Cultuur & Historie in het Nieuws #9

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Het is vandaag alweer 96 jaar geleden dat de Nederlandse exotische danseres Mata Hari door een vuurpeloton werd gefusilleerd. De vrouw was door de Fransen beschuldigd van spionage en werd veroordeeld wegens hoogverraad. In FOK!toen vandaag een terugblik op het korte maar kleurrijke leven van Mata Hari.

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'BREKEND': 100.000 doden bij veldslag Leipzig

Een 'ouderwets' grote veldslag tussen twee legers: hoe zou dat zijn in onze tijd? In Duitsland wordt een grote veldslag bij Leipzig uit 1813 nagespeeld. Wel met een modern tintje: de veldslag wordt 'live' uitgezonden op het Duitse journaal.

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Deskundigen bevestigen vondst Vikinggesp in Domburg

Geplaatst op
16 oktober 2013

Laatste update
16 oktober, 16:29

MIDDELBURG - Tussen alle archeologische vondsten bijna drie jaar geleden gedaan in Domburg bevindt zich een ongeveer 1200 jaar oude bronzen gesp afkomstig van de Vikingen.

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Mystery Badger Leads Archaeologists To Medieval Burial Site

Archaeologists who unearthed the tombs of two medieval lords are crediting a badger living underneath a farm in the Brandenburg town of Stolpe with an assist on the discovery, various media outlets are reporting.

The 12th century burial site is home to a pair of Slavic lords, as well as a cache of artifacts including a sword, bronze bowls, an ornate belt buckle and skeletal remains, UPI reported early last week.

While researchers Lars Wilhelm and Hendrikje Ring were the humans in charge of the expedition, however, they unlikely wouldn’t have found the graves without the help of the short-legged omnivore.

“We spotted a pelvic bone that had been dug up, it was clearly human,” Ring told David Crossland of Spiegel Online. “It wasn’t exactly surprising to us because a whole field of ancient graves had been found on the other side of the road in the 1960s. So we pushed a camera into the badger’s sett and took photos by remote control. We found pieces of jewelry, retrieved them and contacted the authorities.”

According to Crossland, that occurred last autumn. Since then, thanks largely to the badger’s efforts, the archeologists went on to discover a total of eight graves, all of which dated back to the first half of the 12th century.

The skeletons in the graves of the two lords had bronze bowls at their feet, which Thomas Kersting of the Brandenburg Department for Monument Protection said helped identify them as being members of the social upper crust (the bowls were used to wash their hands before eating).

Other objects discovered included an arrow head and a bronze belt buckle that was omega-shaped and had snake heads at either end, Crossland added. One of the two skeletons was said to be especially well preserved, and – based on multiple sword and lance wounds, a healed fracture suggesting that he had fallen from a horse at one point, and the presence of a sword at his side – the archaeologists believe that the individual had been a warrior.

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Een "Viking-parlement" onder een Schotse parking

vr 25/10/2013 - 21:58 Luc De Roy

In Schotland is een site gevonden van een "parlement" van de Vikingen, onder een parkeerterrein in het stadje Dingwall. De site dateert uit de 11e eeuw en wordt een "Thing-site" genoemd, naar de naam van het parlement bij de Vikingen. De Thing was een tijdelijke bijeenkomst, waar de Viking-mannen gerechtelijke geschillen oplosten, wetten goedkeurden en belangrijke politieke beslissingen namen.

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Europe and Asia United at Last

1. On October 29th, 2013, the world’s first sea tunnel linking two continents will be inaugurated in Istanbul, Turkey.

2. The date falls on the 90th anniversary of the founding of Turkey’s Republic under Ataturk.

3. The construction of a submerged tunnel under the Bosphorus Straits connecting Asia to Europe has long been envisioned as a very practical project.

4. It was first envisaged by Abdul Mejid I, the Ottomans’ 31st sultan. Reigning between 1839 and 1861, the determinedly Western-leaning sultan supposedly came up with the idea in a dream.

5. A French architect soon after came up with a blueprint. However, big technological challenges and lack of cash to fund the project stood in the way.

