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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: "As a Christian" preamble to opinions.
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John Holding
Coffee and Cognac
# 158
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
the monarchy in a very over the top manner, seeing them as a symbol of British identity (ignoring the fact that they're Germans).
No they're not ... at least, not in any reasonable sense of the term. The present Queen has had four grandparents, two of whom were Scottish and one of whom (QUeen Mary) always identified as ENglish, though with German relatives. Her fourth granparent was King George, whose mother was not German.
If you want to track a single bloodline and claim that it wipes out all the others....then I'm scottish and entitled to a croft on Iona, because one of my great grandparents was born there. WHich is, as they say, absurd.
John
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Sandemaniac
Shipmate
# 12829
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Posted
Or that Billy Connolly is Indian, given that he has an Indian ancestor at around the same time as the queen's last German one.
AG
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"It becomes soon pleasantly apparent that change-ringing is by no means merely an excuse for beer" Charles Dickens gets it wrong, 1869
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ExclamationMark
Shipmate
# 14715
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by John Holding:
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
the monarchy in a very over the top manner, seeing them as a symbol of British identity (ignoring the fact that they're Germans).
No they're not ... at least, not in any reasonable sense of the term. The present Queen has had four grandparents, two of whom were Scottish and one of whom (QUeen Mary) always identified as ENglish, though with German relatives. Her fourth granparent was King George, whose mother was not German.
If you want to track a single bloodline and claim that it wipes out all the others....then I'm scottish and entitled to a croft on Iona, because one of my great grandparents was born there. WHich is, as they say, absurd.
John
German was Queen Mary's first language. The focus on being English came about in 1917 when it was expedient to suppress a Germanic background. After the Germans bombed London, lots of businesses with German sounding names were attacked and looted - with the Revolution in Russia the fear was that the UK would be next to topple an imperial throne (Marx always thought that it would be the UK).
The Queens Grandfather George didn't have a German mother - she was Danish. George's own Father was the product of an impeccably German marriage -- Victoria and Albert.
It's not so much that their ancestry is Germanic, is the steps they've taken to distance themselves from it and the reasons for doing so. Expediency not through conviction. Even today the Windsors express some pretty robust opinions that in other circumstances would have the Police reaching for heir notebooks
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Oh come on ...
Of course they changed their names out of expediency rather than 'conviction'. Why would anyone with a German sounding name change their surname to an English sounding one unless it was for:
- Reasons of assimilation or economic reasons,which is why many Jewish or German and Eastern European migrants Anglicised their names in the US and here too, to an extent. Are those migrants to be 'blamed' for that?
- Reasons of heightened tension and anti-German feeling.
What other reason could there be?
Ok, so the Saxe-Coburg Gothas weren't in the first category, of course. But it wasn't their fault Cousin Willy was acting like an arse - unless you blame it all on Queen Victoria for treating him like shit.
As for loopy-doopy views across the Royal Family as a whole - well, yes - some of them have - and presumably still do - entertain some pretty unsavoury and untenable positions. As with anything else, the situation is fairly mixed. Prince Philip can be an unreconstructed boor but his mother sheltered Jewish refugees in Nazi occupied Greece.
It's possible to be republican or anti-monarchist without descending into caricature or tumbling over into a kind of reverse racism over their ancestry.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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jacobsen
seeker
# 14998
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Posted
Not a Wenglophile, then?
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But God, holding a candle, looks for all who wander, all who search. - Shifra Alon
Beauty fades, dumb is forever-Judge Judy
The man who made time, made plenty.
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by John Holding:
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
the monarchy in a very over the top manner, seeing them as a symbol of British identity (ignoring the fact that they're Germans).
No they're not ... at least, not in any reasonable sense of the term.
Which is actually the whole point. The idiots of Britain First/EDL/BNP/UKIP and their ilk are hellbent on defending British identity (including the CofE) from foreign influence. Yet, a large proportion of the UK population, even those who identify as English, don't have to go back very many generations to find ancestors from elsewhere in Europe (mostly, other parts of the world less common). The royals happen to be a prominent example of that - with a strong German line (including their name if not for a deliberate change), plus Danish, Greek and other nationalities. My side comment wasn't intended to spark a debate about the correct designation of the Royal Family nationality, it was a comment on the idiotic hypocrisy of English nationalist devotion to the Royals without recognising that they are essentially European (as are most people in the UK).
