfumed the air with opium sweetness, making it wet and soft, filling it with the watery gurgle of two old men drowning.

Once they slipped far into their refuge, a pair of goldfish dying on the floor, I moved the oil lamp out of the reach of their limbs and left them to their slumber. Their smoke swarmed the house, announcing that their spirits were temporarily on a journey, yet everyone tiptoed past the room as though fearful of waking a baby.

Leave a comment

Filed under China, economics, France, Japan, migration, military, nationalism, opium, U.S., Vietnam, war

by | 28 July 2023 · 6:01 am

Scandinavian Warriors in 9th c.

From The Rise and Fall of the Danish Empire, by Michael Bregnsbo and Kurt Villads Jensen (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), Kindle pp. 62-64:

Ireland had previously been the target of Norwegian warriors, and in 851 Danes also started raiding the island. In 853 Ivar became king of Dublin and later participated in the conquest of York in 866. In 844 and 846 some of the armies that had fought in France pressed onwards to Galicia in northern Spain, and even to Arabic Lisbon: according to some later Spanish sources, these troops were dispatched by the Danish king Horik. In 854, 70 ships, led by Björn Ironside and Hastings, sailed from England via Spain to Morocco, into the Mediterranean, ultimately reaching Italy. Although it is difficult to measure the scale of these battles compared to earlier periods with fewer sources, it seems clear that the battles from the mid-800s onwards were vaster in scope, earning attention from their contemporaries who became the victims. There are three main reasons for this intensification of warfare.

First, it is clear that the Nordic longship had developed into a maneuverable and efficient war machine: Danish and Scandinavian fleets were famous and desired by other rulers for centuries to come. It probably wasn’t until around 1200 that other countries off the Atlantic coast built equally strong fleets; in the Mediterranean it probably happened in the early 1100s. Until then, the Scandinavians had a significant advantage at sea.

Secondly, the expansion in the 800s shows that Scandinavia was an extremely rich area. There is a very specific reason for that. With the rise of Islam in the 600s and the conquest of large parts of the Mediterranean world until the beginning of the 700s, Europe’s economic center of gravity shifted to the east. The link between East and West in the Mediterranean was left un-interrupted, but the Arab gold mines and new efficient exploitation of the Silk Road and its access to the East’s lucrative trade system provided an economic boost to the Byzantine Empire, particularly to the capital of Constantinople. The Scandinavians had access to this via the Gulf of Finland, Lake Ladoga in northwest Russia, and along the great Russian rivers to the Black Sea (Bjerg et al. 2013). Islam actually brought Scandinavia closer to being Europe’s economic center, becoming bridge and a transit area between the East and West. The vast quantities of gold coins found in Scandinavia clearly illustrate this. So far at least 200,000 Arabic gold coins have been excavated by archeologists, and with the spread of metal detectors more and more are discovered each year. Yet it is still only a small percentage of the many coins that were buried, and they represent only those treasures that were not dug up again by their owner or his heirs. Most of these immense riches were later invested towards war technology and political capital, in ships and men.

Third, most of these raiding expeditions were not random looting. Nor did they reflect a large-scale war between Denmark and other countries or between two cultures, one European and one Scandinavian, or between two religions, one Christian and one pagan. Rather, they were a natural element of an intricate political game between a variety of different rulers, with opponents and allied partners coming together across the political and religious spectrum.

The Danish wars in England were a continuation of old alliances across the North Sea. In northern England, Danish armies were apparently well received by the local population, whose elite probably had ancient Scandinavian roots. Several groups of warriors joined together to form the “great army” in 865, and in the coming years they conquered relatively easily East Anglia and Northumbria, which starting in around 870 came under Danish control. The Great Army threatened the kingdom of Mercia and Wessex in southern England, where it was stopped by King Alfred the Great. The warriors were soon followed by peasants who settled and cultivated the land. Danish had a lasting influence on the English language, and northern England became known as the Danelaw, the area under Danish law and control. We do know the names of several Danish commanders and kings located in England from the 800 and 900s. However, we don’t know if these kings also simultaneously ruled over anything back in Denmark. English sources say that they occasionally returned home to Denmark. This indicates that the relationship would have been close at the time, and the involvement in England clearly had a profound effect on the political hierarchy and power dynamics in Denmark.

