invasion

Why War is Obsolete

 

by Granville Angell

Zaineb Alani: War Poems

Read more of Zaineb Alani's works (click here for information and purchase)

Life After The Netherlands Surrendered to the Germans

The first couple of weeks into the German invasion, nothing noticeably changed. Although they knew of the social and economic hardships in Nazi Germany, Dutch Jews were still convinced that such things could never happen in Holland. But, things started changing slowly. Small groups of national socialists, mostly uneducated and unemployed thugs, started harassing Jews in movie theaters, stores, and restaurants.

Alia Muhammad Baker: The Librarian of Basra

The Cover from The Librarian of Basra

Alia Muhammad Baker, the chief librarian of Al Basrah Central Library; the Basra, Iraq public library; worked hard to make her library a community gathering place and resource. She was proud of her country's history and the priceless heritage provided by the books in her library. As a child she was impressed and horrified by the story of the burning of Baghdad's Nizamiyah library. When the invasion of Iraq started in early 2003, she worried about the safety of her library's collection. She asked the Iraqi officials for permission to move the books to a safer location and was denied.

When government offices moved into the library and an anti-aircraft gun was placed on the roof, Mrs. Baker started smuggling as many books as her car would hold home every evening. When the British invaded Basra, the government employees left and the library furnishings were looted. Mrs. Baker convinced the owner of the restaurant next door to the library for help, and soon neighbors pitched in to help passing books over the wall to safe storage in the restaurant's dining room. The library was burned down before all the books could be saved, but due to Mrs. Baker's efforts, 30,000 books were saved. Once things calmed down in Basra, Mrs. Baker and her husband rented a truck and distributed the books among library employees, friends, and of course, their own home. The library was rebuilt and reopened in 2004 and Mrs. Baker was reinstated as chief librarian.

Source: Alia Muhammad Baker: Chief Librarian of Al Basrah (Iraq) Central Library, Cultural Heroine by Rachel Schaus, BellaOnline's Middle Eastern Culture editor: http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art27329.asp

 

How to Use Dangerous Memories

 

This internet book, like the printed version, is written in a way different from the usual history text.  It is a source book for reading primary documents, comments on history, and historical summaries related to the colonization and conquering of the Americas.  The authors have worked to provide some of the vision and voices of this history which are not usually seen or heard in mainstream education currucula.

 

Division of Chapters

Chapters One and Two

The first two chapters of Dangerous Memories present overviews of the European invasion and the subsequent five hundred years of resistance.  Each of these two chapters contain two "readings" of this history.  One reading (in bold print) presents an historical context for each subtopic.  The other reading (in regular and when directly quoting a source, in italics) presents some of the "missing pages" of history, the voices and commentaries not usually included in texts from which we have learned the history of the Americas.  They support, dramatize, explicate, and extend the historical context, leading the reader to possibilities for further research.

Material in italics is directly quoted from the source listed at the end of each passage.  The author's name, the title (occasionally in a shortened form), and the page number are given for easy reference.  Citations within the historical context follow the standard form: author's last name and page number.  Full bibliographic informations appears at the end of the book.

Chapter Three

The last chapter addresses, in the form of two essays, the war against culture and resistance to that sustained attack.  The chapter raises strategic questions about where we go from here.  Each of these essays is also accompanied by selected readings, which present voices and viewpoints of the colonized, again those not usually heard or seen.

 

Suggestions for Reading

History can be read in many ways.  History books typically contain a single line of text telling a story in chronological order, with an occasional interruption of inserts. This book provides several points of entry, and there are numerous ways of reading it.  Some readers will choose to go through a short section of the "historical context" (bold print) and then go back to read the related "missing pages" (regular print).  There is no one correct way, although it may be helpful to get an overview of the period by reading the historical context first.  It is hoped that reading one text will inspire the reader to read the accompanying text.  We also hope readers will be interested enough to consult the sources we've used.

 

Teaching Strategies

Reflective questions and activities, including role plays, debates, writing assignments, simulations, timelines, and brainstorming, may help readers connect their own lives and experience with new information.  These activities appear before and at the end of each of the chapters.