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
Surely the problem is not that they're German as much as that royalty across Europe believed - and still believe - that they're a superior super-national ultra-aristocracy, born to rule and for whom normal rules don't seem to apply.
Yes, I'm sure there was a level of intermixing of the British, Danish, Spanish, Germans etc amongst the lesser classes for centuries, but the Royals took strategic intermarriage to a whole other level.
That's the problem here: we don't need self-appointed classes of people to live in luxury by reason only of an accident of birth.
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arse
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
The 'self-appointed' thing is a moot point, as Parliament invited the King back after the Interregnum.
For better or worse, we'd had a crack at republicanism for 11 years.
I'm not saying that was right, wrong, good, bad or indifferent but whatever our views on monarchy and its contemporary role, I hardly see the 'crowned heads of Europe' as some kind of scheming, Machiavellian coterie of inbreds (although they are inbred of course) rubbing their hands together and going, 'Mwa ha ha ha ... mwa ha ha ha ... we will rule, we must rule until Kingdom Come ... mwa ha ha ha ha ...'
My guess would be that the monarchies of Europe will continue until such time as people tire of them or see them as no longer carrying out any useful purpose or function - even if that's simply to maintain tradition.
I don't see that in the UK as yet - although I'm sure the game could change very quickly once Her Majesty pops her clogs and exchanges 'a corruptible crown for an incorruptible one' as Charles I put it ...
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
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Posted
posted by Gamaliel (speaking of the Kaiser} quote:
...it wasn't their fault Cousin Willy was acting like an arse - unless you blame it all on Queen Victoria for treating him like shit.
Actually Victoria had a very soft spot for Wilhelm, first because he was the son of her favourite child, and also because of his withered arm, notwithstanding that he seems to have been poisonous even as a small child. Victoria described him as "a clever, dear, good little child, the great favourite of my beloved Vicky", in fact so great was the bond between them that Victoria died in Wilhelm's arms.
What made little Wilhelm resentful was that although he was called an emperor his realms didn't match up in size to those of his cousins Nicky (Russian) and George (British), and he bitterly resented his Uncle Bertie (Edward VII) who treated him as a tiresome nephew, rather than affording him the respect that he, Willy, felt was his due.
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Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
The 'self-appointed' thing is a moot point, as Parliament invited the King back after the Interregnum.
For better or worse, we'd had a crack at republicanism for 11 years.
Well, yes, but since it was a sort of miserable theocratic republicanism it's a bit irrelevant. Overdue for another experiment in my view.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I'm not saying that was right, wrong, good, bad or indifferent but whatever our views on monarchy and its contemporary role, I hardly see the 'crowned heads of Europe' as some kind of scheming, Machiavellian coterie of inbreds (although they are inbred of course) rubbing their hands together and going, 'Mwa ha ha ha ... mwa ha ha ha ... we will rule, we must rule until Kingdom Come ... mwa ha ha ha ha ...'
Then you're not looking very hard are you. Not only are they scheming bastards, they're bastards who sent many to their graves because of a spat between cousins.
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arse
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
The 'self-appointed' thing is a moot point, as Parliament invited the King back after the Interregnum.
For better or worse, we'd had a crack at republicanism for 11 years.
Well, yes, but since it was a sort of miserable theocratic republicanism it's a bit irrelevant. Overdue for another experiment in my view.
Not if we end up with some shite like Mrs May as President.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by jacobsen:
Not a Wenglophile, then?
Well, as I'm 'Wenglish' and do talk tidy, I'm certainly a 'Wenglophile'.
For some reason my predictive text jumped to 'Wenglish' rather than 'English' ... perhaps because I type things in 'Wenglish' sometimes - the dialect of the South Wales Valleys.
I've done that here before now but won't do so this time as I've been told off for it.
