Roundup: Talking About History

Harout Harry Semerdjian: Armenian Genocide and International Relations

The writer is a PhD candidate at the University of Oxford. He holds advanced graduate degrees from The Fletcher School of Diplomacy at Tufts University and the University of California, Los Angeles. While the modern-day Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923, eight years after its Ottoman predecessors embarked on a massive and systematic undertaking to rid the empire of its Armenian population, the country today often finds itself in diplomatic spats with various Western nations over its history. Outside the periphery of geopolitics, it would be perplexing to most as to why an event that occurred nearly 100 years ago would impact relations between Turkey and the United States and various European countries. The answer lies in the annals of history.During the First World War, while the Islamic Ottoman Empire was fighting the Allied Powers on the side of Germany, its native Christian Armenian population became a target of organized deportations and massacres.

George Monbiot: Deny the British Empire's Crimes? No, We Ignore Them

George Monbiot is the author of the bestselling books The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order and Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain, as well as the investigative travel books Poisoned Arrows, Amazon Watershed and No Man's Land. There is one thing you can say for the Holocaust deniers: at least they know what they are denying. In order to sustain the lies they tell, they must engage in strenuous falsification. To dismiss Britain's colonial atrocities, no such effort is required. Most people appear to be unaware that anything needs to be denied. The story of benign imperialism, whose overriding purpose was not to seize land, labour and commodities but to teach the natives English, table manners and double-entry book-keeping, is a myth that has been carefully propagated by the rightwing press.

Alice Kessler-Harris: Lillian Hellman's Convictions

Alice Kessler-Harris is a professor of history at Columbia University and departing president of the Organization of American Historians. Her book A Difficult Woman: The Challenging Life and Times of Lillian Hellman is being published this month by Bloomsbury Press. The distinguished historian Eric Hobsbawm referred to what has come to be known as the short 20th century, from 1914 to 1991, as the history of the relationship of the West with communism. As it took power in the Soviet Union and then spun out to influence all aspects of personal and political life, the idea of communism and the reality of Soviet influence penetrated every corner of the world. The way we write history, particularly in the United States, ranks among the least visible and yet most unfortunate consequences of the conflict. I discovered that as I struggled to write about the American playwright, activist, and, yes, one-time Communist, Lillian Hellman.

David Hayes: Elizabeth II: A Long Reign and a Lost Republic

David Hayes is Deputy Editor of openDemocracy. He writes each month for Inside Story.“LUCK is a synonym for ruthless adaptation.” When the Polish philosopher Stanislaw Brzozowski (1878–1911) wrote these words, Europe’s clutter of imperial houses commanded the fate of peoples not only across the continent but also in much of the world beyond. Most would fall in the cataclysms of war and revolution to come, though a handful of small-state northern variants (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium) survived by remaining on the right side of their compatriots through the century’s traumas.Britain’s monarchy alone appears to have performed another trick in the face of recurrent social and political convulsion: finding in it material from which to carve new roles and rationales (including even a name), while continuing to live and breathe in the grand manner of old – and retaining along the way, even through its worst of times, broad public support.

Jeff Jacoby: Hitler, Pharaoh, and the Anti-Semitic Culture of Victimhood

Jeff Jacoby has been an op-ed columnist for The Boston Globe since February 1994. Holocaust Remembrance Day always falls during the week that follows Passover. At first glance, the two would seem to have little in common — one memorializes the millions of European Jews annihilated by Nazi Germany; the other commemorates the deliverance of the Jews from slavery in ancient Egypt. Yet for all their obvious differences, a fundamental similarity links these two crucial chapters in Jewish history. Both were attempts at genocide — and in both cases the perpetrators justified their savageries by claiming that they were the real victims, threatened by the people they intended to wipe out. At the Passover Seder, retelling the 3,000-year-old story, Jews read the passage from Exodus in which Pharaoh rationalizes the lethal repression he is about to inflict on the Hebrews. "Come, let us deal wisely with them," he declares. "Otherwise they may become so many that if there is a war they will join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the land." His notion of dealing wisely: slave labor, followed by mass murder.

Daniel Mendelsohn: Why We Can’t Let Go of the Titanic

Daniel Mendelsohn's work frequently appears in the New Yorker.In the early nineteen-seventies, my Uncle Walter, who wasn’t a “real” uncle but had a better intuition about my hobbies and interests than some of my blood relatives did, gave me a thrilling gift: membership in the Titanic Enthusiasts of America. I was only twelve, but already hooked. The magnificence, the pathos, the enthralling chivalry—Benjamin Guggenheim putting on white tie and tails so he could drown “like a gentleman”—and the shaming cowardice, the awful mistakes, the tantalizing “what if”s: for me, there was no better story. I had read whatever books the local public library offered, and had spent some of my allowance on a copy of Walter Lord’s indispensable “A Night to Remember.” To this incipient collection Uncle Walter added the precious gift of a biography of the man who designed the ship. It has always been among the first books I pack when I move. A little later, when I was in my midteens, I toiled for a while on a novel about two fourteen-year-old boys, one a Long Islander like myself, the other a British aristocrat, who meet during the doomed maiden voyage. Needless to say, their budding friendship was sundered by the disaster.

