A Global Depression

When the phrase "Great Depression" is used in modern society, images of families in the Oklahoma Dust Bowl, and long lines of people waiting for a bit of food from a soup kitchen are conjured. But something commonly overlooked is the global impact of the Great Depression. Yes, it hit America hard, but the economy of the world had been integrated together in proportions unseen until that time, so when one nation's economy fell, it began a domino effect on the rest of the industrialized nations. But how did Europe handle the Depression?  Were they able to weather the financial storm any better on their side of the pond?

It is relatively accepted that the Great Depression began in America, although the case could be made that the recession leading up to the Depression was started abroad. In the years following World War I, inflation was rampant, especially in Germany, and many European nations looked to America and her seemingly strong economy for help. Essentially the world's banker, America experienced a boom during the 1920's, and life seemed good. The astute observer would note that this was a shallow and false hope, however: farmers, used to overproducing food for the war effort, were faced with plummeting prices and huge loans for their new modern farm equipment as demand lessened and supply rose. Europe began to increase their production capabilities, but in combination with American imports, prices were again driven down, along with profits, making debts of any kind more difficult to repay. But the deeper issue was merely pushed to the background during these Roaring 20's, and coupled with eased reparation payments and new inventions like the radio and automobile, seemed like the United States could be a bastion amidst the financial storm. But it was not to last, as the American economy entered its own recession in April of 1929, culminating in the collapse of the stock market in October 1929. This sent shockwaves throughout the world, as people everywhere had invested in the stock market and uninsured banks and lost their entire life savings virtually overnight.

Officially beginning in the United States, the Great Depression rapidly spread into a worldwide economic crash, with nation after nation collapsing under the weight of its own debts, as the world's economies had been forged into a delicate web between the US and Europe after WWI. Once the American's economy caved in, however, the ripple was felt all across that web, with the nations deepest in debt to the US – namely Great Britain and Germany – feeling the hardest hit. Germany alone saw her unemployment rise harshly in 1929, until unemployment hit 25% by 1932, which equated to roughly 6 million workers. A panic began to spread amongst the politicians of the effected nations as well, with lawmakers passing legislation to attempt to protect their respective nations. They raised existing tariffs, drafted and imposed new ones, and even went so far as to require quotas set on the number of foreign imports, such as with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, and by 1932 – when Germany reached 25% unemployment – foreign trade had fallen by nearly 50%. Another foolhardy attempt by the politicians to salvage the American economy was a failed repeal of the McFadden Act of 1927, which – in essence – limited the growth of banks by forcing them to stay in their home state. Ironically, the Canadians, who didn't have this restriction, managed to keep a single bank from going bankrupt, whereas the United States lost over 9,000. (Weatherby, 2012) American banks, terrified of the economic climate and more concerned about their own survival, stopped approving loans in an attempt to keep their own proverbial heads above the water. However, there were a select few economies who were buffered from feeling the full effects of the Depression; the Soviet Union, for example, had cut off nearly all their ties with the western nations, save a few rather insignificant ones. This placed a huge strain in the Russian people during Stalin's rapid industrialization, but it protected them from feeling the same, sobering effects of the Depression.

However, the severing of ties was not a viable option for many countries, and they were forced to find other ways of coping with the Depression. The French and British opted to adopt multi-party systems and radical economic ideas that were unheard of in their pre-War nations, and other nations – like the Italians and Germans – moved into a organized, violent and ruthless system of government, falling into the grasp of Mussolini's Fascists and Hitler's National Socialist Party. These men brutally eradicated the obstacles in the way of their respective nations recovering again, whether or not the opponents were real or figments of their imagination. Japan was another nation brutalized by the Depression, because they were so heavily dependent on their import and export trades, receiving raw materials and fuel in exchange for silk and other items of luxury. By 1931, the value of Japanese exports had plunged to 50%, almost a full year before Europe's exports reached that level, with over 3 million people unemployed. Those factors, when coupled with the droughts and bad harvests, left the majority of the Japanese islands in a state reminiscent of the Oklahoma Dust Bowl.

The Great Depression was quite literally hell on earth. Massive unemployment, governmentally meddling, unseen droughts would all combine to make one of the hardest times to survive in modern history, but before the lessons of the Great Depression could be completely grasped, Europe, Asia and eventually America found themselves involved in yet another global  war that would prove longer and even more destructive than the first.

