Review of East and West (1963) C NORTHCOTE PARKINSONThe resulting book is therefore free of Jewish-promoted frantic propaganda, and reads clearly and well, but omits all the issues of finance, debt, and the diversion of wealth by taxation on a national scale. It also implicitly assumes racial equality.
This is not a detailed review, but, rather, notes to indicate the book, though incomplete, was significant.
– 'Rerevisionist' March 26 2018
I've scanned in the whole of Chapter 4, THE PHOENICIANS, hoping that Parkinson might cast light on modern Jews and the 'Phoenician Navy'. Parkinson relies largely on Herodotus, assuming he's more or less honest; and says little about everyday things, such as weather, crops, topography, shipbuilding, tools, housing, rules and laws. I sense he's not good on the long-term subtleties of ideas, conflicts and wars. I was disappointed. However, the chapter is here, on this same page, below.
– 'Rerevisionist' March 23 2023
• Herodotus 'recognised that the struggle between the Greeks and the Persians, between Europe and Asia, between West and East.. was a mortal [sic] contest.. between wholly incompatible ways of life' says Hearnshaw, in 1930s An Outline of Modern Knowledge; Parkinson perhaps just follows him! Rather inconsistently Parkinson ends with a Greek passage suggesting the foolishness of the 'twain' fighting. NOTE: Can interpret the whole book as viewing the world through the eyes, and with the vocabulary, of an antique Greek scrap.
• Idea of 'east' and 'west'; eg east to include India, China, Islamic world, Eastern Mediterranean. West: Russia, US, Europe. This is surely an exercise in imposing ideological categories. Phoenicians, Hellenes, Romans, Carthage. Note his tendency as described by Wells on distinction of 'scholars' into Hellenes vs Romans—and amplification into mythology e.g. by Gibbon of 'manliness', 'individuality', and other stuff, very probably claptrap.
• Iran, Pelican book published 1954, on Iran pre-Islam, has stuff on west and east which perhaps influenced Parkinson
• Parkinson believes in military history: partly because he was in Malaya; partly perhaps a military family or some similar reason, for example maybe he enjoyed national service and/or feeling of superiority over the natives; of course his idea of 'war' tends to be British biased: natives armed with dried grasses are his proving ground for inferiority, rather than full scale modern conflicts; he says in many struggles the atomic bomb 'wouldn't have been the slightest use'; partly on theoretical grounds, perhaps based on Hegel, that conflict produces progress, though naturally his reasons, if there are any, aren't spelt out. For example, you might expect him to welcome German aggression on the grounds that this would improve things, but he's very anti-appeasement etc. Or he might welcome east-west conflict, but seems to end that book on a query as to whether the whole thing was necessary. No doubt there's an element of social Darwinism; the general syndrome is clear and I expect comes from Herbert Spencer, whom Parkinson quotes near the start of his book Left Luggage. Hegel incidentally isn't mentioned in the bibliography of over 100 titles.
• Joseph Needham, Barbara Ward, H G Wells and others like Gandhi and T.E. Lawrence and Freya Stark are some of the more interesting quotees. Toynbee is not there.
• In addition to innocence of fiat money and debt, he has some not very obvious 'contradictions' which occur to one after some thought; his main one I think is the fact he believes taxation should be kept down—i.e. he believes in social darwinism, competition, as applied to business. He doesn't seem able to realise that to support the armies and navies he likes, taxes are likely to be high. He simply has no theory to cover these things, particularly, as he's aware that being anything like 'communist' is a bad thing—maybe he'd lose his professorship?—prevents him from even attempting to assess the money value of imperialism. In practice, the main leakages of his attitudes occur in such aspects as his dislike for bureaucracies, which he always seems to associate with inefficiency, sloth, and so on; and his comments on old age pensions as produced in social legislation in Britain—'inconceivable in a dynamic community.. might have had some value if applied to the future, in medical care for the young or education.' His attitude to religion has analogous difficulties: its cost is something he doesn't allow himself to look into; he simply treats religion as a marketed product—there's a very good description of why Christianity may have won out over competing products—and has something of a British administrator's attitude to the odd beliefs of the natives
• PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Parkinson explicitly states it's given in his introduction. Starts with landmasses, ignoring Africa and counting the Americas as 'Western'. Then we have the Urals etc dividing lands into west and east, which he compares, finding similarities [peninsulas at bottom, tundra at top], but also differences [size, inland water vs deserts and mountains]. He doesn't explain why the amazing qualities of Europe should have stopped at Africa. Seesaw idea of 'orient' versus 'the west', powered by weakness of one or the other, a 'vacuum'. He seems to think this process is inevitable and also desirable, at least in a controlled form—his idea is in effect to scientifically study the phenomenon so it can be understood; he gives a seaside parallel with 'waves of history'. His vacuum idea gives him a piston metaphor, derived from steam engines, no doubt. He tries to explain why Islam, India, China can be considered as having something in common, though he's not very convincing; similar problem of course in considering Europe, with its warring tribes, as basically a unity. I think he has to suppress a lot of stuff, e.g. Huns, Moguls, Tibet, Khazars, Vikings, and generally empires which are taught if at all in an obscure way.
