World War

[honeybee]

I think SJ's question was mainly on the government spendings.

In that respect even I wonder where the money is spent. Though I have a fair idea where 'exactly' it is spent.

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[FunkyDexter]

(Grrr. posted a long reply and lost it - I guess someone will be relieved).

I hate it when that happens. I feel your pain, brother.

although I pretty much can see your argument

Just to be clear, it's not my argument. I've merely explained how economies actually function, what money really is and I've laid out the choices that are available to us. It's all undeniable, if somewhat distasteful, fact. The only time I expressed an opinion was when I said that I thought we probably should bail out Greece in the short term but I qualified that by saying we cannot know whether it is the right choice or not - it's just the one that looks to me like it will have the best (or least worst) outcome.

Suffice to say, all this money lending and borrowing....on and on and on. What is the money being spent on?

Partly on public services, partly on acquiring the funds in the first place and, let's face it, partly on corruption and folly. But that doesn't change the way economies function.

Look, I'm no fan of the Euro. I said right at the beginning that you can't have fiscal union without political union. The Euro was an attempt by Germany and France to force a potlitcal union on the rest of Europe by creating a situation where it would be disasterous not to federalise. Where Germany and France got it wrong was that they didn't realise the constituents of Europe would rather have the disaster than the federalisation.

It also seems to have escaped Germany's attention that part of being one federalised super state is that the more productive parts will subsidise the less productive parts. We do it in our own nations already so why would that be any different if applied to a federalised Europe?

[SJWhiteley]

I think SJ's question was mainly on the government spendings.

In that respect even I wonder where the money is spent. Though I have a fair idea where 'exactly' it is spent.

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Indeed, As I may have noted elsewhere, I read the federal government budget every month.

Looking at the expenditures, while (armchair quarterbacking) I can wave my hand and say 'We don't need that!'. However, looking down the list with a neutral eye, it is very hard to say such a thing. We do 'need' all those things - but to what extent, and what is the collateral cost?

This, of course, is the US books. I can imagine the European books look very similar - indeed can an individual get such a thing? I'd be interested to see a comparison of expenditures.

Greece will survive - with their own currency. Of course, that may not happen, yet, as the media seems to be playing the 'on the brink!' for all its worth, and, similar to the US debt ceiling, there will be a last minute reprieve before 'war' really breaks out. But if Greece isn't bailed out and it goes it's separate way, there are other countries (Portugal?) who will then be the low contributor on the EU totem pole.

It also seems to have escaped Germany's attention that part of being one federalised super state is that the more productive parts will subsidise the less productive parts. We do it in our own nations already so why would that be any different if applied to a federalised Europe?

That is true, but generally, a subsidy of some sort must come with a benefit - generally in some other field. What would be the benefit? If the subsidy is a on-time deal, then it is probably fair to say that a benefit can be minimal. But a continuing subsidy with no benefit is sheer folly. But then, isn't that what has been going on for years?

(Edit: incorrectly quoted and corrected).

[honeybee]

SJW, that quote you have attributed to me, about Germany, isn't by me. I am usually not that profficient or fluent or lucid or coherent in expressing my thoughts by the time I am able to surf here.

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[SJWhiteley]

SJW, that quote you have attributed to me, about Germany, isn't by me. I am usually not that profficient or fluent or lucid or coherent in expressing my thoughts by the time I am able to surf here.

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Sorry, not sure where the quote 'by you' came from: a cut-copy-pasta error. I'll edit that...

[FunkyDexter]

That is true, but generally, a subsidy of some sort must come with a benefit - generally in some other field

I'm not sure that's true. Or at least, I'm not sure it's that simple.

The analogy I'm thinking off are the various regions of England although I'm sure you can find similar example in any developed country. Over here we pretty much spent the last century systematically dismantling the industries and economies of various regions in England. We gave up on mining which left the Welsh with nothing to do but drink and engage in close harmony singing. We let the car industry go which left a large hole in the Midland (or left the Midlands as a large hole). The West country was never good for much except pasties and cream teas (they are very good cream teas mind). The North hasn't produced much since we let the weaving industries decline after you Americans got all uppity about self rule. And Scotland would pretty much be a wasteland if they hadn't got lucky and found Gas in the North Sea. The only exports from Liverpool and Manchester are crime, Men with perms and Women with too much fake tan.

