Good review of the major wars fought in the Americas, well-written and useful for brushing up on your history. At the same time, this is less a coherent work than a collection of extended essays tied together by a loose theme, and the early chapters are (by far) the best. The tail end of the book, which includes a chapter on the Plains Wars of the late 1800s and a chapter (more like an appendage) on the B-17 Bomber, is weaker.
Finally, in the first few pages of the book, the author absolutely nails what it's like in the USA in a brief personal discussion of his thoughts and feelings about America. He describes our uniformity, our general uncuriosity, as well as many other aspects of our culture, both good and bad, and he does so in an openly appreciative and non-pejorative way. Over the years I've gotten the impression that when it comes to the USA there are two kinds of English people: those who love us and those who tolerate us. This author is among the former.
Notes:
1) "There are other large countries on earth, Russia, China, India. Only the Americans have succeeded in creating a society of complete cultural uniformity, in which one can travel for a thousand miles in the sureness that at the end of the journey one will emerge from airplane or bus or motor car to hear a common language being spoken in an identical form, to find people living in identical houses, to see the crowd dressed in identical clothes, to walk streets built in identical style, to find towns served by identical schools, businesses, public utilities. To an outsider the uniformity of America is profoundly relaxing. America makes no demands on one, imposes no expectations, asks no questions... I love passing through. A curious, delectable, weightless, free floating trance possesses me when I stop for a moment in places like Hardin, Montana, or Half Moon Bay, California, or Springfield, Ohio, born of the knowledge that no one will ask me who I am or what I do or whence I come or whither I am going.
2) This book shows how you can take mini-works, extended essays essentially, combine them under an admittedly loose theme, and make an enjoyable (but more importantly, sellable) book out of it.
3) Interesting to hear the author's perspective on Americans he met in the post-Eisenhower years while at Oxford, including the various American Rhodes scholars he met who he became friends with. The tone here is of optimism from an increasingly bygone era: "Americans in the Eisenhower years must have felt there was nothing their country could not do." It's a bit depressing reading this when today Americans can't even extricate themselves from a failed military campaign in Afghanistan; far from bestriding the world as we did then: the world seems to bestride us. What Keegan is writing here is a paean to the peak of American civilization, and just like in markets when you can only see the top long after the fact, the top really feels like it was in in the 1950s.
4) Keegan wins a scholarship and tours the United States on a research project on the American Civil War. It's quite a mournful experience reading about his impressions of each city: many of then (Atlanta, GA, St. Augustine, FL stand out here) have lost their charm, in fact had lost their charm by the time the author visited them later in his life. Once again it really feels like our country peaked in the 1950s.
5) Another example of the increasing decadence of the United States, which is shown in a sort of bas-relief from this quote from the author: "English academics treat faculty seminars as an occasion for languid speculation or for settling private scores. American seminars are dedicated to the pursuit of truth." Note that this quote dates from the author's return to the United States in 1984 after many years, and perhaps at this time he was witnessing the final days of peak American academic prowess. Now, no longer are we interested in the pursuit of truth: we are the ones settling private scores and languidly worshiping at the altar of scientism. We've now achieved the same intellectual decadence that this author decried in Europe.
6) See also: "The ethos of American journalism--disrespectful, hypercritical, self-confident--is one of the most potent gifts the republic has transmitted to the European world." Again, how dispirited this author would be (he died in 2012) to see American journalism today: obedient, uncritical, and a transparent instrument of state power and government narrative.
7) "I love America." It's heartfelt and beautiful when the author says this, but he loves the America of 1997, if not of decades before that. I wonder what he might think of the America of today. For this reason, despite the beauty and earnestness of the author's writing, the experience of reading this book is rather mournful.
8) See Jefferson's quote at his inauguration in 1801: "Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none." Might we go back to this one day?
French and Indian War:
9) Beautifully rendered history of the French and Indian War, pair this book with Francis Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe. Interesting also that at the final culmination of this conflict, when Quebec fell, Wolfe got along well and collaborated very well with his navel colleague Sir Charles Saunders: per the author this was one of the very rare examples of an Army and a Navy leader collaborating effectively.
10) A well-rendered telling of the final battle at Quebec on the Plains of Abraham. After Wolfe by guile manages to arrange his entire force there, Montcalme sees it and says, stunned, "I see them where they have no business to be."
11) Moving conclusion to the Quebec battle and essentially the end of France's political presence in the New World, although the beginning of a new period: the Quebecois people are fruitful and multiply, despite the English. Note also Voltaire's condescending remark calling Quebec "quelques arpents de neige" (a few acres of snow).
