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vuk83 posted:I remember reading about that and the analysis is of wounds treated, in hospitals. A bayonet would probably dead you right there.
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# ? Apr 2, 2014 20:47 |
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# ? May 16, 2024 18:05 |
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handbanana125 posted:Yo, HEGEL- my lead was bunk. Can't get a hold of my friend. bewbies posted:Depends. If you mean "does it offer an accurate and well informed view of the CSA", then yes. If you mean "does it go out of its way to vilify everything possible about the CSA regardless of accuracy or reason", then no.
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# ? Apr 2, 2014 22:13 |
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Are these Civil War books good about not advancing the Lost Cause poo poo? I don't really understand what the Lost Cause argument is supposed to be about (The South should feel good about starting a war it couldn't win?), but Battle Cry is pretty on the level from the very beginning. The first third about the run up to the war is basically "it was totally about slavery", and McPherson also discusses the recent trend of southern apologism in fairly uncertain terms.
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# ? Apr 2, 2014 22:14 |
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JaucheCharly posted:I recall WW2 vets telling over and over that the spade was prefered to the bayonet, because getting stabbed there's a good chance that it doesn't incapacitate. Always the spade to the neck/head. Worse than that, the bayonet can get stuck and then you have to discharge the gun to get it free. Remarque discusses that in All Quiet on the Western Front, and also recommends the spade to the bayonet.
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# ? Apr 2, 2014 22:14 |
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Jaguars! posted:Try Melting it in a crucible with a bat "Help When All Other Sources of Pirating Media Have Failed" "A Proven Means To Deter Doxxing" "When A Nazi Follows You On tumb1r"
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# ? Apr 2, 2014 22:17 |
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Are these Civil War books good about not advancing the Lost Cause poo poo? Tekopo posted:Battle Cry of Freedom is pretty heavily pro-union from what I remember. Shelby Foote is pretty objective about his analysis even though he's from the south. McPherson is one of the heavy hitters in debunking the whole Lost Cause movement. He devotes nearly a quarter of his essay collection This Mighty Scourge to going after popular Confederate myths one by one. I haven't read any of Foote's stuff yet but I'm willing to give him a lifetime pass just for that amazing southern drawl of his in Ken Burn's series
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# ? Apr 2, 2014 23:11 |
Foote doesn't pussyfoot around about slavery. He outright states that the reason that England, and by extension France, never intervened in the war was because there was no popular support for sustaining slavery, particularly in England. He also takes up the cause of Patrick Cleburne who was one of the South's best generals but was never advanced in rank because he called for the South to abolish slavery and recruit freed slaves into the Southern cause.
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# ? Apr 2, 2014 23:24 |
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Healing, 1 There are plenty of grody early modern/medieval medical recipes in this book, which the author rejects as complete bullshit. Some of them might not be, though, like every recipe which asks you to boil herbs in wine and then wash the wound with it. Boiled wine is probably the best thing in the entire period to put in a wound, and I recognize some of the herbs from my own hippie experience. (I should stress, however, that I don't think we should try to find hidden functional reasons for why this stuff could actually have made sense by our criteria, since they also put ash or donkey poo poo or something in wounds. Their reasons for including ingredients were probably symbolic or made sense according to their systems of thought. While I've wondered how much of this stuff was based on observation, I need to remind myself that even when the stuff they do would have had beneficial effects, they're not doing it because they are all modern people in disguise, like the protagonists of every single work of historical fiction on earth, they're doing it for their own reasons.) It's notable how late all this went on—Kronfeld has example texts from the 1700s that read like something out of the previous centuries, and medical practice retained its more-or-less ancien regime character into the late 1800s. You had modern physics developing while people still weren't washing their hands. As of 1915, the modern scientific medicine which Kronfeld champions is actually pretty new. Paracelsus was a military doctor at one point in his career, which must have been hilarious. An especially interesting practice is Wound Salve And Sympathetic Healing It's common in the early modern period and later to attempt to heal wounds not by treating the wound itself but by doing things to the weapon. Many mentions of “wound salves” are of salves designed to anoint weapons, not