What People Think I Do: Historian Edition

In a few previous posts, I talked a lot about the work that historians do and what I appreciate about studying history. However, while historians all take their work seriously, I don't believe it's the same for themselves personally (except for a few terrible people). With that attitude in mind, for this post I thought I'd do my best to qualify a classic meme's perception of historians:

• What my friends think I do
• This image is accurate enough. From the feedback I get from my friends, being a history major/historian doesn't capture the imagination quite as much as a lot of other fields of work. It should be noted though that when I'm researching or writing I often have multiple tabs YouTube videos ready to play at a moment's notice for no reason other than my own entertainment. Oh, I have sources too!

• What my mom thinks I do
• My mom was an English major, and being cooped up in a library is an experience I shared with her. It's really impossible not to spend extensive time in a library even in the digital age, especially for students, given the necessity for primary sources and the fact that libraries are free. For my last research paper on Thomas More, I needed at least 7 books published early in the last century, which required much searching, begging librarians for help, and sifting through mountains of paper. You will become trapped in a dark recess of the library forever if you're not careful.

• What society thinks I do
• Along with being jobless and usually ignored, re-enacting battles seems pretty accurate for the public's perception of historians. However, make no mistake: those guys are passionate about what they do. They have to provide their own equipment, donate tons of their spare time to learn how to "fight," and they know the details of the battle, the time, and the actual person they're playing like the back of their hand. Their hobby helps make sure society doesn't forget these battles and their consequences. Also, according to my friend who's a Revolutionary War re-enactor, they're great at partying too. Make no mistake though,  some re-enactors can take it a bit too seriously, or worse, do it for the wrong reasons altogether. 

• What the university thinks I do
• This is definitely true, but if any of my history classes had as many people as there are in this picture, we would have a lot more classes to choose from, not to mention more clout with the Dean. 

• What I think I do
• I do certainly hope that if you read my blog, or God forbid actually know me personally that I help you learn a bit more about history and its importance. Personally, I do feel  that I'm almost like an architect walking through a city whenever I watch the news or learn about a particular period––I know (generally) how it all got here. 

• What I actually do
• History-related or not, at any given time in my room at home or my dorm, this is what it looks like. Enough said. 

My Top Four Favorite Historical Subjects

In my first post on this site, I explained that when it comes to studying history and learning from it, it's often the particular era's connection to the present that interests me the most. However, that's not to say I don't find history in of itself fascinating. If it wasn't for that, this blog wouldn't exist. So I thought today I would share my four favorite historical subjects/periods to study.

These particular histories strike a chord with me. They're so rich in content and so magnificently detailed that anyone could spend several lifetimes studying each period alone. Some of these capture my imagination so vividly that I can almost imagine I'm there. Some are so distant and seemingly so alien that it's almost hard to believe it took place on the same planet. However, in both cases, I feel the drive to discover and make connections between the past and the present more than ever.

1. The Victorian Era (UK) and The Gilded Age (US)                                                      
   These are fairly recent interests of mine, and despite taking place in different countries the overlap is so apparent  that I decided to include it as one. Though this usually isn't the case for me, what entices me most about these periods are the social histories. In fact, especially in the United States, the political history at this time is one of my least-favorites to study, largely due to a long string of mediocre presidents. However, with industrialization and the scientific revolution in full swing, the massive changes to life at that time in nearly every way is nothing short of remarkable. Soaring skyscrapers were matched by skyrocketing economic inequality, producing social movements that have until very recently been all but forgotten. Though I'm fairly new to the game, one of the best books to capture this new life of wondrous and horrifying possibilities is the Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson. It's a vivid snapshot of life at that time, with the Chicago World's Fair taking off at the same time as the first serial killer in American history claims his first victims. The same can be said for the Victorian era and its ubiquitous duality, prudishness in the front and madness in the back. Jekyll & Hyde and the Picture of Dorian Gray are two of my favorite books, and give me insight into an era that fascinates me but I would never want to live in!                                                        
2. Classical Civilizations
   