6. Now, 150 years later, Sultan Abdul Mejid’s dream is coming true.

7. The scheme was initiated in 2004 by Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in his Justice and Development (AK) party’s first term in power.

8. The tunnel is part of the broader “Marmaray” rail link project, stretching over 76km (47 miles) across the metro area, which has cost $3 billion so far. 1.4km of it rests at the bottom of the sea in the new tunnel.

9. That system is said to “eventually link London to Beijing, creating unimagined global connections.”

10. The Marmaray tunnel will serve only rail traffic. The Avrasya Tunnel, also under construction in a different location, will serve automobile traffic.

From The Sultan’s Dream (The Economist) and from Rail Turkey.

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Voormalige vijanden herdenken samen hun gevallen kameraden,



Op donderdag 14 november 2013 zal bij het Monument van Verdraagzaamheid in de Limburgse Gemeente Leudal voor de dertiende keer een jaarlijkse internationale herdenking plaats vinden. Het in 2001 opgerichte monument herdenkt de meer dan 700 militairen van 11 nationaliteiten die tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog in dit gebied omkwamen. Het is hiermee het eerste en enige monument in Nederland waar ook Duitse en Oostenrijkse slachtoffers herdacht worden.

Waren ze elkaar tijdens de luchtgevechten tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog tegen gekomen, dan had waarschijnlijk een van hen dit niet kunnen navertellen. Nu komen ze voor het derde jaar op rij samen naar dit monument om als vrienden sámen te herdenken. De ene is de Britse veteraan Harry Irons DFC (89) die als RAF staartschutter meer dan 60 missies boven Nazi Duitsland meemaakte. De ander is de Duitser Wilhelm Desinger (90), een Luftwaffe “Ace” die aan het Oostfront zeven Russische vliegtuigen neerschoot.

Samen herdenken en bezinnen; het kan al 13 jaar in het Leudal! De laatste jaren niet alleen op de dag van de herdenking zelf, maar ook tijdens de , om de herdenking heen, georganiseerde “veteranenweek”. De deelnemers aan deze bijzondere week zijn niet allemaal veteraan. Ook leden van het voormalig verzet, slachtoffers van de Holocaust én jonge veteranen sluiten zich hierbij aan. Ongedwongen, en op eigen initiatief, treden voormalige vijanden met elkaar in gesprek. Tijdens een bezoek aan SG St. Ursula Horn praten ze ook met de scholieren van deze middelbare school over hun ervaringen.

De bezoekers delen een donker verleden; tijdens de gesprekken met de jeugd geven ze daar een nieuwe toekomst aan.

Dit jaar heeft de veteranenweek een speciaal “luchtmacht tintje”. Naast een bezoek aan de school vindt er, ter gelegenheid van het 100 jarig bestaan van de Nederlandse militaire luchtvaart, een bezoek plaats aan luchtmachtbasis Volkel. Tijdens de internationale herdenking die plaats vindt bij het Monument van Verdraagzaamheid op donderdag 14 november 2013 (aanvang 14.00 uur) zal, behoudens goede weersomstandigheden, een originele Spitfire een Flyby verzorgen ter ere van de gevallenen.

Het monument is gelegen naast het Bezoekercentrum Leudal, Roggelseweg 58, 6081 NP, Haelen . Zie voor meer informatie http://www.leudalmonument.nl

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Thessaloniki: Heart of Macedonia

Why a silly naming dispute in the Balkans should not be allowed to fester.

By Barry Wood, November 3, 2013

The Galerius Arch has been the eastern gateway into the pulsating port city of Thessaloniki since it was built in 299 A.D. to commemorate the Roman emperor’s victory over the Persians.

The thoroughfare passing beneath the arch – the Via Egnatia – is even older. It dates from 146 B.C. and extends 400 kilometers.

The road ran from the Adriatic town of Durres across the mountains of Macedonia and then south to this magnificent city at the top of the Aegean Sea. The Via Egnatia was the second-most important highway in the Roman Empire and the first to span the Balkan Peninsula. It remains Thessaloniki’s principal thoroughfare.

