[Modern History] Guns Condoms and Electricity

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Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Flavius Aetass posted:

Wanted to start this thread off with something interesting.

So the Taiping Rebellion was this massive civil war that happened in China from 1850 to 1864, around the same time as the US Civil War but much, much bigger. Around 20–30 million people died, which is over 10 times as many as in the US.

To sum up the origins, the Qing dynasty of foreign Manchu conquerors had ruled over the Han people and other ethnicities of China since 1644. Among the typical degradations, they made the Chinese wear their hair in a queue with the front shaved (rather than the traditional Chinese long hair with topknot) under penalty of beheading:

In the decades preceding the rebellion there were a lot of disasters in China, both natural and political, especially the hugely unfair concessions and reparations made to Western countries after losing the First Opium War in 1842.

Eventually a young man named Hong Xiuquan became the leader of a group of bandits in southern China, which grew into a huge anti-Manchu rebellion where territory was taken and maintained, and full-scale war existed between the two groups and entire cities were massacred by both sides. Battles were extremely bloody affairs, with huge armies of muskets, spears, and swords clashing into each other.

What's so interesting about this rebellion, you ask-- well, Hong Xiuquan declared himself to be the younger brother of Jesus, that is, Jesus Christ of Christian fame. Hong did not know a whole lot about the Bible, nor did his followers, but they knew enough to establish what would be known as the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, of which Hong was the king by divine right.

This was of interest to Westerners. As of 1850 the openly anti-foreign Xianfeng Emperor ruled in Beijing, and resistance to European-based "free trade" was at an all-time high. Suddenly they're hearing that nearly half of China is ruled by a Christian? This could be an opportunity...

Supposedly the PRC looks upon Taiping as a ideological predecessor to their revolution. Sorta like how the bolsheviks viewed the jacobins.

Which is pretty interesting given that Taiping was a theocracy inspired by Western ideas, but I guess you take what you can get when it comes to historical precedence.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 17:54

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 09:37

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Bro Dad posted:

tbh mao was a history nerd that tried to rehabilitate a bunch of historical figures like qin shi huang and cao cao

the taiping thing really didnt stick which is why modern party historiography usually focuses on anti-concessionist movements of the qing period

Reminds me of Trotsky's fascination with Cromwell, of all figures

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 19:08

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:

Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War is insane and so very swept under the rug. There were like 10,000 American troops in Russia at one point. The Japanese conquered the whole Russian Far East and half of Siberia and hung around for years.

Mike Duncan claims there's no evidence for this on his podcast. In fact he adds that the allies wanted the reds to win the civil war.

Looking forward to his makhno episode!

# ¿ Feb 15, 2022 06:21

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

V. Illych L. posted:

wtf

units like the czech legion are very well documented and actual survivors of the campaign would talk about having been in that campaign

what's his angle? that there was no concerted intervention?

Oh no he acknowledges all that he just frames it in the most credulous way possible.

To paraphrase, "the allies intervened in Russia to secure the regions stability.(citation: Woodrow Wilson) There's no evidence for a conspiracy to overthrow the Bolsheviks. In fact the allies wanted the reds to win the civil war. Better the modern socialists than the reactionary whites."

That's more or less his explanation of the initial invasion.

In general Mike interprets the Bolsheviks actions and explanations uncharitably relative to radicals in earlier seasons. While giving the benefit of the doubt to Kornilov (really), kolchak, and post-exile Trotsky.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2022 05:46

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Orange Devil posted:

In what way?

Yeah we're going to need some quotes now.

Nah to lazy go listen yourself

Citations:

10:84 the end of the world.
You can scrub through the ep for Mike's explanation for allied intervention.

10:70 the Kornilov affair.
self explanatory

Post exile Trotsky quotes are numerous, the Romanov execution ep one is the latest iirc.

Newest EP he described the British arming kolchak with no explanation for why the allies swapped support to the whites.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2022 05:46

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

V. Illych L. posted:

in the US and UK the soviet revolution didn't find many adherents, but it had huge consequences in terms of crackdown and even in britain they did an actual general strike before chickening out. revolution was very much in the air in the years following the bolshevik seizure of power

The gently caress are you talking about the CPUSA topped out at about 50k, 250k if you include affiliates.