Meanwhile, as for the links between European Monarchy and European Imperialism - such as British Imperialism, German Imperialism, Russian Imperialism etc - have been clearly established then there's no way I'd try to exonerate those institutions from all the shite that happened and that culminated in the Great War ...
But there was more to WW1 than a dynastic struggle between close relatives. Much larger and greater forces at work than that.
On a micro-level, of course, had it not been for WW1 the Windsors would still be called Saxe Coburg Gotha to this day and I doubt anyone would bat an eyelid.
You can't blame the current Windsors for the attitudes and actions of their forebears, of course. They have to be judged on their own merits. But the personality side - are the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh scheming gits? - is a different issue to the institutional one.
As to what a latter-day experiment in British Republicanism would look like ... I have no idea. My concern would be that it would just as bloody po-faced and petty-minded as the theocratic Puritan experiment - only without the theocracy.
Brambles and briars on all sides with this one.
I'm all for social justice but I've long since given up on the idea of some egalitarian utopia. I'd have thought the 20th century would have disabused most of us of that pipe-dream ...
Still, one has to strive for something and something other than unfettered capitalism, red in tooth and claw ...
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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Bishops Finger
Shipmate
# 5430
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Posted
And for a glimpse of monarchy at its best (though an elected President could well say something similar):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvB0jZKRKrk&nohtml5=False
Harald V seems a decent and level-headed chap, to say the least, and describes his country well! For their part, they appear to quite like the old boy.....
IJ
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Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service. (Wilkie Collins)
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Then you're not looking very hard are you. Not only are they scheming bastards, they're bastards who sent many to their graves because of a spat between cousins. [/QUOTE]
The last time I looked, Britain entered WW1 because the Germans invaded neutral Belgium and we had a treaty with them that we felt honour-bound to hold.
Also, of course, we wouldn't have been best pleased to have the German Imperial Fleet in control of the Channel Ports.
The whole thing was triggered off by internal struggles in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and by neither Germany and Russia being prepared to back down but to sabre-rattle their way to Armageddon.
As they descended into the morass, we were drawn into it too.
There is a revisionist view of history that suggests that the British were to blame because the Germans were shit scared of us because of what we'd allowed to happen in Ireland with the Potato Famine mid-19th century and our behaviour out in the various colonies. But steady-on, it's not as if the Germans were paragons of virtue in that regard ... witness the massacres in Namibia in 1904.
The Kaiser had secret plans to blockade and bombard Boston and New York should the Americans ever annoy him ... and that long before WW1 broke out and long before the US even dreamt of entering the conflict.
I'm not suggesting the Kaiser was any more of a bastard than any other Imperial power at that time - whether Britain, Russia or the French.
But he had this very paranoid view that Germany was in danger of being squeezed from both sides and so wanted to gain extra elbow-room by bashing the neutral Belgians (themselves no saints when it came to imperialism) and bulldozing onto Paris.
There was more to it than King George V and Kaiser Bill not seeing eye to eye ...
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
There is a revisionist view of history that suggests that the British were to blame because the Germans were shit scared of us because of what we'd allowed to happen in Ireland with the Potato Famine mid-19th century and our behaviour out in the various colonies. But steady-on, it's not as if the Germans were paragons of virtue in that regard ... witness the massacres in Namibia in 1904.
History is subjective and perception. That's not revisionism, that is simply another way to explain the facts.
quote:
There was more to it than King George V and Kaiser Bill not seeing eye to eye ...
Yes. But this isn't about whether there was more than what Kaiser Bill did or didn't do. This about whether the monarchy was the root of the battles for power in Europe.
You can present other opinions and I'm not denying it was more complicated and other things were involved. But I'm saying that in my opinion the root is in competition between the aristocracy, and within the royals, in Europe for supremacy and power and the willingness to use others as pawns in their Colonial power games.
You don't have to agree or see that root. I don't care what you do or don't believe.
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arse
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
The idiots of Britain First/EDL/BNP/UKIP and their ilk are hellbent on defending British identity (including the CofE) from foreign influence. Yet, a large proportion of the UK population, even those who identify as English, don't have to go back very many generations to find ancestors from elsewhere in Europe (mostly, other parts of the world less common).