References

About the Great Depression. (2008, August 27). Department of English, College of LAS, University of Illinois. Retrieved from http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/depression/about.htm

Pearson-Prentice Hall (1995). Europe and the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Western Heritage. Retrieved from http://wps.prenhall.com/hss_kagan_westheritage_8/11/2878/736876.cw/index.html

Rothermund, D. (1996). Read The Global Impact of the Great Depression, 1929-1939 by Dietmar Rothermund. | Questia, Your Online Research Library. Questia, Your Online Research Library. Retrieved from http://www.questia.com/read/103606166/the-global-impact-of-the-great-depression-1929-1939

The Great Depression. (n.d.). World History International: World History Essays From Prehistory To The Present. Retrieved from http://history-world.org/great_depression.htm

Weatherby, E. (2011, February 27). Causes of the Great Depression « Pipe N' Slippers. Pipe N' Slippers. Retrieved from http://pipenslippers.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/causes-of-the-great-depression/

To the Victor Goes the Spoils: The Formation of the Modern Middle East

The Middle East has always been a hotbed of contention and strife throughout the millennia, with one group or another trying to gain dominance of the region. The Ottoman Empire had been that domineering force for generations, but when they threw in their lot with Germany and their allies during World War I, it was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. After the Triple Entente won the war, and the League of Nations was formed shortly thereafter, the groundwork was laid for the decadent and plagued nations we recognize today through the "Mandate System".

Before World War I, the Middle East was comprised of small pockets of like-minded people, living in semi-autonomous regions. Granted, they were most likely part of the Ottoman Empire, but they were – for the most part – left to govern themselves. After the fall of the Ottomans, however, the League of Nations was suddenly thrust upon the region. Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations granted the authority to the mandate powers, claiming it was to prepare the natives of each region for autonomous self-government. Both the British and French were granted mandates, even though both had been involved in the region long before the Great War, but their victory gave them the much needed opportunity to increase their reach. ("The League of Nations Mandate Provision", n.d.) Using both platforms of the Zionists and Arabs, the British asserted their dominance in the region, despite French protests. Between the Zionist support and the fact that the Her Majesty's Royal Army occupied the entire Fertile Crescent and through to Egypt, English forces merely strong-armed the various other national units in the region, and the main threat to the British – the Russians – had imploded and the Bolsheviks renounced the Russian claim on Constantinople. With the Soviet threat in the region eliminated, the Crown was able to shape the fledgling nation as they thought best.

Their sheer military might in the region gave them the ability to crush any local indigenous resistance, often mixing the iron fist of military might with the silver tongue of diplomacy. The French were more of an irritant than an actual threat, so the British begrudgingly forfeited the Syrian and Lebanese Mandates to their former ally. When France unceremoniously ousted Faisal ibn Abd al Aziz, whom the people had proclaimed as the King of Syra, the British government welcomed him and his entourage fled to British controlled Palestine. However, the local British governor grumbled about the swarm of people that had come along, stating that "they cannot stay here indefinitely."  ("Middle East (region, Asia)", n.d.) They couldn't just oust him as the French did though, so the British elites used their considerable influence to arrange for Faisal's 'election' as king of the newly formed Iraqi state. The British also successfully staved off  the French expansion in the area as well, with the British keeping a hold of the oil rich regions of northern Iraq, along with the historically significant region of Palestine. But when Faisal's brother, Abdullah I ibn Hussein, took the Middle Eastern world by storm, seeking to reclaim his brother's throne and attack the French in Transjordan with his rabble of an army, the British intervened on behalf of the French. The begrudgingly sent a number of officers to the region, to stave off a decline back into sheer anarchy. ("The Middle East After World War One", n.d.)

Once the British firmly established their unquestioned dominance in the region, and the French were resigned to their two holdings, they began to withdraw their military presence. It wasn’t truly by choice, however, as popular support for the overseas military waned drastically. Plagued by budget cuts and newspapers opposing the massive expenditures being amassed by the military, the British Army was reduced to small, scattered units, with the only exception being the standing force guarding the strategically crucial Suez Canal. This was the beginning of the end of English supremacy in the Middle East, and laid the groundwork for the formation of the modern Arab states we find there today. By the early 1920s, a majority of the populace had been agitated to the point of civil unrest against the British, so much so that even the Sunni and Shia Muslims in Iraq were banding together to resist, forming the Haras al Istiqlal, or "The Guardians of Independence". ("Iraq - WORLD WAR I AND THE BRITISH MANDATE", n.d.) These violent protests, along with the English forces left in the area arresting many of the leaders, forced the British government to rethink their stance of essentially keeping the Middle East as one giant colony or satellite state. However, Egypt was granted her independence in 1922, and it was there that the British experimented with essentially a puppet government to keep their superiority in the region. It was so successful, to an extent, that they later granted Iraq their freedom in 1932 under the same circumstances, but for each case, Britain maintained an efficient control over critical tactical and financial interests. The maintaining of this so-called 'veiled protectorate,' a term coined in the Egyptian case, merely aggravated nationalist dissatisfactions and hatred, but these were written off as posing no immediate threat to the British Empire.

