CFP: Legal History and Mass Migration

[We have the following call for papers.  DRE]

Legal Response to Mass Migration Between the 19th Century and the WWII 

Confronted with mass migration, since the mid-19th century Western legal culture was forced to face migrants not just as a sum of individuals, but as a phenomenon demanding new legal concepts and mechanisms appropriate to govern and regulate groups and collective subjects. European migrants moving towards colonies and the East led to a reconceptualization of traditional international law doctrines on state sovereignty in order to de-territorialize Western citizens who occurred to be in the Eastern countries, freeing them from the imperium of the local authority and entrusting them to their own consular courts. Whereas immigration into Western countries led to the adoption of protective legal strategies and exclusion mechanisms to bar the dangerous others, emigration of European citizens towards colonized regions and Eastern countries prompted the elaboration of exceptional safeguards and privileges for ‘civilizing’ migrants. The new challenges of mobility led jurists and legislators to reshape the peculiarity of ius migrandi through terminological as well as conceptual revisions (e.g. the notions of citizenship, sovereignty, territorial state, undesirable and dangerous alien), the elaboration of new disciplines such as international labor law and international migration law, and the creation of special administrative bodies or jurisdictions (e.g. immigration officers; board of inspectors; consular courts; inspectors of emigration; arbitral commissions for emigration).

The Legal History and Mass Migration project (PRIN 2017) invites proposals for papers relating to the theme of the juridical response to mass migration between the mid-19th century and WWII. Papers can be based on different methodologies and may refer to a broad variety of subjects, including, by way of example:

• application of methodologies such as global legal history, comparative legal history, critical analysis of law to the study of migration issues;

• relationship between local rules and international migration law;

• tensions between human rights’ recognition and border control policies;

• non-Western legal approaches to migration issues;

• construction of legal discourses, theories, justifications to support, contrast, govern, or limit mass migration;
  

• models of citizenship and integration or exclusion of alien immigrants in different countries;

• role of case law and/or resort to special tribunals with jurisdiction in migration issues as means of departing from ordinary rules and constitutional protections;
  

• institutional and informal mechanisms (such as ‘soft law’, role of unions or charitable institutions, nets of assistance of national citizens abroad etc.) adopted to deal with mass migration problems in different countries of both departure and destination;

• impact of mass migration on national and international labour law;

• racial paradigms and immigration laws;
  

• local/global economic impact of migration and its legal regulation;

• exploitation of criminal law concepts, discourses, practices to stir the public conviction about the social danger of mass migration

Proposals for papers are due by 30 March 2021 and should be submitted by e-mail at legalhistoryandmassmigration@gmail.com in Word format, following this order: (a) author(s); (b) affiliation; (c) e-mail address; (d) title of abstract; (e) body of abstract (apx 350 words).  Accepted papers will be presented at an international conference which will be held at the University of Naples in December 2021.  

Support for selected participants: funding for travel expenses and accommodation may be available. Please indicate with your paper proposal if you would like to be considered for a support, and if so, your expected expenses. All funding decisions will be made independently of paper acceptance.
Papers and pre-circulation: Please note that the conference panels will be structured around a short summary of speakers’ pre-circulated papers, followed by more extended discussion. It is our intention that accepted speakers will submit papers of no more than 4,000 words for circulation by Friday 22 October 2021.

For general inquiries, please email: info@legalhistoryandmassmigration.com

Conference Committee: Luigi Nuzzo (University of Salento), Michele Pifferi (University of Ferrara), Giuseppe Speciale (University of Catania), Cristina Vano (University of Naples Federico II).

Clio@Themis: The Relaunch

We are grateful to David Sugarman for word that Clio @ Themis, the on-line review of legal history, has a new website, which makes current and previously published articles more accessible. From the website:

Founded in 2009 at the initiative of several researchers from the Centre national de la recherche scientifique, joined by a number of University lecturers, Clio@Themis contributes to the development of debates and scientific exchanges with regard to the history of law. Its creation in France is based on enlargement and enrichment of the traditional perspectives of the legal history. Indeed, the history of law, through more and more varied types of research, concerns now all periods, from Antiquity to the beginning of the 21th century. This broadening of perspectives is not only in a chronological context, but also a geographical one: today, the subject of the history of law is necessarily European, comparative, and reacts to the phenomena of legal globalisation.