I'm being deliberately flippant (because, at core I'm a very small and petty man) but the point is that the wealth generation of England is disproportionately centred in London and the South East. Us Southerners could fold our our arms and turn our back on the rest of the country. We could wag a finger at them and say they need to be more austere and live within their means. It's not like they really need shools and hospitals is it? And if they do want those things, well then, they'll just have to knuckle down and work harder. Obviously they're just all lazy ne'er do wells who are leeching of the taxes of the fine upstanding people of the South East.

But of course, we don't do that. We pool our tax intake as a nation and, on the whole, spend it for the good of all. We build hospitals in Wales and Scotland because we recognise that drug addicts and alcoholics are probably going to need them before too long. We build schools in Manchester because we recognise that even shell-suited men need an education (mostly in the hope that they'll learn to buy proper clothes). We build prisons in Liverpool because, well, it saves on transportation.

The point (which I hope I haven't completely buried under an avalanche of regional slurs) is that we recognise we're all one society and all in the same boat. That sentiment is still missing from Europe as a whole. It lacks the sense of shared identity that would allow them to operate as a cohesive society.

After all, but for an accident of birth we could have all been French!

[honeybee]

Sorry, not sure where the quote 'by you' came from: a cut-copy-pasta error. I'll edit that...

Nah, leave it as it is. It's good to have some sensible post after your name in Chit Chat, although wrongly attributed. Keeps the sense of being intelligent alive.

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[SJWhiteley]

The point (which I hope I haven't completely buried under an avalanche of regional slurs) is that we recognise we're all one society and all in the same boat. That sentiment is still missing from Europe as a whole. It lacks the sense of shared identity that would allow them to operate as a cohesive society.

After all, but for an accident of birth we could have all been French!

In other words 'can't we all get along'? It is particularly tough for Europe because of the unique identities. Personally, I like Italy and Italians, Germany and Germans are an extremely interesting culture, but really have no kinship with France or the French (to put it mildly - I am originally a Brit after all).

It is this strive for uniformity and 'shared identity' that is the problem. Which identity will one share? You mention Britain, and demonstrate the differences, but the identity is present under a single flag; the differences exist but an identity is shared. Expanding to Europe, one would have to impose an identity; this is an impossible task, so money generally substitutes - the meaning is to create a uniform Europe by taking from some Europeans and giving to others.

As a (now) US Citizen, having lived in Britain and the US, the whole structure is based on different cultural identities living together. I know many will disagree, but there is a lot of harmony with different cultures, here. I understand the disagreements, but they are based on false premises, and the imposition of one cultural identity on another. This is why we have the 'war on women', 'war on racism', 'war on gay marriage' and so on. The attempt to make everyone the same, inevitably means you will take away something from one to give to another. Don't be surprised when some fight back. We are all different, and will always be different.

Sadly, we are arguing - and making/breaking laws - based on media hyperbole, and there will always be a financial burden that must be paid in real currency. There is always an on-going cost to equality, quite simply because we are not 'equal'; the natural state is non-equality. We want to change y but it ends up changing x and z where there is no relationship between the two. Money and happiness are an obvious example, but a real example is money and poverty.

Needless to say, a 'shared identity' comes naturally - or not. It cannot be forced. I really don't think Europeans want a shared identity. I'm beginning to wonder how the Euro got put in place; what compelling reason would a country put forward to its populace to convince them to throw away a perfectly good currency?

[FunkyDexter]

Woah there, Nelly! I never said anything about a uniform Europe and, like you, I seriously doubt it would be possible.

A sense of shared identity, though, is entirely possible without turning us all into drones and we see it every day in every nation. That's what the regional examples in my post were meant to illustrate. We're different, we come from different backgrounds, we have different upbringings, we're informed by different cultural norms and yet, for the most part, we recognise as a Nation that we're all pulling in the same direction. We all call ourselves British and are proud to.

Even the anti-unionist movements that have gathered pace in the last couple of decades don't really want to change that. They want more self determination, sure, but they're mostly still proud to call themselves British. It's entirely possible to be a proud Scot and a proud Brit at the same time.

In fact you've summed up my point of view rather neatly with this simple quote:-

the differences exist but an identity is shared

It's that sense of pride in being European that's missing. Maybe that could be nurtured over time but we're still a long way off it at the moment. And while it's missing the Germans are unlikely to want to keep helping out the Greeks because they don't see it as helping "us", they see it as helping "them".