 

Introduction

When its little paper houses are burned, memory finds refugee in mouths that sing the glories of men and of gods, songs that stay on from people to people and in bodies that dance to the sound of hollow trunks, tortoise shells, and reed flutes.

Eduardo Galeano, Memory of Fire: Genesis 137

 

The Europeans who came to the Western Hemisphere in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries understood the power of memories.  The people they conquered, in many cases without much opposition, remembered a different time and a different culture, developed over many centuries, and their memories gave them strength.  Some of the existing societies had, in addition to highly refined oral traditions, systems of writing and written documents.  In an attempt to counteract the danger of powerful memories among the Mayas, the Spaniards burned their books.  Eduardo Galeano suggests what the book burning might have meant to those who witnessed it.

Fray Diego de Landa throws into the flames, one after the other, the books of the Mayas.

The inquisitor curses Satan, and the fire crackles and devours.  Around the incinerator, heretics howl with their heads down.  Hung by the feet, flayed with whips, Indians are doused with boiling wax as the fire flares up and the books snaps, as if complaining.

Tonight, eight centuries of Mayan literature turn to ashes.  On these long sheets of bark paper, sings and images spoke: They told of work done and days spent, of the dreams and the wars of a people born before Christ.  With hog-bristle brushes, the knowers of things had painted these illuniminated, illuminating books so that the grandchildren's grandchildren would not be blind, should know how to see themselves and see the history of their folk, so they should know the movements of the stars, the frequency of eclipses and the prophecies of the gods and so they could call for rains and good corn harvests.

In the center, the inquisitor burns the books.  Around the huge bonfire, he chastises the readers.  Meanwhile the authors, artist-priests dead years or centuries ago, drink chocolate in the fresh shade of the first tree of the world.  They are at peace, because they died knowing that memory cannot be burned.  Will not what they painted be sung and danced through the times of the times?

Attempts to burn memory are always futile.  The memory of a people is carried in song and story, as inspiration and understanding of a better past, as hope for a better future.

However, what Marilyn James refers to as the "white historical perspective" has had a powerfully negative effect.  The history of the last five hundred years in the Americas is for most of us an unknown story.  Although we may have studied American history on numerous occasions through elementary, secondary, and post-secondary levels of schooling, we know little of the real story of the first Americans and of the multitudes who have been struggling for five hundred years to preserve their cultures, have their voices heard, and determine their own destinies.  The American  history we have heard has been told basically from one perspective, that of the invaders and the conquerors.  The history we do not know is the story of those who  have been colonized and disenfranchised.  Without this perspective we cannot understand or analyze with accuracy or objectivity the reality of America today.

Dangerous Memories is meant to challenge our memory of the last five hundred years of history in the Americas, to reassess the origins of the societies that developed in the Western Hemisphere, to question fundamental assumptions about the disenfranchised, to reread history with a more critical eye, to critique our own understanding of that history.  It is meant to make us reconsider our funamental viewpoints and assertions about who we have been and who we are now as nations and people.

Writing history is the art of making choices; it requires choosing perspectives and choosing sides.  In this book we have tried to present writings that are not well known, to encourage the reader to investigate resources that are certainly available but not widely publicized, with the hope that they will be jolted into an appreciation of the narrowness of commonly held historical perspectives.  We have been selective in the voices and events included, choosing to give voice to the marginalized, those who refused to give in or give up in the face of overwhelming firepower.  We have chosen to present what was accidentally lost or purposely suppressed.

Some may call this approach one-sided and therefore not objective.  Our purpose is not to be objective; our purpose is to try to be honest. The critical question for historians is not "Is your material objective?" but rather "Is it true?"  Those who speak from the white European perspective often use the term "objectivity" or the goal of "presenting both sides" as ways ot cover their own biases.  To present Columbus's voyage to the Western Hemisphere as an "encounter between two cultures" is not objective; it is simply wrong.  What most of us have received in terms of history has been one-sided.  What we present here is indeed the other side, the side of the persecuted and the rebels.  We do so without apology.  As they approach this material, readers should ask the same questions that should be asked of traditional histories: "Is this presentation true to the historical record"  Whose interests does this history serve?  What is the purpose of its writing?"