As a consequence, far from keeping legal history locked in a complacent study of the past, this journal aims to be an instrument for the critical understanding of the present. It does not intend to separate legal phenomena from social phenomena. In addition to questions about socio-economic factors in the production and reception of the law, it is increasingly important to consider reflections on judicial culture, the formation and circulation of ideas and judicial concepts, practices and representation.

History, Law, Society: these three ideas express, without any doctrinal constraint, our usage of historical method, our focus on legal subjects and our embrace of social science in the broadest sense.

–Dan Ernst

Duggan's Essays on Medieval Canon Law

We’ve recently learned of the publication of A. J. Duggan, Popes, Bishops, and the Progress of Canon Law, c.1120–1234, ed. T.R. Baker (Brepols, 2020).   Anne J. Duggan is Emeritus Professor of Medieval History and Fellow of King’s College London; Travis R. Baker (D.Phil, Oxford, 2017) is a private scholar living in the Diocese of Orange:

This book considers the role of popes and bishops in the development of the law of the Church between 1120 and 1234. Although historians have traditionally seen the popes as the driving force behind the legal transformation of the Church in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the primary argument of this book is that the functioning of the process of consultation and appeal reveals a different picture: not of a relentless papal machine but of a constant dialogue between diocesan bishops and the papal Curia.

Bishops have always played a central role in the making and enforcement of the law of the Church, and none more so than the bishop of Rome. From convening and presiding over church councils to applying canon law in church courts, popes and bishops have exercised a decisive influence on the history of that law.

This book, a selection of Anne J. Duggan’s most significant studies on the history of canon law, highlights the interactive role of popes and bishops, and other prelates, in the development of ecclesiastical law and practice between 1120 and 1234. This emphasis directly challenges the pervasive influence of the concept of ‘papal monarchy’, in which popes, and not diocesan bishops and their legal advisers, have been seen as the driving force behind the legal transformation of the Latin Church in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Contrary to the argument that the emergence of the papacy as the primary judicial and legislative authority in the Latin Church was the result of a deliberate programme of papal aggrandizement, the principal argument of this book is that the processes of consultation and appeal reveal a different picture: not of a relentless papal machine but of a constant dialogue between diocesan bishops and the papal Curia, in which the ‘papal machine’ evolved to meet the demand.

–Dan Ernst.  TOC after the jump.
Chapter 1: Jura sua unicuique tribuat: Innocent II and the advance of the learned laws
Chapter 2: ‘Justinian’s Laws, not the Lord’s’: Eugenius III and the learned laws
Chapter 3: Servus servorum Dei: Adrian IV’s contribution to canon law (1154-9)
Chapter 4: Alexander ille meus: The Papacy of Alexander III
Chapter 5: The Effect of Alexander III’s ‘Rules on the Formation of Marriage’ in Angevin England
Chapter 6: The Nature of Alexander III’s Contribution to Marriage Law, with special reference to Licet preter solitum
Chapter 7: Master of the Decretals: A Reassessment of Alexander III’s Contribution to Canon Law
Chapter 8: Making Law or Not? The Function of Papal Decretals in the Twelfth Century
Chapter 9: ‘Our Letters have not usually made law (legem facere) on such matters’ (Alexander III, 1169): a new look at the formation of the canon law of marriage in the twelfth century
Chapter 10: Manu Sollicitudinis: Celestine III and Canon Law
Chapter 11: De Consultationibus: the role of episcopal consultation in the shaping of canon law in the twelfth century
Chapter 12: The English Exile of Archbishop Øystein of Nidaros (1180-83)

Scott Named ASLH Honorary Fellow

Joan Wallach Scott (IAS)

 [We continue our posting of the citations, prepared by the Honors Committee of the American Society for Legal History, for the three legal historians named Honorary Fellows of the ASLH at its November 2020 meeting.  Today’s honoree is Joan Wallach Scott.  DRE]

Our next Honorary Fellow is Joan Wallach Scott, emeritus professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.  Professor Scott is a transformative scholar of French social and labor history, the history of gender and feminism, and the history of civil liberties in the United States and in France. 

Professor Scott received her B.A. from Brandeis University in 1962 and her Ph.D. in history from the University of Wisconsin in 1969.  She began her teaching career at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and from there moved to Northwestern University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Brown University, where she was the founding director of the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women.  In 1985 she joined the Institute for Advanced Study, where she was Harry F. Linder Professor in the School of Social Science.