One wonders how many generations the average Scot would have to go back before an English ancestor was found, and yet you're a staunch defender of the Scottish identity and culture against unwelcome English influence.
Marvin
English ancestors all the way back to the 1500s at least. Shit, we've barely even left Worcestershire since the Civil War.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Marvin
English ancestors all the way back to the 1500s at least. Shit, we've barely even left Worcestershire since the Civil War.
Oh puleeze. Nobody gives a shit about your antecedents. There is a 100% chance that you've got immigrants and non-English in your tree.
Englishness, and Scottishness, is absolutely nothing to do with how much willy-waving you can do about where your ancestors were born. Prick.
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arse
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
History is subjective and perception. That's not revisionism, that is simply another way to explain the facts.
With comments like that, you could get a job in the White House.
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Hail Gallaxhar
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
With comments like that, you could get a job in the White House.
Fuck off. It was your Tory bollocks which put the fascist there, nothing to do with me.
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arse
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Anselmina
Ship's barmaid
# 3032
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Posted
Anyway.
In response to the death of Martin McGuinness, Ian Paisley Jr, prefacing his comment with the words 'as a Christian' felt that he was obliged to say of Mr McGuinness that it wasn't 'how you start your life that's important; it's how you finish'.
Usually the 'as a Christian' thing is cringeworthy. But I think it had some real meaning in this case, and in this context.
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Irish dogs needing homes! http://www.dogactionwelfaregroup.ie/ Greyhounds and Lurchers are shipped over to England for rehoming too!
Posts: 10002 | From: Scotland the Brave | Registered: Jul 2002
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
My side comment wasn't intended to spark a debate about the correct designation of the Royal Family nationality, it was a comment on the idiotic hypocrisy of English nationalist devotion to the Royals without recognising that they are essentially European (as are most people in the UK).
And that "essentially European" bollocks is the same nonsense that the EDL and their friends produce. If we agree that having ancestry in other countries doesn't stop you from being English, or Scottish, or whatever, then we must also agree that having ancestry in a range of European countries doesn't make you "essentially European".
The only reasonable meaning of "essentially European" is someone who identifies with the continent as a whole (or at least a large part of it) rather stronger than they do with an individual country. It's hard to see how you could achieve that without fluency in a handful of European languages, but perhaps you can.
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Marvin
English ancestors all the way back to the 1500s at least. Shit, we've barely even left Worcestershire since the Civil War.
The Scottish have roots on the island from far before your interloping ancestors left Europe.
Ancestry doesn't strengthen your claim to a culture by itself, else 1/2 of America would be culturally Irish.
"English" identity, BTW, is a mongrel mishmash of European invaders and transients, AKA immigrants.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
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Anselmina
Ship's barmaid
# 3032
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Marvin
English ancestors all the way back to the 1500s at least. Shit, we've barely even left Worcestershire since the Civil War.
The Scottish have roots on the island from far before your interloping ancestors left Europe.
Ancestry doesn't strengthen your claim to a culture by itself, else 1/2 of America would be culturally Irish.
"English" identity, BTW, is a mongrel mishmash of European invaders and transients, AKA immigrants.
I understood it to be fairly conclusively proved that of all the indigenous 'races' that inhabit the British Isles, the least British of them all is the English?!
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Irish dogs needing homes! http://www.dogactionwelfaregroup.ie/ Greyhounds and Lurchers are shipped over to England for rehoming too!
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
Race is a variable is a filter through which people choose to view others.
All the cultures in the Isles are accretive, there are none pure to the original occupants. Some do have older links. ISTM, the culture which became English arrived after the cultures which became Scottish and Irish. I'm not a cultural anthropologist, so I cannot sort out all the influences nor their age and overlap. But Marvin's claim because of his ancestry are meaningless. An immigrant's child has as much claim to English/British culture as one whose ancestors hunted aurochs on the island.
[ 21. March 2017, 16:05: Message edited by: lilBuddha ]
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Oh puleeze. Nobody gives a shit about your antecedents.
It was a direct, if flippant, response to Alan's post.
quote:
There is a 100% chance that you've got immigrants and non-English in your tree.