American Revolution:
12) On Yorktown and the primary misconception almost everyone today has about the Revolutionary War, that it was fought by "hardy New Englanders" when in reality much of it took place in the south. Recall also that the "battle of decision," Yorktown, was in Virginia. The Revolutionary War also is an example of how Southerners are massively over-represented in our military history.
13) On the Minutemen, more warlike and better organized than our social studies class' impressions would have us believe. They were not peaceful men who just sprang to arms under British oppression, they were already a well organized force thanks to militia laws from English tradition, and frequent Indian attacks (Pequot War, King Philip's War, etc).
14) Right after the Battle of Bunker Hill the colonial army attempted to invade Canada to establish a northern perimeter, it was a disaster. Then, as the colonials brought a bunch of cannon down from fort Ticonderoga, British general Howe pulled his army from Boston and moved it to Halifax, Nova Scotia, basically controlling of the mouth of the St. Lawrence.
15) Interesting to learn about general John Burgoyne, a Canadian-British military commander, who began a campaign against the colonial rebels in the waterways above the Hudson: he quickly took Ticonderoga but then his entire effort fell apart ultimately in Saratoga. Just like McClellan in the Civil War he was "oversupplied" and gradually used up all his supplies while the colonialist rebels evaded him and waited. Interesting parallel! It's a curse to have too many resources in war just like it's a curse to not have enough. See the USA in Vietnam, McClellan in the 1862 Peninsula Campaign of the Civil War, etc.
16) "...a third of the colonists during the Revolution remained loyal to the crown and a third neutral." Never knew this. After it was over of course everyone who was against it was suddenly for it and had been for it all along.
17) The colonists' independence movement was a combination of time, extra winters during which Washington could wait, and finally a strategic change when France signed a treaty with the revolutionaries.
18) There was a plan by Benedict Arnold to surrender West Point to the British, this is what Arnold planned to do that made his name synonymous with "traitor." He then escaped to the British side who made him a general. Later he went on to fight against the French in the West Indies.
19) The bulk of the fighting happened in the south: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina. Spain even got involved in 1779 and managed to take western Florida and much of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi from the British, later to sell it back to the United States in 1819. Thus England is warring with Spain, France, the colonies, and conducting campaigns in West Africa, Southern India, the Mediterranean and North America. A lot on their plate, and it sounds sort of familiar to a modern American reader today thinking about the tremendous over-extension of the US government globally.
20) The real problem for the British was that they had insufficient numbers of seagoing vessels to control the American coast at the same time that the French sent ships from the West Indies to block British efforts at resupply.
21) The American Revolution effectively took about 6 years, until the total surrender and defeat at Yorktown against Cornwallis, but some forts in the west including Detroit remained in British hands until 1797. "Nor was it the end of the larger war. Britain remained at war with France and Spain..."
22) The Spanish came as far north as the Chesapeake in the 16th century, and even had a short lived mission, Ajacan, that was near Jamestown, VA. (!!)
Civil War:
23) At the outbreak of the Civil War the Navy almost entirely sided with the north, while a third of regular officers "went with their states," meaning they would effectively fight for the Confederacy. Note also many coastal fortifications (e.g., Key West, Pensacola Bay and obviously Fort Sumter) were under Federal control.
24) Bull Run was an important location: it was a passageway into the South's enormous territory east of the Appalachians at a time when the South had significant control of the Mississippi and the central/midwest United States. Interestingly, the South had surprisingly strong natural frontiers, and the vast majority of the Confederacy was unreachable by water, railway or road (at least at the onset of the war). Thus there was a tremendous challenge here because the North would have to invade and occupy it.
25) I never really understood the importance of a naval strategy of the Civil War and how the North relentlessly captured bases and anchorages across the Atlantic coast and throughout the river system of the United States, and essentially strangling the South.
26) McClellan as the "successful" ludic: an excellent student, successful at West Point, successful in everything, always promoted... but when exposed to the real world of war he was unable to function effectively. Ironically the fact that he was seemingly comfortable only in retreat is yet another example of the problem of the ludic: most aspects of retreating are done by the book, so there's a clear rule book to follow! The ludic always does best when life resembles a classroom with clear rules and clear outcomes. Compare this to Grant, who was a failure at everything except the actual thing: effectively and successfully fighting a war against the enemy.
27) The Civil War chapter is good reading, and you learn a lot about the personalities of the war as he walks through events. This is well-written military history, and it is an excellent review for anyone looking to better groove their Civil War history. One idiosyncrasy however: the Civil War chapter ends abruptly and at an arbitrary point. Obviously to cover this war fully would expand this book by another thousand pages.