   This one casts a wide net, and I could never hope to get a firm grasp on it all. However, nearly every time I learn something, it changes my view of that civilization. This is the period from about 500 BCE to 500CE. Now, that does cover from the early days of the Roman Republic through to its fall, but I include the Chinese Han Dynasty there too. When I was in high school, my teacher made an extra effort to talk about the Han as much, maybe even more so than he did of Rome, to emphasize how important yet overlooked it was to history. My friend has extensive knowledge of this period, and he often tells me facts of Roman traffic jams and Han attempts at domesticating horses and I'm just astounded. These eras are almost an ocean of knowledge unto themselves.                                                  
3. The American Civil War
   
   How could I not be into this era? It's one of the few aspects of American history that even the most ignorant citizen knows is important. This is because the Second American Revolution is still right at our side. Just turn on the news and for any issue that pertains to citizenship, economic and social divides, war powers, or anything related to the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, each has echoes of the Civil War. It's not just its-more-than-usual relevance that captures me though. Whether it's the speeches and proclamations for or against slavery and the war, the incredibly idiotic or brilliant decisions on the battlefield, the political cage matches between politicians, or the fact that so many men-- and a few women-- gave their lives for a better country or a worse one still affects me very deeply. We owe an incredible debt to Abraham Lincoln. Had it not been for him and his incredible skill, courage, love, and humor, we could have lost it all.                                                   
4.  The Second World War
   
   I imagine this one is also hardly a surprise, given it's the biggest and by-far deadliest conflict in human history. You can thank Call of Duty for capturing my imagination and later my zeal for wholehearted study of WWII. The scope and depth of the war, in almost every facet imaginable, from military to political to technological to human stories is so vast that you could very well make new books, movies, shows, plays and video games from it over and over and never lose interest.
   
   I believe, however, that there's another reason that the war continues live in so much of the world's consciousness. Though it's hardly as clear-cut as most people make it out, there's really no denying it: It was a "Good War." Great evil was stopped. Great good came from it. It was a war worth fighting unlike few others. Humanity both then and now has been measured by this conflict, and proved capable both of horrifying evil and magnificent good. And the good won.
   
   Though I would never, ever wish for another war even close to its magnitude, at a time when it seems like there's so much senseless and unnecessary fighting, sometimes it's difficult to not be nostalgic for that clear choice between good and evil. Then I remember what led to that choice even being possible, and how much suffering resulted from it. That war was fought so that no other of its kind could ever happen again. We must continue to make sure of that.

The Only History Book You'll Ever Need to Read

If I was only ever to do one review of anything for this blog, it would be for The Great Big Book of Horrible Things, by Matthew White. If you seem unsettled, or skeptical with the title, don't; I really don’t think anything else I would potentially recommend would surpass or even equal the impact that this book would have on you, as it did for me when it was first bought for me as a throwaway Christmas present five years ago.

Neither a macabre coffee table book nor an impossibly dense collection of stats, this book is essentially an editorialized reference book. Now that may seem like a contradiction, and in most cases it would be, along with being not all that interesting. But White, a self-described “numbers freak” with a gift for historical writing masterfully weaves bold classifications with sober analysis and goofy commentary to create an utterly unique work, one that almost seems unrecognizable from others. White's goal in this book is to bring the best justice he can to the countless of overshadowed or altogether forgotten victims in historical killings, and those efforts shine bright. Horrible Things is credited by distinguished psychologist Steven Pinker, who provides the foreword, as the "the most comprehensive, disinterested and statistically nuanced estimates available." Ever since I’ve read it, I’ve tried to emulate White’s approach and style and I’ve proudly cited it multiple times in my own reports.

In assessing history's deadliest man-made events, White, who has no formal training in history or statistics, approaches the subject with a scientific method. He rejects consensuses about the death toll of a given event, instead going straight back to primary and secondary sources. He throws out the highest and lowest numbers and plugs in the median. How does he get these sources, you ask? "The short answer is money," White replies. "Even if a general is reluctant to tell the newspapers how many men he lost in a bungled offensive, he still has to tell the accountants to drop 4,000 men from the payroll... Head counts (and by extension, body counts) are not just an academic exercise; they have been an important part of government financing for centuries." The length of each chapter is proportional to the deadliness of the event.