BTW I'm actually a Europhile and believe a European super state could be a very good thing... but only if it was properly answerable to it's constitutuents and was actually wanted by it's constituents. The current inception fails miserably on both those counts which leaves folks like me thoroughly dissillusioned. Any organisation that can have it's constitution refused by the referenda of various nations and then turn round and say "fine, we'll call it a treaty and push it through on the nod" is not an organisation I want governing me.

As a (now) US Citizen, having lived in Britain and the US, the whole structure is based on different cultural identities living together. I know many will disagree, but there is a lot of harmony with different cultures, here.

I absolutely agree with this. I actually think there's alot over here too, although you wouldn't know it from the media.

I'm beginning to wonder how the Euro got put in place; what compelling reason would a country put forward to its populace to convince them to throw away a perfectly good currency?

My somewhat cynical belief is that it was put into place to create more gravity for a fully federalised Europe. It was meant to make the political outcome inevitable. It failed.

The compelling reason given was increased trade opportunities and it does achieve that, at least in the short term. I'm just not sure the long term cost was worth it.

Still, it is what it is and we're stuck with it. We either allow it to collapse with all the inevitable ensuing pain, or we prop it up for a while longer and see if we can either make it work or dissmantle it in a controlled fashion.

[Shaggy Hiker]

This thread has gotten slightly moribund, but I was contemplating something last night as I was reading The Economist (doggone magazine shows up so often that you have no prayer getting through the current one before the new one arrives unless you are retired or unemployed).

The economic upheavels that Europe is experiencing is fairly unprecedented. The countries are tied together a bit more tightly than they thought, and yet they are not tied together quite tightly enough. Now they have a fairly painful decision to make. In the past, situations like this have given rise to ultra-nationalistic views, and that is also appearing in several countries.

While keeping in mind the horrible track record of people predicting major upheavals, does anybody see a pathway that could lead to armed conflict within Europe? Prior to WW I, lots of people felt that the countries were too closely tied together economically for them to ever go to war again. At the time that such statements were made, that belief was already absurd, as all countries had sizeable standing armies, and were planning for war. That doesn't seem to be the case, now, but then again, was starts over some of the stupidest reasons, so who knows? Once you get people truly agitated, large masses can come into conflict with other large masses. This has happened several times before in Europe, where some sector of the population became so enraged that they kind of went on a rampage (such as the first years of the French Revolution) before cooler heads prevailed (and lots of heads were cooler as a result of those first years of the French Revolution, since they no longer had blood flowing to them).

Is this crisis extreme enough to cause that level of anger in any sector of Europe?

[honeybee]

I doubt if it would lead to armed conflict, because exiting the Euro is still viewed as one of the options. The pros and cons of it are yet to be seen, so I think the Euro members may want Greece to initiate the exit process and then watch if they can recover on their own, outside the Euro zone. After all Greece would then be free to print its own money and might be either able to survive or postpone the inevitable by a couple of years.

Then you do have the possibility of both sides coming to an agreement.

After all an armed conflict would bleed everyone even more.

I am not currently including the Al Qaeda and the likes taking advantage of the political/economic unrest, I am solely thinking of the various nations.

[Nightwalker83]

Of course we did, just because there lots of other smaller wars afterwards doesn't mean they are all part of the same conflict.

No, but they are related! You can trace what cause the Korean, etc wars back to a the aftermath of WWII which, itself started because of the aftermath of WWI. Would you like to go back further?

[honeybee]

No, but they are related! You can trace what cause the Korean, etc wars back to a the aftermath of WWII which, itself started because of the aftermath of WWI. Would you like to go back further?

Now that you want to go back further, why the heck did these conflicts start in the first place? There was just Adam and Eve and they couldn't have sired so many kids!

Man, the history of mankind is sure crazy, if someone knows it accurately. I guess the powers that be must be busy laughing their royal arses off.

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[Shaggy Hiker]

Our being a cosmic joke is a pretty reasonable theology.

Some wars probably don't link in very well to the general sequence, but most of them do to some extent or another. The one that appears to be largely divorced from those that came after it would be the American Civil War. There may also have been a disconnect between the war of 1812 (whatever it is called across the pond) and wars after that. However, from the late 19th century to present, the wars are pretty tightly linked by either their immediate causes, the initial military moves of the belligerents, or the geopolitical causes. However, I do think that WWI was a more of a starting point than any of the subsequent wars. The connection between the Vietnam War, Korean War, and WWII are pretty clear, whereas the connection between WWII and WWI is so obvious that they are practically the same war.