injured people. (In folk belief, this extended almost to the present day—The Golden Bough is full of references to sympathetic healing from Frazier's own time. But that was among the common people, which is where yesterday's science always goes. Ask everyone you know on Facebook whether or not they eat gluten free and see for yourself.) I don't think they thought of this as “magic,” because I don't think “magic” was completely distinct from “science.” There were many hidden influences on things, and hidden relationships among the things of the world. Gravity and magnetism also functioned at a distance. If you were a military doctor in the field and did not have access to the weapon which injured your patient, an exact copy of it was also acceptable, such as another musket. In some areas of northern Germany, they anointed a “wound stick” instead of the weapon, which is shaped like half a dowel split down its vertical axis (so that when you hold it head on it has a half-circle profile) with three crosses carved into it. Some of the procedures are stringently precise, like they tell you to note the depth that the knife or sword penetrated and anoint that part of it. Considering that many of these instructions specify binding the wound in a clean linen or hemp cloth and not touching it with your gross early-modern hands while the treatment is going on (since nothing should obstruct the hidden sympathetic influence), I wonder if people healed by sympathetic magic really did heal faster and better than others. Example: quote:Take the fat from a wild boar and from a male bear, 8 Lot of each. The older the animal is, the better the fat, but it should not be over seven years old. Wash the fat in red wine and let it stand in there for a half hour next to a gentle fire (simmering). Pour it out into cold water and collect the fat that floats to the top; throw away the sediment. Then take a half Mass of earthworms, wash them in wine or water, then put them in a glued-shut pot and let them dry in an oven, but take care not to let them burn. Grind this into a powder. Take this powder, as well as powdered wild pig brain, 2 Lot each. To this add yellow sandalwood, mummy powder, and bloodstone, 2 Lot each, and moss which grew on the skull of a hanged person and was taken off the skull during a waxing moon in the house of Venus. When all of this has been mixed together well, make a salve with the bear and boar fat out of it and put it in a closed vessel for use. The salve is best if made in autumn, when the sun is in Libra. The powers and virtues which this salve manifests are almost unbelievable because it heals all wounds, whether cut or beaten or what you will, if you only have the instrument by which the injury was received, even when the sick person is a distance of several miles away from it. If the wound is large, the weapon must be anointed with salve every day, bound with a clean linen cloth, and placed in a clean lukewarm place. You must also watch out with diligence that no dust falls on the instrument or that no cold wind blows on it, otherwise the patient will experience great pain and become as it were unreasonable over it. --This cure, although it seems supernatural, and therefore is thought by many to be suspicious, is in fact not so, since EXPERIENCE and diligent study knows that it imparts a MAGNETIC and ATTRACTIVE POWER WHICH WORKS POWERFULLY FROM THE STARS, which happens inasmuch as the magnetic power of the salve is carried from the stars through the mediation of the air to the wound. Since the whole thing depended on secret relationships acting at a distance, wounds could even be healed in absentia.
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# ? Apr 2, 2014 23:35 |
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Healing, 2 Healing Rhymes Rhymes which are supposed to stop blood from flowing have been collected from all over the German-speaking world. Interestingly, a lot of the rhymes in this book are similar to things I've found in German-American magic from the 19th century to the present day, which makes a lot of sense. Oddly for someone so interested in ancient Germanic holdovers, Kronfeld doesn't mention the similarity between these rhymes and semi-pagan medieval Northern European healing rhymes. People might not know about them yet in 1915. I'm not sure when many of these are from, but the dated ones are contemporary to Kronfeld. From the Transylvanian Saxons quote:There were three sinful women quote:Write JNRJ on a little piece of wood and throw it into a well, saying: quote:To Speak To Blood quote:Sanguis mane rite Sicut Christus quote:Blood stay still quote:Obit ruwit ruwit prawa. From Schulenburg, among the Wends: quote:Jesus Christ lies down and sleeps, This is also very common in Brandenburg: quote:Speaking to Blood quote:There came three maidens from England to here quote:There came three maidens from heaven down quote:Jesus Christ came to earth and was wounded. quote:In the morning, through the dew, quote:There came three holy women quote:On Christ's grave stand three lilies: quote:There came three lovely maidens quote:Blood, stand still quote:Here is a flower, it is wounded
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# ? Apr 3, 2014 00:06 |
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When did military forces go from being led by the strongest, fittest warrior to being led by the most senior tactician?