• He surveys all history, as known to 1900 or so schools of British history; i.e. starts with Troy and Macedonia etc after nods towards Egypt, Babylon; and he later looks at Islam and China and the rest. His description of Greece, and of Alexander's achievements, are very lyrical; IMPORTANT NOTE: I believe this is because he attributes qualities which he thinks British to them, e.g. athletics, nakedness, small groups of independent men with good leaders, sense of humour, liable to be good-humoured when drunk. Naturally civilisation is assumed to start in the west with India and China following; and Africa has never produced a civilisation but may be a reservoir of energetic primitive people. He thinks jazz is African, for example.
Sees the 'seesaw' militarily; rather unfairly it seems to me since China and India haven't been noted for world empires. For that matter, Parkinson understates other aspects of empire, notably Spanish and Portuguese influences in South America (and Portuguese in India and Africa). Significant point of course which he skates over is the failure of Britain and US in these parts of America.
Blurb says: 'He gives his views on communism, democracy, Western decadence, technology, the United Nations, one world, & why 'Russia is destined to align herself with the Western powers'. He has a few pages on race and racial purity. Like Wells he has a section on Utopias, apparently based on Lewis Mumford (and incidentally including Spence). I wonder whether Wells isn't an inspiration here; there's a Short History flavour & material on communications and writing and even the maps slightly suggest Wells; and some influence of Russell perhaps here and there.
Nothing unfortunately, relatively at least, about other empires: France, which had a large empire, is more or less ignored; all aspects of US policy, like the Monroe doctrine and their attitudes to the Pacific, aren't included. There are nods to Portugal, the Dutch etc but Parkinson's enthusiasm seems to be reserved for British public schools, British nostalgic education, British India, British missionaries, British pyjamas etc, British administrators returning to Britain and living in big houses on the hill, Harrison's chronometer, Kipling's poems, attitudes of Chinese to Britain, Sam Browne belt and cross-strap, pith helmets, lightweight tropical suits, POSH liners, etc etc.
PREFACE/ INTRODUCTION
1 THE ANCIENT EAST
2 DARIUS THE KING
3 THE TALE OF TROY
4 THE PHOENICIANS
4 THE PHOENICIANS
HAD THE GREEKS been the only seafaring people of the Mediterranean, there would have been something of a deadlock {47} between Persian and Greek aspirations. Darius wanted to extend his trade route westward, the Greeks wanted to extend theirs to the head of the Euxine and as much further as they could go. And, although the Persian monarchy was immensely powerful, the Greeks were far from easy to coerce. Fortunately, from the Persian point of view, there was a rival people to whom Darius could turn. In the Phoenicians he had seafaring allies, the more useful in that their original seaports were within his own empire. And before the Greek movement of expansion, the Phoenicians had been monopolists. As Toutain points out:
The Phoenician cities lay along the Levant coast, the most important being Aradus, Byblos, Sidon, and Tyre. Behind them lay the forests of Lebanon, their source of shipbuilding timber. Their narrow strip of territory produced little else, but formed a corridor connecting Mesopotamia and Egypt. They lived in a restless borderland, fruitful mainly in dispute and ideas, and derived their culture more from Babylon than from Egypt. They soon extended their activities to Cyprus and Crete, and so across the Mediterranean. A Semitic people akin to the Jews, they were most closely allied to them from about 970-940 B.C., when Hiram of Tyre provided Solomon with materials for the temple at Jerusalem. It was mostly after that period that the Phoenicians expanded their trading activities westward. By the eighth century, they held the center of the Mediterranean, with settlements established at Carthage (814 B.C.), Utica, Motyca, and Malta, and more distant trading stations in Sardinia and as far westward as Cadiz. In the other direction, their ships went down the Red Sea to Mesopotamia and India, and the caravans which crossed the desert seem to have been part of the same organization. For some five {48} hundred years, their commercial ascendancy was assured, and the more so in that the Greeks were relatively quiescent. From about 1400 to say 1100 B.C., The Mycenaeans had been pushing into Asia Minor, hut their effort had died away. From about 1100, it was the Phoenicians who were the more active, pushing their settlements westward to Lebda, Susa, Utica, and (in 814 B.C.) to Carthage. The Greeks also spread westward to Italy and Sicily and (in 600 B.C.) to Massalia in the south of France. Their only important colony on the African coast was Cyrene, and there was some sort of agreement, in about 500 B.C., by which the Greeks ceded the rest of the African shore to their rivals. Beyond the central narrows of the Mediterranean, beyond Malta and Motyca, the Phoenicians' influence predominated. There was thus no question of Greek rivalry in Spain, nor apparently in Minorca, and none but the Phoenicians had passed the Pillars of Hercules. After the fall of Tyre, in 574 B.C., the leadership of the Phoenicians passed to Carthage. Tyre and Sidon came to be a part of the Persian empire in 539, forming with Syria and Cyprus a single province in that vast organization.
If there was a marked difference between the Greeks and Persians, there was a still greater difference, and a natural hostility, between the Greeks and Phoenicians; as also incidentally, between the Greeks and Jews. There was, of course, a rivalry in trade, but there was more to their difference than that. As Sarton points out, their hostility went deep.
Almost the first Greek references to the Phoenicians are to be found in Books XIV and XV of The Odyssey. When Odysseus, disguised, tells his imaginary life history to the swineherd, Eumaeus, he describes his visit to Egypt: {49}
{50} I passed seven years in the country, and made a fortune out of the Egyptians who were liberal with me one and all. But in the course of the eighth I fell in with a rascally Phoenician, a thieving knave who had already done a deal of mischief in the world. I was prevailed on by this specious rogue to join him in a voyage to Phoenicia, where he had a house and estate: and there I stayed with him for a whole twelve-month. But when the days and months had mounted up, and a second year began its round of season, he put me on board a ship bound for Libya, on the pretext of wanting my help with the cargo he was carrying, but really that he might sell me for a handsome sum when he got there ... [Homer, The Odyssey, trans. E. V. Rieu (London: Penguin, 1950), pp. 222-23.]
