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reviewed on the Americas
John Keegan: The American Civil War
The US Civil War has always been one of the black holes in my
history background - an area I have neither studied or taught
directly. So I purchased John Keegan's "American Civil War" in the
hope that this would help fill the gap. And largely it has. Keegan,
a war historian best known for his surveys of 20th century warfare
writes well and clearly. I should imagine that the book provides
more than sufficient detail on the campaigns and key meetings
between both sides to satisfy most students researching the conflict
(however some reviews have expressed concern with accuracy). What is
irritating is the habit of repeating points made earlier on in the
narrative. The battle maps are particularly useful (although I must
admit to moving quickly through some of the land campaign details,
lack of personal familiarity with the basic geography of the area
trying my patience a little. This though is a personal failing, not
one of the authors.). What is made very clear is how inexperienced
and unprepared both sides were in the craft of warfare and it is
interesting to read the process of natural selection required to
find able military commanders.
Keegan also provides a number of chapters prior to and after the
conflict that are extremely useful articles in their own right on
key aspects of the conflict (such as the Life of the Soldier,
Generalship, Nature of the Civil War Battle, Home fronts, Black
soldiers). In many ways these are just as valuable as (if not more
so than) the account of the war itself. One omission is a discrete
chapter focusing on the war role of Lincoln himself, which is a
pity.
Given Keegan's interest in 20th century warfare there are many
instances where he shows how the Civil War displayed and introduced
features of later wars (as well as how it did not and drew rather on
earlier conflict experience in Europe). All in all this is an easily
recommendable narrative cum basic analysis of the war if what is
required is a primer. March '11 (****)
Greg Grandin: Fordlandia: The Rise and
Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City
Grandin writes of Henry Ford's attempt to build a settlement in the
Amazon jungle during the 1920's and 1930's. Ostensibly to provide
rubber for Ford's factories and so break the monopoly of the Dutch,
French and British plantations of the Far East, in reality
Fordlandia was an attempt by the US industrialist to build what he
considered a model industrial settlement in the heart of the
Brazilian rainforest.
Grandin tells the story well, of how Henry Ford was hoodwinked into
buying a 5,000 square mile tract of land which he might have gained
for nothing from the government; how a New England type town was
built in the middle of nowhere for brazilian and expat workers
complete with company shops, golf course, barn for square dancing
and clapboard hoiuses each with a garden ready for planting flowers;
and how ultimately the project collapsed.
But the story is more than this. We are taken on an enlightening
journey into the mind of the founder of Fordism and his theories of
small planned industrial communities which he had already tried out
in Michigan. Here was paternalism at its height. Quality housing,
above average wages, planned communities with clinics and schools.
In this Ford also displayed some ideas recently quite fashionable:
dislike of big banking, direct government control and monopoly
producers. His communities were planned where possible without any
of this. But the downside was company control. No organised labour,
intolerance of those who failed to think as Ford men should,
entertainment outside the (Ford) approved parameters (ie alcohol,
gaming, close-up dancing) frowned upon. There was also a disdain for
specialists in favour of individuals who were self trained, who
learned from experience.
All of this was to come to a head in Brazil. Fordlandia becomes the
island of homely "mid-western" modernity in the Amazon. Well laid
out housing, clinics and schools combined with above average wages
to spend in company shops selling at reasonable rates to encourage
the purchase of clean clothing. But the cracks appear. The dislike
of experts mean the Ford team in the Amazon have to learn on the job
(the pretty houses were solid, but their thick walls and tin roofs
made them like ovens to live in). More importantly scant attenton
was paid to cultural differences. Clocking in helped produce a riot
that destroyed much of the early settlement.
And the rubber? That came secondary to Ford's attempts at social
engineering. It was also a disaster. Brazil's latex was
traditionally cut from isloated rubber trees in the wild - and for
good reason. Far eastern-style plantations with close planting such
as at Fordlandia meant blight and bugs spread easily in the damp
heat of the Amazon. Plantations at Fordlandia and a new site further
north were devastated by disease. Agronomists could have told this
to the Ford team of car engineers before they went to Brazil.
Eventually after World War II Ford's grandson sold Fordlandia to the
Brazilian government. It is now overgrown and much is used for soy
production (ironic as soy was one of Henry's pet projects. He loved
the plant and tried to find uses for it in the US. Now Brazil is the
world's second largest producer).