28) The author doesn't discuss this, but to me, especially lately, it is interesting to think about the strategy of "complying" versus the strategy of immediate violent reprisal when it comes to people exploiting or imposing its will on another. The Indians in North America did not wake up to the threat of the white man and did not respond to it with aggressive violence to a sufficient level until it was way too late. Also you could argue that the Jews in general in 1930s-era Germany and (later) throughout German-occupied countries went primarily with a strategy of compliance and ultimately paid the ultimate price for it.
The Plains Wars:
29) Interesting quote here on US explanations of the fort system throughout the Great plains, one blunt and the other even more blunt: "The great father puts warehouses all throughout the Indian country." Followed by "Building posts in their country demoralizes them more than anything else except money and whiskey."
30) The Great Plains Indians: an interesting example of a society rapidly transitioning from primitive to sophisticated warriors as they developed a highly mobile warrior force using horses and the gun, and did it in less than two centuries. By contrast it took a thousand years for the nomadic peoples of the Eurasian steppe peoples to combine horsemanship and bows and arrows into cavalry.
31) Interesting confluence of factors in the Plains Wars: 1) the incursion of white settlers to the Great Plains, 2) the lack of war in between various Indian tribes until much later, at least more to a broad scale, and 3) the killing off of Buffalo herds in response to the needs of ranchers and farmers. These were collectively enough of a threat to the Plains Indians that they developed into a legitimate warrior force. It may have delayed the "manifest destiny" process in the United States by a century.
32) Also the US government did an excellent job of "divide and conquer" with all Indian tribes. Examples: moving the tribes from east of the Mississippi into regions west of it, where they had to change from agriculture to plains living; this then created animosity among Indian tribes already there, who saw these "new" native American peoples as interlopers/invaders. Further, the Eastern tribes "thought the plainsmen to be primitive savages, the plainsmen thought the incomers to be interlopers dependent of the white man." The angrier and more disempowered a people are, the less likely they'll be able to unite to stop injustices being done to them. Isn't it interesting how our media, our two faction/party political system (and in many ways our own government) do this to the people today? Divide, enrage and conquer: when weakened and quarreling we are a lot less likely to change the system!
33) Note also that the overall caliber of American troops declined dramatically after the Civil War, thus the soldiers used during these Indian conflicts were well below prior standards.
34) Custer as the "boy general" who never grew up and a bad boy cadet who loved war, considered the Civil War glorious, and was luckily unwounded (interesting aside here from the author of what happens to people when they show substantial bravery in battle and are totally untouched/unwounded, often these dudes become disasters later in their career, as they sending men to their deaths, while going on assuming that they'll be untouched too somehow). This was a form of arrogance that indirectly led to the disaster at Little Bighorn.
35) Custer's last stand, 1876, as a standard example of the Indian tribes winning a battle but losing a war: the result of this battle (massacre, really) enraged white America, leading to much more military pressure to pacify the region, and by late December 1890, at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota, an attack on 150 Souix who refused to disarm, essentially ended all native American resistance on the continent.
36) See Frederick Jackson Turner's "frontier thesis": his paper discussed the significance of the frontier in American history, arguing that the frontier itself was why Americans were different from Europeans and had an strikingly non-European sense of self-reliance and independence.
Flying Fortress:
37) This chapter is more of an "appendage" than a chapter and it's kind of random. Starts with a discussion of Orville and Wilbur wright and their 1903 flight. Note also how the Wright brothers got screwed over in a patent dispute, as Samuel Pierpont Langley represented himself as an earlier inventor. Even the Smithsonian got it wrong and credited Langley with the first flight, an error left uncorrected until 1948.
38) The author moves on to Maxwell Field in Montgomery, Alabama where strategists worked out (in 1939!) most of the strategic bombing ideas used of World War II back, including strikingly (one might say preternaturally) specific plans to bomb Japan back into the Stone age, this is quite shocking to read.
Then, finally, on to the B-17 bomber which was initially designed as a coastal defense tool for the United States coastline, then repurposed for defensive/offensive bombing raids in Europe.
Vocab:
Decastellated: to remove castles or battlements
Métis: francophone version of mestizo
Anabasis: a march from a coast into the interior (as that of the younger Cyrus into Asia in 401 BC, as narrated by Xenophon in his work Anabasis).
Haver: act in a vacillating or indecisive manner
Fabian strategy: an approach to military operations where one side avoids large, pitched battles in favor of smaller, harassing actions in order to break the enemy's will to keep fighting and wear them down through attrition. See also "Fabian socialism"
Estaminet: a small cafe in France that sells alcoholic drinks
Coeval: having the same age or date of origin; contemporary.