The same certainly applies to the Frankish empire. One of the most important defensive strategies of the French king against the attack of the Scandinavian armies was to quickly ally himself with other Scandinavian rulers who were given land to which to defend [like Rollo in Normandy].

Leave a comment

Filed under economics, England, France, Ireland, Mediterranean, migration, military, piracy, Scandinavia, Spain, war

by | 9 July 2023 · 5:06 am

Japan’s Defeat Hits Southeast Asia

From Asian Armageddon, 1944–45, by Peter Harmsen (War in the Far East, Book 2; Casemate, 2020), Kindle pp. 278-281:

Even many years after the war, Mustapha Hussein remembered his reaction when he heard that Japan had surrendered: “I cried.” A political radical in the former British colony of Malaya, he had hoped that the peninsula’s separatist movement would seize the opportunity and declare independence during the brief period that offered itself while Japan was fatally weak and the Allies had not yet declared victory. Now that Japan had formally capitulated, the reimposition of British rule was just a matter of time. The chance was wasted. “I regretted the matter deeply as Malaya would once again be colonized and gripped by Western power.”

Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, some activists did try to exploit the brief interregnum between Japan’s surrender and the arrival of the Western victors. In the East Indies on August 17, two days after the Japanese had accepted their defeat, the head of the separatist movement, Sukarno, declared independence, creating “an electrifying effect on the mass of Indonesians,” according to an observer. In Indochina two weeks later, on September 2, the day of the surrender ceremony on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, the US-backed guerrilla leader Ho Chi Minh did the same for Vietnam. “Today we are determined to oppose the wicked schemes of the French imperialists, and we call upon the victorious Allies to recognize our freedom and independence,” he told a jubilant crowd in Hanoi.

Both attempts were squashed within weeks as the old imperialists returned, battered but determined to pick up where they had left off. It would seem that it was now back to colonial business as usual, and that the Western empires would be resurrected to their former grandeur. Nothing could be further from the truth. The European colonies, some dating back centuries, only returned for a brief interlude before evaporating forever. This also meant that the peace that was heralded by Hirohito’s speech in August 1945 was not peace at all, but more war by new means. This went for virtually all of Southeast Asia. For every society in the region except Thailand, the first two decades after the war that ended in 1945 brought new mass-scale violence, whether in the form of war, civil war, or revolution, or a combination of the three.

It came as completely unexpected to most Europeans. B. C. de Jonge, governor general of the Dutch East Indies in the 1930s, had confidently signaled that his country’s control of the Southeast Asian archipelago was essentially for eternity. “We have ruled here for 300 years with the whip and the club and we shall still be doing it in another 300 years,” he had said. In fact, counting from the time they returned to the East Indies in 1945 trying to reinstate their authority, the Dutch had only four years left as colonial masters. The Dutch had shown in 1941 that they could be beaten, fast and decisively, and the aura of superiority which had enabled them to control a country many times larger than their own was gone forever.

The genie of independence was out of the bottle, and it could not be put back in. Often it had horrifically violent results. Dirk Bogarde, the future actor, was on the island of Java with British forces and saw how Dutch internees, returning from the camps and trying to start their lives anew in their looted homes, often were murdered by frenzied mobs. In one instance, an elderly Dutch couple had been hacked to death in their small villa: “The woman… had put up a desperate fight, her hands shredded by the knives, her blood sprayed in elegant arcs across the tiled walls. The man lay face downwards in the sitting room, his balding head almost severed from his body.”