The swineherd turns out to be himself the son of the King of Syrie, kidnapped from home with the connivance of his Phoenician nurse, and eventually sold as a slave to Laertes.
The repetition of the words used—with no other Phoenicians described more favorably—gives a clear picture of the folk from Tyre and Sidon as seen by their Greek competitors. They were greedy, thieving, and double-dealing. Above all, they were treacherous—each anecdote being an instance of betrayal under the cover of a pretended friendship. Had the great library at Carthage survived we should have Phoenician literature to study; epics, perhaps, in which the Greeks always appear as talkative, unreliable, and piratical liars. These would at least serve to remind us that dishonesty on the one side is no proof that those on the other side are upright. Granted, however, that the Phoenicians had virtues and the Greeks had faults which Homer failed to emphasize, it is interesting, nevertheless, to realize that these are not passages of indiscriminate abuse. Homer does not accuse {51} the Phoenicians of idleness, cowardice, dirtiness, or even cruelty. He accuses them mainly of treachery, and there is good reason to conclude that he was right.
In the history of the Phoenicians, scholars tend to ignore Phoenicia itself after the Persian conquest of 539. From that period on, Carthage, a colony settled from Tyre, assumed the leadership of this race. The efforts of the Carthaginians were directed toward Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica, and these formed the overture to later conflicts with Rome. But the merchants of Phoenicia, absorbed into the Persian Empire, were none the less prosperous for their loss of autonomy. They enjoyed Persian protection, and a considerable share of the trade. There was a Persian royal palace in Sidon, but Tyre was still a city of importance. It was from Phoenicia that Darius was to draw his fleet and recruit his seamen. Nor can there be any doubt that their ships were among the best obtainable. As for the seamen, they had no reluctance about destroying their chief rivals in trade. From their point of view, it was a trade war between Phoenician and Greek, with the Persians called in as allies of the former. Many of the Greeks must have seen the conflict in the same light. In the growth of their national feeling, the difference they recognized between themselves and the Persians was perhaps initially less than their sense of contrast with the men of Tyre and Sidon. Whatever differences there were came to be emphasized as the war went on. They came to regard their opponents as increasingly alien. But while this is true of many Greeks, others were affected differently by the Phoenician example, and also by the attitude of many Greeks resident in Asia Minor. They were far from united against Persia. Some of them saw Darius as a friend.
To understand this divergence of view, we must return again to the trade route. By the time of Darius, trade from the East reached the Mediterranean at various points, including Miletus in the north and Sidon in the south. The northern route was extended along a line of Greek colonies which ended at Massalia now Marseilles. The southern route was extended along a line of Phoenician colonies which ended at Gades now Cadiz. Each group would have preferred a monopoly, and each was prepared to defend the share it had. But the Greeks could seek no commercial advantage from a conflict with Persia. Economically, they might gain more from being a part of the Persian Empire, obtaining special privileges—perhaps even at the expense of the Phoenicians. Any Greek merchant would wish to remain on good terms with Darius, even if it meant, possibly, some loss of autonomy. And in the past, remember, the {52} Greek cities in Asia Minor had been allowed a great measure of freedom. The Persian rule had been benevolent. Nor had the Greeks been without influence at Susa. Their trade had gained from Persian protection and patronage, their craftsmen had worked at Persepolis. The sensible thing to do was to make the best terms possible, and yield a token submission to the Persian monarchy. For Darius was the ruler, after all, of the civilized world, having no rivals, only subjects.
Many Greeks thus argued for accepting Persian rule. But others argued for resistance to the death. Why? And why did resistance become the accepted policy? The first historian to attempt any answer to these questions was Herodotus, whose aim, he said, was to do two things:
Persian historians put the responsibility for the quarrel on the Phoenicians ... [Herodotus, op. cit., p.11.]
What had they done? They kidnapped Io, daughter of Inachus, King of Argos. Later, some Greeks, or possibly Cretans, abducted Europa, the king's daughter, from Tyre. Followed the voyage of the Argo and the abduction of Medea from Colchis. Forty or fifty years afterwards. Paris, son of King Priam, carried off Helen, the wife of King Menelaus of Sparta.
The generally accepted view is that Herodotus lived from about 484 to 425 B.C., writing his Histories in later life. If we suppose them to have been written between 440, say, and his death, he is describing events fairly near to him in time. So that he can be assumed to represent his generation in making a sharp distinction between European and Asian; as indeed in recognizing a geographical boundary between Europe and Asia. The talk of the day was of a feud going back for centuries, such a feud as may or may not have existed. But the conflict was certainly obvious when Herodotus wrote, and he was perhaps the first man to describe it. More than that, he described the European reaction to Asian pressure. He was aware of the piston movement as between East and West and lived at a time when the East was unquestionably in the ascendant. Asia was a different world and one against which the Greek states had to defend themselves and so defend Europe. But what, to him, did the word "Europe" signify? On this subject he was fortunately explicit:
Herodotus uses the word "Libya" for Africa, states that Asia is called after the wife of Prometheus, and Europe after Europa, the king's daughter abducted from Tyre. Between Asia and Europe his boundary line is the Nile and the Rion at the eastern end of the Euxine—bringing the {54} whole of Asia Minor into Europe. According to others, as he admits, the boundary is marked by the Don and the Bosphorus. There was room here for disagreement, but that was not what the conflict was about. For the effect of a Persian victory, had it taken place, would have been to absorb Europe into Asia. Nor would this have been geographically absurd. It was strange, rather, as Herodotus remarks, to apply different names to the opposite ends of the same continent. This was now being done, and it marks the hardening of a cultural frontier.
