Tag: military history

Johan Huizinga, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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Johan Huizinga
Homo Ludens
Groningen, Netherlands: Wolters-Noordhoff, 1938

After writing last week about Tarot considered as a game, I kept with the subject of gaming for a while longer. I realized I didn’t really know what Game Theory was, for example, so I swotted up on that. I also came across a book I had never heard of by a writer whose name rang only the vaguest of bells, although readers may be more familiar. Homo Ludens was published in 1938 by Dutch historian Johan Huizinga, and has turned out to be a complete delight. (more…)

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There is a peculiar asymmetry in how the world discusses imperial and colonial history. Western nations—and England in particular—are routinely placed in the docket of historical judgement, expected to issue formal apologies, pay reparations, and carry the moral weight of empires long dissolved. (more…)

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Emile Zola’s 1892 novel Le  Débâcle is almost familiar reading these days, for when I recall this book, while set in the supposedly serene and ordered nineteenth century, has a horror of déjà vu that shrouds America, Iran, and the Donald.

The novel, part of a series Zola wrote to capture France in the nineteenth century and especially the Second Empire, deals with the collapse of Napoleon III’s empire from the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 as told through the eyes of French soldiers Jean Macquart and Maurice Levasseur; the first a peasant and former soldier and the second, a bourgeois. (more…)

Cornelis Cort-The Battle of Zama. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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In Part 1, I presented a close reading of Critias and Timaeus. I argued that Atlantis did exist and was probably an upper paleolithic settlement in North Africa. In fact, the upper paleolithic was probably busier than commonly thought but is only dimly remembered in myth and legend due to a lack of writing. While fascinating, that’s not the main point. Plato’s discussion of Atlantis is a means to a philosophical end. Plato’s message, moreover, is even more relevant to us today than to the ancient Athenians.

The strongest theme is the cyclical nature of time. Civilization periodically has to restart due to natural disasters and/or human decadence. In Plato’s view these oftentimes go hand in hand, due to the Traditionalist doctrine of as above, so below; as within, so without. (more…)

Iranians marching in Tehran cheer at an airstrike ahead of them.

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In the run up to the 2026 Iran War, I described how the most straightforward and optimistic path to victory for the US was:

1. A flawless conventional military victory, followed by
2. A successful Persian insurrection, followed by
3. Pahlavi running a corruption free illiberal democracy.

I generously gave each of these conditions a 10% chance of happening, and thus a 1/1000 chance of success overall. (more…)

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Only a few people have managed to rise from the dead. If I don’t count stories about gods, such as the Egyptian god Osiris and the Sumerian goddess Ishtar (Innana), the only stories I know about people coming back to life are the stories about Jesus and the Italian futurist artist Giacomo Balla, who also managed to rise from the dead. (more…)

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In the late 1980s I lived in Brixton, South London. The London in England, that is, not the one in Kentucky or the dozen or so other Londons that are dotted across North America. Occasionally, on a Saturday night after the pubs closed, my friends and I would pile over to the all-night movie show. The famous cinema there was called The Ritzy—formerly The Little Bit Ritzy—and it was a flea-bitten old pit, a relic from the pre-TV golden age of British cinemas. (more…)

Horace Vernet, Napoleon at Jena: “En Avant!”

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1. Homer, Iliad. W. C. Bryant, trans. Perth, Aus.: Imperium Press, 2019, 576 pp.: While everyone knows the story, few people today have actually read it. You can bet that almost every great military commander in Western history read it. Composed during the Greek “Dark Ages” and (probably) based on a real event, Iliad is an echo of the even earlier Bronze Age — of war’s power at its all-encompassing, glorious, and terrible pinnacle. (more…)

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Studying military history is entertaining and practical. You might not be interested in war, but war is certainly interested in you. On September 10, 2001, I was expecting to spend as much free time as I could hunting that autumn, but by mid-morning the next day I was focused on training for a real war.

War is often the summit of achievement, be that an achievement of a national leader, a nation, or an individual. (more…)