Links..

Oh by the way, links to the Mariner's Museum:


http://www.marinersmuseum.org


.. and my Youtube video of Gettysburg reenactment, 2013.

http://youtu.be/013jkvs47Q4

The Mariner's Museum, Newport News, Virginia (visit)

Maybe I'm saying this because a friend of mine works here, but this is a fabulous museum. It would take many hours to see everything. The museum is about life at sea from time immemorial to the present time.

But the most spectacular display is the USS Monitor, one of the first ever ironclad warships built during the US Civil War in the 1860s. Most famously, a duel between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia/Merrimack, the first ever fight between ironclads that was fought as a result of the Confederate States's attempt to break the Union blockade that was slowly strangulating the South. (The Battle of Hampton Road, March 9, 1862)

The fight ended with a draw: both ships were so heavily armoured, neither ship could sink the other. Still, it was a strategic win for the Union, as the Rebel ironclad could no longer sink Union ships with impunity. On the previous day of the battle, before the Monitor showed up, that's what happened.

Anyway, some months after the battle, both the ironclads sunk due to bad weather or accident. Recently, the Monitor was finally located. The Monitor at the bottom of the sea was slowly but surely decaying due to corrosion. So it was a race against time to preserve something of this sunken ship. They show a film about the effort to raise the turret of the ship in one of the theatres in the museum.

Just outside the main building of the museum, you'd find a mock up of the Monitor, giving you a good idea about the scale of the ship. We are so used to looking at 10,000 ton destroyers or even 100,000 ton cruise liners these days; so this ship might look tiny. And yet, this small vessel is no joke. She is a full blooded warship, designed purely from the point of functionality. In a way, both the Monitor and the Merrimack resemble today's stealth warships. The Merrimack's sloping armour made her very difficult to inflict any damage, as shells simply bounced off of it. The Monitor, with such a low silhouette, almost that of a submerged ship, could not easily be targeted. That the Merrimack managed to knock out the pilot house at all is incredible.

The Monitor mock-up. To uninitiated eyes, this ship might look boring, but she was meant to impress people solely by her fighting capabilities...

The above is a model showing what the turret from the USS Monitor was like when found. The real turret that was raised is preserved in a water tank at the back of the museum. I shd have taken a pic...

Another fabulous section was that of model warships by August and Winifred Crabtree. Meticulously built, they are a class of their own. Here is an ancient Egyptian ship I liked.

Gettysburg 150

I was lucky enough to be able to visit Gettysburg on July 4th and 5th, 2013 to witness the 150th anniversary reenactment. Some pictures from the vantage point of grand stand...

 Scenes from the Union camp...

The first day of the battle: Reynold's infantry arrive..

 The cavalry

The climax of the first day.

This should be more like a tweet, but

When I was a kid, my parents annoyed me. As a young man, it was other people. Now that I'm getting old, it is my brain that is really, really annoying me.

Turkey again!

Well, I had a narrow escape! Only two months after I visited Turkey, this nation wide protests flares up.  And the protests are about the plan to demolish a park right next to the hotel I stayed, and to build a shopping mall. As a tourist, a shopping mall next to a hotel would be very handy, but a park should not be sacrificed.

Anyway, as a historian specialised in history of the Roman Empire in the Byzantine period, right up to the Turkish conquest of Constantinople/Istanbul, this is a sad moment. Now, the whole of the Roman Empire has erupted in recent years. First Tunisia, then Egypt. Syria, always the most troublesome Roman province has sunk into the nastiest civil war in decades. Almost as bad or even worse than Yugoslavia. Greece, in the meantime, was also in shambles. Now Turkey. The heart of imperial territories has now plunged into chaos.

The Turkish republic began 90 years ago, when Kemal Ataturk abolished the Ottoman Empire and started a secular state called Turkey. Instead of Ottoman imperial system controlling various people with different backgrounds, the new Turkish Republic was a nationalistic and in a way intolerant. They expelled Greeks who were still refusing to become Turks. Under Ottoman rule, they could exist either as Romans or Greeks. Now, be a Turk or go. The protesters are saying that the PM, R. Erdogan is too autocratic and Islamophiliac, but, maybe the Turkish Republic isn't a very tolerant and flexible regime to begin with.

Just a thought...

Turkey visit (part 2): Çanakkale

One thing I am a little embarrassed about is that I didn't know anything about Çanakkale, in Turkey, until I actually visited the place. 'Çanakkale' means 'Channel', as in Dardanelles Channel. My knowledge of modern history is so Eurocentric, I had not even wondered how the Gallipoli campaign is viewed and remembered in Turkey today!