But if the frontier was there, we must beware of giving it a greater significance than it merits. For, as Sarton points out, the situation was confused.
All this is perfectly true. But while the conflict was not exactly one of Asia against Europe, it did serve to decide whether there was to be a Europe at all. With the details of the struggle we are not concerned, except in so far as they illustrate the difference between the antagonists. Suffice to say that Darius launched his first attack soon after establishing his invasion base at Miletus. An army under Mardonius was ferried across the Hellespont and marched overland with Athens as one of its objectives. Macedonia was conquered, but the accompanying fleet was wrecked on the promontory of Mount Athos. Mardonius withdrew, therefore, to Asia Minor and was superseded by new generals. Datis and Arta-phernes. These collected another and larger fleet in 490 B.C., embarked an army, and sailed straight for the Aegean. After sacking Eritrea, the Persians headed for Attica, and made their landing at Marathon, not far from Athens. They landed only a part of their army, which was defeated by the {55} Athenians with heavy loss. Darius instantly began his preparations for a new campaign, but the news of Marathon produced a revolt in Egypt, which was still in process when Darius died. His son and successor, Xerxes, dealt first with the Egyptians, and then resumed the campaign against Greece. Said Xerxes (if we are to believe Herodotus), "I will bridge the Hellespont and march an army through Europe into Greece," and he went on to explain his further objectives in these words:
From wanting to round off their commercial system, the Persian rulers had gone further in their plans. Unavoidably, the conquest of Greece had become a matter of prestige. How could the rest of the empire be held together if it became known that Xerxes had accepted defeat? "We Persians have a way of living," said the King, and appeasement was no part of it In 480 B.C., he raised a vast army and led it in person across the Hellespont, passing the strait by a bridge of boats—at the second attempt—and once more taking the land route via Thrace and Macedonia. With great difficulty, Xerxes forced the pass of Thermopylae, and occupied the deserted city of Athens. His fleet, however, was defeated at Salamis, and the Persian king returned to Asia, The next year (479 B.C.), the Persians were decisively defeated at Plataea. They did not venture into the Aegean again until 467 B.C., when their navy was defeated again. Thenceforward the Persian threat was greatly diminished. The initiative now lay with the Greeks.
From the point of view of the relationships between Asia and Europe, the most significant fact about this conflict was the composition of the Persian army. It comprised, besides Persians, Medes, and their immediate allies, contingents from Syria, Bactria, India, Parthia, Arabia, Ethiopia, Libya, Phrygia, Lydia, and Thrace. It was an army fully representative of Asia as a whole, with other groups drawn from the territories through which Xerxes marched. Its strength {56} lay in its cavalry, which had no chance to operate in suitable country. Its weakness lay in the fact that the infantry, apart from the Persian, Median, and Lydian divisions, had no helmets. For engaging the Greek infantry, masses of lightly-armed bowmen and spearmen were singularly ill-equipped. "The Indians were dressed in cotton: they carried cane bows and cane arrows tipped with iron." Of the well-armed, a proportion were of doubtful loyalty. Themistocles attributed the Persian defeat to the gods, "who were jealous that one man in his godless pride should be King of Asia and of Europe too." More prosaically, Herodotus says of the Persians at Plataea: "The chief cause of their discomfiture was their inadequate equipment; not properly armed themselves, they were matched against heavily armed infantry." As for the fighting at sea, Herodotus remarks very justly that "the Persians were, indeed, bound to get the worst of it, because they were ignorant of naval tactics and fought at random without any proper disposition of their force." As for the Phoenicians, their morale may have suffered from the Persians' attitude toward them. They were good seamen and genuinely hostile toward the Greeks. "Amongst those who sailed ... " writes Herodotus, "it was the Phoenicians whose heart was most in the business." [Herodotus, op. cit., p. 365.] But if the Greeks thought little of them, there is some indication that the Persians thought less.
The story is told that Xerxes' tent fell into Greek hands after the battle of Plataea. Pausanias told the captured servants to prepare the sort of meal a Persian Commander-in-chief would expect. They laid gold and silver tables with a magnificent display. For a joke, Pausanias then told his own servants to prepare an ordinary Spartan dinner. The difference between the two meals was indeed remarkable, and, when both were ready, Pausanias laughed and sent for the Greek commanding officers. When they arrived, he invited them to take a look at the two tables, saying, "Gentlemen, I asked you here in order to show you the folly of the Persians, who, living in this style, came to Greece to rob us of our poverty." [Ibid., p. 584.]