Through a dozen monographs, another dozen edited volumes, and articles and book chapters too numerous to count, Professor Scott has challenged the foundations of conventional historical practice, including the nature of historical evidence and historical experience and the role of narrative in the writing of history.  Her challenges have repeatedly won recognition from her colleagues in the profession.  The American Historical Association alone has bestowed four awards on her, starting with the Herbert Baxter Adams Prize in 1974 for her first book, The Glassworkers of Carmaux:  French Craftsmen and Political Action in a 19th-Century City; followed by the Joan Kelly Memorial Prize in 1989 for her book, Gender and the Politics of History; the Nancy Lyman Roelker Mentorship Award in 1995; and the Award for Scholarly Distinction in 2008.  She holds honorary degrees from universities in the United States and Europe, and in 1999 the Hans Sigrist Foundation at the University of Bern awarded her its prize for her groundbreaking work in gender history.  The influence of her work is truly international-her books and even some of her articles have been translated into multiple languages.

Professor Scott may not be a legal historian, but scholars who study the legal history of gender, feminist legal thought, or the legal history of secularism or of academic freedom-to take four core areas of modern legal historical scholarship-could not imagine their scholarship without her powerful and inescapable presence.  For many of us in legal history, she is best known as the author of a series of path-breaking articles on methodology in history, which have had immense impact on our field as well as on others.

Taking just the legal history of gender, her work has transformed the practices of nearly everyone who works in the field.  Her now-classic article, 'Gender:  A Useful Category of Historical Analysis"-in which she argued that studying gender explains not only women's history, but history generally-challenged the reigning conventions in women's history and continues to inspire innovative research.  Without question, engagement with her scholarship has deepened what legal historians do.

Professor Scott's survey of the history of French feminism opened up the history of feminism to legal historians.  Beginning with her book, Only Paradoxes to Offer:  French Feminists and the Rights of Man, she has explored the gendering of citizenship and rights in modern representative democracies.  Her demonstration that the concept of citizenship was from the start gendered as male and defined against a female "other" illuminated the dilemmas at the heart of rights claims, such as the paradox of women claiming "the rights of man."  In examining the continuing difficulties faced by feminists in their struggle for equality, her analysis has assisted scholars and activists focused on women, people with disabilities, and members of racial, ethnic, and sexual minority groups.

Her interest in the ways in which difference poses problems for democratic practice continued in subsequent books-most notably Parité: Sexual Equality and the Crisis of French Universalism and The Politics of the Veil.  Her work on the veil enmeshed her as a willing and provocative combatant in legal controversies both in France and the United States about the meanings of secularism. Her careful analyses of the headscarf controversies in France became a model of how to explore such issues.  Writ large, her scholarship traces the limits of liberalism, whether among French feminists or the American historical profession.  Her work has made her an important voice for academic freedom.

Professor Joan Scott has also been an active and generous citizen of the profession.  The center she created at Brown became a site for exploring feminist theory by historians and others in the humanities and social sciences who until that point had been mostly hostile to social theory.  At the Institute for Advanced Study, she brought in generations of younger scholars, encouraged them, and guided them, as her work has guided so many others, legal historians included.  

Professor Scott has always been a challenging presence.  She has been described-admiringly-as spiky and uncompromising.  Her work has often been controversial, good both to argue over and engage and argue with.  Yet, it has always been essential.  She does not need our accolades, but we have needed her and are grateful for what she has taught us.  We are pleased and honored to welcome her as an Honorary Fellow of the Society.

Weekend Roundup

• From the Washington Post's "Made by History" section: Julio Capó Jr. (Florida International University) and Melba Pearson (Florida International University’s Center for the Administration of Justice ) on Florida voter suppression as "Jim Crow Esq."; Ashley Farmer (University of Texas, Austin) on Black women running for Congress;
  

• The Supreme Court Historical Society has just launched The Supreme Court & the Presidential Election of 1876, "a documentary on the 15-member Electoral Commission (including 5 Supreme Court Justices) appointed to resolve the disputed election."
  

• New online from Law and History Review and Cambridge Core: Counterterrorism in American Civil Courts: The Role of Letelier v. Republic of Chile, by Alan McPherson.
  

