The first world war.
Apr. 26th, 2004 08:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conuly
As we all know (or should), understanding what caused the first world war involves the cute acronym MAIN.
Militarism: It was like an arms race, everyone wanted a bigger and better army to beat up on their enemies and show off.
Alliances: Everyone was allied with everyone else, to the point where it was impossible to see where the lines were drawn. And these are just the treaties and agreements we know about, there were undoubtedly hundreds of secret alliances as well.
Imperialism: Everyone wanted to conquer foreign lands, and the have-nots were jealous of the haves. When all the land filled up outside of Europe...
Nationalism: This is the one they don't explain very well in school. We know that each nation was pushing at the seams of other nations, we don't get told that each state often contained more than one "nation" or people, and that all these people were experimenting with the concept of self-determinism, and finding they couldn't.
When I was in the eighth grade, we finally got to WWI, and were told that the official start of the war was the death of Archduke Ferdinand. (The Balkans were the "powder keg of Europe", a situation that never seems to change.) We were all told about how the Archduke had married somebody "unsuitable", and that her children could never inherit, though he was next in line for the Emperor, and that he made his journey through the city to show that he didn't care, and that after the first shot he didn't back down (again, to show he didn't care what people thought of his wife) and then they were killed. The assassins were Serbian nationalists, but really they were just students and not very good at their job, since most of them got caught.
This is the same thing we were told in the ninth grade (global history) and the tenth grade (European history) and the eleventh (American history). Twelfth grade was economics and participation in American government, we didn't do any history.
World history is a required course in college. We covered everything up until WWII. And now, we get primary sources to work with. And we hear something different. First off, we don't hear anything about Ferdinand's love life. Instead, we hear about the Black Hand, the organization that killed him.
They admitted they were a "terrorist organization". Those were the words they used (well, in translation). They wanted to restore Serbian nationality by any means necessary. They considered, with some justification, the Archduke to be a horrible tyrant to most people. Worse yet, he was coming to their country to stage some sort of military demonstration on the anniversary of the fall of the Kingdom of Serbia. This is like spitting in their face, almost, coming to remind them that they hadn't been an independant nation in... generations. Centuries.
This is all new. Before, all I ever heard was "they were Serbian nationalists". Nobody ever explained why they were nationalists, or that a nation could be more than just a big political body, that it could also be a smaller, submerged people, or that maybe Ferdinand wasn't just a hapless target. We only ever heard one side of the story. Essentially, we were prevented from forming our own judgments about the situation. We may as well have been outright lied to, for all the good it did.
I'm still not sure if this is just my experience, or if every school in the US has this. I certainly don't know why they decided to tell the side they gave us... it's so far in the past, you wouldn't think it would hurt to give both sides. Nowadays, we hear from the settlers and the native americans. We hear from the union and the confederacy. But for something across a damn ocean, they tell us a sappy love story.
Militarism: It was like an arms race, everyone wanted a bigger and better army to beat up on their enemies and show off.
Alliances: Everyone was allied with everyone else, to the point where it was impossible to see where the lines were drawn. And these are just the treaties and agreements we know about, there were undoubtedly hundreds of secret alliances as well.
Imperialism: Everyone wanted to conquer foreign lands, and the have-nots were jealous of the haves. When all the land filled up outside of Europe...
Nationalism: This is the one they don't explain very well in school. We know that each nation was pushing at the seams of other nations, we don't get told that each state often contained more than one "nation" or people, and that all these people were experimenting with the concept of self-determinism, and finding they couldn't.
When I was in the eighth grade, we finally got to WWI, and were told that the official start of the war was the death of Archduke Ferdinand. (The Balkans were the "powder keg of Europe", a situation that never seems to change.) We were all told about how the Archduke had married somebody "unsuitable", and that her children could never inherit, though he was next in line for the Emperor, and that he made his journey through the city to show that he didn't care, and that after the first shot he didn't back down (again, to show he didn't care what people thought of his wife) and then they were killed. The assassins were Serbian nationalists, but really they were just students and not very good at their job, since most of them got caught.
This is the same thing we were told in the ninth grade (global history) and the tenth grade (European history) and the eleventh (American history). Twelfth grade was economics and participation in American government, we didn't do any history.
World history is a required course in college. We covered everything up until WWII. And now, we get primary sources to work with. And we hear something different. First off, we don't hear anything about Ferdinand's love life. Instead, we hear about the Black Hand, the organization that killed him.
They admitted they were a "terrorist organization". Those were the words they used (well, in translation). They wanted to restore Serbian nationality by any means necessary. They considered, with some justification, the Archduke to be a horrible tyrant to most people. Worse yet, he was coming to their country to stage some sort of military demonstration on the anniversary of the fall of the Kingdom of Serbia. This is like spitting in their face, almost, coming to remind them that they hadn't been an independant nation in... generations. Centuries.