Well duh. Everyone not currently in Ethiopia is either a migrant or descended from migrants.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
It was a direct, if flippant, response to Alan's post.
It was the point where the mask slipped, Tory-boy. You thought it was relevant to a point about Scotland to mention your (probably utterly false) story about your family in Southern England, asserting your unearned privilege to have a say in other people's decisions.
Oh well oi have family in deepest Somerset going back to the 15 century, don't you know, and I think I should be asked whether or not Scotland should be allowed to leave. Because I was here first and I matter more than you do.
Like fuck. OK have an opinion, but keep your claim of racial superiority and privilege to yourself you puny little shit.
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arse
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
One wonders how many generations the average Scot would have to go back before an English ancestor was found, and yet you're a staunch defender of the Scottish identity and culture against unwelcome English influence.
Since Scottish independence is based on what is best for the people who currently live in Scotland rather than those who are "ethnic Scots", that's not relevant. So, if I use "English" to mean someone born in England there are several of us who live in Scotland and who support Scottish independence. Also lots of people born in Poland, India, Australia and practically everywhere else.
Just because English nationalism is ethnic in nature (hence the calls for those who are dark skinned to "go home" even if they and their parents, grandparents and possibly even older generations) doesn't mean Scottish nationalism is ethnic in nature as well.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
And that "essentially European" bollocks is the same nonsense that the EDL and their friends produce. If we agree that having ancestry in other countries doesn't stop you from being English, or Scottish, or whatever, then we must also agree that having ancestry in a range of European countries doesn't make you "essentially European".
"European" = someone born in Europe. Deny the fact that the vast majority of people born in England don't have ancestors (for argument let's stick to relatively recent ancestors so we don't have to argue about when people first crossed the Dogger land bridge at the end of the last glaciation) born somewhere in Europe. A much smaller number of people would have ancestors born in Africa, Asia, the Americas etc. (which basically proves we're all human, which isn't all that controversial).
quote:
The only reasonable meaning of "essentially European" is someone who identifies with the continent as a whole (or at least a large part of it) rather stronger than they do with an individual country.
There are, of course, people who do identify more strongly with the continent as a whole more than an individual country. There are a far larger number of people who have an identity that covers several countries within Europe - if you're born in one country with parents from one or more other countries, for example. Which would describe much of the Royal Family. And, those multiple identities can last through several generations - just look at the US where large numbers of people identify as "Irish", "Italian", "Scottish" etc after several generations.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
An immigrant's child has as much claim to English/British culture as one whose ancestors hunted aurochs on the island.
I am an immigrant. My children are American. I might become American in the future.
Culturally, I am mostly British. That's not going to change much. Certainly I've adopted some of the habits and practices common to the country in which I now live, but my instinctive reactions are entirely British.
My children are a cultural mish-mash, but there's a big British component in there. They are clearly culturally distinct from their American friends. These points of difference between my children and "American culture" do not change "American culture" at all. It's certainly possible for "American culture" to adopt elements from a particular subculture, but that's not the same thing at all. If some element of culture remains within a subgroup and does not pass in to wider society, it's not a part of the wider society's culture.
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
There are a far larger number of people who have an identity that covers several countries within Europe - if you're born in one country with parents from one or more other countries, for example. Which would describe much of the Royal Family. And, those multiple identities can last through several generations - just look at the US where large numbers of people identify as "Irish", "Italian", "Scottish" etc after several generations.
My point is that that's a choice. Irish-Americans and Italian-Americans choose to identify in that way - it's not some kind of genetic determinism forced on them by their ancestry. If Tony Carruso doesn't want to preserve a distinctive Italianness, he doesn't have to. If he doesn't want people to assume Italianness of him, he can change his name to Anthony Carr, and he's erased any sense of "being Italian".
Suppose we have, for the sake of argument, a German married to a Frenchwoman, living and raising children in England. There are lots of possibilities for the culture and identity that the children end up with. Depending on the choices that the parents make, and the choices that the children make themselves, they could end up with almost any combination of German, French, and English culture and identity. They might identify as generic "Europeans" without a particularly strong attraction to any of the individual countries, the might identify as some combination of the three countries they have a claim on, or they might only claim one or two of them.