• "Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis and Social Justice," a discussion featuring Georgetown Law’s Brad Snyder, who is the author of House of Truth, and Jennifer Lowe, the Director of Programs and Strategic Planning of the Supreme Court Historical Society, will be conducted online on November 18, 2020 at 3 pm.  It is sponsored by the National Archives, the Supreme Court Historical Society, and the Capital Jewish Museum.  Register here.
  

• Street Law, with the help of the Supreme Court Historical Society, has revamped its site, Landmark Cases of the US Supreme Court. 

• A Call for an upcoming event at the Université de Neuchâtel on historical sources of Swiss law here (9-10 Sept. 2021).

• Update: a profile of Buffalo Law's Michael Boucai and his article "Before Loving" (UB Now).
  

Weekend Roundup is a weekly feature compiled by all the Legal History bloggers.  

Battle of White Mountain (1620)

Battle of White Mountain is a decisive battle near Prague at the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War. The Battle of White Mountain was the first major battle of the Thirty Year’s War.

In 1526, Ferdinand I, the rule of Austria, had conquered Bohemia and imposed the rule of the Roman Catholic Habsburg dynasty over the kingdom. In 1618, in what is known as the Bohemian Revolt, Protestant Bohemians attempted to rid their kingdom of Catholic rule by the Habsburg.

The Catholic forces of Maximilian I, duke of Bavaria, commanded by count von Tilly, defeated the Protestant forces of Frederick V, king of Bohemia. The combined imperial and league forces, numbering 28,000 met the Bohemian army of about 21,000 men about one-half mile west of Prague on 8 November 1620.

Christian, Prince of Anhalt, commander of the Bohemian n forces had posted his troops on the White Mountain in a strong defensive position.

The force blocked the road to Prague and waited for Tilly to arrive. He failed to attack Tilly’s forces while they were passing a little brook on the battlefield.

By the defeat, Bohemia lost its independence, and Protestantism was exterminated until 1648. The battle did not destroy the entire Bohemian military forced but the psychological impact of the defeat was so strong that Frederick V of the Palatine, the elected Bohemian king, fled immediately.
Battle of White Mountain (1620)

Battle of Vaslui

The Battle of Vaslui was fought by Stephen III of Moldavia on January 10, 1475, against Ottoman Beylerbeyi of Rumelia, Hadım Suleiman Pasha.

Battle of Vaslui was also referred to as the Battle of Podul Înalt or the Battle of Racova. In this battle, Stephen of Moldavia faced the biggest Ottoman army ever assembled during the Battle of Vaslui where the Ottomans outnumbered the Moldovans 3 to 1 and were better equipped.

Battle of Vaslui

Hadim Suleyman Pasha led an army of about 120,000 men to restore Ottoman authority in the region. Gathering 40,000 men and supported by Hungarians and Poles, Stephen met the enemy at Podul Înalt, near the town of Vaslui.

The Moldavian success in this battle and the Turks were forced to withdraw. Stephen was named the ‘athlete of Christ’ by Pope Sixtus IV for his resistance to Ottoman expansion, but he received little help from other European rulers.

He withstood a further Turkish invasion in 1884, but at the cost of the parts of Chilia and Cetatea Alba, and finally agreed to pay tribute to the Turks as the price of Moldavian independence.
Battle of Vaslui

Siege of Belgrade (1456)

Ottoman siege of Belgrade happened from July 4 to 22, 1456, broken when a relief force led by John Hunyadi defeated the Ottoman forces in a battle outside the city.

Having captured Constantinople in 1453, Mehmed II marched his Ottoman Turks into the Balkans. Southern Serbia fell under his control.

Although George Brankovic of Serbian kingdom signed treaty with Mehmed to respect what remained of his kingdom, the Mehmed II returned in 1456 with invasion army.

Janos Hunyadi defeats Turks in 1456

His invasion force of around 100,000 reached Belgrade in July 4, Mehmed deployed almost 200 guns in his siege lines and guarded the Danube and the marshes to the northeast of the city.

Mehmed’s guns had breached the fortifications of the city in a number of places, and on July 21, Mehmed ordered an assault.

The city seemed doomed, but Janos Hunyadi, led a Hungarian army to relief of Belgrade.  The following day Christian forces raided the Ottoman lines. This attack was reinforced by forces under the command of Giovani de Capistrano, despite the fact that Hunyadi had instructed his forces not to bring in a general engagement.