However, it's not the numbers that are of the most interest in this book, even if it is the selling point. It's how White incorporates them into his writing. Each chapter is categorized rather surprisingly, and loaded with unexpected, juicy terms of White's invention, like 'atrocitology,' 'multicides,' and 'hemoclysm' that capture the reader's imagination much more than dry terms like 'genocide.' His commentary captures the ironies, tragedies, and downright absurdities of history. Here are some examples, starting with his chapter on Timur:

TIMUR

Death toll: 17 million
Rank: 9
Type: world conqueror
Broad dividing line: Timur vs. everyone he could get to
Location: central Asia, the eye of the hurricane being Samarkand
Who usually gets the most blame: Rimur; also called Tamburlaine (old version) or Tamerlane (newer version) from his insulting nickname, Timur Lenk ("the Lame")
Another damn: Mongol invasion

Here's an example of White describing Saladin In his Crusades chapter (3 million deaths):

In reality, Saladin's sense of honor was flexible... []Two leading crusaders were brought to him in chains. He fed the first one, explaining that the rules of hospitality now forbade him from killing a prisoner who had been given food and drink by his captor. Another prisoner... lunged for a cup of wine and downed it before anyone could stop him. [He] thought, Aha! I'm safe! But Saladin killed him anyway because no one likes a smartass.

White understands, however, the issues and contention that really do affect our modern life and knows when to be serious, not tolerating some minority opinions. Believe it or not, there's a sizable minority of people who believe that the Western democracies fought on the wrong side of WWII (along with the faction that denies the Holocaust). White responds with this: 

In this case, revisionists seem to forget the world went to war against Hitler because he was dangerous, not because he was evil. This is an important distinction in international relations. You can do whatever you want inside your own country, but when you start invading your neighbors, the rest of the world gets jumpy. No matter how brutal Stalin may have been to his own people, he was content to stay inside the borders of the Soviet Union. By the time Stalin began grabbing small countries for himself, the West was already committed to war with Hitler. The choice wasn't between fighting Hitler or Stalin. The choice was to fight Hitler or both of them.

Despite his unorthodox form and his use of black humor, it’s understandable to think that reading White’s book about humanity’s worst achievements might get a little depressing after a while. However, with each chapter I absorbed, I got steadily more excited until I felt downright enlightened by the end. This is because what happens as you travel across time and the world in White’s book is that you feel a remarkable sense of discovery. Because of White’s information, style, and arguments, you really do feel that you understand not just history but humanity so much better. White passes the historian’s ultimate test with flying colors and imprints it on the reader: He effectively makes history relevant to the reader, and uses it to better understand our present and prepare for the future. It worked for me and it will surely work for you. 

For more on Matthew White visit his website (don't be fooled, it deliberately looks old-school) or the New York Times review of Horrible Things.

To check out the book itself, click here. 

Was the US Getting Involved in the Korean War Worth It?

A friend of mine, who is from China, already seems to have a lifetime full of stories. One she doesn’t consider especially noteworthy—but I certainly do—is her trek to the Chinese-North Korean border.

“It’s really boring,” she says dismissively, “there’s nothing there and it takes hours of hiking to get to it.”

Considering that the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) of North Korea and South Korea is one of the most militarized, increasingly dangerous borders in the entire world, maybe you can understand my amazement at how the situation seems completely different a few hundred miles north.

Though recently overshadowed by domestic political crisis and Islamic State-related attacks, the threat posed by North Korea, steadily growing with each provocation and nuclear missile test should arguably be taken more seriously than any other global security threat. With events like these, it got me thinking: was the Korean War worth fighting if it only led to this increasingly unstable stand off? Was too little, or too much for that matter done all those years ago? 

For this piece, I won’t give the same amount of context I usually give for a historical event. Rather, I’ll try to talk solely about American involvement in the war and assess its gains and losses, and have it serve as a potential introduction for another post in the future.

The Korean War, succeeding the Second World War and preceding the Vietnam War for American forces, is often forgotten due to being sandwiched between these greater conflicts. While WWII is perennially considered a, ‘good’ war, and Vietnam a ‘bad’ one, which side does the Korean War fall on, if any?

The first major post-WWII conflict of the Cold War was never intended to take place in Asia, but rather in Europe. Neither the Americans nor the Soviet Union wanted to fight there, even though they were each backing their own puppets in the region, north and south, respectively. Kim Il-Sung however, founder of the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea following the Japanese surrender, and installed by the Soviets, decided to take his chances and reclaim the southern Korean peninsula. The South was lightly defended, and its capital, Seoul, was captured in a matter of days. It was expected that the rest of the country would soon follow. However, President Harry Truman shocked the world, and much of America for that matter, by throwing US troops stationed in Japan into the fray and stating his determination to protect the South.