5 THE HELLENES
6 TALK OF ALEXANDER
7 CARTHAGE AND ROME
8 ROME OF THE EMPERORS
•96: [Imports and Introductions to Italy from Persia]
9 THE ORIENTAL WORLD
10 THE EAST TRIUMPHANT
•119,120: [Influences on Christianity and attractions of it: Parkinson treats it as a marketing thing]
•129 'The acquisition of horses by the Arabs in the centuries immediately preceding the birth of Muhammad was one of the most momentous events in the history of the world. ..' [from a 1905 book on thoroughbreds]—[material on stirrups, built up saddle, chain mail, then crossbow.. Byzantine defences, Greek fire, and parallel naval achievement including navigation techniques, and ships in China]
11 THE WEST AT BAY
• 134: EUROPEAN DREAD OF THE EAST—
'... Sinister and inscrutable Chinese... hypnotic Hindus... death comes to the man who has rifled the Egyptian tomb. A book remains to be written about European dread of the East, with analysis of all the superstitions which have clouded reality. .. For the moment, however, the fact to note is that the mental attitude involved is a relic of a period when Asian civilization was incontestably superior. Orientals never had the occult powers for which they were given credit. All they had was a scientific knowledge which surpassed all mental comprehension.'
• 136: CHINESE TECHNOLOGY: [taken from Joseph Needham on China]—
'.. here are a few of the things which may be said about the transmission of mechanical and other techniques. A few fundamental ones diffused in all directions from ancient Mesopotamia, e.g. the wheeled vehicle, the windlass and the pulley... the only Persian invention of the first rank was the windmill.. But China produced a profusion of developments which reached Europe and other regions at times varying between the 1st and the 18th centuries:
(a) the square pallet chainpump |
(b) the edge runner mill and the application of water power to it |
(c) metallurgical blowing machines operated by water power |
(d) the rotary fan and winnowing machine |
(e) the piston bellows |
(f) the horizontal warp-loom (possibly also Indian) and the draw-loom |
(g) silk reeling, twisting and doubling machinery |
(h) the wheelbarrow |
(i) the sailing carriage |
(j) the wagon-mill |
(k) the two efficient harnesses for draught animals, i.e. the breast strap or postilion harness, and the collar harness |
(l) the crossbow |
(m) the kite |
(n) the helicopter top and the zoetrope |
(o) the technique of deep drilling |
(p) the mastery of cast iron |
(q) the 'Cardan' suspension bridge |
(r) the segmental arch bridge |
(s) the iron-chain suspension bridge |
(t) canal lock-gates |
(u) numerous inventions in nautical construction, including water-tight compartments, aerodynamically efficient sails, the fore-and-aft rig |
(v) the stern-post rudder |
(w) gunpowder and some of its associated techniques |
(x) the magnetic compass, used first for geomancy and then, also by the Chinese, for navigation |
(y) paper, printing, and moveable-type printing |
(z) porcelain
.. many more instances, even important ones, could be given.. common to all examples is that firm evidence for their use in China antedates, and sometimes long antedates, the best evidence for their appearance in any other part of the world.'
• 'Between China and Islam there was a closer connection than many people realise. "Seek for learning," said the Prophet...' in 8th century 'their ships were a familiar sight in the southern Chinese harbors, ...'
• Note on ARABS: Parkinson never makes it quite clear what 'Arabs' are; Arabia is the size of half a dozen European states—why should it be homogeneous?—
He lists such inventions as India (maths)/ Persia (chess and polo)/ Byzantium (fortification). And horsemanship and poetry—chivalry. And religion and war. Parkinson has little idea of the bloodiest aggressions and thefts of Moslems or their Jewish origin.
Jarvis 1936 'Cases of interference with women are extremely rare.. women kept within the home and protected when young.' Reputation of showing their enemies remarkable clemency after a fight.
Jarvis: nomad not cultivator: Jarvis (1936) '..The Arab is sometimes called the Son of the Desert, but.. in most cases he is the Father of the Desert, having created it himself....'. Ibn Khaldun of Tunis (1332-1406) Prolegomena: '.. all the countries of the world ... conquered and dominated by the Arabs have had their civilisation ruined, their populations dispersed, and even the soil itself... transformed. Thus Yemen is in ruins... Iraq, which was so flourishing under the Persians, is devastated; so, too, Syria.. In North Africa and the Maghreb.. ruin and devastation.. prevail. Yet ... all the country lying between the Sudan and the Mediterranean was the centre of a flourishing civilisation..' —'In the ninth century, the merits of Islam were much in evidence, and the longterm devastation had still, perhaps, to be realized. ..'
Richard Coke in 1929 sounds like Rudolph Valentino in Blood and Sand: '.. a new and fine religious conception; a then quite novel idea of ..individual behaviour, of personal cleanliness, of good manners and an idealistic treatment of women... art.. decorative work.. unity of God; propriety and necessity of self-indulgence within certain clearly defined limits; the essential brotherhood of man'
• Parkinson on p144 says Muslims were thought of as almost more than human when Europe was at its lowest
But he has nothing on the conquest of Aghanistan, and what is now called 'Pakistan' [Punjab, A for Afghans (Pathans), K Kashmir, S for Sind, stan = country] by Islam—very bloody according to Will Durant—'probably the bloodiest story in history', or on the Black Death, very possibly a Jewish infliction.