Ottoman forces were caught off guard and began to flee. His 1456 siege of Belgrade failed, but Mehmed did seize areas in the Peloponnesus and captured Trebizond in the early 1460s.
Siege of Belgrade (1456)

Celts

Celts

The Celts were a tribal people of the Bronze and Iron Ages united by a common language, culture, and art. They lived throughout Europe. Most were eventually conquered by the Romans and became a part of the Roman Empire.

Many unconquered areas have retained their separate language and culture for centuries. Ireland and parts of France, England, Wales, and Scotland can claim to be largely Celtic to this day. Language studies indicate that the Celts were an Indo-European group, first identified in Switzerland and Germany.

The first written references to Celts come from the Greeks in 630–600 b.c.e., who describe the Keltoi as mining and trading silver from the Iberian Peninsula. The period of Celtic history from the fifth through the first century b.c.e. is called La Tène, after a village on Lake Neuchâtel in Switzerland, where ancient pilings leading into the lake prompted excavations in the mid-19th century.


Swords, shields, pins, razors, cauldrons, and even human remains were found buried in the silt of the lake, and many artifacts were decorated with graceful curving lines, whimsical faces, and plant motifs. The La Tène art style, since found in graves and monuments throughout the Celtic world, displayed the creativity and technical sophistication of the Celts.

Before and during the La Tène period, Celts had migrated, tribe by tribe, throughout Europe. By the seventh century b.c.e. they moved south through the Alps and into the Po Valley of Italy, where the Boii, Insubres, and Senones tribes of Celts attacked Etruscan cities.

Romans intervened as the Celts continued south but were defeated at the Battle of Allia in 390 b.c.e., after which the Senones, under the command of Brennus, sacked Rome and occupied the city for seven months. At that point Brennus accepted a bribe of 100 pounds of gold to leave, though Celtic forces harried the city for the next 50 years.

Other Celtic tribes lived in the Russian steppes by the mid-fourth century b.c.e. and were well established on the Balkan borders of Alexander the Great’s empire. They conquered Thrace and set up a Celtic dynasty to rule there through most of the third century b.c.e. This century marked the height of Celtic power and dominion.

The Celts had no empire, but independent tribes, some with populations in the hundreds of thousands, controlled much of Europe from the far west to the Black Sea. To the west the miners and artisans of Britain, Ireland, Spain, and Brittany traded in metals for centuries before being identified as Celtic.

The tribal names that were eventually used to identify them during the La Tène period (for instance, the Iceni and Veneti) do not reveal whether the people were indigenous or conquered indigenous groups or mixed with them. It is possible that these populations of these places considered themselves Celtic throughout the first millennium b.c.e.

Their enemies’ writings describe bloodthirsty savages whose cruelty knew no bounds. However, Celtic tribes could not have existed for centuries in their lands if they did nothing but wage war.

Graves and offering pits with spectacular weaponry point to a war-like people, but archaeologists find evidence of family homesteads with marked fields with grazing land. Like most Iron Age people, the Celts worshipped and sacrificed to a myriad of gods, many local and unique.

Their learned class—the Druids—were masters of astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, medicine, and history; they scorned writing and put their faith in training the memory.

Celtic women had more options and independence than women in Greece or Rome; writers such as Diodorus, Siculus, and Tacitus describe women who fought as warriors or served as tribal rulers.

Celtic warriors were renowned for being terrifying, functioning as independent fighters, and seeking to enhance personal reputations for heroics and glory. Many of these fighters would prove their skills by forgoing the lightest of Celtic armor and shields.

Opposing armies would often be faced with the frightening psychological warfare of fierce, crazed, unclothed long-haired barbarians. They were also known for a frightening habit of collecting heads.

Roman armies conquered the Celts or Gauls of northern Italy, warring from 225 b.c.e. through 190 b.c.e. The Dacians defeated the Celts of Bohemia in 60 b.c.e. Julius Caesar took western Iberia and then chronicled his conquests of the Celts or Gauls in The Gallic Wars.

His siege of Alesia in the Auvergne region, capturing tribal king Vercingetorix, completed his victories in 52 b.c.e. In the reign of Claudius, in 43 c.e., much of Britain was conquered.