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# ? Apr 3, 2014 00:29 |
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Also, there's this. While you could get a bullet out with a chisel, it was also possible to attempt to draw it out with magic/science. For instance, this is from the time of Emperor Charles VI:quote:A proven art/to pull the bullet out of the arm or leg/of someone who has been shot/within 24 hours with God's help
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# ? Apr 3, 2014 01:29 |
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I've heard that superstitions crop up when something depends largely on luck. I can see how that would be the case for a lot of these. But surely you can objectively tell if a bullet came out or not.
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# ? Apr 3, 2014 01:56 |
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BurningStone posted:I've heard that superstitions crop up when something depends largely on luck. I can see how that would be the case for a lot of these. But surely you can objectively tell if a bullet came out or not. Yours is the second remark along these lines and I would like to stress that I don't think this is a reaction to uncertain situations, rapid social change, or cultural shock--it's just what they believe, and the sort of thing they've believed since forever. This is simply one option out of several for getting a bullet out. It's not like they would agree with us about everything if only they weren't stressed out. It's a different worldview. Edit: Also, wounds eject the matter that's in them (bullets, pieces of cloth, scraps of bone) while they're healing anyway. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Apr 3, 2014 |
# ? Apr 3, 2014 01:59 |
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Just a quick question to put aside a really stupid debate that has been going around recently (and since I can't find anything through Google on the matter): NATO never moved nuclear weapons to the Falklands since 2013, in an attempt to make it their main operational center of the South Atlantic, right? (Time frame put into place so the nuclear warheads carried by British ships in the Falkland Wars don't count )
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# ? Apr 3, 2014 02:32 |
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Do people ever get pissed off when one of these no-fail spells or treatments fail?Azran posted:Just a quick question to put aside a really stupid debate that has been going around recently (and since I can't find anything through Google on the matter): NATO never moved nuclear weapons to the Falklands since 2013, in an attempt to make it their main operational center of the South Atlantic, right? Who would nukes in the South Atlantic be useful as a deterrence against? What the hell does the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation even care about South America? Fangz fucked around with this message at 02:41 on Apr 3, 2014 |
# ? Apr 3, 2014 02:37 |
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Fangz posted:Do people ever get pissed off when one of these no-fail spells or treatments fail? Edit: Now that I think of it, there are TONS of early-modern / premodern jokes and cultural references about how doctors are massive screwups, though. That probably bespeaks some anger. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Apr 3, 2014 |
# ? Apr 3, 2014 02:42 |
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Fangz posted:Who would nukes in the South Atlantic be useful as a deterrence against? What the hell does the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation even care about South America? France has territory in South America. It's not covered under Article V, but it still is tangentially an interest.
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# ? Apr 3, 2014 02:46 |
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Azran posted:Just a quick question to put aside a really stupid debate that has been going around recently (and since I can't find anything through Google on the matter): NATO never moved nuclear weapons to the Falklands since 2013, in an attempt to make it their main operational center of the South Atlantic, right? No. NATO wouldn't have an "operational center" in the South Atlantic because it's not really anywhere near the North Atlantic nor does it have any interests regarding the majority of the states in the North Atlantic (ostensibly the reason NATO is in Afghanistan). The Falklands is solely a British undertaking, NATO has nothing to do with it. Additionally, the only nukes NATO "owns" are those under the NATO Nuclear Sharing program, which are a) not actually owned by NATO (US retains custody at all times until they're to be employed) and b) pretty clearly focused towards ensuring the security of the Northern Atlantic region, so even if NATO somehow decided that the Southern Atlantic was now a strategic focus there would be some pretty large political concerns to overcome before they could deploy nukes to the Falklands (not the least of which would be getting US permission to do so, since the US owns them). DerLeo posted:France has territory in South America. It's not covered under Article V, but it still is tangentially an interest. French Guyana is over 3800 miles away from the Falklands. France is closer to Afghanistan than that. (South America is a big place) (Also the North Atlantic Treaty is pretty explicit as to what NATO cares about)
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# ? Apr 3, 2014 03:20 |
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Thanks for the answers, I thought as much. This kind of stuff, in case anyone's interested, comes from my government. This is literally the reason they make up as for why the UK refuses to give the Falklands back to Argentina.