12 THE CRUSADES
• 148: [Origin of national flags during the Crusades]
• 148,149: [Christianity's borrowings from the east]
• 149,150: [Parkinson on Crusades and West learning military techniques from Arabs]
-155: Turks driven from Turkistan west into Turkey by the Mongols. [Hence St George, a Christian in Turkey]
13 RENASCENT EUROPE
14 THE WEST GOES EAST
• 171-183: [Detailed chapter, plenty of maps, many dates: suggests that this is a topic close to Parkinson's heart. Most of the expansion, within USA and Russia, and European by sea, is English-speaking, though he pretends or asserts that it isn't. Some of this perhaps from H J MacKinder?]
• 178-9: 'What distinguished the British from previous movements of expansion, whether eastward or westward, was the fact that the whole of the trade route was brought under one system of control. The Arabs had come near to the ideal when their empire extended momentarily from Spain to India, their trade from Cadiz to Canton. But the British authority was more firmly established and stretched further in either direction. In its earlier form, the route went via Capetown, Bombay, Madras, Calcutta and Penang. To these possessions were added, for greater security, the bases of Ceylon, Malacca, Mauritius, and Singapore; with Hong Kong, Labuan and North Borneo as well. The route round the Cape was in general use until 1869, .. Suez Canal was opened to a traffic which was no longer under sail. This necessitated the strengthening of the other route by the development of other bases at Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, Alexandria, and Aden. It involved controlling Egypt and the Sudan. It also meant a tightening of imperial discipline by telegraph and fast ships, with colonial authorities kept more strictly on the leash. India had already been placed directly under the crown, and Queen Victoria proclaimed its empress. After 1870, the tentacles of Empire reached out to Malaya, to Japan, and even into the heart of China, with the white ensign regularly seen at Hankow and Weihaiwei. [Note: myth of ubiquitous British sea power? In fact it seems to have been Jewish owned or controlled, not 'British' unless the word 'British is interpreted in crypto-Jew style. Cp what he says on 220:] By 1900 the British seemed to be everywhere, their power firmly based upon India and upon their naval superiority in the Indian Ocean.
It is important to remember.. that the expansion of Europe was not a purely British phenomenon. The French.. lines of enterprise.. North Africa.. Madagascar.. Indochina. The Dutch.. East Indies, and the latecomers, Italy and Germany, were quick to seize any chance that offered. Even the United States.. began to make its influence felt in the Far East by the mid-nineteenth century.
[NOTE: Russian Land Empire:] Quite as important, and little noticed, was the expansion of Russia. The vacuum caused by the weakness of Asia, which drew the British by sea, was as effective in drawing the Russians by land. The Mongol collapse and the empty spaces of Siberia led the Russians towards the Pacific. What is still more significant is that their advance exactly paralleled that of Britain, beginning at the same time and ending literally in the same year. The year when Gregory Stroganoff entered Asia (1558), with encouragement from Ivan the Terrible, was the year in which Elizabeth I came to the throne. Tobolsk was founded just before the defeat of the Armada, Tomsk just after the accession of James I. The annexation of western and central Siberia accompanied the development of New England, as also the foundation, in 1640, of Madras. The date of the first Navigation Act (1651) is also the date of the first Russian clash with the Manchus. The fateful year 1707, when the Act of Union coincided with the death of Aurangzeb, was equally marked by the annexation of Kamchatka. The Russians reached the Amur in the year (1847) that James Brooke was appointed to public office in Borneo. The whole of Siberia was conceded to Russia in the year (1858) that the East India Company was replaced by the India Office, and Vladivostok was founded in the year after that. Like the British, the Russians were moving astride the trade route, which they began to transform in 1891, just after Cecil Rhodes had become Prime Minister at the Cape. But the 4000 miles of the Trans-Siberian railway were not finished until 1905, a year which marked the limit of British and Russian expansion alike.
From 1472, when Ivan III, Grand Duke of Moscow, married the niece of the last emperor of Constantinople—from about the time, in fact, when Columbus first went to sea—the Russians had been pursuing their imperial destiny as the "third Rome." "The importance of the move is in direct proportion to the neglect it has received in Western studies." [Endnote gives Michael Edwardes Asia in the European Age: 1498-1955 (1961) as source; the Cossacks quotation is from Lancelot Lawton, Empires of the Far East (1912).] But another and earlier author wrote on the subject that "The Cossacks have achieved for Russia what the sea-rovers have done for England." That is perfectly true, and the story of their move eastward by land, coincident with the British move by sea, should convince us, were we in doubt, that Russia is essentially a western power. .. It was Disraeli who pointed out, in 1866, that Britain "interferes in Asia because she is really more of an Asiatic than a European power." It is in this sense that the Russians can be regarded as Orientals. Their civilization is Western, however, in character and origin. Whether they like it or not, their fortunes are inextricably bound up with the rise and fall of the West.'
• 219: [Japan's industrialisation at astonishing rate noted, but Parkinson doesn't know of Rothschild finance]
• 219-220: [1905 and Japan gets Port Arthur by not declaring war, says Parkinson; and Admiral Togo destroys Russian Baltic fleet at the Battle of Tsushima.]
• Maurice Paléologue, 1935, The Turning Point.. 1904-1906 .. shows that the First World War had become a certainty by .. 1905.. [This may well have been a Jewish claim, of course Britain had entered into an alliance with Japan in January, 1902 ... Britain needed two fleets, one to face Germany in the North Sea, the other to defend British interests in the Far East. But these two fleets did not exist, both political and technical considerations preventing their ever being built..'