Fordlandia is shown though to have had other, perhaps more
significant impact. The inexperienced Ford technicians did devise a
new way of cross cutting plants to improve them genetically that was
soon to be copied across the globe. More controversially it was a
visit to the Ford plantations that inspired Brazil's dictator Vargas
to make his 1940 "March to the West" speech that formally announced
the drive to open up Brazil's interior. In a final irony Grandin
explains how this has since led not only to the erosion of the
rainforest but also to the explosion of an industrial region in the
mid Amazon with squalid living conditions that are the antithesis of
Ford's hopes fo rhis Fordlandia. And the irony? This
industrialisation is based on the unskilled assembly of parts made
elsewhere - the essentials of those Fordist principles which made
Henry his fortune.
An intriguing and provoking book for students of Fordism as well as
for general interest. Reads well and is accompanied by many
instructive photographs. Sept '10 (****)
Dee Brown: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee:
An Indian History of the American West
Dee Browns (at the time of writing he was Western historian and head
librarian at the University of Illinois), 1970 "Bury my Heart at
Wounded Knee" is about the demise of the north American Indian
tribes at the hands of the 19th century US military, government and
population. And what a depressing read it has been. Brown shows
clearly, and with a regularity that begins to distract, how the
Plains Indians were dealt with one by one from the 1850's to the
1890's as they fell foul to a combination of the white man's greed,
lack of humanity and an almost universal desire to rid the growing
USA of an unwelcome people.
When it was written forty years ago the use of the word "genocide"
was not one in general use. However this is what Brown is
describing. Villages wiped out, tribes herded onto reservations
where the land was worthless, meaning they had nothing to hunt or
could not grow anything. Then when something of value was found -
gold for example - they were moved on to another reservation. All
this despite signing supposedly binding agreements with Washington.
The Indians were innocent, naive, unable to grasp at first the self
interest of what Brown describes as the
military-washington-reservation complex which saw them and their
original lands (and later on the provisions provided by Washington)
exploited for personal and commercial gain. Even those who adopted
the "white" lifestyle advocated by Washington: who settled in one
place, grew crops and went to church were eventually dispossessed
through trickery and military force.
With only limited exceptions noted by Brown, very few whites
understood or attempted to understood the Indian position -that they
were trying to live with the whites and a culture alien to them but
were forced to resist when their lands were illegally settled on or
buffalo being hunted out of existence. The old chiefs tried hard to
restrain their younger members realising that the white man's power
was much greater and resistance would only bring even greater
retribution.
This role of the white civilians west of the Mississippi are not
shown in the most honourable way - especially those in what became
Colorado. During the US civil war they help create conflict with the
tribes to ensure local young men are recruited to serve nearby, not
on the battlefields further east. Later their greed drives the
Indian off the land west of Denver in a series of underhand
manoeuvres.
Then when finally they realised the true determination of the
growing white population to push them out of the way it was too
late. The tribes were too few in number, too divided in intention
and left facing an arrogant US military busily building forts across
their original lands, equipped with the latest technology (magazine
loading rifles, mobile artillery, and the beginning of long distance
communications) and using them to ride out and deal with Indian
problems and ultimately to round up the survivors of their raids and
campaigns and imprison them on reservations. In 1970 this had
definite echoes of US military policy in Vietnam but depressingly
still equally for modern Iraq. So the tactics developed against the
north American Indian continue to drive US military policy
Given it was written in an era when traditional cowboys and Indian
films still dominated white culture with cowboys and cavalry as
goodies and Indians as universal baddies (with some notable
exceptions - The Lone Rangers companion Tonto!!) Brown uses an odd
mechanism to increase the readers sympathy for the Indians - the
narrative is written as if by the Indians themselves. This is
strange at first but eventually the reader gets used to it. Today
however, this can seem patronising and an encumbrance to a reasoned
understanding of the aboriginal position, and although the work is
widely sourced, it makes sourcing what is written difficult.
Nonetheless the work remains a powerful piece of writing, if not
strict history. Aug '10 (****)
Rowland White: Vulcan 607: The Epic Story
of the Most Remarkable British Air Attack since WWII
This is the story of the first Black Buck V-bomber raid on Stanley
airport during the Falklands/Malvinas war. It recalls much that is
to be admired from a purely logistical and management aspect: the
ingenuity of the engineers as well as the planners, coaching the old
superannuated nuclear bombers (due to be scrapped in June 1982) into
service and planning a massive in-flight refueling programme to
ensure one Vulcan made the islands and was able to disable the
runway and prevent its use by Argentine jets, so ensuring the
eventual success of the British campaign. A role that has perhaps
been underplayed in the past. It also paints a magnificent picture
of two of the legendary V-bombers, Vulcan & Victor, at work.
However the cover has a quote recommending the book written by BBC
petrolhead Jeremy Clarkson which sets its tone quite accurately.