[FunkyDexter]

does anybody see a pathway that could lead to armed conflict within Europe?

I do. I don't think it's likely but it's definitely possible. Ultra right movements are on the rise all over Europe already, particularly in the East but also in France. Imagine Greece bombs out and starts blaming Germany and France (actually pretty likely so far). Continued lack of leadership in the Eurozone means a continued decline and Spain and Italy follow. The Euro at this point is almost certain to collapse enitirely at which point we could face MAJOR economic hardship throughout Europe. The right really thrives in climates like this and could well take control in some major nations of Europe. Admittedly it's unlikely to take hold in Germany (given the history) but France, Poland, Ukraine, Greece, Spain, Russia... definitely possible. And we've all seen what can happen when the right takes hold in a big way. Oddly enough, this time Germany could find it's role reversed from previous conflicts as it's likely to be doing best economically and would therefore be held up as the enemy by the ultra right movements in the struggling countries. And it's worth mentioning that you really would not want to be a Eurpean Muslim at this point.

It's quite a convoluted chain of events and you'd like to think our memories are fresh enough that we'd spot it coming and find a way to prevent it so it's extremely unlikely, I think, but definitely possible.

the war of 1812 (whatever it is called across the pond)

Either the American War of Independence (which I guess you just call the War of Independence over there?) or the Napoleonic Wars, depending on which you're referring to.

The link in the chain you're missing between 1812 and 1914 is the Franco-Prussian War. It tends not to get taught in Europe (and I don't imagine it's taught at all in the States) which I think is a shame because it's actually hugely important in the history of Europe. It's roots can clearly be traced back to the Napoleonic Wars because it was Napoleon's repeated humiliations of Prussia and Prussia's pivotal role in his final defeat (both in 1812 and 1815) that created the conditions for a sense of nationalism to rise in Germany and brought up the possibility of unification. Bismark's strategy to expoit that possibility was to manufacture a war with France, a war which France was equally happy to have because they wanted to prevent unification. Bismark occupied Paris, Germany was unified and the formation of the Central Powers and the Entente Cordial was pretty much inevitable after that. Bingo, we've got WW1.

So from a European perspective there's defitely a continued chain. From an American one, less so. For you guys the Napoleonic Wars were just something that created a global political situation that made the War of Independence viable and the Franco Prussian War was a complete irrelevance. You were too busy fighting your own civil war to be concerned with what was happening in Europe.


edit>Thinking about it, there's probably a lesson in that last sentence for all of us. There's no such thing as a European problem, or an American problem, or an African, Middle Eastern or Asian problem. Sooner or later we're all likely to be affected. The butterfly flaps it's wings.

[honeybee]

The effects of globalization. In the days of the cavemen, it would have taken millions of years for a conflict in the faraway lands to reach us.



I think it's happening!

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[thebuffalo]

WW3, Humans vs Zombies.

/thread

[Shaggy Hiker]

The American War of Independence predates the Napoleonic conflict. The War of 1812 was a sub-theatre, at best, for England in the Napoleonic War, but was an independent war in the US. Various factions wanted various things, but there was a concerted, and incredibly inept, attempt to take Canada.

I was aware of the Franco-Prussian war, and that it had a real impact on the how and why of WW I, but I don't think it had the impact on that war that WW I had on the subsequent wars (WW II, Korea, and Vietnam). There is always a continuum, because people beget people, and ideas beget ideas, but I think that some wars are tied very tightly together, while others are not so much.

[FunkyDexter]

I was aware of the Franco-Prussian war

That actually kinda surprises me. Most French and German people I meet only know it in passing and Brits tend not too have heard of it at all so an American who knows about it is a rare treat indeed.

I was aware of the Franco-Prussian war, and that it had a real impact on the how and why of WW I, but I don't think it had the impact on that war that WW I had on the subsequent wars (WW II, Korea, and Vietnam). There is always a continuum, because people beget people, and ideas beget ideas, but I think that some wars are tied very tightly together, while others are not so much.

I guess it's all shades of grey really. I'd agree that the link from WW1 to WW2, for example, is far stronger than the Franco-Prussian to WW1 link but I'd still call FP to WW1 pretty causal. It led to the formation of Germany for a start.

The link I made between the Napoleonic conflicts and the Franco Prussian war was probably alot more tenuous.