The inability of the Western colonial powers to deal efficiently with social problems that the colonized people, left to their own devices, had occasionally proven better at solving further contributed to the Western loss of prestige in the former colonies. An example was the famine in Indochina, which was alleviated after the French authorities had been ousted in the spring of 1945 and replaced with an indigenous regime propped up by the Japanese. Immediately after assuming power, the colony’s new rulers introduced new measures to reduce speculation on the pricing of scarce rice supplies while improving the transportation of grains to the hunger-stricken provinces. “Brutal measures that we ourselves would not have ventured to take bring a momentary abundance,” a French writer reluctantly acknowledged, adding that the people of Indochina “have come to think very seriously that they are ripe to be a great nation.”

This was only reinforced when the Japanese left and handed back Indochina to the Western powers. Despite the improvement made in the spring, the food situation quickly turned desperate again. “Hanoi with a population of 200,000 inhabitants is literally dying of hunger,” a foreign observer wrote. “The worst situation is that of feeding the infants.” This was only partly the result of Western mismanagement. More importantly, Indochina experienced devastating flooding, with river levels in Hanoi reaching a historical record, but the prestige of the colonial authorities suffered yet another blow.

As in the East Indies, a protracted guerrilla campaign followed in Indochina, fueled by the population’s thirst for independence, and French determination to hold onto its prized possession. If France let go of this “admirable balcony on the Pacific,” it would no longer be a great power, a leading French politician said. The result was long years of bloodshed which gradually evolved into a full-scale conventional war, and only ended with the withdrawal of the French colonial rulers and the division of Indochina into two in 1954.

Leave a comment

Filed under Britain, France, Japan, military, nationalism, Netherlands, Southeast Asia, war

by | 8 July 2023 · 5:50 am

Indochina, 1945: Famine & Coup

From Asian Armageddon, 1944–45, by Peter Harmsen (War in the Far East, Book 2; Casemate, 2020), Kindle pp. 200-202:

The famine lasted for five months in early 1945 but its causes could be traced back to the year before, and similar to the mass starvation that had struck British-ruled India earlier in the war, it was the result of both natural calamities and official policies. Drought and insect attacks caused the spring harvest in 1944 to drop steeply below expectations, and the following autumn devastating typhoons cut down the agricultural output dramatically. The worst effects of the hunger disaster could have been mitigated if rice had been sent to the north from southern regions, where the crops were more plentiful. However, American bombing had destroyed bridges, railroads, and other infrastructure, and anyway both the Japanese army and the French colonial authorities, who were still in charge despite the presence of large Japanese forces, prioritized the transportation of their own military forces over vital food supplies for the civilian population. Between one and two million people died as a result of the 1945 mass starvation in Indochina. This overall figure covered vast regional variations, and in the worst hit areas of northern Indochina, society teetered on the brink of collapse.

…

The food scarcity also affected those inhabitants of Indochina who were not directly pushed to the limit by starvation, but still saw a precipitous drop in the standard of living due to steep prices in rice. The result was that the French colonial authorities became even more unpopular than before. The fact that the French administration had helped prevent the kind of mass conscription of forced labor that had happened in other parts of Japanese-controlled Asia mattered less. To many Indochinese it made a much deeper impression to see sharply dressed Japanese officers walk the streets of the major cities, in humiliating contrast to the often flabby-looking French colonial troops.

Therefore, there was widespread anticipation of better times when on March 9, 1945, the Japanese Army in Indochina took over control from the French colonial authorities in a swift coup. French officers were taken into custody, and their soldiers ordered to lay down their arms. Those who resisted were met with trademark brutality. A few French garrisons opposed the Japanese move, and in some cases extended firefights took place. At the end of the battles, French prisoners were bayoneted or beheaded. Defeated foreign legionnaires were forced to watch as Japanese soldiers hauled down the French flag, tore it to shreds, and stamped it into the ground. Rapes of French women were commonplace. Duong Thieu Chi, the official who had witnessed instances of cannibalism, was shocked to see a senior French colonial official be thrown to the floor by a Japanese captain and then beaten bloody with the hilt of a sword.