This is very much a "Boys Own" account which makes only a limited
attempt to view the raid in a broader context than the RAF and the
crews involved. This is served especially poorly by brief anecdotal
inserts that appear to tell the story of some of the islanders after
the Argentine landings. The sources listed at the end are extremely
thin on Argentine materials/interviews.
This may be a good beach read but it is no Frederick Taylor
(Dresden) or Leo McKinstry (Dambusters). July '10 (**)
Neal Bascomb: Hunting Eichmann: How a Band
of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the World's Most
Notorious Nazi
Adolf Eichmann was the SS officer behind the removal and logistics that sent
millions of Europe’s Jews to the extermination camps of eastern
Europe. Bascombe follows the likes of UKi Goñi in showing the
growing cold war disinterest outside Israel for following up Nazi
criminals like Eichmann and the role played by the Catholic Church
as well as Argentina’s Perón in offering them an escape route and
refuge.
This story of how Eichmann escaped capture in 1945 and fled Europe
to Argentina where he was then captured in 1960 by Israeli secret
agents is a real page turner which I couldn’t put down. Meticulously
detailed it shows the chance way by which Eichmann’s new identity
unravelled and how it was picked up by the Israeli’s who determined
to capture and bring him back to Israel for trial. In fact it is so
detailed I could clearly picture the suburban Buenos Aires streets
in Olivos and San Fernando where the action took place. The whole
mission was a masterpiece of organisation and planning and Bascombe
makes this very evident. At times though as the cast of those
involved grew, I would have like a list of characters to refer back
to. Ultimately I found the book quite moving as the reader is
carried along by the euphoria of the successful capture.
Less obvious to me before reading this was the hidden agenda behind
the arrest and trial. From the start the Israeli government
leadership hoped a high profile trial would do more than try an SS
officer central to the Final Solution. Rather it was to refocus
attention on the holocaust for a new, postwar global generation in
danger of forgetting the genocide. In this it undoubtedly succeeded,
especially in Germany where as a school student myself in the post
Eichmann years I remember the much greater emphasis laid by the
Bonner Government in education and the media on maintaining a high
awareness and confronting the issues raised by the Final Solution.
Oct '09 (****)
Tim Tzouliadis: The Forsaken: An American
Tragedy in Stalin's Russia
The
"Forsaken" are a small group of US citizens who move and settle in
the USSR to escape the Depression and work in a society they
believed promised more than the capitalist USA in the 1930's.
Within a couple of years all goes wrong
as they get caught up (as dangerous "spies") in the 1930s Terror.
One by one they disappear and this is where their tragedy begins.
Innocents caught in Stalin's and then the NKVD's paranoia they are
siezed off the street, tortured, forced to confess then shot or sent
to the Siberian Gulags to be worked to death and vanish without
trace. Just like the anything up to 20 million other Soviets that
Tzouliadis includes in the narrative.
What is especially appalling about
these US victims is that they are disowned totally by the US. The
Embassy ignores appeals for help (In fact it fails to even protect
its own employees from disappearance. One of its key figures in the
1930's is Kennan of the containment telegram fame. He also sees
little point in pushing to help these US citizens, who are perceived
by many in officialdom as pinks and reds linked to US unionism.The lame response of FDR himself to the
tragedy of the US citizens and the failure to perceive the true
nature of the Stalin regime helps understanding of Churchills
frustration with FDR-Stalin relations at the wartime meetings. It
also provides a wider survey of the process of arrest, horrendous
Gulag conditions, execution and disappearance during not one but
three waves of Terror including US troops seized during and after
World War II and how the process came to an end of sorts.
"The Forsaken" is a valuable addition
to the work on Stalin's Russia. Perhaps it will also start to show a
wider audience that Stalin was no better than Hitler, in all
probability much worse, in creating a society that dehumanised its
members and eliminated millions. May ‘09 (*****)
Walter Nugent: Habits of Empire: A History of American
Expansion
Looks at the expansion of the USA from independence to today &
identifies this in 3 stages (Empire I, the period of internal
expansion, Empire II, the Pacific and Caribbean imperialism and
Empire III, post 1945.) Most focus is on I & II and what a
depressing tale he tells. It did not take long for the (thoroughly
European Great Power) diplomatic skills of duplicity and selfish
ambition to appear. Greatly assisted by an early ability to take
advantage of Great Power problems elsewhere to acqiure territory by
Treaty & Dollars, the young Republic is also quite happy to
undermine states that helped it gain independence (most notably
Spain) and attack neighbours (British Canada, Mexico) in search of
the expansion of what it considered its manifest destiny.