The really interesting bit, though, was that the Franco Prussian war was largely a result of French fears about German status overtaking their own, which is exactly the same reason why they wanted the Euro and a federalised Europe. In fact pretty much every European war since 1815 onwards has been about the French and Germans vying for position. That's still going on only now the conflict's economic rather than military. And round and round we go...

[Shaggy Hiker]

I guess it's all shades of grey really. I'd agree that the link from WW1 to WW2, for example, is far stronger than the Franco-Prussian to WW1 link but I'd still call FP to WW1 pretty causal. It led to the formation of Germany for a start.

It also directly led to the initial moves by both sides in WW I, and showed that the Germans had learned a bit more from the earlier war than the French had.

The preview of WW I appeared towards the end of the US Civil War...but nobody learned the lessons.

I used to read everything I could find on WW II and the US Civil War. Eventually, I figured I ought to branch out, and started reading...pretty nearly any history that looked interesting. A fair amount of WW I, an oddly large amount of early and middle crusades, random time periods throughout the middle ages, and random minor conflicts here and there in other places. In all that, I have never seen a book that was directly focused on the Franco-Prussian War, and all that I know of it is from books dealing with the lead up to WW I.

A conflict I am particularly intrigued by, is the phoney war between the US and France around 1790. This may have been ended by, or started by, the French Revolution, but I have only been able to find oblique references to it. It was entirely naval, which is impressive, as the US pretty much had no navy prior to 1812, but I haven't found anything else about it. Considering that France had helped us so greatly only two decades prior, the fact that this conflict occurred was a surprise to me.

[honeybee]

Are you sure it was a war and not a naval military exercise?

I guess now the thread can be renamed to "World Wars".



It would be interesting to see if the WW II caused the Indo-Pak wars, and whether the Indo-China war would have taken place had the British occupation of India continued. It's widely said that the WW II resulted in many commonwealth nations gaining independence from the British rule. However it also means these nations were more vulnerable to conflicts since they were at a very nascent stage of independence. So if Briton hadn't been weakened by the World Wars, or if the WW II hadn't taken place at all, the British occupation might have continued for another couple of decades, there would have been no partition and as a result both (or rather three) Indo-Pak wars might have not taken place.

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[FunkyDexter]

I used to read everything I could find on WW II and the US Civil War. Eventually, I figured I ought to branch out, and started reading...pretty nearly any history that looked interesting

That pretty much describes how I learned about history too, except I started with Napoleonics. In fact I started with teh film "Waterloo". I think I was mostly impressed by the big explosions

These day's I'm pretty hot on the two world wars, very up on Napoleonics, very good on Alexander, fairly good on the Roman Empire from the Punic wars through to the the 2nd century AD (though with a few large gaps) and pretty good on English history from the 1400's through to the 1800s. I reckon that represents about 1 percent of human history so I'm still reading.

I have never seen a book that was directly focused on the Franco-Prussian War

Me neither. I think because it was quite dull militarily. You've got the battle of Sedan followed by the French stubbornly refusing to admit defeat even though they had no army left. The interesting stuff about it is socio-political and that doesn't sell books. We like bangs.

the phoney war between the US and France around 1790

I've never heard of it but there's a few odd "conflicts" like this throughout history. Two nations declare war but can't actually get at each other to do anything about it. The French didn't have much of a fleet either at that point. We didn't give it a proper sinking until 1805 but it pretty much went to rack and ruin during the French Revolution because all their officers heads mysteriously fell off.

It would be interesting to see if the WW II caused the Indo-Pak wars, and whether the Indo-China war would have taken place had the British occupation of India continued.

It's an interesting thought and you're probably right. I can't help feeling those conflicts would still have happened but they'd just have been delayed. Actually they might have been worse for having the extra time to simmer.

[Nightwalker83]

Now that you want to go back further, why the heck did these conflicts start in the first place? There was just Adam and Eve and they couldn't have sired so many kids!

Pretty much! You just need to look into the first world war to find families fighting each other. For example Kiser Wilhelm of Germany and his Uncle King what's his name of England.

[FunkyDexter]

George.

In fact, Kaiser Wilhelm, Tsar Nicholas and King George were all cousins. They were all pretty close freinds too. The French must have felt quite left out.

[honeybee]

Ah, so all those big bangs finally turn out to be family affairs! How disappointing!