They ate up the SPUSA and IWW membership rolls.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2022 16:53

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Fly Molo posted:

yeah with the Kornilov affair it was very noticeable. portraying the whole thing as a goofy miscommunication? totally downplaying kornilov’s own aide gossiping that Kerensky was gonna get murdered as soon as they were in power? and his portrayal of the bolsheviks alternated between ignoring them and portraying them in a bad light. they literally owned the gently caress out of a reactionary proto-fascist psycho general by fraternizing his army to death. that’s amazing! how do you gently caress up telling that that story??

lol what the gently caress is duncan smoking??

yes of course world leaders loved the bolsheviks, which is why they send them so many guns and troops, lmao

yeah the allied governments had just spent decades and decades crushing communists and socialists all over the world. look at the paris commune, European and American leaders were overjoyed that they got slaughtered. look at 1848, or how many socialists were murdered by police before during and after ww1. now im genuinely curious what leaders were on the bolsheviks’ side, or how mike would answer a question about that.

i kind of just stopped wanting to listen to new episodes at some point. it’s arguably the most successful revolution in history (or second only to China), but it’s like he’s got steadily worsening boomer brain as the series goes on

Mike tweeted that he sympathizes with "certain subsets of Marxists" (read: the unsuccessful ones).

Notably the Russian Rev is the only one Mike's covered in which the socialists win, so that's probably a big factor in his turnabout.

In the latest EP he spends a lot of time harping on how opportunists corrupted the communist party. But I doubt he thinks the solution to that problem (purges) were very good.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2022 17:05

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Terrible Opinions posted:

Haven't gotten the episode in question but given how he talked about them before Duncan is probably referring to the Provisional Government in that statement, he has pretty consistently referred to the Provisional Government as socialists in episodes I've reached. Vyelkin is more or less the same as Duncan's episodes 64-79.

Nope, after the civil war breaks out he very clearly delineates between the Bolshevik "reds" and the other socialists "whites"

# ¿ Feb 19, 2022 17:36

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Does anyone have any book recommendations for American/Chinese Cold War relations? I'm particularly interested in Nixon's 1972 trip to China and the China Lobby.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2022 15:20

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

genericnick posted:

I'm going to finish listening to the dumb Revolutions podcast, but god, liberalism does things to your brain. I have no idea about the Kronstadt rebellion against the USSR, but how do you go from the facts as reported:

It started because someone claimed the reds were attacking when that wasn't true

The leadership hosed off to Finland after telling their dudes to sabotage all equipment

There was talk about the rebellion in foreign papers before it happened

That there definitely wasn't any foreign meddling because the UK was reopening trade relations? Definitely not something that happens in the real world, trading with a country you try to regime change.

Literally hueing and crying over Kronstadt

# ¿ Apr 17, 2022 16:29

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Revolutions seasons 4-9 are pretty good! Throughout them Mike gives a decent overview, and remains sympathetic to the revolutionaries.

Mike's cold war brain kicks in during the Russian revolution. The extent to which he's willing to interpret the reds actions in bad faith is striking.

Recently he's gone full animal farm and has stated the communists never intended to decentralize power. He doesn't mention the communist's line that doing so was political (and literal) suicide.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2022 16:37

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Not So Fast posted:

How true is stuff like factories still being run under war conditions and complaints along those lines that Duncan cited as contributing to the rebellion? Do those get solved by the NEP?

Couldn't tell you.

What I do know is that widespread suffering in the post-civilwar USSR was due to said civil war and not the mean old Bolsheviks deciding to be, and I quote Mike, "diabolical"

# ¿ Apr 18, 2022 13:58

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Every poli sci major I've met has had their political instincts atrophied by the ordeal.

Any teenager who just found out about marx last week has a better political antenna

# ¿ May 18, 2022 02:19

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Hey guess what Mike Duncan's episode on Stalin's industrialization policy is awful in the exact way you'd imagine.

Most egregiously he states that "there are better ways to industrialize" about twenty minutes after he acknowledged the USSRs unprecedented jump in industrial capacity during the period

# ¿ Jun 27, 2022 18:11

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

He goes off on a holodomer (ofc he doesn't mention the origin of the term) rant about Russia punishing Ukraine while conveniently leaving out the fact the famine took place in the russified eastern half of the country

# ¿ Jun 27, 2022 18:44

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 09:37

Dreddout: Oct 1, 2015; You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Anyway one more episode to go followed by final thoughts on the podcast as a whole. I'm sure we'll get some 🔥 takes

# ¿ Jun 27, 2022 18:51

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [Modern History] Guns Condoms and Electricity