Ultimately, the study of the past should enable us to see the present more clearly.  The study of the Americas' past should lead to an understanding of present-day realities and injustices.  Further more, hearing the voices and stories of the courageous, reclaiming dangerous memories, should empower us to take hold courageously of our own responsibility to work together to frame a future which is truly characterized by justice for all the peoples of the Americas.

 

 

Teaching Strategies

Post-reading Strategies

 

Siege of Medieval Caste

The End of the World: Questions for Discussion

  • How would you describe everyday life in Europe and/or Spain after reading the chapter?  How does this image agree or contrast with the image you had of Columbus’s time before your reading?
  • Fifteen-century Spain had a heavy emphasis on military advancements.  How does that emphasis compare with current priorities in the United States?

 

Getting Inside the Minds of the Colonizers: Cartooning

Draw a cartoon which presents in “imagination bubbles” the mindsets of the merchant and ruling classes of Europe which prepared them for a “conquest” over the people they were about to encounter across the Atlantic.  Draw a contrasting cartoon which sho9ws the mind-sets of other groups of people who also sailed the Atlantic and Pacific, landed on the coasts of the Americas, and did not proceed to conquer its inhabitants.

 

The First to Land or the First to Conquer?:  A Role-Play

(Refer to the requerimento information in the chapter and the section on European views of the natural world.)

Divide into three groups.  The first group represents a part of the world with the following characteristics:

  • Government with a high degree of participation of the people
  • Equitable distribution o f land, goods, and benefits
  • Development of sophisticated navigation techniques
  • Widespread curiosity and interest in exploration
  • No expansionist warfare over neighboring populations

The second group represents another part of the world, which has:

  • An autocratic pattern of government, with power and goods in the hands of a few
  • Sophisticated navigation techniques and also highly advanced weapons
  • A long history of engagement in military battles for power and territory

The third group represents the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean.

The first two groups take turns “landing” in the Americas, pretending to be sailors from the vessels which have sailed long distances and are now meeting natives for the first time. 

  • How do the sailors talk with the natives?
  • What are their goals?
  • What arrangements do they make, out of what worldviews and assumptions?
  • How are the two experiences different?

 

Charting Key Connections

Several “isms” are mentioned in this chapter as influential ideas and movements at the time of Columbus.  On a large piece of paper write these terms, spacing them all over the page.  In a discussion group draw lines which connect terms and discuss any connections you can make between those “isms.”  Write notes on each “connecting” line which summarize your thoughts on how these terms are connected.

Inquisition

Nationalism

Rationalism

Catholicism

Humanism

Capitalism

Feudalism

Materialism

Judaism

Islam

Militarism

 

 

 

 

 

 

            Inquisition                                                                                                          Islam

 

                                Catholicism

 

                                                                                                                Militarism

 

Impact of the “isms”

Sketch a map of Europe and one of the Western Hemisphere.  Fill in the “isms’ listed above on the European map and draw lines to the Western Hemisphere showing transference of these notions beginning with the arrival of Columbus and the subsequent Spanish conquest.  Again write notes on each “connecting” line which summarize your thoughts on how these ideas were key factors in the conquest of the indigenous people on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

 

Expansionism and Militarism

Study the maps below and discuss the questions presented here:

  • What group controlled the major portion of the Iberian Peninsula in the tenth century?  How do you know?
  • By the end of the eleventh century what had happened to the political control of the Iberian Peninsula?  From y our reading of this section, explain what had transpired in the politics of Spain.
  • Identify the political powers which controlled the peninsula at the time of Columbus’s first voyage.  Describe the importance of the reconquest of Granada for Spain.

Explain why Portugal’s position was better suited for Atlantic conquest and why Columbus’s journey would be perceived by the world as one of conquest and colonization rather than exploration.