It is tragic that a geopolitical argument prevents Thessaloniki from being fully integrated with its traditional hinterland

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Why Some Nations Grow Fast (and Others Don’t)

What are the historical origins and future prospects of the Chinese business model?

By Jean-Pierre Lehmann, November 6, 2013

Joe Studwell, in his excellent opus “How Asia Works” (2013), compellingly debunks the idea that there is any such thing as an Asian economic model or indeed even an East Asian economic model.

In essence, there are two East Asia’s, one in the Northeast, which includes four successful historical economic narratives, the other in the Southeast. In the latter region, apart from the city-state of Singapore, no economy has succeeded to rise to first world status. In addition, on the basis of current trends, none is likely to do so.

In the Northeast Asian formula of successful industrialization, the state drives, the market follows. The real economy is on top — and finance is on tap. After a first stage of agricultural reform involving small scale, labor intensive farming, a second stage of competitive export-oriented manufacturing followed.

The Northeast Asian model is outward, not-inward looking. It therefore stands in contrast to the import-substitution industrialization model, as practiced in the past by many countries, including Brazil and India.

The success or failure of these models was not preordained. For three decades, Japan and Brazil were the world’s fastest growing economies. Notably, Japan operated on an export-oriented model, Brazil on an import substitution model.

However, while Japan’s GDP per capita increased eleven-fold from 1950 to 1980, Brazil’s was a much more modest four-fold. That move allowed the country to graduate from low to middle income, but it has remained there ever since.

Why some nations grow fast and others don’t

The four successful East Asian economies are, in chronological order of industrialization: Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). While economic theories may be failing to explain their evolution, history provides a lot more light.

One of the common forces in the four Northeast Asian industrialization narratives is that of external threat. In the early to mid-19th century, Japan lived in a state of self-imposed peaceful feudal isolation, following its decision to close the country (sakoku) in the early 17th century.

The early to mid-19th century was also when the Western imperial powers, Britain in particular, burst upon the East Asian scene and in a series of Opium Wars brought the Chinese dragon to heel: China’s share of global GDP stood at 33% in 1820, from where it fell to less than 5% by 1950.

Enriching the country as practical national defense

While Japan’s intention was initially to tell the Western powers seeking Japan’s opening to go away, in view of the devastating blows brought to China, pragmatism prevailed. In 1868. a major political revolution occurred, known as the Meiji Restoration.

It set in place the structures and strategies for Japan’s rapid economic development – the most rapid the world had ever seen and indeed saw until the Chinese story of the last 30 years.

Japan’s industrialization was driven by the slogan of fukoku-kyôhei – enrich the country, strengthen the army. Thus, enriching the country (industrialization) was not an end in itself, but a means to establishing a strong state that could withstand the threats of Western imperialism.

Little wonder then that Japan was the only non-Western nation to emerge as a major industrial and imperial power in the course of the late 19th century.

Of course, Japan defeated its own economic approach when it went into militarist overdrive in the 1930s and felt confident enough to take an economy that had been built as a defensive mechanism into one that would fund an aggressive military expansion strategy.

When that strategy badly failed with Japan’s defeat in September 1945, most of the country’s production capacity had been destroyed. Nevertheless, the Japanese economic phoenix rose quickly from the ashes, essentially by putting in place a modernized version of the Meiji state-industry model.

Whereas in typical Western capitalist economies the ministries of industry and trade are separate, Tokyo’s main institutional innovation was to merge the two in establishing in May 1949 the famous MITI – Ministry of International Trade and Industry. Thus, industrial policy was linked to trade policy, and vice-versa.

The private sector became part of the national chain-link mechanism, operating under the aegis of the government’s “administrative guidance” (gyôsei-shidô). It combined protection of domestic infant industries with the promotion of exports.

Overcoming the Japanese and other fear factors

Taiwan and Korea had both been colonized by Japan. Post-war, both were under imminent potentially devastating threat, Taiwan from the PRC and South Korea from North Korea.