This is all new. Before, all I ever heard was "they were Serbian nationalists". Nobody ever explained why they were nationalists, or that a nation could be more than just a big political body, that it could also be a smaller, submerged people, or that maybe Ferdinand wasn't just a hapless target. We only ever heard one side of the story. Essentially, we were prevented from forming our own judgments about the situation. We may as well have been outright lied to, for all the good it did.
I'm still not sure if this is just my experience, or if every school in the US has this. I certainly don't know why they decided to tell the side they gave us... it's so far in the past, you wouldn't think it would hurt to give both sides. Nowadays, we hear from the settlers and the native americans. We hear from the union and the confederacy. But for something across a damn ocean, they tell us a sappy love story.
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no subject
Date: 2004-04-26 05:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-26 06:40 pm (UTC)*nods* Yeah, exactly. I've also never before heard anything about the Serbian nationalists other than that they were Serbian nationalists, and we never learned anything about Ferdinand except that he got shot. That was about all my history book said; I've never even heard that thing about his wife.
Note that I say history book. We never got into the 1900s before high school and ninth grade was geography. We really only studied World War I in tenth grade, in a class that was called "world history" but was really European history. It was mentioned only briefly in 11th grade US history, and Ferdinand didn't come into the picture at all; we focused only on what America did and how American was affected.
I hate the way history is taught. You only skim the surface, and there's that whole missing-both-sides-of-the-issue thing. And the fact that there are apparently only two kinds of history: really ancient history (Sumer, Egypt, etc.), and American/European history. Because we sure as heck never studied any place's history except in relation to Europe or America. Nothing happened in Asia, Africa, or South America until white people showed up there, don't you know.
And the fact that we didn't get into World War II in (relative) depth, or get past it at all, until eleventh grade really ticked me off. Meanwhile I was in the corner going: I know all about the Revolution and the Civil War and the missions, okay, we've done it ten thousand times! Will someone please explain, oh, the Korean War or Vietnam to me?! Because I don't have a clue about them and there are so many references to them and I never understand them! I think knowing what's been happening in the last few decades is pretty important, too; couldn't we mention that before our second-to-last year of high school?
Grr.
Whoops. Sorry for ranting.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-26 06:49 pm (UTC)This is a rant I firmly agree with. The only answer I can give you is to 1. read the book as soon as you can (even if you know the class won't go that far) 2. if the teacher is cool, ask for extra help with what you're less likely to cover 3. independant research.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-27 03:22 pm (UTC)For the WWI thing, I think I actually heard a mix of your two summaries... I never heard about the love-story thing, and I did know (or once knew) about the Black Hand, but except for that the motivations were kind of vague. Just one of those assassinations, you know? *rolls eyes*
no subject
Date: 2004-04-26 05:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-26 06:40 pm (UTC)*nods* Yeah, exactly. I've also never before heard anything about the Serbian nationalists other than that they were Serbian nationalists, and we never learned anything about Ferdinand except that he got shot. That was about all my history book said; I've never even heard that thing about his wife.
Note that I say history book. We never got into the 1900s before high school and ninth grade was geography. We really only studied World War I in tenth grade, in a class that was called "world history" but was really European history. It was mentioned only briefly in 11th grade US history, and Ferdinand didn't come into the picture at all; we focused only on what America did and how American was affected.
I hate the way history is taught. You only skim the surface, and there's that whole missing-both-sides-of-the-issue thing. And the fact that there are apparently only two kinds of history: really ancient history (Sumer, Egypt, etc.), and American/European history. Because we sure as heck never studied any place's history except in relation to Europe or America. Nothing happened in Asia, Africa, or South America until white people showed up there, don't you know.
And the fact that we didn't get into World War II in (relative) depth, or get past it at all, until eleventh grade really ticked me off. Meanwhile I was in the corner going: I know all about the Revolution and the Civil War and the missions, okay, we've done it ten thousand times! Will someone please explain, oh, the Korean War or Vietnam to me?! Because I don't have a clue about them and there are so many references to them and I never understand them! I think knowing what's been happening in the last few decades is pretty important, too; couldn't we mention that before our second-to-last year of high school?
Grr.
Whoops. Sorry for ranting.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-26 06:49 pm (UTC)This is a rant I firmly agree with. The only answer I can give you is to 1. read the book as soon as you can (even if you know the class won't go that far) 2. if the teacher is cool, ask for extra help with what you're less likely to cover 3. independant research.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-27 03:22 pm (UTC)For the WWI thing, I think I actually heard a mix of your two summaries... I never heard about the love-story thing, and I did know (or once knew) about the Black Hand, but except for that the motivations were kind of vague. Just one of those assassinations, you know? *rolls eyes*