However, with the threats of Hitler's Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy upon the homeland forced Great Britain to reprioritize her funds and military, and essentially neglected the Middle East upon the outset of WWII, leaving all of her mandates and protectorates to fend for themselves. This, coupled with the ruthless crushing of various uprisings helps to explain the current Middle Easter hatred for all things Western. The greed and inhumanity portrayed by the British and French poisoned entire generations, something that the Western Powers of today are still dealing with.

References

Iraq - WORLD WAR I AND THE BRITISH MANDATE. (n.d.). Country Studies. Retrieved March 5, 2013, from http://countrystudies.us/iraq/19.htm

Middle East (region, Asia). (n.d.). In Britannica Online Encyclopedia. Retrieved March 6, 2013, from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/381192/Middle-East

The League of Nations Mandate Provision. (n.d.). MidEast Web Historical Documents. Retrieved March 6, 2013, from http://www.mideastweb.org/leaguemand.htm

The Middle East After World War One | The Non-Western World | Big Site of History ©. (n.d.). Big Site of History © | History of Civilization. Retrieved March 6, 2013, from http://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-middle-east-after-world-war-one-the-non-western-world

Historiography: Into the Modern Era

Historiography is an interesting field. Equal parts art and science, it isn't generally inserted into the classical definitions of either category, and as such, is often overlooked. Or worse, it's written off as being mere history, much as it was throughout the medieval period. But it's more than just history: not only is it reconstructing our human record, but it's writing or recording history, as it happens. It's the art of being able to observe and preserve what's going on around you for future generations to reference and learn from. And that is an extremely exciting prospect. But when did historiography go from the fledgling art that was developed classical Greece to the modern discipline it is today?

Historiography first saw its modern roots grow out of German universities in the 1800s. Leopold von Ranke quite literally revolutionized it with the seminars he put on, coupled with his critical approach that focused on diplomacy and the political realm. Previous historiographers, or those who dabbled in it as a hobby like French philosopher Voltaire, had generally focused on the culture of the day and social issues, so von Ranke's ideas were quite radical. To von Ranke's mind, history was a science that had many qualities of an art, not the other way around. Sources had to be solid, not mere ideas and speculations, and primary sources needed to have vetted authenticity. Something he stressed in his works was to "write history the way it was," ("Historiography", 2013) but he did his own version of selective writing. Many historians before von Ranke had tended to focus on how events were cyclical, citing the rise and fall of nations, empires, rulers and other figures, but von Ranke wanted to break away from universal history. Instead, he nationalized history, keeping with the popular views of the day, and separated the history of one's own country, insomuch as to merely emphasize that nation in regards to how and where it fits into the history of the world. This would lead to a spin-off science as well, later known as sociology, but at the time it was still considered a subset of historiography.

Von Ranke's ideas stayed relatively isolated in German for many years, but they began to spread, slowly but surely. One of the people that agreed with von Ranke was the 20^th century French historian Ferdinand Braudel, one of the leaders of the famed Annales School. Braudel picked up on von Ranke's notion to turn historiography into an art-like science, making it less subjective and requiring distinctly measureable evidence, something that is still stressed to up and coming historians to this day. He also wanted to broaden the historiographer's view, but not in the traditional sense: he wanted expand the nationalist type of history as put forward by von Ranke. Adding geographic relations, socio-economic aspects and other topics, he stressed a longer look at history, not just the short, event-focused style popular at the time. His fellow Frenchmen began to pick up his ideas and expand on them even further, with historians like Michel Foucault and Philippe Aries beginning to look at the historicity of seemingly mundane everyday subjects like sex and death – two subjects French always seem to be willing to talk about, no matter their profession. But this led to another genre of history, sometimes known as 'microhistory', that was pursued by some in Braudel's Annales School. ("Religion and Politics in 19th Century America", 1990)

At this point, the entire field began to open up, with people able to study the history of anything and its relation to anyone. One of those is 'musicology', or the historical study of music. Even though it had its own roots laid down by the historians of the Enlightenment in the 17^th century, somewhat removed from historiography itself, it really began to flourish and blossom in the 19^th century. The pragmatic knowledge of the music of the past was added to immensely, and the gradual growth of the field rocketed into relative prominence, and merely added to the desire to return to romanticism popular at the time. ("Acta Musicologica: Patterns in the Historiography of 19th-Century Music", 1970)

In short, historiography is a field of growth. It is an art just as much as it is a science, and the open, inquisitive, and determined minds of anyone can revolutionize the field. Recording and reconstructing our history is a vital part of a historians job, but all is moot if he or she is not willing to take a chance and chase a theory. 

References

Acta Musicologica: Patterns in the Historiography of 19th-Century Music. (1970). JSTOR. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/932271

Historiography. (2013). In Britannica Online Encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/267436/historiography

Religion and Politics in 19th Century America: Historiography as a Teaching Resource. (1990, September). ERIC – World’s largest digital library of education literature. Retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ415734&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ415734