For the Turks, Gallipoli was indeed a rare victory in the Twentieth Century when the Ottoman Empire was suffering defeat after defeat. Although Turkey lost WW1 and the Ottoman Empire fell as a direct consequence of it, Gallipoli gave the Turks not just some measure of dignity but a new hope and a new national-ethnic identity.

The Ottoman Empire was a very international empire, ruling over not just Turkish peoples but also the Greeks, the Romans, the Slavs, the Armenians and a myriad of ethnic groups of the Balkans and Asia Minor, not to mention subjects of Near Eastern (sorry about using another Eurocentric terminology!) provinces, especially Egypt and Syria-Mesopotamia.

The Empire used to create such powerful force of arms out of this amalgam of ethnicities, but, by the nineteenth century, their military was falling apart. In face of European nationalism, it completely lost its edge. The Empire was called the sick man of Europe. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire was merely a question of when by the turn of the twentieth century. Being Ottoman was no longer cool or desirable.

Gallipoli is a place where a new sense of Turkishness, instead of Ottoman-ness, was forged. Or so it is believed, apparently. I found a new film, about which the rest of the world seems to be totally oblivious, titled 'Çanakkale 1915'. (It does make me suspicious that young Turkish people don't know much about this history either - that's why they added '1915' to the title?) In this movie, the Turks are underdogs, desperately fighting off Imperial powers of the West. Through their struggle and victory, they regained confidence - but at the same time, since the Ottoman Empire lost WW1 despite their win at Gallipoli, they finally decided to let the empire go extinct and to let a new nation, whose spirit was first manifested at Gallipoli, be born.

Gallipoli is not a sort of battle that can easily be translated into a movie script or action sequences. The front was mostly static, as the Anglo-French forces failed to evict the Turks from Gallipoli peninsula. The campaign was conceived as a mobile sea-land joint warfare with the ultimate aim of quickly taking the capital Constantinople; unfortunately, due to sluggishness of amphibious operations on the part of the Anglo-French allies and strength of Turkish shore naval defence and a determined opposition by army troops under command of Kemal Pasha, it was quickly degenerated into a Western-front style trench warfare. At least the weather was better than in France, but the warmer climate also meant an even more unhygienic environment for soldiers, to put it mildly.

There has been, as far as I know, only one major attempt to make a war movie out of Gallipoli in the west, titled, well, Gallipoli, starring Mel Gibson. Inevitably, it is about ANZAC soldiers who had to endure hardships of war in far away place, fighting people they had no quarrel with. It is about awakening of Australia as a modern nation, rather as a British colony.

This film is a Turkish response, perhaps. The Turks indeed think that they inspired Australians to become an independent nation. While the Australians brought back their dislike of the idea of fighting for the British Empire, the modern Turkish Republic was also born in the dirt and mire of Gallipoli. The Australians and the Turks at Gallipoli are almost brothers-in-arms!!

Anyway, so, actions are rather second-rate by western standard, as military history is not the point in this film. Some scenes are downright cheesy (like a guy carrying a 245kilo shell in the midst of a half-destoryed gun emplacement); CGI used for naval battle scenes is OK if this was a computer game but not really up to it by today's standard for action movie special effects. So, for us non-Turks, this is not an entertaining movie, but useful to learn how history is understood by the Turks today.


More info on IMDB website:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2415964/

Also apparently the full movie is available on Youtube?


As for the town of Çanakkale itself, it is a scenic coastal town with strong military presence. For many foreign visitors, the reason to visit here is to see the excavation site of Troy, about 45 minutes drive from the town.

Actually, Schliemann took most of the best stuff from the site, so all you see is stone bases of ancient buildings from the end of Bronze Age.

In the middle of town, there is a real-size wooden horse of Troy they used in the movie 'Troy'. The one with Brad Pitt.

I was there on March 17th. Missed the big celebration of Gallipoli victory, which was scheduled for the next day. But I can see several warships sailing down the channel towards the Aegean, obviously as a part of its preparation.

Feel like I will have to go back to the place in 2015 for their centenary celebration....

Turkey

My recent Turkey trip!

Turkey is where Christianity was born. Geographically speaking, of course. St. Paul of Tarsus mainly travelled in the Aegean coastal regions of Turkey and Greece, supporting local communities and preaching. It was not our intention to retrace Paul's footstep or anything and yet we visited many ancient Ionian Greek communities.

Here is just a peek into my trip ... This is a short trailer movie I made using iMovie software.