[ 21. March 2017, 17:49: Message edited by: Leorning Cniht ]
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
Who said anything about "generic European"? Whatever that is.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
That's the problem here: we don't need self-appointed classes of people to live in luxury by reason only of an accident of birth.
Does that mean that you would be happy with the monarchy if they lived at a standard of, say, modest middle-class comfort? Or indeed of respectable working class comfort?
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My beard is a testament to my masculinity and virility, and demonstrates that I am a real man. Trouble is, bits of quiche sometimes get caught in it.
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
The last time I looked, Britain entered WW1 because the Germans invaded neutral Belgium and we had a treaty with them that we felt honour-bound to hold.
Also, of course, we wouldn't have been best pleased to have the German Imperial Fleet in control of the Channel Ports.
The whole thing was triggered off by internal struggles in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and by neither Germany and Russia being prepared to back down but to sabre-rattle their way to Armageddon.
As they descended into the morass, we were drawn into it too.
There is a revisionist view of history that suggests that the British were to blame because the Germans were shit scared of us because of what we'd allowed to happen in Ireland with the Potato Famine mid-19th century and our behaviour out in the various colonies. But steady-on, it's not as if the Germans were paragons of virtue in that regard ... witness the massacres in Namibia in 1904.
The Kaiser had secret plans to blockade and bombard Boston and New York should the Americans ever annoy him ... and that long before WW1 broke out and long before the US even dreamt of entering the conflict.
I'm not suggesting the Kaiser was any more of a bastard than any other Imperial power at that time - whether Britain, Russia or the French.
But he had this very paranoid view that Germany was in danger of being squeezed from both sides and so wanted to gain extra elbow-room by bashing the neutral Belgians (themselves no saints when it came to imperialism) and bulldozing onto Paris.
There was more to it than King George V and Kaiser Bill not seeing eye to eye ...
Did a fair bit of reading about the history of the years leading up to WW1. There are additional aspects which often ignored. Such as the arms race commencing in the 1890s, the British realization that the German economic future would put it ahead of Britain, that they wanted to contain Germany by seeking alliances against them. Germany felt kept down and mistreated, which has some seeds in fact. We had wondered as a family if it mightn't have been better had Germany won WW1. There certainly wasn't much to choose from in the two sides. My father's family which lived on both sides of the French and German border got all killed any how.
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
And both the UK and Germany had totally failed to realise that the world's greatest economic power by 1914 was the US; by 1919 it was the creditor nation as well. To be fair, many in the US had failed to make those realisations as well. UKIP etc have still failed to understand.
[ 21. March 2017, 22:01: Message edited by: Gee D ]
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
What would a German victory have looked like? They'd have annexed - or recovered - parts of France, probably hung onto Belgium and the Channel Ports - which would probably have brought them into renewed conflict with Britain within a few years. I wouldn't expect they'd have been in a position to invade the UK in 1917 or '18. Not after the years of carnage on the Western Front.
No, there'd either have been some kind of Bolshevik uprising in Germany had the war dragged on ... Or else a round-two within a few years - sooner than the 2O years before WW2.
As it was, the British were anticipating the War going on until 1920 at least. Had that happened then I suspect there'd have been no clear winner. Both sides would have fizzled out through sheer exhaustion.
The German push of 1917 was their last throw of the dice. Once it'd been contained - and it was a close-run thing, then an Armistice was inevitable. US entry hastened the end, of course, but even if the US hadn't intervened I suspect there'd have been stalemate rather than a clear win for either side.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
There are additional aspects which often ignored. Such as the arms race commencing in the 1890s,
The late 19th century arms race had, by 1914, created a state very similar to a doctrine of deterrence. The slaughter of Flanders may have come as a shock to the ordinary people of Europe, but to the military and political leadership it was expected. The experiences of Crimea and the American Civil War had amply illustrated the capability of modern weapons to inflict massive casualties, and the slaughter that would be the inevitable result of trying to overrun entrenched positions. And, by 1914 the capabilities of artillery and machine guns had only increased. It was very much a case of no one wanting a war because of the inevitable massive loss of life.
