Travel: Venice

A grey and wet day in Venice, seen from the Campanile in St. Mark's Square.

 

Quiz: Monarchs

These monarchs are all the second of that name for their respective countries: e.g. "Ferdinand II" (which is not one of the answers!) Who are they? There are three English, three Russian, and one each from France, Spain, Germany and the Holy Roman Empire. They are placed here in alphabetical order of their names.

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Annunciation

 March 25th is the Feast of the Annunciation, when the Archangel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary. This has always been a favourite subject with artists. This is a 16th century Flemish interpretation, by Joos van Cleve.

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History: Maps

 The past 30 years have witnessed the biggest changes in European frontiers since the Treaty of Versailles at the end of The First World War.

Compare this map of Europe before the collapse of the Communist regimes in the 1990s

with this one of Europe today, where there has been massive fragmentation in central and eastern Europe. 

The German, Austrian and Turkish Empires were broken up in the treaties after the First World War,  and new states were created in their place, supposedly based on ethnic dividions; but, unexpectedly, Lenin contrived to keep almost all the old multiracial Russian Empire together, and Stalin even managed to extend it in 1945. It was only after the collapse of Communism that this empire fell apart, bringing about some completely new states in eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Fighting has resulted in some of these areas.

   The ethnic map of central and eastern Europe was greatly simplified in the aftermath of the Second World War, when many ancient German communities in these regions were forcibly uprooted and expelled. There had been similar mass transfers, often violent, in the new Turkish state after 1918. 

   Czechoslovakia was a new and artificial state created by the Treaty of Versailles. It was destroyed by Hitler, created anew under the Communists, and fell apart, fortunately bloodlessly, after the Communist regime fell.

   Yugoslavia was another artificial Versailles creation. It always had ethnic tensions simmering beneath the surface, which broke out into extreme violence during the Second World War. Then for a generation it was held together by Marshal Tito, an independent-minded Communist who refused to follow Moscow's orders. But once his iron hand was removed, horrific scenes of massacres, bombardments and ethnic cleansing followed: the worst violence seen in Europe since 1945. 

   By contrast, the frontiers of Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, established from the ruin of the Turkish (Ottoman) Empire are still unaltered. They are only lines drawn on a map, bearing no relation to ethnic and religious boundaries, and the states created by them have been the scene of appalling violence over the past twenty years, but with as yet no moves to establish more realistic divisions.

England: Clive: Shropshire

 Views from the tower of All Saints church

Politics: Washington; December 6th 2020

 Donald Trump has always portrayed himself as the champion of "the people" against "the corrupt liberal ruling elite", and when the mob surged into the Capitol Building yesterday it did look for a moment as if we might be witnessing one of the great seminal revolutionary moments in history, analagous to the storming of the Tuileries in the French Revolution or of the Winter Palace in Russia in 1917; this being especially the case when the police apparently stepped back and let the demonstrators through. Fortunately, Mike Pence and the other Republican leaders, after fully supporting Trump for the past four years, experienced a sudden attack of sanity. Trump himself chickened out and backed off at the vital moment; because, of course, he isn't really a revolutionary at all, just a ridiculous loudmouthed egotist. But I wonder what he expected to happen when he summoned his supporters to Washington and addressed them with such wild rabble-rousing rhetoric. My suspicion is that he never gave the question any serious consideration whatsoever.

Brexit and Freedom

 I would like someone to explain to me in what sense I am "freer", as an individual, as the result of Brexit. As far as I can see, if, for instance, I wish to travel to Europe, I am sightly less free than before, and I do not believe that any of the other supposed benefits of Brexit affect me in any way. This raises the important philosophical question of whether a nation can be "freer" if the individual citizens are not. 

 Freedom and prosperity are quite different concepts. I would cite a quotation from John Gray, which is always a good basis for discussion: "A beggar is always freer than a conscript soldier, even though the latter may have more to eat".

To liberal philosophers, freedom essentially meant the number of things that you were permitted to do: the more the better. This has been derided as a mere "liberty pile". Rousseau, however, produced a much more complex notion of freedom. True freedom, he thought, involved voluntarily submerging your personal desires and ambitions in the "General Will", which was defined as "what is best for the community". If there are votes, then the rules dictate that the minority should submit to the wishes of the majority. This would appear to indicate that, in our case Remainers should now submit and embrace the cause of Brexit. Rousseau, however, adds a vital qualification: if the decision taken by the majority proves not to be in the community's best interests, then the whole structure collapses. Rousseau's definition of freedom was taken up by Hegel and by Marx, amongst others.

   Freedom and material prosperity are quite different things, and should no be confused. To return to John Gray's comment: the beggar might be free in some idealistic sense, but in terms of the "liberty pile" he isn't free, for the simple reason that he hasn't got any money, and therefore there are very few things that he is able to do with his freedom. He has virually no freedom of choice in what he buys or where he lives, and he is also very vulnerable to violent attacks or arrest, or to generally being victimised. He is unlikely to have much in the way of family or friends to support him. The soldier, assuming that he is allowed out of the barracks occasionally, scores better in all these fields. 

  In wartime, of course, the soldier has vey little freedom; but in war everyone's freedom is necessarily restricted. In this respect, the current Covid lockdown is analagous to a war situation: our "liberty pile" has been massively reduced, and we are urged to take the restrictions cheerfully and embrace them for the sake of the general good.