My visits included ancient Greek cities of Didim, Pergamon and Ephesus. They are just ruins of typically Greek temples, theatres and public buildings. All you have to do, though, is to walk slowly and try to notice some details. Even after archaeologists and scholars have removed most juicy bits from these sites (the most prominent case is Pergamon, as the whole temple was shipped to Berlin!), as you would see signs that these Greek cities were inhabited by vibrant communities of Romano-Greeks who were the first Christians.

Ephesus

What remains of Ephesus is the most robust parts of public buildings in city centre. You can see what you would expect from Classical Greek city: theatres, agora, educational institutions, etc. When you don't see any church, you might think, of course, this is pre-Christian civilization. Well, actually, Ephesus was a functioning city of commerce well into late antiquity, when the Roman world was transforming itself into a Christian one. It is not very prominent, but these signs are there:

The temple of Apollo at Didim, south of Izmir (Smyrna), near the Aegean coast:

Our guide informed us that they never completed the temple. He then just said that the settlement went into decline, but, you can see that perhaps the place survived into the Christian era:

Some signs are rather crude.. make me wonder if these are genuinely from late antiquity. But then again, who would carve these symbols with an intent of misleading those who visit these sites later? Local Turkish farmers, who were bored with pastoral life? Nineteenth century archaeologists who did not care much about fidelity of their findings? Or are they some kind of markings done by builders or something?

Well, it is quite fun to visit these places and think about possibilities when visiting these Greek ruins. 

I wish to visit Nicaea and Chalcedon, where our Creed was decided, next time!

Ancient Aliens?

As a historian, I enjoy watching stuff like Ancient Aliens. Because it is totally not true but entertaining. 'Theories' about E.T.s coming to our world to create our civilization sort of fill the gap in our knowledge of our own past, and we can fill this void anyway you like.

Well, so long as you are writing fantasy fiction. Stargate SG1 was fun, too. This show was successful, because the story in the end tells us that we are here because we deserve to be here: all those technologically advanced aliens were either too arrogant or evil or stupid and ended up destroying themselves. We humans, on the other hand, with our spirit for self advancement, will rightly inherit the best part of ancient civilizations and will achieve a lot in future. Very uplifting and American. Good for your morale.

But if these bunch of amateur theorists claim that aliens created humanity in the ancient past? Well, evidence they cite is weaker than evidence for existence of angels and demons.

What is most annoying is that they say the ancient aliens ideas are 'theories'. Erich von Daniken, the guy who started it all, repeatedly says, he's merely asking questions: 'Isn't it just possible ... ?' and he goes on complaining that his critics attack him for coming up with his fantastic theory without credible evidence just to sell books.

A few minutes later, he shows some ancient wall carving, practically shouting, this is evidence that aliens landed on earth. I would say Daniken's critics are right: he is not merely asking questions, he's trying to force you to accept an idea backed by the most flimsy evidence.

For instance, we are repeatedly shown this archaeological find at Palenque from Maya civilization.

Apparently, this stone carving depicts an ancient nobleman who was also an astronaut sitting in the middle of some sort of mechanical craft. They say this guy looks like modern astronauts and that this is an ancient space craft, with the cockpit part exaggerated for artistic reason and belching fire at the bottom. If this thing also looks like some sort of mythical tree, that's because an artist or artists didn't understand what they were looking at. Hence the idea of aliens visiting Earth, as the ancient Mayans did not quite understand alien technology.

(Perhaps like this?)

They maintain that the ruling elite of Maya were a either liens or people who were educated by aliens. Maya civilization collapsed in the medieval period - that this advanced civilization didn't fall: the Mayans left Earth either to return to their home world or to colonise another planet.

When I was a kid, though I loved watching stuff like that on TV, naturally I was baffled by this explanation. For one thing, if ancient aliens were so advanced to travel for hundreds of light years to come to earth, surely, they used more advanced technology than primitive rocket from the 1960s? Belching fire? Aren't they supposed to fly flying saucers or something? I thought they would be using anti-gravity or technology we cannot even imagine to power such craft. How come their astronauts were confined in a small cockpit when traveling for many months or even years? Where's the loo?

Indeed, when we imagine future technology for long distance space travel, this is how we picture it.

So, perhaps, ancient statues like this is better evidence to support the idea that we had space technology in the past or that aliens came to earth.

Or, maybe Abraham Lincoln wasn't assassinated but he flew off in his spaceship!