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# ? Apr 3, 2014 03:58 |
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Yeah, the reason they won't ever turn the islands over to Argentina is pride (especially now that a war has been fought), and also that the people living there really don't want to be turned over.
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# ? Apr 3, 2014 04:09 |
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At the very least you could say that controlling the Cabo de Hornos (southern-most part of South America, links the South Atlantic with the South Pacific) would be important, but even then it wouldn't be precisely a NATO affair. It's also kind of funny that I had to look through English sources to find information regarding the Argentinian Forces in the Falklands War; military tradition here ends in the 19th Century I guess.
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# ? Apr 3, 2014 04:47 |
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Azran posted:At the very least you could say that controlling the Cabo de Hornos (southern-most part of South America, links the South Atlantic with the South Pacific) would be important, but even then it wouldn't be precisely a NATO affair.
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# ? Apr 3, 2014 05:02 |
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jng2058 posted:Foote doesn't pussyfoot around about slavery. He outright states that the reason that England, and by extension France, never intervened in the war was because there was no popular support for sustaining slavery, particularly in England. He also takes up the cause of Patrick Cleburne who was one of the South's best generals but was never advanced in rank because he called for the South to abolish slavery and recruit freed slaves into the Southern cause. Ehh, I think he uses Cleburne more as a way to say "look, the South weren't all racist slaveowners! Some of them were okay!" I think he was trying to undermine the image of a racist, slave-holding South by doing it, and any time someone starts claiming that the South wasn't all about slavery I started to get suspicious of Lost Cause-ism. I understand the value of a history focused almost exclusively on the battlefield but the Civil War was so unbelievably political that I think it's a copout to ignore politics as much as Foote does.
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# ? Apr 3, 2014 05:49 |
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gohuskies posted:Ehh, I think he uses Cleburne more as a way to say "look, the South weren't all racist slaveowners! Some of them were okay!" I think he was trying to undermine the image of a racist, slave-holding South by doing it, and any time someone starts claiming that the South wasn't all about slavery I started to get suspicious of Lost Cause-ism.
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# ? Apr 3, 2014 05:54 |
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Except that the British can't actually control anything from the Falklands. Having a few tankers and a handful of Eurofighters chilling on that rock isn't scaring anyone. I know. It's just that it would make a little bit more sense to say that rather than "NATO is encroaching upon South America". It's still silly, but considerably less stupid. That reminds me, what's the situation with Gibraltar? I've heard it has to do with controlling the entry to the Mediterranean, but it really, really sounds like something out of a high school history book. Azran fucked around with this message at 06:30 on Apr 3, 2014 |
# ? Apr 3, 2014 06:24 |
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Azran posted:That reminds me, what's the situation with Gibraltar? I've heard it has to do with controlling the entry to the Mediterranean, but it really, really sounds like something out of a high school history book. While time has diminished it's military importance somewhat it's still a formidable fort situated on an important waterway. The fact that the USN is such a massively overpowering force sort of makes controlling major sea lanes an obsolete concept for anyone else though.
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# ? Apr 3, 2014 06:44 |
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Also relevant is that having a port and holding in Gibraltar requires that the straight be patrolled which conveniently gives the holders a good idea of what ships go in and out. Such as, for example, the Black Sea Fleet. The Suez Crisis was in part about a similar issue.
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# ? Apr 3, 2014 07:36 |
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Arquinsiel posted:Also relevant is that having a port and holding in Gibraltar requires that the straight be patrolled which conveniently gives the holders a good idea of what ships go in and out. Such as, for example, the Black Sea Fleet. The Suez Crisis was in part about a similar issue. But there is always the chance the French might try to take over the world again so it pays to keep an eye on them.
