Our reading this time was chapter IV, The Buffer Fringe. Please post in this thread only if you’ve read that chapter.
For next week, let’s read chapter V, The First World War, 1914-1918 and chapter VI, The Versailles System and the Return to “Normalcy”. I’ll post the thread on Tuesday May 28.
If you want to join the reading group, details are at >>1706. You’re welcome to start at the beginning and resurrect old threads, or to skip ahead and join where the group is currently, whichever you prefer.
In the spirit of keeping the discussion anonymous, I’ll put my own thoughts in a separate post, which will go up between 10 and 1000 minutes after this one.
I got less out of this reading than the one before. The quality of the different sections was pretty variable, IMO, with the section on China being the best. Sticking to the fundamentals of the economic basis of the state and the military was a very illuminating lens. In the previous reading he mentioned how the timing of the arrival of different Western technologies is the critical factor in the history of much of the world, and this section bore out those claims. I found this approach much more compelling than e.g. the minutia of the Round Table conspiracy in South Africa.
>after 1870 it became increasingly evident that, however expensive colonies might be to a government, they could be fantastically profitable to individuals and companies supported by such governments When analyzing recent American foreign policy, I’ve noticed I get much more coherent results by looking at the careers of individual American diplomats and politicians rather than looking at the interests of the government or the nation as a whole.
>in imperial matters one step leads to another, and every acquisition obtained to protect an earlier acquisition requires a new advance at a later date to protect it. Yup, this comes up a lot in every empire. You don’t really see empires built and maintained *for some other purpose*, whether that’s economic or moral or defensive or whatever. Once they get going, expanding the empire becomes a goal in itself.
>The ability of the Japanese to westernize without going into opposition to the basic core of the older system gave a degree of discipline and a sense of unquestioning direction to their lives which allowed Japan to achieve a phenomenal amount of westernization without weakening the older structure or without disrupting it. ... The essential item which the Japanese retained from their traditional society and did not adopt from Western civilization was the ideology. This seems true as far as it goes, but it raises the question of *why* Japan was uniquely able to retain its ideology while adopting much of the West's physical and social technology. Would be great if anyone knows of good research on that.
I actually enjoyed the parts about the Round Table conspiracy, because I think there is a tendency in parts of the dissident right to look for some "outside" source to blame for woke ideas, and I often wondered whether or not they are correct. But the discussion of the ideology of the Round Table group made it clear to me that the seeds of ideas about decolonization, the rights of "natives", and the crusade to push the Western (or "English way of life") on everyone on the planet was very much native to the English aristocracy.
>after 1870 it became increasingly evident that, however expensive colonies might be to a government, they could be fantastically profitable to individuals and companies supported by such governments I agree, the generalization of this idea (from "expensive colonies" to X) explains a great deal about current day politics.
>>1809 I think there is a tendency in parts of the dissident right to look for some "outside" source to blame for woke ideas, and I often wondered whether or not they are correct. But the discussion of the ideology of the Round Table group made it clear to me that the seeds of ideas about decolonization, the rights of "natives", and the crusade to push the Western (or "English way of life") on everyone on the planet was very much native to the English aristocracy.
Yes, good point. See also the Puritans, the abolitionist movements in both England and New England, and in the U.S. the temperance movement and the various "great awakenings". This iteration does seem stupider, but precursor ideas have been part of Anglo culture on both sides of the Atlantic for a long, long time.