The Celtic queen Boudicca led a major, but unsuccessful, revolt in 61 c.e. After earlier wars with Rome and Pontus, Celtic Galatia was absorbed into Cappadocia in 74 c.e. and a process of Romanization in Gaul occurred as in other Celtic lands.

Ireland was not conquered and remained independent and Celtic for centuries. It later adopted Christianity and writing. The few Irish books that have survived provide an account of ancient myths, poems, legal codes, and cultural practices of the Celts.

What were the causes of World War I? What made it a “world” war?

The causes that lead to the First World War were complex, and to follow their development, we need to look at the second half 19th century and early 20th century: the European nationalist spirit during the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, the political and economic rivalry between the states, the excessive arming after 1871 and the two hostile military alliances. Leading to the World War I - imperialism, nationalism, militarism, and defense alliances - was an accumulation of facts and event; however, the immediate cause was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife The Duchess of Hohenberg, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 by Bosnian Slaves recruited by Serbian terrorists. Austro-Hungary blamed Serbia and declared war. The assassination in Sarajevo was only the pretense or the alleged reason of the war; the causes of this first global conflict were much deeper: economic competition, imperialism and nationalism.

At the end of the 19th century the problem of nationalism in many parts of Europe was unresolved, leading to strained relations between the regions involved and various European countries. The nationalist spirit was also manifested in the economic conflict. At the dawn of the 20th century, Europe was the most powerful region in the world. European colonial empires ruled over most of the world, and due to the Industrial Revolution, Europe was the richest, generating the need of a larger market for goods. The main field of economic development was Africa, and colonial interests in this area have clashed several times since 1898; the economic rivalry in Africa between Germany on one side, and England and France, on the other side, was slowly bringing Europe on the break of war.

As a result of these tensions, between 1871 and 1914 European countries have adopted measures that have increased the domestic and external threat of war. Convinced that their interests were threatened, European powers maintained a huge army.

As tension was mounting in Europe, the contradictions between the great powers increased, and the armed conflict for dividing the world power became inevitable. The major powers pursued a foreign policy of expansionism and conquest in search of new sources of raw materials and markets for goods. England occupied colonies in Africa and Asia, while France took possession of some countries in the same area. Russia occupied territories in Iran and China, generating the armed conflict between the two Asian countries. Germany and Italy were after the redistribution of their colonies in the developing countries and desired to strengthen their positions by all means possible, in regard to Russia, France, Great Britain and the Austria-Hungary Empire. Germany’s tendency to become the largest military power and to break Britain's naval supremacy caused great tension between the two countries. This lead to the division of the world powers into two blocs: the Central Powers’ Triple Alliance (Germany, Austro-Hungary and Italy), and the Triple Entente (France, England and Russia). The Triple Alliance had as purpose was mutual aid in case of a Russian attack. The Triple Entente was a deterrent to the Triple Alliance and was part of France’s plan to surround Germany. Militant nationalism and the national issue turned into the Balkan area into a real powder keg ready to ignite at the slightest spark. With the Moroccan Crisis and Balkan wars, where Austria-Hungary and Russia were competing for power, peace was threatened and Europe was on the verge of war: this was the spark to ignite the conflict. The outbreak of war in July 1914 between the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente marked the unequal political and economic development in the late 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. England and France, old industrial countries with large colonial empires were overcome by countries like Germany and the United States, experiencing a strong industrial development.

On 8 May 1915, a German U-boat sank the British luxury liner ‘Lusitania’, killing 128 Americans, prompting President Wilson to reconsider the United States position towards the war. In April 1917 Wilson declared war on Germany, entering the world conflagration on the Entente side.

The World War I was a “world” war because major nations of the world are involved, affecting many countries on various continents.

Allan, Tony. The Causes of World War I. Chicago, IL: Heinemann Library, 2003.

Cojan, Vincent. World War I: A Military Timeline. Bucharest, Romania: The Didactic and Pedagogic Publishers, 1997.

Henretta, James A. and David Brody. America: A Concise History, Volume II: Since 1877. 4th ed., Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2010, 640-644

Reason to Resist In Europe (1550 – 1700)

Reason to Resist In Europe (1550 – 1700)
Europeans lived more precariously in the seventeenth century than in any period since the Black Death.