However, there was always the hope of a quick, decisive victory. A rapid, unexpected assault to outflank the entrenched positions of the enemy and avoid the lines of trenches facing each other. In 1914 it's what the Germans tried to do, and failed, in invading Belgium to outflank the French lines on their border. They just couldn't get their troops forward fast enough. In 1940 it succeeded.
And, that hope was the driver of the arms race. The race to develop the technology that would give the decisive edge, to have a big enough army to deliver a decisive blow. Fundamentally no different from the second half of the 20th century - the race to develop a nuclear arsenal as the ultimate deterrent. And, to develop first strike capability that could render the nuclear arsenal of the enemy inoperable, or defence systems to do the same. And, to develop delivery systems that could evade the counter measures of the other side.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
There was also a belief, both in the military and in the public, that war with Germany was inevitable. There were plays about it, at the turn of the century, a steady drumbeat of ginning up the aggression and nationalism. And the Antarctic explorer Robert Scott, a naval captain, deliberately went to Antarctica in 1909. His plan was to be back before war broke out. (Didn't work out.)
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
So as a Christian, I can see clearly that Germany was supposed to dominate the continent. The two world wars were God's punishment. Brexit was ordained by God and wouldn't have been necessary had God's will for WW1 been fulfilled. And now I comdemn myself to vomitting. ![[Projectile]](graemlins/puke2.gif)
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
Germany won WW1 on November 1, 1993.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
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ExclamationMark
Shipmate
# 14715
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
There was more to it than King George V and Kaiser Bill not seeing eye to eye ...
Agreed but there was that to it as well. It goes back to Queen Victoria playing her grandsons off against each other - and it led to George refusing to welcome Nicholas from Russia.
WWI has its territorial issues but it was also a family scrap for the position of top dog.
It was also a convenient fight for some. 1914 saw the greatest number of days lost to strikes in the UK ever - second only to 1926. The fear was that revolution would break out - that can't be taken out of the equation. An appeal to patriotism brought things in the UK back on an even keel but did for Russian and Germany monarchies. Part of the reason was that George left the slaughter to his generals while Wilhelm and Nicholas headed up their armed forces in the field.
George was happier at home shooting pheasants and sticking stamps in his albums.
Posts: 3845 | From: A new Jerusalem | Registered: Apr 2009
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Sure, there was concern about revolution and the years leading up to WW1 saw massive industrial unrest in the UK. Heck, people were still talking about the great Cambrian Coal Strike and the Tonypandy Riots when I was growing up in South Wales in the '60s and '70s.
That said, I think it's simplistic to suggest that there was a desire for war with Germany to distract attention from unrest at home. I suspect that had WW1 not broken out when it did we'd have seen civil war in Ireland. The Unionists were already sabre-rattling and posing with guns and marching militia and some of the military may have joined them has it developed to a full scale rebellion to halt Home Rule. Whether this would have spilled over onto the mainland in the form of violent revolution is a possibility - but I doubt it.
There'd either have been some kind of two-state or power-sharing compromise or years of chaos which would have worked to German advantage and hampered any British response to their expansionism on the continent.
Whatever the case, things did need to change and it's certainly true that some war-mongers and whackoes - including Bishops - saw war with Germany as some wierd way to 'purify' the nation ...
Whether some kind of revolution would have been a preferable development ... Uh oh ... Revolutions have a tendency to devour their children. I see no reason why some kind of revolution in the Britain of the 1910s would have been any different.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
That's the problem here: we don't need self-appointed classes of people to live in luxury by reason only of an accident of birth.
Does that mean that you would be happy with the monarchy if they lived at a standard of, say, modest middle-class comfort? Or indeed of respectable working class comfort?
Can't speak for Cheesy, but I will never be happy about a monarchy. No-one us special through accident of birth. I fail to see why we should afford a special status to a bunch of people because their ancestors were more successful warlord thugs than some other warlord thugs. Yes, William the Bastard, I'm looking at you...