History is full of gaps. When we say 'history', we are talking about recorded history. Unless it gets written down, no matter how significant, what happened in the past wd not constitute our history. We historians are trained to decipher official documents and other written records to construct a seamless narrative to give people 'a story of us'. Unfortunately, there are so many things in this world that defiy historians' effort to explain everything.

There are many gaps in our knowledge of the past simply because our written records are not complete. Some cultures were illiterate. Something happens, but no one bothered to write about it. Wars and natural disasters destroyed written records. There are many reasons for blank pages in our history books.

Also, our history is naturally selective, as most historical narratives we consume are often written for political and moral purposes. Simply put, a history is about explaining how a certain group of people, i.e., a nation or an ethnic group, has formed and why you are part of it and why we should obey certain rules in our society. Inevitably, such history includes only information which is relevant to the theme.

The Bible, for instance, talks about how a Jewish nation was formed during the first millennium BC. So, while we know that the Jews were once in Egypt, the Bible isn't very helpful about Egyptian history, as it was not the purpose of the book.

What you can read in the Bible is political ideology at the height of the ancient Israelite kingdom: the book is not even intended to give factual accounts of history in the region since the creation of the world. Yet, the ancient Jews, by saying we were delivered from the tyrannical and evil Egyptians by the power of God, tried to make a point about their independent existence, free of interference from great powers of the day, such as Egypt. Sitting in the crossroad between great powers in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, developing such ideology must have been crucial for survival of a middle sized kingdom.

When Jews were helped by God, they won. Since, this God was supposed to be powerful enough to beat military might of the great powers, His image must be something more assuring and powerful than just a statue of a winged half-man, half-animal. Hence the weird imagery described in the Book of Ezekiel, perhaps? This God is something beyond natural laws and human perceptivity. Surely, such a God must be so powerful, He can help a small nation to survive among big bullies. Yet, when the Israelites refused to worship this God properly, they were enslaved by the Babylonians, the big bully of the time.

What I want to say is that before jumping on to the alien theories, we must exhaust all other possibilities. Aren't there more mundane and simpler explanations? Simply because ancient historical writing does not follow modern styles of history writing, we should not bring in aliens so easily.

The real mystery to me is this though: if the above is my view, why do I keep watching History Channel?

Top Chinese Gun?

With the tension rising in the East China Sea, pitting two nations without much sense of humour, no one seems to notice something on the light side. For the past week or so, the Japanese government has been blaming the Chinese for acting provocatively.

They claim that a Chinese warship, one of the Jiangwei class frigates, painted a Japanese DDG (Guided missile destroyer) with her targeting radar. Basically, warships got three types of radars - for navigation, early warning (to find enemy ships, planes, missiles etc.) and targeting - i.e., to determine range, direction and speed of the said target so that you can fire at it accurately.

[The victim... the Japanese DDG]

In normal combat situation, once you use the targeting radar and have 'locked on' - that is, you get detailed data re. the target, you can immediately fire your guns or missiles or torpedoes or whatever you have with good chance of actually hitting, damaging or destroying it.

The Jianwei class does carry anti-ship missiles, so technically, with just one hit, a Japanese destroyer can be crippled. During the Falklands War, it was demonstrated that one Exocet missile can totally neutralise a British Type 42 destroyer; the US frigate Stark, hit by a single Exocet during the Gulf crisis in the 80s, was totally disabled and had to be towed out of the combat zone.

[The Chinese frigate. In the box, you can see eight anti-ship missile tubes]

The Chinese allegedly did this when the distance between the Chinese and the Japanese flotillas was only three kilometres. The Japanese government is concerned that this can easily lead to a fatal mistake, precipitating an accidental war. This indeed reminds me of the accidental shoot-down of an Iranian jetliner by the USN, when the USS Vincennes accidentally mistook it for Iranian F-14. And the liner was not even doing anything hostile, just flying in the warship's direction.

Or, the Soviet shoot-down of KAL007 flight from Alaska to Seoul in the Cold War years. This liner obviously strayed from the planned flightpath because the old-fashioned captain of the flight, who did not wholly trust modern navigational equipment, took a wrong turn and flew almost directly above a Soviet airbase. The Soviets thought it was an American spy-plane buzzing the Soviets, obstinately and arrogantly refusing to leave.

With warship so close to each other, you have only split seconds to react, leaving a tiny margin for error. Back in the 1980s, when Iranians used Chinese "Silkworm" anti-ship missiles at US warships, the US Navy easily splashed them down, but, they had ample warning time. With just two nautical miles separating the two sides, the defender could not do much. Especially if the Chinese had used naval guns, there was no way the Japanese could have dodged shells. Any unnecessary act of hostility or any act that might indicate a commencement of hostility must be avoided. Hence the Japanese anger, and the US State Dept. also expressed their concerns.