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# ? Apr 3, 2014 07:44 |
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the posted:When did military forces go from being led by the strongest, fittest warrior to being led by the most senior tactician? A bunch of different times. History is not a linear progression from backwardsness to forwardness. Alternatively, never, since you'd need to prove to me that big strong fit dudes were ever in charge in the first place. What I'm saying is your question is wrong. Less catty answer: You could argue that the Epic of Gilgamesh mythologizes the victory of the civilized king over the wild man, ergo the victory of 'thought' over 'muscle,' though that's super problematic and it still boils down to a wrestling match so... Alternatively, you could look at the Iliad and read into it tensions between 'thinkers' (Odysseus) heireditary or institutional leaders (Agamemnon) and the pure 'warriors' (Achilles). Not sure about other cultures but, AFAIK, there's no point before heavy mythology that really describes your presumed starting state so, if that state did indeed exist, you're mostly going to find it in mythologies. History, generally speaking, is not recorded by peoples that lose fights.
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# ? Apr 3, 2014 09:10 |
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Azran posted:It's also kind of funny that I had to look through English sources to find information regarding the Argentinian Forces in the Falklands War; military tradition here ends in the 19th Century I guess. This is, of course, completely aside from the tropes and such put forward in either country about the conflict by the respective governments and everyday media.
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# ? Apr 3, 2014 13:31 |
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The only book I personally own on the subject is Signals of War by Lawrence Freedman and Virginia Gamba, written in 1987. I picked it up mostly out of interest due to the author dynamic, maybe I should give it a read. Thanks for the answer to my throwaway sentence, too. Ghost of Mussolini posted:This is, of course, completely aside from the tropes and such put forward in either country about the conflict by the respective governments and everyday media. Now this, I'm curious about it. Could you name some, if you don't mind?
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# ? Apr 3, 2014 13:52 |
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Azran posted:
I read a book published in the 80's which was already pointing out that the Battle of Goose Green was fought entirely for propaganda purposes, had no strategic or operational purpose, and the charge that got Colonel Jones and several other officers killed and for which we gave out a posthumous VC was totally senseless.
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# ? Apr 3, 2014 14:04 |
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WEEDLORDBONERHEGEL posted:Boo-urns. Do you remember the titles? If you give them to me I can get into JSTOR. Disclaimer, I trained as a historian for undergrad/part of a grad program, but these docs are coming based on my judgement as a corporate global-risk person. These are some of the things I clawed out of a assessment I found. 1.) http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/testimonies/2010/RAND_CT349.pdf Here's one, it's 4 years old at this point, but the projections have largely held 2.) http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/corporations-and-counterinsurgency-william-rosenau/1102621153?ean=9780833049018 This one is a fun one. I actually have the hard copy somewhere, focuses on the Corporate relations and retention of PMC's with multinationals. 3.) http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/articles/isenberg-private%2520military-contractors-2009.pdf Also old, but contemporary for some of the ramping up/ buckling down of PMC's at the time. Has pictures straight out of a Godsmack recruiting video. 4.) http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/articles/isenberg-private%2520military-contractors-2009.pdf Edit: Whoops that's CATO. take with chunk of salt 5.) http://afs.sagepub.com/content/36/4/671.abstract Academic / 2nd hand account abstract looked promising. OH YEAH! Before I forget, there's an out of print book called Fire Force that focuses on the Rhodesian SAS. Very tangentially related, it kinda gives a mindset to the guys who would go on and form some of the first PMC's in South Africa. Not your era, but maybe you could get a kick out of it. http://www.amazon.com/Fireforce-Mans-Rhodesia-Light-Infantry/dp/158160615X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1396531003&sr=8-2&keywords=Fireforce Immanentized fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Apr 3, 2014 |
# ? Apr 3, 2014 14:11 |
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WEEDLORDBONERHEGEL posted:Are you saying that any mention of causes for the war other than slavery--whether or not these causes actually existed--is automatically suspect to you, and that any mention of Southerners who were less racist than the Southern establishment--whether or not these people existed--is necessarily propaganda? The Lost Cause isn't history, but if I'm understanding you correctly, neither is that. Lost Cause revisionism of the Civil War is extremely common, particularly among Southern authors (which is most of them), and Shelby Foote certainly toes that line. gohuskies is making a pretty valid point about being critical of the nature of Foote's perspective on the war. There's nothing to be gained from intentionally ignoring the beliefs of the authors and the way that they present the Civil War. I own a number of Shelby Foote's works (fiction and nonfiction) and enjoy him as an author and a historian, but I think that it's pretty silly to pretend that his politics don't affect his coverage of the war and the Confederacy. Kaal fucked around with this message at 14:40 on Apr 3, 2014 |
# ? Apr 3, 2014 14:38 |
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Kaal posted:Lost Cause revisionism of the Civil War is extremely common, particularly among Southern authors (which is most of them), and Shelby Foote certainly toes that line. gohuskies is making a pretty valid point about being critical of the nature of Foote's perspective on the war. There's nothing to be gained from intentionally ignoring the beliefs of the authors and the way that they present the Civil War. I own a number of Shelby Foote's works (fiction and nonfiction) and enjoy him as an author and a historian, but I think that it's pretty silly to pretend that his politics don't affect his coverage of the war and the Confederacy. What exactly were Shelby Foote's politics and how did they affect his writing?