One benchmark of the crisis was population decline. In Mediterranean, Spanish population fell from 8.5 to 7 million and Italian population from 13 to 11 million. The ravages of the Thirty Year’s War most clearly felt in central Europe.

Population decline had many causes and rather remarkably, direct casualties from warfare were a very small component. The direct effect of war, the disruption of agriculture, and the spread of disease were far more devastating.

Spain alone lost a half million people at the turn of the century and another half million between 1647 and 1652. Severe outbreaks on 1625 and 1665 hit England, while France endured three consecutive years of epidemics from 1629 to 1631.

All sectors of the European economy from agriculture to trade stagnated or decline in early seventeenth century. Not surprisingly, peasants were hardest hit.

The entire period from 1647 to 1653 was the worst ever in parts of France. Five consecutive bad harvests decimated the countryside.

Predictably acute economic crisis led to rural revolt, as the French peasants reeled from visitations of plaque, frost and floods, the French state was raising the taille, the tax that fell most heavily upon the lower orders.

A series of French rural revolts in the late 1630s focused on opposition to tax increases.

These revolts began in the same way, with the murder of a local tax official, the organization of a peasant militia and the recruitment of local clergy and notables. The rebels forced temporarily concessions from local authorities, but they never achieved lasting reforms.

Each revolt ended with the re-imposition of order by the state. In England the largest rural protests, like the Midland revolts in 1607, centered upon opposition to the enclosure of grain fields and their conversion to pasture.

The most spectacular popular uprisings occurred in Spanish-occupied Italy. In the spring of 1647 the Sicilian city of Palermo exploded under the pressure of a disastrous harvest, rising food prices and relentless taxation. A city of 130,000 inhabitants, Palermo imported nearly all of its food stuff.

As grain prices rose, the city government subsidized the price of bread running up huge debts in the process. When the town government could no longer afford the subsidies they decided to reduce the size of the loaf rather than increase its price.

This did not fool the women of the city, who rioted when the first undersized loaves were placed on sale. Soon the entire city was in revolt. Commoners who were not part of the urban power structure led the revolt in Palermo. For a time they achieved the abolition of Spanish taxes on basic food stuff.

Their success provided the model for a similar uprising in Naples, the largest city in Europe.

The Neapolitan revolt began in 1647 after the Spanish placed new tax on fruit. A crowd gathered to protest the new imposition, burned the customs house, and murdered several local official. The protester were first led by a fisherman and then by a blacksmith, and again the rebels achieved the temporary suspension of Spanish taxation.
Reason to Resist In Europe (1550 – 1700)

The Celts: Northern Europe Warrior 500 BC – 100 AD

The Celts: Northern Europe Warrior 500 BC – 100 AD
Fighting was an obsession with the Celts, whether in bands against enemy forces or in the brawling combats that erupted incessantly between individual warriors. Drunk on strong beer and lust for glory, the Celts did battle with a fierce exhilaration that seasoned Roman soldiers even found alarming. They were careless of life and limb, often going into battle naked but for a torque or neck ring.

The Roman historians Tacitus describing an attack by the legions on Anglesey, wrote: ‘On the shore stood the opposing army with its dense array of armed warriors, while between the ranks dashed women in black attire like the Furies, with hair disheveled, waving brands.’

Celtic men were tall by Mediterranean standards; the skeleton of warrior discovered near Milan, Italy was 6ft 5in in height. Even the women were large and fearsome brawlers. Boudicca, the rebel queen of the Iceni who died in AD60, was describe as huge of frame, harsh voiced and with a great mass of bright red hair falling to her knees. Ammianus Marcellinus, a Roman author, writes of the Celt being virtually invincible with this wife fighting by his side; ‘stronger than he by far, and with flashing eyes, she…begin to rain blows mingled with kicks like shots discharge by the twisted cords of a catapult.’

Celtic warriors often cut off the heads of their foes and dangled these grim spoils from their belts and saddles, or bore them aloft on spears. Singing in triumph they would carry the heads back to their hill forts and homes, nailing them up as highly revered trophies. In Celtics shrines found at Roquepertuse and Entremont in southern France the skulls of many young men were displayed in specially carved niches.

With such savagery matched by their fighting and riding skills, the Celts presented Rome with a formidable foe. Their weaknesses, though lay in lack of strategy and discipline – and in the weakening effects of their constant feuding.
The Celts: Northern Europe Warrior 500 BC – 100 AD