The Chinese government says that they have no knowledge of the incident and even accuses the Japanese of fabricating it. Though this possibility cannot entirely be ruled out, it is more likely that the Chinese sailors on the spot are acting on their own. Back in the 90s, it was widely reported that the underpaid Chinese sailors were often selling weapons to pirates in Southeast Asia. A lack of discipline was indeed a major problem for the Chinese navy. Today, probably they are better paid and more disciplined, but, equally they are more obnoxious and angry with the perceived Japanese aggression.

But, I cannot help seeing a funny side to it. For the past six months or so, the Chinese navy has been letting us know that they do watch old American blockbuster movies like Top Gun. In fact, the game of using the targeting radar to scare enemy off is what is depicted in the movie. And the Chinese have been at it since their first fleet carrier was shown in public for the first time. The style of carrier op technician on board became an online phenomenon.

[The American original. Carrier launch operation on board a Nimitz class nuclear aircraft carrier. Scenes like this were shown in Top Gun]

[And these are Chinese sailors imitating what they saw on Top Gun]

["Aircraft carrier style" by the supposedly humourless members of Communist China!]

The Tom Cruise character (call-signed Maverick) became a hero in the first half of the movie by using his targeting radar and locking on to an enemy warplane buzzing another American fighter plane. I bet the Chinese sailor or sailors who did the same to the Japanese must be calling themselves 'Maverick'! (Of course I could be totally wrong, I must add)

So, I think we should not dismiss the possibility that this latest dispute between China and Japan might be provoked by some silly game by bored Chinese naval personnel. Let us just pray that the Japanese develop some sense of humour too...

Algeria

Just my initial reaction...

Apparently, Islamists scored some points by their raid and attempted hostage taking at an oil and gas plant in Algeria. One, they produced thirty odd martyrs who are now happily dwelling in the next world. Two, they demonstrated what they were capable of. Three, their profile has significantly increased.

I have been glued to Syrian and Mali situations for the past fortnight, but, what is really annoying is that the civil war in Mali has been ignored by national media here in Japan. Apparently, in Norway, they suffer from a similar lack of interest. Now suddenly, they've learned that their fellow countrymen are woking in the remote desert in Algeria and got entangled in struggle against international terrorism.

Now, as this latest tragedy unfolds, they can no longer keep ignoring the ongoing war in Mali and the fragile security situation in Algeria. Isn't this sort of publicity what Al Qaeda wanted? So long as the media's practice of following big explosions only continues, terrorists will keep trying to produce just such bangs. In other words, the media's selective process and rating-based criteria for what constitute news might be partially responsible for what has happened in some small way.

I don't think the decision by the Algerian government to go in to free the hostages was wrong. After all, this has always been a region beyond the reach of city-based civilization since Roman times. They could simply disappear into the vast desert where we cannot follow. Once the hostages had been moved to hideouts in the desert, it would have been impossible to find them. They would have been held in atrocious condition for many months or even years, only to be killed in the end.

Of course, if they had accepted offers of help from the US, Britain and France, the death toll could have been different ....

Justinian?

Justinian fascinates us. I have recently come across with a reconstruction of his image based on the mosaic in St. Vitale, Ravenna. But doesn't this sort of spoil our image of the great Roman emperor? In the reconstruction, he looks like just average guy from any Balkan country today!

 

Something even more amazing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XnGgtDzhys

But seriously, given different diet (no one ate potatoes in Roman/Byzantine times presumably), less technologically developed health care and sanitary system of the day, did people really look the same as modern people?

Greco-Roman statues give us an impression that ancient peoples look surprisingly modern and healthy.

But then, just like portraits of actors and actresses can be doctored and idealised, ancient statues, mosaics and paintings depict idealised images of rulers and holy men and women. You never know what they really looked like.

In a way, these paintings are equivalent of modern TV and movies. We can tell what looks are considered pretty perhaps, but don't really have any clue how people really were.

Obviously the reconstruction of Justinian takes the aura away from the original mosaic in St. Vitale in Ravenna. He looks gentle, kind and even weak-willed, compared with the mosaic. Of course the artwork is supposed to be a political statement from a man who was determined to hold the Roman Empire together and even to recover some of the lost territories. You feel strength and confidence, which are totally lacking from the reconstruction. It makes me realise what a masterpiece the St. Vitale mosaic is even more.