Truman’s rationale for this was that communism simply could not be allowed expand from where it already existed, otherwise one country after another would fall under the communist influence. US commitment sent a clear message to the Soviets in particular that hostile military takeovers of free (and "free") countries would not be tolerated. However, as we'll see later on, the US-led forces in Korea soon overplayed their hand.

So far though, American forces weren’t doing much protecting. For the first time in American military history, the Americans were forced to retreat on a large scale in the face of overwhelming North Korean numbers. With their backs to the wall in the southeast corner of Korea, Pusan, the odds didn’t look good. Then General Douglass MacArthur, hero of the Pacific in WWII launched an amphibious invasion behind the North Korean lines at the port island of Inchon. With the North Koreans cut off, within a few months American-led forces recaptured Seoul and pushed them back to their border.

The war could have ended there. However, MacArthur, sensing blood in the water, wanted to invade North Korea and finish the job, knocking the communists out of North Korea. Truman was uneasy. Defending the South from communist aggression was one thing, but driving through the North would alter the pre-war communist boundaries and status quo of Asia. He was worried China might perceive such a move as a threat. However, Secretary of State Dean G. Acheson and MacArthur advised Truman that China, led by Chairman Mao Zedong, was too concerned with building their own nascent People’s Republic and consolidating their power. An intervention would not be in their interests. With this advice, Truman gave MacArthur approval, and within another few months, the North Korean forces were driven back to their northern border along the Yalu River. Victory was within reach.

However, Mao and the Chinese Politburo saw the invasion as a direct threat. A US base along its border could mean they themselves could be invaded in the near future. As a result, the war was of vital interest into the Chinese. In one of the more understandable things Mao has ever done, without any warning he quietly flooded North Korea with Chinese troops, taking American forces by surprise. Once again half of Korea was rolled over by an invading force, but the American-led forces made a stand at the 38^th parallel. After that, there’s not much to say about the war. Over two years, little change came to the stalemate that formed there. The key point however is how the war ended. What happened was simply an end to the fighting was negotiated (the sticking point for a long time were prisoners of war returns for both sides) and reluctantly agreed upon. No ‘armistice’ or peace treaty was signed. That means we, along with South Korea, are still technically at war with North Korea, 64 years later.

So where does that leave us today? In the decades following the war, for a while the North Korean GDP per capita was larger than the South’s. However, in the late 70s and early 80s, the South Korean economy took off and its hard-right government liberalized. Today, South Korea is an incredible success story of a country with few natural resources. It has one of the largest GDPs in the world, a flourishing democracy, has gifted the world with numerous products and is an excellent global citizen. North Korea, by contrast, has doubled and tripled down on its tyrannical rule, especially after losing its strongest backer with the fall of the Berlin Wall. North Korea is one of the poorest, most illiberal places to live and its government has grown increasingly erratic, desperate even, and has grown increasingly dangerous. It is a “loose-cannon” in every sense of the phrase, aggressive enough to provoke the world but risking even full-scale nuclear war if it perceives any outside response as a threat. It believes disarmament invites annihilation, or reunification, which for them without Kim Jong Un leading would be even worse. There are certainly options available for disarmament—consistent sanctions and cooperation with China to use their leverage on the North is probably the best option. However, that policy needs to be fundamentally overhauled, otherwise it risks falling apart.

So did the 35,000 American troops killed in the war and the thousands of others who fought in it do so for a good cause? I believe so. Not only did their actions save South Korea, a country that bloomed into an invaluable gift to the world that otherwise would have made the Northern regime even stronger, their actions likely saved more. Under Truman’s “Containment” doctrine of communist countries, those troops sent a clear message to communist countries that they would not allow invasions to go unopposed. Such an action in Korea likely prevented one occurring in Europe, which would have involved the Soviet Union and would have risked all-out nuclear war. These men indeed gave their lives for good.

However, the work they were thrown into is undone. War cannot be allowed on the Korean peninsula again. It carries grave risks for the region and possibly the world. I don’t think most people understand that, something that could have dire consequences maybe sooner than later.