• 220: '.. 1894.. Curzon.. foretold the increase of British influence in the Far East, provided only that British sea power were maintained. .. .. the Naval strength.. between Singapore and Vladivostok, when compared with the combined fleets of France and Russia can scarcely be said to possess that incontestable predominance..
If not incontestably superior.. nine ironclads and cruisers against a Franco-Russian equivalent of four. Their force was one, in short, of a respectable size. By 1905 the position has entirely altered, with the Russians replaced by the victorious Japanese and the high seas fleet constituting a new threat in home waters. In that year the British Far East fleet was withdrawn, leaving British interests to be protected by the Japanese. The fleet was never replaced, and into the vacuum its departure created were drawn the competing influencers of Japan and the U.S.A.
•
In theory there was nothing to stop the British from building another Far East fleet, but the Conservatives, who might just possibly have done so, were defeated in the general election of 1905. ..'
• 221: '.. rising taxes would have been enough.. to bring the British Empire to a standstill. The comforts.. would discourage ordinary people from going overseas. The dwindling reward for outstanding effort would discourage the enterprise of the empire builder and capitalist. But a high taxation, although lethal.. (as.. in Mogul India, and Imperial Rome), is almost certainly the symptom, not the cause, of a more basic failure. .. The trend towards socialism.. France.. socialist prime minister in 1906. The German socialists... movement in the U.S.A...'
• 221-222: [Quite a long account of Malaya, 'the last [territories] to be acquired. Northernmost point the 'isthmus of Kra' which Parkinson compares to Romans picking on Hadrian's Wall as a compromise, not too far north, or south. Frank Swettenham was 'the current genius', says Parkinson; he suddenly resigned in 1903, 'leaving his work unfinished.' He says the frontier was a 'perpetual liability during the [Malaya] emergency which began in 1948.'
• 224: [Note: Parkinson attributes wily Oriental cunning:] '.. China itself.. meritocracy.. complete separation of the governing and the governed. .. the people at large become expert in the interpretation of evidence.. They automatically reject the press release, while studying carefully what the officials actually do. Nor have they become less cynical under British colonial influence or rule. They ignore the speeches, and count the warships.. Among people with this keen sense for realities, the disappearance of the British Far East fleet could not pass unnoticed; nor..could they fail to remark the resignation of a Curzon or a Swettenham. ..'
• 225: [Interesting account of 1953 study of attitudes among Straits Chinese: 1900 'made a voluntary contribution' supporting Britain against the Boers, Association, Coronation, Singapore Volunteers, YMCA, Chinese defeat in 1895 [I think to Japanese aggression, 1894-5], perhaps Boxer Rebellion though Parkinson omits it here/ Sun Yat-sen 1906 tipped balance, 1908 visit, Manchu dynasty overturned 1911, Chinese renascence had begun.]
15 THE EAST AT BAY
16 VICTORIAN VIRTUES
• GUNPOWDER AND FIREARMS; AND LATER SUPERIORITY OF THE WEST:&nmdash; 200ff: .. gunpowder was possibly a Chinese invention and one first heard of in 1260. The earliest Chinese cannon date from 1356. Whereas there were guns used at the Siege of Metz in 1324 and by the English at Crecy in 1346. They are described in documents dating from 1326.. while firearms are mentioned from 131.. Both were used by the English at sea from the Battle of Sluys in 1340. Henry V used cannon against Harfleur (1415.. The Turks used cannon against Constantinople in 1453, and the Earl of Warwick was as successful against Bamborough castle in 1464. The Persians were asking the Venetians for gunpowder and artillery in 1471, and a Shah of Gujerat was making a similar application to Egypt in 1511-12. By 1512 the Venetian Ambassador reported to the Doge that Henry VIII "has enough cannon to conquer hell." In 1523, Philip of Hesse flattened Landstuhl Castle in a single day. The Mughal Emperor Babur had cannon in 1526, with Hindu artillerymen. .. one might conclude that guns were never a monopoly of either East or West. Credit for their first effective use may have to be shared between the Turks and the English; the Turkish artillery being the best in 1550, and the English known to be superior by 1580 or thereabouts, at which period the best firearms came from the Netherlands and Spain. So far as mere invention goes, the story is one that ranges from Woolwich to Peking, with no one country standing supreme.
