You’re correct about the current world we live in. I went to war to help our economic trading partners whose economies affected our own. Kuwait’s occupation did not directly affect us and despite the peaceful embargo threats, Saddam continued to assert his claim of rightful conquest. It was also our military stance after the ceasefire that prevented Saddam’s expansion and the embargoes embittered the Iraqis against us when we finally decided to dethrone him. History does not only consist of WW2 as an example. the same thing has been happening for millenia. Tibet and Kosovo are polar opposites of bellicose decisions. Rome fell from internal dissension and civil war when those energies could have been better spent keeping the borders secure in offensive actions. The problems we face now have always plagued empires. We just happen to be lucky enough to be somewhat isolated an our economic empire is falling apart due to our society’s inability to adapt to the fact that the world is changing.
We have to protect that empire and a soft and weak military will cause that economic empire to be taken advantage of. You can use post war Germany and Japan as examples of weak military and economic growth but remember that their economies were heavily subsidized by our military might protecting their trade from others who would take it from them. I’ll just mention the Ukraine for a contemporary example and you can research the history, both economically and politically and come to your own conclusion.
What parts of history would have changed if the South had forced the North to
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make peace?
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Hi Cromwell. I am out of my depth here. Which of North and South do you see as more isolationist? I think I understand you are saying US would/might have stayed out of Europe in 1917.
Wilson (a Virginian)took you in, was it his decision alone? I know nothing of his cabinet.
Would a post civil war South have wanted to go back in to Mexico too?
Where are you from anyway? I was born in Florence, Italy, but my English mother brought me back to the south of England before I was one. Started reading about your civil war 20 years ago and like nothing more than dredging up information. -
probably would have fought again every 20 years or so until the atomic age
then cold warwith a third of the population enslaved and the north or usa smuggling weapons encouraging revolt etc…
could have gotten real uglya little off topic but has anyone read Edward Porter Alexander’s “Fighting for the Confederacy” ?
written a couple decades after the war,but I thought it to be a excellent read -
I cannot see how you would not have become one nation again.
We all have two halves: Italy and England have a poorer and a richer half with two differing cultures. -
Linclon himself said slavery would have died out in the 1890’s. I’m not so sure. I see slavery continuing.
Economicly the South would have little need for salves by the 1890, the industrial/ agricultural revolution changed the south in the 1890’s. Machines can do much more work than slaves.
For Social and cultural reasons that slavery may have survived into the 1890. Freeing a large population of slaves with the right to freedoms of speech, bearing arms.etc for the South was difficult and fearful.
Jefferson said it best by: “we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.”
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Thanks again Cromwell. Enjoyed your responses.
For me The most pertinent fact about the English Civil War was how few people were involved and how few were casualties. Compared to yours it seems like a stroll in the park. I think that is why I stopped reading about it and read more about yours. Most of the battles were fought in the Midlands and probably half of the population tried to get on with their lives. It does not seem that the two sides were so clearly cut. I do see it as an aside to the great and disruptive religious wars of the continent that threatened, but never erupted over here. I am sure you are aware there were rarely more than 20000 men on each side at the battles and that the outcome of them, like yours, was renewed fighting and no significant change. Ultimately, it was parliament’srecognising the need to change the army and its leadership and its ability to create funds, combined with the King’ s inability to recruit infantry and arm them.
The King asking for Scottish aid did not help his cause either. (Distrust of our Northern neighbours has always run deep for the English.) -
If the casualties really are estimated that high, I can only surmise the majority are from Cromwell’s Irish war. I believe it is as close as we got to genocide on these Islands.
I was talking of the first Civil War. The majority of English did not understand the reasons for conflict and wanted no part in it. As I said the war centred on the Midlands( Charles’ base was Oxford) and his recruiting grounds in the West. I wonder if that figure of 1 in 4 included the Clubmen, out to protect their own lands and villages from both sides. Whoever won mattered little; taxes were the same whoever held Parliament.
On Charles: he was an opportunist and yes he loved his catholic, mistrusted wife. She was French and French monarchy was absolute. Her ideas of divine right and not challenging the King was how Charles was brought up, but was always going to be impossible to reconcile with compromise, which is only what Parliament first wanted.
Despite this, I too, like the man. -
Not seen any Civil War battlefields. My wife and I love castles and that is where we go when we want a day out.
Henry, what an egotistical messed up man. He was certainly a catholic at heart, probably died believing he was one. It was only for his legacy he did most of what he did. And wow is he remembered! His children were as stubborn as he. A great what if of history: had his as bigoted, uncompromising son lived, would the Spanish have tried and succeeded in their holy crusade 40 years earlier?
I won’t dwell on it. -
This discussion reminds me of the scene in the 1993 film Gettysburg in which General Longstreet is talking with Colonel Fremantle about the English Civil War.
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I’ll take that as a compliment: have always wanted to be a stuffy old English officer.
I prefer the scene in which Pickett is talking to his brigadiers and shows himself up as the least educated. (or does Jim Kemper?)
Was sorry they never made the third film. -
As I recall from the movie, when Longstreet says to him, "You people had your own civil war, didn’t you?’ Fremantle opens his reponse with a breezy, “Oh, that.” Funny line, nicely delivered by the actor.
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