I have read War And Peace by Tolstoy and I am pretty impressed by the theory he has put forward. Going by that theory it would be interesting to know what impact the WW I and the WW II had on the British occupation of India and other countries. Maybe if the British had continued to rule, they would have kept India undivided. Maybe if they spotted signs of having to relinquish the Indian reign, they sowed the seeds of separation. It's all pretty hypothetical but interesting nevertheless.

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[FunkyDexter]

What theory do you think Tolstoy was putting forward? For me I just took War and Peace as a story about the family life of the Russian nobility at the time of Napoleons invasions. The conflict was really just a backdrop.

I think Britain would have kept India undivided as long as they continued to rule but only because that's what suited them and because they had a well trained and armed army to make sure they could keep it that way. As soon as they left the break up was bound to happen and they certainly didn't encourage it. Mountbatten worked hard to prevent it happening but in the end had to accept it as an inevitability. He was basically faced with a choice of leaving one nation at civil war or two nations who would hate each other. He viewed partition as the lesser of two evils. The British certainly weren't sowing the seeds of discord and would have rather left a United India if they thought it was possible.

The British Empire was probably the most benign of the great victorian empires. There's no denying that we were in it for our own benefit and there are plenty of incidents of violent repression but, on the whole, the British Empire looked after it's colonial population pretty well. That's part of why they were so happy to serve in the world wars and why they went on to form a common wealth after the Empire dissolved. In fact, many of the ex colonies still serve in the British army today.

I think that's partly a function of how the British Empire formed, namely by accident. Generally we turned up somewhere to trade and only started sending the army in if that trade was threatened. Since that trade was good for the local populace as well as us they were usually quite hapy to have the red coats parked on there door step because they benefited from the protection they offered. We generally didn't set out to conquer our colonies, we just spent long enough protecting them to gradually become the de-facto rulers.

It also helped being an Island. We were able to sit outside of the European conflicts, join a side without having to really risk invasion ourselves and send the fleet off round the world to nick the colonies of whichever nations were on the opposing side. Since the other European power tended to be pretty repressive to their colonies we were usually seen as liberators and, again, protectors.

[honeybee]

Tolstoy has (or had?) proposed that the events in the world aren't necessarily caused by what we think caused them. To give an example, he has depicted in the novel how Nepoleon was almost caught by the Russian army when the French walked into the middle of two Russian divisions flanking them. Historically it has been hailed as a smart tactical move, but Tolstoy has given an interesting twist: the commander of one of the divisions has been asked to work under the commander of the other division and been asked to join him. This commander does not like it and so moves his troops in such a way that joining his reporting boss will be delayed. This causes the French army to be trapped.

So his theory is that it wasn't any planned strategic/tactical movements on the part of the Russian army which led to the defeat of the French, but the personal enmity between the two commanders of the Russian divisions.

And it's a good theory. Decisions taken on the spur of the moment can turn the tide. Which is true and interesting too.

Extending the same theory we can say that if the world war hand't happened, the British might have extended their rule in India and then India might not have been divided. But please remember these are mere speculations.

So is your claim that Briton didn't want India divided. You will find enough instances where the British rulers did try to divide the Indian masses by religion. Now whether it was the common personal habit of some of the rulers of the time or whether it was a hidden strategy adopted from the higher-ups is open to debate. But we cannot necessarily claim that a particular event led to another event (or vice versa) if we accept Tolstoy's theory.

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[FunkyDexter]

And it's a good theory. Decisions taken on the spur of the moment can turn the tide.

Oh I see. I never picked up on that myself but that does ring a vague bell (I read war and peace about 15 years ago so the memory is pretty dim). In fact, doesn't he expound on that at some length?

Anyway, it's a pretty fair theory. The problem with it is that, taken to it's extreme, it dooms us to never learn anything. Essentially it's saying "I can't know for certain that X mistake caused Y tragedy so I will keep repeating X in the hope that the outcome will be different this time". It's the old correlation is not causation argument. That's fine as far as it gos but if we refuse to learn from correlation we are, in essence, refusing to learn because causation can never be empirically proved.

Where I stand would be somewhere in the middle. We can look at documented history and consider the sources in the round. If they overwhelmingly agree on a point then we're probably better off taking that point as true than disregarding it entirely. But, equally, to stick dogmatically to our belief in the truth of that point and dismiss any other possibility as false would be crazy. We need to learn from what we believe to be true but always accept that our premise could be false.