Worst of all though Nugent shows the impact of Manifest Destiny on
the native population. Pushed, shoved, but most of all decimated by
the diseases of what Nugent calls the Anglo-European settlers they
are all but wiped out to become little more than another ethnic
minority by the 20th century. At times the depth of detail of the
early Spanish wars can be overwhelming, not to say tedious, but
Nugent's book needs to be recommended reading for anyone who
believes the US was isolationist before Teddy Rooosevelt and Woodrow
Wilson. As I said at the start, a depressing read.
Feb '09 (****)
H.W. Brands: The Age of Gold: The Story of
an Obsession That Swept the World
Brands provides a well detailed account of the
California Gold rush of 1848-9, placing it in its national (and international)
as well as Californian context. Especially valuable are the descriptions of the
journeys taken by the argonauts (the hopeful gold prospectors) by sea (round the
Horn, across the Pacific, through the Panama isthmus) and by land across the
plains, deserts, Rockies & Sierras. Some of the dangers encountered are new to
me - for example the high mortality rate from cholera as the wagons moved west.
The destructive impact of the western migrants on the buffalo herds so vital to
the Indian tribes is also made clear. Unfortunately, the 491 pages of small,
dense type would have benefited from tighter editing. The post Gold Rush period
especially seems to take on a life of its own (which perhaps should have been a
separate book) but loses focus as a consequence of trying to cover too much.
Brands' previous book, the Reckless Decade, on late 19th century US was more
concise and all the better focused for being so. August '08. (***)
Peter Chapman: Jungle
Capitalists: A Story of Globalisation, Greed and Revolution
Charts the economic rise and pervasive political influence of
the first globalised company - the US United Fruit Company, precursor
for the activities of today's multinationals. By building railways and
the acquisition of land rights from central American states it created
monopoly banana production and determined the politics of the region. By
the 1930's the company had created a "vast feudal state" of plantations,
worker settlements and client governments scattered across central
America. The simple Banana may have been the product, but to ensure its
continued profitability (ie keeping production costs low and free from
native involvement) United Fruit was not averse to heavy involvement in
aggressive politics. Support for coups was common, most clearly seen in
the 1929 Santa Marta massacre of 1000+ demonstrators in Colombia and the
Guatamalan coup of 1954. But Guatamala backfired - it frightened the US
government into starting anti trust procedures that would see United
Fruit shrink into "Chiquita" in the 1980's; Ernesto Guevara witnessed
the coup and it helped convince him of the need to use force to gain
national freedom; the US press, heavily manipulated by United Fruit
decided to pursue more personally investigative styles in future
(Herbert Matthews went off in search of Castro on a personal quest for
"truth" which was to give such positive press for Castro in the US).
However the author warns for today: Chiquita has admitted to paying
nearly $2 million to right-wing death squads in Colombia and Chapman
cites the example of Costa Rica, (the only central American country to
escape United Fruit and create a more welfare-orientated state) where
modern multinationals working within a free-market economy are causing
severe problems of social inequality. This book is timely and testimony
to the survival of United Fruit and how well it has continued to cover
its tracks outside latin America. May '08 (****)
Robert Carver: Paradise
with Serpents
Carver's travel tales of Paraguay in 2001-2 see him comparing it
with amongst others, the Congo, Albania, and the one I like best: pre
partition 18th century Poland.... In places amusing, in others sadly
pathetic this is a good companion to John Gimlettes Inflatable Pig
(which has a more historical focus and which Carver is gracious enough
to praise). Carver is well read and this gives a depth to his stories as
well as allowing him to put modern Paraguay in a context with its
neighbours. Starting off an enthusiastic investigative tourist, Carver
ends desperate to leave and running for a seat on one of the few planes
out of Paraguay for São Paulo. It may be good armchair adventure but I
am not sure if this will encourage less intrepid tourists to travel far
beyond Ciudad del Este though! April '08 (***)
Paul Blustein: And the Money Kept Rolling In (and
Out): Wall Street, the IMF, and the Bankrupting of Argentina
A readable account of the 2001-2 Argentine economic
crash and how it emerged out of the growth of the 1990's. And at the
end, where does Blustein point the finger of blame? To be sure, slack
Argentine policies throughout the period and the impetuosity finally of
Cavallo (where was President de la Rua at the time?) carry much of the
final responsibility for the eventual collapse. However he argues that
the real culprits are the international bankers - too willing to lend,
to convince the Argentine government to issue more & more bonds and to
push rates of repayment ever higher. The IMF? Blustein sees them as
being blinded by what he calls "poster-child syndrome" ie unwilling to
be tough & give unwelcome advice and support (especially post 1998)
other then more loans, when "tough love" rather than more debts was
needed by the country it had over-promoted as the free market success of
the 1990's. Sept '07 (***)
Ian W. Toll: Six Frigates: The
Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy
A huge tome that tells the story of the origins of the US Navy (It
started with just 6 frigates...) in the late 18th/early 19th century.