[Note: Parkinson says nothing about the raw materials for gunpowder] Why then was the position so different by 1700? For that matter why were the Portuguese able to obtain a naval superiority in the Indian Ocean by 1509? The answer is to be found surely in the evolution of the literate soldier.—
.. the invention of a gun or firearm is less than half the battle. Cannon, to be effective, must be mounted, maintained, cleaned, and polished. Solid shot must be scraped and repainted. Gunpowder must be kept dry and the kegs regularly turned end for end. Breechings and tackles, ramrods and wedges must be checked and inspected. The gun crew must be taught an elaborate and exact drill, every man learning his own task and the task of every other man... One mistake in the rigid sequence of events, one failure to ram home the rod, may wreck the gun with the crew under it. Nor is there any less need for precision with small arms. Infantry drill was invented by Maurice of Nassau, the first manual—by Jacob de Gheyn - being published in 1608. Loading and firing a musket might involve a sequence of thirty seven actions and as many commands.. [extract, 2 part paragraphs, from it follows]
17 THE MARCH OF PROGRESS
18 THE TURNING POINT
19 THE RENASCENCE OF ASIA
20 THE DEFENSE OF THE WEST
BIBLIOGRAPHY [6 pages, mostly parts of the world, [Japan, Persia/ Iran, India, China, Islam, Greece, Arabs, Asia, Russia, Egypt; and a few titles of east meets west type; no book about Jews, though]/ plus accounts of cities, firearms, fortifications, Greek fire & gunpowder, horses, radio?, science, ships, technologies, war, water transport. Parkinson doesn't always give original publication dates]
INDEX [22 pages, double columns; a bit sketchy, but interesting variety: includes: Academe; Adams, Henry; Afghanistan; Agamemnon; attitude to old age; Ahura-Mazda; Albigenses; Alexander, Alexandria; Alexander VI Pope; Algeria; Alternation of ascendancy; Amenhotep; Amorites; Ancestor worship; Anchita = Artemis; Ancient Royal Road; Andromache; Anti-American propaganda; Anti-Christian Association; Antigonus Gonatus; Antilochus; Antioch; Anti-Semitism; Antony, Mark; "Arabic" numerals; Arabs; Arae Philenorum; Aristocracy, Arab; Aristophanes; Armenia; Armor; Art & architecture; Artaxerxes; Asia; Asia Minor; Asoka; Astrolabe; Athens; Aurangzeb; Austria; Auvergne; Ayub Khan; Babur; Babylon; Bactria; Baluchistan; Bamborough; Barbarossa; Barbary Coast; Baths; Beaumaris; Bengal OMITTED; Bentham OMITTED; Berenice; Black Sea = Euxine; Boarding schools; Bordeaux; Bretons; Bristol; Bronze Age; Brotherhood among Arabs; Bulwer-Lytton; bureaucracy; Burma; Byzantium; Cabot; Caesar, Julius; Cairo University; Calcutta; Calicut; California; Cambodia; Cambyses; Campbell Bannerman; Candia; Cannon; Canton; Carrhae; Carthage; Cartography; Caspian Sea; caste systems; Castiglione; Catalan portolano; Catalonia; Catholicism; Cavalry; Cervantes; Ceylon; chain mail; Chandragupta; chariot races; Charlemagne; Charles V; Chaucer; Childe, Gordon V.; China; Ch'ing dynasty; Chios; Chippendale; chivalry; chosen people; Christianity; chronometer; Cinque ports; City; Civil Service in India; civilization meaning; classes in Europe; cleanliness; Clive OMITTED except for one reference; clothing, men's; Cochin; Colombo; Color bar; Columbus; communications Persian, by river → language, literature, writing; compass; Confucius; Congress movement; Constantine; Constantinople; Coomaraswamy; Corinth; Coromandel; Corsica; Cossacks; council house; Crécy; Crete; Croesus; crusades; Ctesiphon; cultural inundation, Roman; Cunaxa; cuneiform; currency & banking; Curzon; Cynosarges (gymnasium); Cyprus; Cyrenaica; Cyrus brother of Artaxerxes; Cyrus of Persia; Dacia; Danube River; Darius; Darius II; dark ages; Delcassé; democracy; Descartes; desert, law of, and warfare in; Deuteronomy; Dharmaraksa; dialectical materialism; Diocletian; Diomedes; Dioscurias; discovery and social organization; Disraeli; Dolon; Don River; Dubrovnik; Dundas; Dutch; duty, sense of; East Africa; East India Company; East Indies; eastern Roman Empire; Ecbatana; Edessa; education in China, Hindu, Muslim; Edward I, VII, VIII of England; Egypt; Elizabeth I; England, character of, behaviour, decline, expansion; Epaminondas; Ephesus; equality, attitudes to; Erasmus; Eratosthenes; Eritrea; Essenes; Ethiopia; Etruscans; Euclid; Euphrates; Euripides; Europe, ascendency of, decline of, loss of confidence of; Europos; evangelism; excellence, passion for; exposure of infants; Fahien; family, decline, wider association; Fatehpur Sikri; Federated Malay States; Ferdinand of Spain; Fibonacci; "Fifth column"; filial piety; flags; Flemish trade; Fletcher, John; Florence; Formosa; Fort William; fortification; forum; Fourier, France, Frederic II, freedom, Fukien, funeral customs, Gades = Cadiz, Gaius, Galata, Gama, Vasco da, gamesmanship, Gian Yen-shun, Gandhi, Ganges, Ganymede, Gascony, Gaul, Gautama Buddha, Gelon, General Service Establishment Act, Genoa, Germany, Gibbon, Gibraltar, Gods, Bedouin, Carthaginian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman → religion; golden age; Good Hope, Cape of; Gordon, "Chinese", gothic architecture; government: complexity, dominance, self-training for; Granada, grassroots influence, Roman; Greeks, long list inc. abandoned by British, art, birth control, defense against Asia, ?Golden age, horsemen, ideas absorbed by Rome, in India, wars; Gregory I Pope; Guadiana; Guam; gunpowder; "gymkhana"; Hadrian; the Hague; Haileybury; Halicarnassus; Halys river; Hammurabi; Han dynasty; Hangchow; Hankow; Hannibal; Hanno; Hanoi; Hansa towns; Harappa; harem system; Harfleur; Harrington, Sir John; Hastings; Havre; Hawaiian Islands; .. Indigo OMITTED; Khazars OMITTED; Mill J S OMITTED; Opium wars OMITTED; Slaves OMITTED except in antiquity; Turks largely OMITTED cp Wells; Ward Barbara OMITTED though in bibliography]
Notes, HTML Rae West