Extending the same theory we can say that if the world war hand't happened, the British might have extended their rule in India and then India might not have been divided.

I certainly agree that the British probably wouldn't have left if WW2 hadn't happened and I agree that India wouldn't have been divided as long as the British remained.

The only point I think we might be differing on is whether India would have divided if anfd when the British finally did leave. I believe it would have divided because of the religious differences that had grown up among the Inidan populace. I don't believe the English remaining there for another 50 years (or however long) would have removed those underlying tensions. If a figure as great as Ghandi couldn't unify the populace then nobody could.

So is your claim that Briton didn't want India divided

Well, that was the official British position and I find it hard to believe that it wasn't sincere, at least at a governmental level, because the British had far more to gain by keeping Inida unified and stabe than by dividing it. Us Brits are shopkeepers. We trade. It's what we do. And a unifed stable India would be a far more profitable trading partner than a having Pakistan and India snapping at each others throats or a single India that was in a state of civil war - which were really the only two alternatives at the time. What we wanted was a single peaceful India that we could continue to do business with but that was impossible to achieve. Partition was, for us, the lesser of two evils.

Of course, that was teh official position but that doesn't mean every member of the British Beuracracy from the bottom to the top agreed with it or that nobody on that beuracracy worked against it for their own ends. To believe that would be naive.

please remember these are mere speculations

Of course. So are my responses. We're debating a "what if" and we can never really know for certain. That's what make the discussion interesting. All we can do is present our hypothesis and try to back it up with reasoned argument.

[Shaggy Hiker]

History is written by the historians. The facts on the ground are often different, and generally show that we are a bunch of people, who can, as a group, appear to act in ways that not single individual would choose. There are generally millions of small incidents that conspire to produce every action in the world. Our minds can't comprehend that complexity, so we narrow it down to some manageable level and call it truth. Of course, it is not the truth. No two people who observe some event see the same thing, or see it happen in the same way. One classic example of this is the Titanic. Until the wreckage was found, historians were largely split as to whether the ship sank in one piece or two. A slight majority of the survivors reported that it sank as one piece, and that is how it was generally depicted. A large minority reported that it split in half, and that proved to be the truth. Events like this should lead us to doubt EVERY eyewitness account of everything, but we don't, because it would leave us paralyzed.

In my own experience, I witnessed a terrible car accident, and was the first person to reach one car, which was on fire. I dealt with that car until the fire trucks arrived and the pros took over. At that point, I stepped back from the car...and saw the other car. My first thought was that there had been a second accident while I had been at the first one. In my memory, the one car hits...nothing...flips up in the air, and rolls several times. The spot that it hit is like a blind spot in my memory. I know the car had to hit something, and that it is likely that it hit another car (as the blank spot is in the other lane of a two lane road), but my memory has just a gap. Not a car shaped gap, just a lack of anything. This was obviously a pretty good thing, as I was able to respond to the more immediate problem (where I missed a great opportunity for a prank, and otherwise was unable to do anything useful other than temporarily reduce the fire, but it was VERY entertaining). The scenario is pretty common. Our memories are what we need them to be, they are not a reflection of what we have actually experienced. Somehow, we still manage to live, and even convince ourselves that what we remember as having happened, really did happen, and happened the way we remember it.

As for war, what Tolstoy described has other, similar incidents throughout history. In the US Civil War, the Confederates broke the Federal line in one battle because the army commander had reprimanded a subordinate division commander, incorrectly, that morning. As a result, the division command was overly sensitive. In the heat of the battle, the army commander sent a mistaken message to the subordinate to make a move. The subordinate knew the army commander misunderstood the situation, but because of the earlier incident, he tried to comply, thereby taking his division out of the line just as the Confederates, who had been mauled up to that point, attacked at the very point where the division had been. That one rebuke cost several thousand lives, and cost the Federal army the battle.

[honeybee]

I think more than learning from mistakes/history or whatever else, what we need to focus on is the application of the theory. Somewhere I believe it's comparable to the well-known debate on whether economics is a science and the classic (cliche?) line that all economic theories assume the consumer makes a rational choice, and in practice the consumer is anything but rational.

Similarly in a war, you have to make strategies and plans and not leave things to chance, but also remember that a small, seemingly inconsequential event could turn the tide in favour of or against you. I don't think Tolstoy meant his theory to be used to abandon all notions of learning, improvising or planning.

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