 

The First Crusade, 1096-1099

 


Iberian Peninsula, 10th century

 

Iberian Peninsula at the time of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella

 

 

Capitalism and Conquest

Beginnings of Capitalism

Medieval craftsmen 

What began as a new way to organize economic interaction, referred to as capitalism or mercantilism, had a profound impact on the next several centuries.

Having brought impoverishment to the domestic peasantry, especially in England, the land-owners and budding manufacturers were stimulated to promote overseas conquest and colonization.  With their control of the state they could carry on such commercial activities under the guise of legality, international law and the law of states and conquest.

First the Spanish and Portuguese, and then the British, turned towards America, and the British annihilated whole societies in North America, in both cases rearranging the survivors under their control.  The Dutch and French also penetrated North America and the Caribbean with the same motives, goals and results.

The advent of capitalist production brought fundamental changes in the structure of European society, and through colonialism, affected the entire world.  Two new classes appeared wherever capitalism intervened: owners of the means of production, and dispossessed persons who were forced to sell their labor cheaply to those owners.

For the first time in human history, the majority of the people depended for their livelihood on a small minority, a phenomenon which became associated with colonialism worldwide.

Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, Indians of the Americas, 10

http://www.worldrevolution.org.uk/oldsite/pages/ideas_pages/birthofcapitalism.html


Dangerous Voyages

 

The legend of sailors beaching their ships on the back of a whale in the mistaken belief that they had found land was a popular one throughout the Middle Ages. 

Highly motivated men dared to undertake dangerous voyages to strange lands, willing to risk their lives on the high seas on perilous journeys, traveling farther than anyone had every ventured before.  A combination of circumstances in fifteenth-century Spain provided the incentives and the context: the violence, poverty, and disease common in the lives of the people; the rise of nationalism out of the hierarchical feudal system with  its acceptance of the domination of one class over another; an impoverished nobility yearning for wealth; a recognition of the importance of material wealth and an awareness that other nations were getting it through commerce; and an insistence on the universality of the Christian culture, with a tradition of waging battles against heretics and a missionary spirit to “save the world.”

http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/history/middleages/trade.html

 

New Philosophies

Nature as the Enemy 

Medieval painting of a garden

The attitude toward nature of Europeans was very unusual.

This separation from the natural world, this estrangement from the realm of the wild, I think, exists in no other complex culture on earth.  In its attitude to the wilderness, a heightening of its deep-seated antipathy to nature in general, European culture created a frightening distance between the human and the natural, between the deep silent rhythms  of the body, between the elemental eternal workings of the cosmos and the physical and psychological means of perception, by which we can come to understand it and our place within it.

To have regarded the wild as sacred, as do many other cultures around the world, would have been almost inconceivable in medieval  Europe—and, if conceived, as some of those called witches found out, certainly heretical and punishable by the Inquisition.

Kirkpatrick Sale, The Conquest of Paradise, 78-79

 

New Philosophies


To the violence and terror of the day, humanism provided answers.   Humanists turned to the classics of antiquity, translating and disseminating ideas from Greek and Latin authors to help upper-class citizens find a sense of direction in their lives.

According to humanist philosophy, man is the crown of God’s creation, constantly seeking dominion over the world, never satisfied as long as there are lands to conquer.  Morality took the form of a secular pragmatism: what’s important is what works in the here and now.

Humanism also fit into the prevailing class system.  Although the term “man” was used to mean “human,” it also had strong connotations of “male human,” especially male human of the upper class, the educated, wealthy, urban man of position.

Along with the glorification of the human went a dismissal and fear of nature.  Fairy tales and poetry portrayed mountains, forests, jungles, and deserts as terrifying, populated with both real and mythical beasts.  Anything wild was feared; man’s duty was to tame the wilderness, to bring nature under his control.  The early explorers shared with their culture a lack of appreciation of the beauties of the lands they were seeing for the first time; the notion that humans might live in harmony with nature was not a familiar one.

The idea of the Wild Man, a terrifying mythical being who lived in the hills and mountains, frightened both children and adults.  In pictures and stories he was portrayed as naked, covered with hair, usually wielding a club, living like a wild beast and ready to do damage to more “civilized” Europeans.  The concept of the Savage Beast later had disastrous consequences for the innocent natives who welcomed Columbus.