In both cases, the fear of invasion, as with Japan in the Meiji period, acted as a strong propellant for economic growth and development paired with powerful state involvement.

Bitter post-colonial resentment towards Japan notwithstanding, both Taipei and Seoul adapted the Japanese model of state directed economic governance and development.

Apart from the city-states of Hong Kong, Singapore and Malta, South Korea and Taiwan are the only economies to have successfully transited from third world to first, from very low to comparatively high income per capita.

I first visited both Taiwan and South Korea in 1967 and have returned often since. The changes have been absolutely astonishing.

A completely different world

This is all the more so as they were not expected. In the 1950s, the World Bank estimated that the Asian countries most likely to perform well economically were Burma and the Philippines!

Just as Japan had had a major demonstration effect on Taiwan and South Korea, the Asian NIEs (newly-industrialized economies) would in turn have a major demonstration effect on the PRC.

In Beijing, following the death of Mao Zedong, it was clear that the red cat of communism was not catching the economic growth mice. Hence evolved the need to switch to the black “socialism with Chinese characteristics” cat. Whereas Maoism was replete with ideological fanaticism, Dengism is all about pragmatism.

Underlying both, however, is a mega force of nationalism. China’s modern history, from the 1830s to 1949, is probably the world’s most bloody and cruel period. It saw constant civil and foreign wars, revolutions and invasions, which resulted in catastrophic economic conditions. No wonder that the words “poor” and “Chinese” became synonymous in the global lexicon.

That is also the background that intuitively guides Chinese leaders today. They remain convinced that the United States ultimately aims to prevent China from realizing its full potential.

Why great powers industrialize

That is an important point to remember. After all, as with Japan in the Meiji era (1868-1912), industrialization is the means to an end, namely a means to China’s re-emergence as a great power.

As things stand in the second decade of the 21st century, there are a number of questions, both in respect to the sustainability of the Northeast Asian model and its impact on the outside world.

Japan’s two lost recent decades would seem to demonstrate that while its model may have been an ideal road for achieving industrialization, it appears ill-suited to the aging post-industrial society that Japan has become. Whether “Abenomics” will do the revitalising trick remains to be seen.

Many questions arise in respect to the future and sustainability of the Chinese model. A critical one is that China has yet to pass the middle-income threshold. Whether it will, and if so how it should go about it, is one of the most discussed issues in Chinese policy and academic circles today.

There is also the whole environmental dimension. Japan, Taiwan and South Korea were high-growth and high-pollution societies at their stages of industrial development last century. Is that still a possible avenue in which to base one’s rise in the 21st century? This is an all the more hair-raising question this time around, since it is not “little dragons” we are talking about but the biggest dragon of all.

Nationalism in the era of globalization

What about nationalism in the era of globalization? China is a potentially extremely lucrative market for foreign enterprises, though none are really clear on what the Chinese playing field is really like and where the goal posts are.

The current crackdown on foreign firms for alleged malpractices is sending chills down foreign corporate leaders’ spines.

How China develops internally and how China behaves externally are the two most important questions of this stage of the 21st century.

The answers are by no means obvious – indeed even the Chinese leadership is unlikely to have them. But the quest is likely to be far more fruitful by studying history than economic theory. As Winston Churchill famously said: “The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.”

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zondag 10 november 2013 om 09u07

Unieke foto's van Londen in 1877

Het lijken taferelen uit een Charles Dickens roman: deze foto's gemaakt in Londen in 1877.

Het boek Street Life in London gepubliceerd in 1867-1877 biedt de unieke kans te zien hoe het dagelijks leven in Londen er in die tijd uitzag. In beeld komen schoorsteenvegers, schoenenpoetsers, visverkopers, slotenmakers en veel meer Londenaren die op straat proberen hun brood te verdienen.

Het werd geschreven door de radicale journalist Adolphe Smith die het verhaal bij de foto’s van John Thomson vertelde. Op de website van de London School of Economics kunt u het volledige boek in PDF versie doorbladeren.