The new Japanese rulers took steps to improve the food supply, for example by handing out grain from public granaries under much publicity, and also ensured a fairer distribution of rice where it was needed. However, they were less enthusiastic about nationalistic sentiments in the population, who suddenly believed that colonialism might be a thing of the past, resulting in mass gatherings and strikes. “The defense of Indochina against the enemy outside the country will be completely ineffective if domestic order is not perfectly maintained,” the Japanese military authorities warned in a statement. The people of Indochina gradually came to understand that their new masters were perhaps not all that different from the old ones.

Leave a comment

Filed under Britain, food, France, Japan, Laos, military, U.S., Vietnam, war

by | 12 May 2023 · 6:17 am

How They Handled European Settlers

From Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America, by Pekka Hämäläinen (Liveright, 2022), Kindle pp. 261-263:

After several generations of interactions with Europeans, variously violent and peaceful, the Six Nations knew how to manage anxious, land-hungry settlers. In 1742, at a large summit in the statehouse in Philadelphia, the Onondaga sachem Canassatego addressed the Lenapes as junior allies, relegating the English to a secondary role. “Cousins: Let this Belt of Wampum serve to Chastise You,” he reprimanded the Lenapes in sharply gendered language. “We conquered You, we made Women of you, you know you are Women, and can no more sell Land.” Canassatego ordered them to “remove immediately” from ancestral Iroquois lands. The settlers were mere spectators of the Six Nations’ power politics. The next year, another summit was held to defuse the mounting tensions between Pennsylvania and the neighboring Indians. The Six Nations envoy Zillawoolie focused on the Catawbas, promising to “persuade and charge them to be of good Behavior everywhere”—something Pennsylvania’s timid settlers dared not try. The Iroquois also demanded a right to travel through Virginia as they pleased, and they reasserted their dominance over the Delaware and Ohio Valleys.

Had they been present in Philadelphia, the Catawbas would have denounced the Six Nations’ presumption. The Great Trading Path between the Chesapeake Bay and the Piedmont continued to channel English trading parties to Catawba towns, keeping them prosperous and powerful. As ancient residents of the Piedmont, the Catawbas thought they could simply stay put and wait for goods to flow into their towns. In exchange for their precious deerskins and furs, they received guns, powder, lead, metal tools, cloth, blankets, luxuries, and rum. Certain of the strength of their position, they were aloof to the point of becoming arrogant and outright offensive. When the talks resumed in Philadelphia in the summer of 1744, the Catawbas sent a cutting message informing the Iroquois that they “were but Women; that they [themselves] were men and double men for they had two P——s [penises]; that they could make Women of Us, and would be always at War with us.”

In an era when pushing the colonists back into the sea was no longer a possibility, the Catawbas kept the settlers in a state of uncertainty: Europeans feared that the Indians might launch a war any day. The colonists’ nervousness about the Catawbas set that Indigenous group apart from the Iroquois and their artful diplomacy, and from the Shawnees and the strategic mobility they used to keep the settlers at a distance. The Catawbas knew that eventually they would have to adapt to new circumstances, compromise, and enter into negotiations with the Europeans, but they would hold on to their independence as long as they possibly could. They were determined to preserve Indigenous sovereignty in the face of unprecedented odds and to rebalance Indigenous power on the continent.

Other nations east of the Appalachians adopted a more counterintuitive approach. They relied on accommodation and compromises that required a new mindset: Indians should embrace the colonists—at arm’s length—to survive colonialism. When colonial frontiers inched toward them, they would meet the settlers on the borderlands between the two parties. This strategy demanded numbers, political gravitas, and delicate diplomacy. The Muscogee, Cherokee, and Chickasaw leaders in the Appalachian foothills and Trans-Appalachian West pursued this strategy. Tucked between French and English realms, these three Native nations were already fluent in colonial methods when the English began to push their farms and settlements uphill. The Indians left the Europeans alone, playing Louisiana, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Pennsylvania off against each other and extracting gifts, weapons, and manufactured goods from all. The Indians were careful not to attach themselves to any single colony. The settlers thought that the Indigenous confederacies—most notably the Six Nations—had divided into pro-French and pro-English factions, but those divisions were more circumstantial than fixed. Operating in a different geopolitical landscape west of the Appalachians, the twenty-thousand-strong Choctaws divided into “Eastern,” “Western,” and “Sixtown” villages to engage with various colonies more flexibly.