Another response to the chaos of the Middle Ages was rationalism, the philosophy that forms the basis for present-day scientific methodology.  Gradually, over many decades, old worldviews were replaced.  Centuries-old beliefs in gods and spirits that inhabited the elements of nature gave way to scientific proof that all combinations of chemical and mechanical properties could be measured and subjected to analysis, prediction, and manipulation.

Scholars could point to new technological advances such as the printing press to bolster their claims for the validity and significance of rationalism.  Printing extended knowledge to a wider audience than ever before.  With the development of movable type in the 1440s and the availability of good, cheap paper, came a well-established printing industry by the 1470s.  In a fifty-year period, from 1454 to 1504, twenty million books were printed in at least forty thousand separate editions.  One of the most successful early books was the log of Columbus’s first voyage, translated into four languages and printed in nineteen editions.

A natural adjunct of humanism and rationalism was materialism, the celebration of objects of the “real” world.  Possession of material wealth became a primary goal of life and began to replace other values long honored because of ethical and religious considerations.  Coveting goods was gradually accepted as tolerable human behavior, not criticized as sinful or immoral, and slowly a new form of economic interaction developed: capitalism.  The church accompanied the shift in attitude.  The Bible enjoins believers to promote the general welfare and common good of God’s “corporate” world.  Those words were simply applied to the new definition of God’s world as the civil society in which individuals resided.

Under capitalism, morality shifted.  The purposes, needs, and limits of human beings no longer had a restraining influence upon industry; rather, the accumulation of money and power became the ultimate end for which human beings worked.

http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/3b.htm

 

The Economics of Wool

The Economics of Wool

 

The year 1492 marked a watershed for Spain.  The conquest of Granada and the expulsion of the Jews had far-reaching consequences.  Centuries of conflict came to an end; so did centuries of religious tolerance.  Spain became a nation-state characterized by centralized autocratic government, a homogeneous population, and a theology that allowed for no deviation.  It was also a nation-state badly in need of gold.

The only way of getting that universally acceptable means of payment was through the export of wool,, a crop produced in a context of extreme economic disparity and hardship.

Ferdinand and Isabella had used the long war against the Moors to strike down the political power of the noblemen, but not their economic power.  The nobility, about two percent of the population, owned ninety-five percent of the land.  The peasants were not serfs: they had the right to leave their fields.  But that freedom has been called “the freedom to die of hunger.”  There was nowhere for them to go.

The sheep of Spain, some three million of them, belonged to the Mesta, the sheep raisers’ corporation, which was really a state within the state.  Every spring, these vast flocks of sheep were driven from the high plains of Castile to the mountains of Galicia and Leon for summer grazing.  In the fall they were brought back.  They had a guaranteed free passage.  The sheep walks could not be enclosed by the peasants, who twice a year saw their land despoiled and their woods cut down by the Mesta shepherds.

The wool went to Flanders for gold, and the Mesta paid no one for the damage done to the land.  No one but the King, who got tax monies, and the noble owners, who reaped profits, received anything back.

This, then, is a very brief sketch of the economics of Spain at the end of the fifteenth century: half-starving peasants and noblemen holding enormous estates: townships humbly obedient to an aggressive enormous monarchy and Church.  The country was criss-crossed by millions of hungry sheep like a permanent plague of locusts.  Wool was the national export but the wool trade brought in diminishing returns, and the damage to the land began causing repeated famines at home.

It was no wonder that envious eyes looked at the riches form commerce, and at the easy prosperity that the trade in spices and gold had brought to Venice, and was bringing to Portugal from its trading stations along the African coast.

The “Catholic Monarchs” felt they had a role to play in the world that could neither be financed by their miserable peasants nor by the Mesta alone.  The stage was set for Columbus and the conquistadors who came after him.

Hans Koning, Columbus: His Enterprise, 17-18

http://bell.lib.umn.edu/Products/wool.html

 

 

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