History Re-Read

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The fifth President of the United States, James Monroe, proclaimed in 1823 that the New World, the Western Hemisphere, was closed to further colonization; and that any attempt by the European powers of the Old World, whether Portugal and Spain diminished powers in the south to recolonize or Britain and France in the North to newly colonize would be viewed as acts of hostility.

Yet America’s self-appointed role as protector in the region, and the countries just mentioned, against European expansion was only made possible by the Louisiana Purchase. That is to say the acquisition of mainly swampland owned at the time by France running the entire length of the Mississippi river to the East taking in all its tributaries stretching westwards as far was what was then called New Spain.

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PREVIEW

The season will start in earnest next month (August 2021)

The Monroe Doctrine:

American foreign policy from the time of nation’s 5th President (James Monroe) through to the present can be seen through the prism of the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. Not fully understood as a doctrine at the time, it became so a generation later. It was meant as a warning to Europe against further colonization of the Americas. Later, in 1904, under President Theodore Roosevelt, who more punitively wanted it as a bulwark against barbarism, a corollary was added. A further congressional re-reading following WW1 was undertaken in relation to the League of Nations, which, had America signed up to, would have given foreign powers some say over deploying American troops for peace keeping missions, thus contravening the Doctrine or how the doctrine was being interpreted at that point. 

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The idea had been in this series of podcasts to have a kind of three-act structure for each, taking in the Views from Germany, Russia and America in the 20th century from the perspective of 100 years on. I had hoped when starting out 18 months ago to present historical events episodically on a monthly basis. But history cannot be trifled with in this way.

A big thank you to those following previous podcasts. I hope you will not be too disappointed with the next direction explained here as the last Bock-Deer Podcast. From next month, it will be called History Re-Read.

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THE VIEW FROM GERMANY

Twenty-four hours before the deadline of May 31st 100 Gold marks were duly paid to the inter-allied reparations commission. But not under the chancellorship of Constantine Fehrenbach. Yet, his party, Zentrum, the Catholic Centre Party retained its in influence in all the main offices of State, after Fehrenbach and the independent diplomat, Walter Simons, the Foreign Minister, both resigned.

Harrington, Joseph F.

The League of Nations and the Upper Silesian Boundary Dispute, 1921-1922.

The Polish Review, vol. 23, no. 3, 1978, pp. 86–101

www.jstor.org/stable/25777590

THE VIEW FROM RUSSIA

New Politics and the Education of the Peasant

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The Communists had all by sealed victory in the Russian civil war in the country but had practically lost the countryside by April 1921. The famine discussed in the podcasts of October and November in season 1, focused economic on implications of this new politics, I was talking about then and will be talking about now in relation to Lenin’s New Economic Policy (NEP) in particular. In Russian transliteration: New Economic Politics. I want to focus more on the politics than the economics.

http://chkprf.narod.ru/Texts/VIL44-155.htm#ch5 NEP in Russian

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/oct/17.htm in English

THE VIEW FROM AMERICA

America Declares That She Fought for Herself Alone in WW1

At a dinner at the American Embassy in London on May the 19th to welcome the latest Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, the new incumbent, George Harvey stated his country’s interest in the outcome of the conflict in Upper Silesia and wanted it to play a part in order to safeguard its own commercial interests. But on its own terms, not through the courtly procedures of European diplomacy but as the new President personified in the American approach to diplomacy: humble but unafraid.

Published: May 20, 1921. Copyright © The New York Times

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THE VIEW FROM GERMANY

The Sicheheitpolizei (Sipo) was made up of disparate elements of the Freikorps and others ready to do violence for the sake of the nationalist cause. When I say ‘disparate,’ by way of analogy, I mean as disparate as the many of claiming German linage in order to register to vote in the plebiscite – but that is for later. They were a security force ostensibly acting a as law enforcement agency in the name of the Government but ill-disciplined enough individually to terrorize the population they meant to keep in order by lawful means...

THE VIEW FROM RUSSIA

The doings of the Cheka, one way and the other, can be illustrated by looking at the final days of two very different poets: Blok, Aleksandr Alexandrovich, and Gumilev, Nikolai Stepanovich.

THE VIEW FROM AMERICA

Woodrow Wilson had set the framework for peace, the League of Nations. If fully realized, with the U.S. as first among equals, it could still bring about a kind of proto-globalization. This framework remained visibly in the distance along with a residue of hope in Wilson’s legacy for generations to come. After all, whatever administration may be found in the White House, of whichever strip, the Governance of the USA was surely the most democratic and along with Congress, the most stable. The mere husk that was the Government of the Republic of Germany in Berlin under Chancellor Fehrenbach and Foreign Minister Simons pleaded for help. 

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