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# ? Apr 3, 2014 14:56 |
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bewbies posted:What exactly were Shelby Foote's politics and how did they affect his writing? I'd suggest actually reading his books and finding out.
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# ? Apr 3, 2014 15:05 |
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Kaal posted:I'd suggest actually reading his books and finding out. Yeah I'll definitely do that but I'm pretty curious what your take on it is.
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# ? Apr 3, 2014 15:07 |
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bewbies posted:Yeah I'll definitely do that but I'm pretty curious what your take on it is. It's not an easy thing to reduce someone's views on his life's work down to a single statement, but I'd say that while he is not truly a Lost Cause proponent he certainly is a Southerner at heart and has no interest in offending Southern sensibilities about the nature of the Confederacy. Though he doesn't make the mistake of worshipping Lee and the honorable Confederate soldier, he's very interested in portraying the grandeur of the war and not all that interested in addressing the co-occurrent hypocrisy and dysfunction. It should be remembered that he is essentially writing for other hobbyist Civil War historians, which are almost overwhelmingly Confederate sympathizers from the South.
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# ? Apr 3, 2014 15:20 |
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The Civil War: A Narrative although it is mostly about the battles and military leadership of the war, does touch on the political aspects of the War. Before reading the book I had read that Shelby Foote was leaning towards the Confederacy's view, but reading the book itself I didn't really get a strong perception of this: even in the bit mentioned where some Southern generals wanted to have slaves fight in the armies of the south, it's made clear that this almost completely opposed and that it did happen, it was not with the view to emancipate the slaves after they had finished fighting, but strictly as a survival mechanism for the South. Maybe some of his other books reveal more of his politics wrt to the South (it's especially very telling that no details are given at all about Restoration in the book), but as far as I could see there weren't many of the Lost Cause themes that I would expect to run rampant: a focus on state's right at the expense of focusing on the slave question, complete vilification of the march to the sea, etc. I might have to do a re-read when I have time, however, to see what the extent is of him 'toeing the line'. EDIT: Reading the response above, I see what points you are trying to make and I can't really disagree, the book does feel sanatised when compared to Battle Cry of Freedom Tekopo fucked around with this message at 15:29 on Apr 3, 2014 |
# ? Apr 3, 2014 15:26 |
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# ? May 16, 2024 18:05 |
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Kaal posted:It's not an easy thing to reduce someone's views on his life's work down to a single statement, but I'd say that while he is not truly a Lost Cause proponent he certainly is a Southerner at heart and has no interest in offending Southern sensibilities about the nature of the Confederacy. Though he doesn't make the mistake of worshipping Lee and the honorable Confederate soldier, he's very interested in portraying the grandeur of the war and not all that interested in addressing the co-occurrent hypocrisy and dysfunction. It should be remembered that he is essentially writing for other hobbyist Civil War historians, which are almost overwhelmingly Confederate sympathizers from the South. I seem to recall that he at least acknowledges his biases in the introduction to the trilogy, recognizing that he grew up steeped in a pro-Confederacy environment.
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# ? Apr 3, 2014 15:29 |