Written by a journalist rather than a historian so is not quite a US
N.A.M. Rodgers but is well written and reads easily. Still it is perhaps
one for the ship anorak rather than the general reader. Interesting to
see the early potential wealth of the newly independent US: able to
build a fleet and a state capital at the same time! Equally valuable are
the links drawn at the end that connect this early growth directly to
the Monroe doctrine and Thedore Roosevelts Great White fleet. Feb '07
(***)
Robert
Harvey: The Liberators
Sympathetic & comprehensive narrative of the latin American Wars of
Independence. Gave a new appreciation & respect for the social values of Bolivar
and San Martin especially. Unfortunately, all were unappreciated in the ensuing
states that they fought for - in particular by the criolla landowning families
who undermined their reforms thus creating the years of chaos that followed -
very much to the present. A worthy reference on the period but too heavy on
military details for the general reader and limited on recent Spanish language
scholarship. Aug '06 (***)
Patrick Wilcken: Empire Adrift
Did you know the Portuguese Royal Court all up-sticked and headed for Rio during
the Napoleonic Wars? This explains the why's and how's. A good read, describing
the growth of Rio - as well as the duplicitous role of Britain. This may have
been where Britain first began to influence latin American internal politics
through the back door. Jan'06 (***)
David Sinclair: Sir Gregor Macgregor and the Land That Never Was
Story of a 19th century Scots fraudster, Gregor MacGregor and his scheme to make
a fortune selling land in a non existent country in central America. The tale is
an interesting one covering the MacGregors exploits in the Americas (where he
fought alongside Miranda and Bolivar) and Europe as well as in Britain, but more
judicious editing (especially of the independence campaigns MacGregor actually
fought in) with a greater use of footnotes might make it both more useful to
historians and efficient to read. Nov '06 (**)
Peter
Nichols: Evolution's Captain
The story of Robert FitzRoy who took Darwin around the world. FitzRoy's life is
shown as tragedy, from his early attempt to "civilise" the natives of Tierra del
Fuega to his realisation that having facilitated Darwin produced the massive
attack by Science on his own fundamentalist beliefs. Written not by a historian
with an understanding of the sea but by a yachtsman with a sound grasp of the
history this is a very readable account - although the paperback is much in need
of a good map of Patagonia! Sept '06 (***)
Tomás
Eloy Martínez: The Tango Singer
A short but intriguing novel set in 2001 from Eloy Martínez, a writer whose work
battles between history and literature. Whereas 'Santa Evita' (****) and The 'Perón
Novel' (****) saw history dominant, here it is the literary side that provides
an (ale-gorical?) framework for an almost mystical search through the horrors of
Argentina's recent history. Best read if you have a knowledge of Buenos Aires
and Borges - and a map handy!. July '06 (***)
John Gimlette: At
the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig
Ostensibly a travel book, this was the surprise bestseller of 2003. It
has a silly title, and a surreal cover (even more so in the US) but it
is a knowledgeable voyage through the 19th and 20th century history of
the Guarani homeland.
In this grimly amusing book Gimlette reveals the horrors and absurdities
of the past as well as the present, but reading between the lines he has
an affection for this blighted country, incarcerated in the centre of a
continent and the pawn of its larger and stronger neighbours - whose
politicians though are no brighter than those of Paraguay. Pobre paraguayos....
(****)
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Teachers' pages
This is the story of the first Black Buck V-bomber raid on Stanley
airport during the Falklands/Malvinas war. It recalls much that is
to be admired from a purely logistical and management aspect: the
ingenuity of the engineers as well as the planners, coaching the old
superannuated nuclear bombers (due to be scrapped in June 1982) into
service and planning a massive in-flight refueling programme to
ensure one Vulcan made the islands and was able to disable the
runway and prevent its use by Argentine jets, so ensuring the
eventual success of the British campaign. A role that has perhaps
been underplayed in the past. It also paints a magnificent picture
of two of the legendary V-bombers, Vulcan & Victor, at work. 
The
"Forsaken" are a small group of US citizens who move and settle in
the USSR to escape the Depression and work in a society they
believed promised more than the capitalist USA in the 1930's.