By European standards, the Muscogees, Cherokees, Chickasaws, and Choctaws were dangerously decentralized and their leaders hopelessly weak, but therein lay the genius of their political systems. Most of their leaders commanded small groups, which threw the settlers off-balance: there was no single person for the Europeans to co-opt—just a multitude of seemingly ineffectual potentates who were useless to the settlers’ aims. But those leaders knew how to manage European newcomers.

Leave a comment

Filed under Britain, economics, France, migration, military, nationalism, North America

by | 8 May 2023 · 5:46 am

Early French Métissage in Louisiana

From Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America, by Pekka Hämäläinen (Liveright, 2022), Kindle pp. 226-228:

The Natchez war had shown, with graphic immediacy, what disregard for Indigenous sovereignty, traditions, and needs could bring: cataclysmic violence, massive loss of life and property, the utter collapse of colonial institutions. The violence discouraged French investments in the colony and impeded France’s empire-building in the lower Mississippi Valley. It also taught the colonists how little they could do without Native approval. In Louisiana, Indigenous customs prevailed, turning a colonial space into a hybrid one. Choctaw, Illini, Quapaw, and Apalachee societies were all intact, and they expected the French to comply with their traditions. The consequences for Louisiana were far-reaching. Métissage—cultural mixing—became the norm, shaping the most intimate aspects of the colonists’ lives: sexual practices, gender roles, and child-rearing. The French in Louisiana came to realize that to survive in North America, newcomers needed to embrace its Indigenous inhabitants and convince them to become allies. The French had been doing so elsewhere, and by the early eighteenth century, all the European empires had grasped, if not necessarily accepted, that reality. They had also learned that the most effective way of building alliances was generosity and trade, which could turn enemies into kin.

In the wake of the war and loss, French officers set out to appease the Indians with gifts and goods, creating a robust frontier exchange economy that stabilized French relations with the Indians. A new and improved French-Indian alliance centered on the Choctaw Confederacy, which, even after losing hundreds of its members to South Carolina slave raiders, numbered more than twelve thousand people and could mobilize five thousand soldiers. The Choctaws commanded more than twenty-five thousand square miles, overshadowing the neighboring Quapaws, Alabamas, Chickasaws, Taensas, Tunicas, Natchez, and Houmas. Their own slave-catching and -trading had garnered for the Choctaws a sizable arsenal of guns, turning them into a domineering military power in the lands between the lower Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers. They also welcomed a regular flow of English trading parties from the east. Weakened Native groups on Choctaw borderlands found shelter in their fortified towns, and the French asked the Choctaws to help restore order to Louisiana. The Choctaws punished the Chickasaws and Natchez, whose raiding operations destabilized the colony and disrupted trade; the Choctaws wanted an economically viable French Louisiana that could continue to supply them with guns, powder, lead, tools, and other goods.

The Choctaws were fighting for themselves. As much as the French officials wanted and needed to claim suzerainty over them, they could not deny that the Choctaws were the masters of the lower Mississippi Valley. When traders from the newly established colony of Georgia visited, the Choctaws welcomed them and their goods—to the dread and embarrassment of French officials. The Choctaw Confederacy had become Louisiana’s last best hope—a humiliating role reversal that the commandant of the New Orleans troops was forced to accept. He called the confederacy “the bulwark and security” of the colony and admitted that “none of those who have come to the country fail to be aware of the impossibility of keeping a country as vast as the one we occupy with the few troops and colonists who are there and who would soon be obliged to depart from it if the Choctaws refused us their assistance and decided to act against us.”

Leave a comment

Filed under economics, France, language, migration, military, nationalism, North America, slavery, war