[ 22. March 2017, 06:42: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
It was the point where the mask slipped, Tory-boy. You thought it was relevant to a point about Scotland
The post to which I was responding wasn't about Scotland, nor did it even mention Scotland. It was part of an argument about British identity sparked by a comment about the Royal Family being German. I mentioned Scottish Independence in order to point out what I perceive to be hypocrisy.
quote:
to mention your (probably utterly false) story
I have birth and marriage records going back to the 1500s to support my story. Obviously that amount of time is enough for such records to potentially become corrupted, but that's true of any historical claim.
quote:
about your family in Southern England,
Worcestershire is not in Southern England. And before my distant ancestor moved here after the Civil War he lived in Cheshire.
quote:
asserting your unearned privilege to have a say in other people's decisions.
Which decisions would they be, then?
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Just because English nationalism is ethnic in nature doesn't mean Scottish nationalism is ethnic in nature as well.
Keep telling yourself that. You'll sleep better.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Just because English nationalism is ethnic in nature doesn't mean Scottish nationalism is ethnic in nature as well.
Keep telling yourself that. You'll sleep better.
Well, what has been the attitude of immigrant and minority groups living in Scotland to independence and Scottish nationalism generally? That might provide some indication about how genuinely inclusive it is.
I know that in Quebec, the nationalists make a big deal about how they're just promoting "civic nationalism", nothing to do with race or ethnicity, you understand. But the immigrants and minorities don't seem to be buying it, judging by their voting habits, both in elections and the two referendums that have been held since 1980, as well as just informal canvassing of opinion.
(The case for it being civic-nationalism is probably not helped by the small but steady stream of xenophobic comments made by leading nationalist figures on an ongoing basis.)
But I HAVE heard that things are a bit different in Scotland, that it does seem to be one place where the nationalism hasn't gotten entwined in petty racial chauvinism. Other than anecdotes, I don't really have any evidence either way about that.
[ 22. March 2017, 14:32: Message edited by: Stetson ]
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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
But I HAVE heard that things are a bit different in Scotland, that it does seem to be one place where the nationalism hasn't gotten entwined in petty racial chauvinism.
All the petty racial chauvinism in Scotland is directed against the English rather than anyone else.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
But I HAVE heard that things are a bit different in Scotland, that it does seem to be one place where the nationalism hasn't gotten entwined in petty racial chauvinism.
All the petty racial chauvinism in Scotland is directed against the English rather than anyone else.
Well, sure, and Quebec nationalists like to have a go at the local English community(aka Westmount Rhodesians). But that's probably more to do with their historical status as the top dogs, socially, economically, and politically, rather than simple hostility to outsiders. (And, in fact, old-stock Quebec anglos aren't really outsiders in any case).
For a while now, however, it has become apparent that certain elements in the nationalist camp also harbour hostility to "newer" immigrant groups. Nationalist apologists argue that this is simply because those communities tend to side with the old-stock anglos when it comes to independence and general questions of Quebec's destiny. Recent issues like religious headwear and the Charter Of Values call this defense somewhat into question.
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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
But I HAVE heard that things are a bit different in Scotland, that it does seem to be one place where the nationalism hasn't gotten entwined in petty racial chauvinism.
All the petty racial chauvinism in Scotland is directed against the English rather than anyone else.
English isn't a race. It is more tribe and tribalism is present in Scotland. Which is more a nationalistic thing.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
But I HAVE heard that things are a bit different in Scotland, that it does seem to be one place where the nationalism hasn't gotten entwined in petty racial chauvinism.
All the petty racial chauvinism in Scotland is directed against the English rather than anyone else.
Though, it's not directed towards individual English people (unless they start to act all superior to the people of Scotland) on a very large scale - though probably most of us have experienced some resentment from Scots at one time or another. As noted though, that's mostly fallout from the more serious angst - against governments (of all flavours) comprising almost entirely MPs elected to represent English seats deciding the fate of the people of Scotland as though our views and needs are less than those of the leafy suburbs of London and the vilages of the home counties (for Tories) or the industrial heartland of England (for Labour). After 300 years of unwanted rule by an English government it's not unexpected that English people get a bit of stick as well.
Though, I know many English-born people here who are fully-fledged yellow through and through Nationalists.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
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