Robert Fulford: The Return of Neo-Stalinism

Robert Fulford is a Toronto author, journalist, broadcaster, and editor.The Russian people suffer from a severe inferiority complex, if we can believe the editorial that appeared in Pravda last week. It took the form of a cry from the wounded heart of Mother Russia, a nation wronged by the malicious insults of foreigners. In Pravda’s view, there are people everywhere, particularly East Europeans and Americans, who want “to make the Russians feel guilty for the past.” They accomplish this with reminders of Joseph Stalin’s cruel dictatorship and the decades when eastern Europe was under “Soviet occupation” — a phrase Pravda now prints with quotation marks, as if it were a figment of someone’s imagination. Apparently, foreigners keep harping on these subjects because they “do not want to admit that the Soviet Union defeated both Hitler’s Nazi Germany and the whole of Europe.” This don’t-hurt-our-feelings style of Russian defensiveness was most famously articulated a few years ago when Vladimir Putin said in a speech that “others cannot be allowed to impose a feeling of guilt on us.” It has since taken root in the officially approved publishing of Russia, where it encourages persistent attempts to upgrade Stalin’s reputation...

Dan Ernst: Charles Evans Hughes's Lifelong Respect for the Courts

Dan Ernst is professor of law at Georgetown Law School.

Jed Perl: How Hilton Kramer Got Lost in the Culture Wars

Jed Perl is the art critic for The New Republic.

Wei Jingsheng: Remembering Fang Lizhi: 'Hero of the People,' Hated by China's Regime

Wei Jingsheng is one of China’s most well-known dissidents, now living in exile. He spent 15 years in Chinese prisons. In an open letter to Deng Xiaoping in 1989, Fang Lizhi called for Wei’s release.Professor Fang Lizhi, the Chinese astrophysicist whom many regarded as “China’s Sakharov,” died suddenly at his home in Arizona last week.For this great Chinese patriot to die in the American desert 22 years after he was forced into exile symbolizes the harsh truth about the ruling Communist regime which Mr. Fang often warned the world about.For those of us whose memories have not been erased by the censorship of getting rich gloriously, Fang was a hero. In the years and months leading up to the Tiananmen demonstrations in 1989, he dared to tell the historical facts – about Mao, the Party, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution – to a new generation....

Bettany Hughes: The Wisdom of Women Written out of History

Bettany Hughes is an award-winning author, historian and broadcaster. She is a research fellow at King's College, London and a fellow of the Historical Association.

Hal Gordon: Titanic: The Squalid Sequel

Hal Gordon, who wrote speeches for the Reagan White House and Gen. Colin Powell, is currently a freelance speechwriter in Houston. Web site: www.ringingwords.com.On the night of April 14-15, 1912, the R.M.S. Titanic struck an iceberg and sank with a loss of over 1500 lives. It was the greatest peacetime disaster in maritime history....No sooner had the British liner Carpathia docked in New York with the Titanic’s survivors when William Alden Smith, an eager, self-promoting U.S. senator from Michigan, bounded up the gangplank to inform J. Bruce Ismay, the chairman of the White Star Line who was among those rescued, that Smith was chairing a special inquiry into the disaster, and that Ismay and the crew would be detained for the proceedings.

Bret Stephens: Why the Falklands Matter

Mr. Stephens writes the Journal's "Global View" column on foreign affairs.Thirty years ago this month, Argentina's military junta seized the Falklands from the U.K. and Margaret Thatcher decided to take the islands back. Newsweek ran a picture of a British aircraft carrier on its cover with the headline "The Empire Strikes Back," implicitly casting Mrs. Thatcher as Darth Vader. What, one had to wonder, did that make Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri in the eyes of Newsweek's editors: Princess Leia? The Falklands war put partisans of the left and right to a dilemma. Some American conservatives, especially those who had criticized the Carter administration for being squeamish when it came to supporting pro-American dictators, were reluctant to abandon the anticommunist junta too quickly. But most conservatives admired Mrs. Thatcher and wanted to support a principled stand against aggression. Ronald Reagan ultimately resolved the debate in favor of Britain. But not before Secretary of State Al Haig embarrassed himself, and the U.S., by trying to split the difference with a compromise that would have sold out the Falklanders. The dilemma was even more acute on the left... 

Jeremiah Christopher Whitten: Twitter Needs Shakespeare

Jeremiah Christopher Whitten is a strategic communications expert in Chaska, MN....Twitter is at the forefront of the decline of America's patience for prose. The social-media network recently celebrated its sixth birthday with media fanfare and reproductions of the first tweet in history....In some workplaces, there seems to be an intolerance for eloquence that overrides all other considerations. I once worked for a client who demanded that everything be written in bullet points -- no verbs, adjectives or other parts of speech....The professional pressure for brevity at the expense of thoughtfulness is expressed perfectly in a PowerPoint satire of the Gettysburg Address, which renders one of the most important speeches in history into six slides. The first full slide reduces all of the nuance, history and eloquence of the speech's opening into: "• Met on battlefield (great) • dedicate portion of field • unfinished work (great tasks)."

Robert W. Merry: Saddam's Head Not Worth the Cost

Robert W. Merry is editor of The National Interest and the author of books on American history and foreign policy. His next book, Where They Stand: The American Presidents in the Eyes of Voters and Historians, is due out on June 26 from Simon & Schuster.

Journalist Eyal: The Unsung Heroes of the Balkan Wars

Journalist Eyal Press is the author of Beautiful Souls: Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of Conscience in Dark Times.Twenty years ago last week, Serbian snipers fired on a crowd of unarmed demonstrators in Sarajevo, launching a brutal siege that brought ethnic violence in the Balkans to menacing new heights. In the two decades since, attention has understandably focused on the deeds of the architects and perpetrators of the Balkan wars. Confronting the truth about how the violence was planned and orchestrated, many have argued, is an essential step in getting formerly warring factions to reckon honestly with their responsibility for what transpired. But this point should apply no less to the conduct of those who behaved honorably during the war, daring to cross the lines of ethnic division that too many of their fellow citizens chose not to traverse. Such people were not as rare as commonly assumed, the Serbian human rights advocate Natasa Kandic told me when I traveled through the Balkans several years ago, though she warned me that finding many willing to share their stories would not be easy...

Corpus Christi Caller Times Editorial: A More Complete Texas History

CORPUS CHRISTI — It isn't often one has the opportunity to be a witness to history — particularly a history so deeply tied to your own. Last week, Tejanos, the descendants of Texas' first settlers, bore witness to a long overdue recognition — the unveiling of the Tejano monument on the historic grounds of the Texas capitol.Our story in bronze — the statue reflects the early role of Tejano settlers, from a depiction of a Spanish explorer to the traditional vaquero atop a mustang to a family of young Spanish settlers to that quintessential symbol of Texan pride, the longhorn. The 12-year effort to make the Tejano monument a reality stands as a testament to the tenacity and pride in being Texan that today's Tejanos share with their antecedents who took root in Texas nearly 150 years before the first Anglo settlers. While the state appropriated $1.1 million for the project in 2007, the Tejano Monument Committee of private citizens (many from South Texas) raised more than $1 million to see the project through.

David Helvarg: The Savior of California's Coast

David Helvarg is executive director of the Blue Frontier Campaign. His book, "The Golden Shore: — California's Love Affair With the Sea," will be published in 2013.A good argument can be made that no one since Father Junipero Serra has had as much impact on coastal development in California as Peter Douglas. Douglas, who died a week ago, wrote and helped pass Proposition 20, the California Coastal Commission initiative, in 1972. He wrote the 1976 Coastal Act, worked for the commission from its early days and was its outspoken executive director for more than 25 years despite often fierce opposition, including a nearly successful attempt by then-Gov. Pete Wilson to get rid of him in 1996.

Eyal Press: The Unsung Heroes of the Balkan Wars

Journalist Eyal Press is the author of "Beautiful Souls: Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of Conscience in Dark Times."Twenty years ago last week, Serbian snipers fired on a crowd of unarmed demonstrators in Sarajevo, launching a brutal siege that brought ethnic violence in the Balkans to menacing new heights.In the two decades since, attention has understandably focused on the deeds of the architects and perpetrators of the Balkan wars. Confronting the truth about how the violence was planned and orchestrated, many have argued, is an essential step in getting formerly warring factions to reckon honestly with their responsibility for what transpired.But this point should apply no less to the conduct of those who behaved honorably during the war, daring to cross the lines of ethnic division that too many of their fellow citizens chose not to traverse....

WaPo Editorial: Ike's Memorial Shouldn't be Derailed

SECOND-GUESSING the design of the nation’s memorials is as American as the iconic figures they honor. When the Lincoln Memorial was being planned, no less an authority than Frank Lloyd Wright called it the “most ridiculous, most asinine miscarriages of building material that ever happened.” Critics of the Jefferson Memorial wondered why this father of democracy was housed in a Roman temple. So controversial was Maya Lin’s spare homage to those who died in Vietnam that the highest-ranking member of the executive branch to show up for its dedication was the deputy interior secretary....