Category: European History

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Was Mikhail Gorbachev a Hero? Yes.

Reagan and Gorbachev

“The West likes him. The people of Russia, not so much.” That has been a theme in tributes to Mikhail Gorbachev,  the former head of the Soviet Union, who died yesterday, August 30.

You may know more about Gorbachev than I did a few years ago when I wrote a paper about him for a class about modern European history.  But perhaps sharing some of the history I learned will reveal why the West is grateful to him, even if the people of Russia  are not.

Gorbachev never intended to break up the Soviet Union. He simply didn’t know that perestroika (restructuring the USSR’s economy) and glasnost (openness of speech) would result in cataclysmic change. Continue reading “Was Mikhail Gorbachev a Hero? Yes.”

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The Secret Behind Our Legacy of Magnificent Music

Leopold Mozart family

In 1772, Joseph Haydn and his musicians were spending a long summer performing at the country retreat of Hungary’s Prince Esterhazy. The musicians were restless and wanted to go home, but Esterhazy expected them to stay there as long as he did.

To change the prince’s mind, Haydn wrote a symphony. In the finale, each player, one by one, ends his music, snuffs out his candle, and exits—until only two violinists are left (one being Haydn) to quietly end the piece. Now known as the Farewell Symphony, it persuaded Esterhazy to release the troupe. [1]

The prince’s failed effort to control the musicians was about as heavy-handed as European governments got with respect to music in those glorious days between, say, 1700 and 1820. (Think, from Vivaldi and Telemann to Mozart and Beethoven.) The results were magnificent.

Over that period musical performances were enriched and diversified on multiple dimensions. The piano replaced the harpsichord, the cello replaced the bass viola da gamba, Bach brought the organ’s sounds to new heights—to mention just a few changes. Ways to share music—orchestras, quartets, sonatas, concertos, oratorios, and operas—proliferated.  The styles we know as Baroque, Classical, and Romantic began to solidify, and the stunning masterpieces that we love today emerged.

It was not planned, it was not forced, it was not “orchestrated.” It was, as Friedrich Hayek said about the world-wide economy, a spontaneous order. Continue reading “The Secret Behind Our Legacy of Magnificent Music”

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How Taxes and Regulations Shaped Architecture

Above is a photograph of two houses in Nashville, Tennessee. They are narrow buildings, connected by a one-story hallway in the middle, and they share a driveway. Do they look a little strange? To me, they do—handsome but strange.

They show how a Tennessee law led to creative designs.

Taxes and regulations often have unintended consequences. In this post, I will share three examples of distinctive housing that came about in an effort to work around government fiats.

Nashville’s Connected Houses

Let’s start with Nashville’s connected houses. The reason is simple. Nashville has been growing, with population increasing at about double the U.S. rate during the past decade. [1] This puts pressure on housing supply, and subdividing a lot to build two houses is attractive.

Until 2014, however, zoning laws required builders who wanted to build two homes on a single lot to connect the houses—to make them legally duplexes  or condominiums.  So, as having two homes on one lot became financially attractive, we got homes like those above. Continue reading “How Taxes and Regulations Shaped Architecture”

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Why Do We Have Wars? Part II

Map of Eastern Europe

The invasion of Ukraine may give us some insight into the causes of war, with the help of experts.

I recently shared Jeremy Black’s view of why wars happen.[1] High on his list are two explanations: humans are inherently warlike and we idolize war heroes.  But after I wrote about Black, I was urged (by Mark Brady) to read a more classic treatment by Geoffrey Blainey, a prominent Australian historian. He wrote The Causes of War in 1973 and updated it in 1988.[2]

Blainey was not interested in fundamental psychological causes but, rather, in finding specific patterns of how wars get started and how they stop. His book, he said, was based on a study of all international wars since 1700.

Blainey’s most important claim is that war starts when “two nations disagree on their relative strength.”[3] The leaders of each nation weigh their chances of winning or obtaining a goal (which might be maintaining independence). The decision to go to war is based on at least seven factors, he says. Continue reading “Why Do We Have Wars? Part II”

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A Magnificent Discovery and What It Means to Me

Statue of Abraham Lincoln and freed slave.

Last year, during the height of agitation over whether or not to tear down statues, the Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D.C.’s Lincoln Park came under scrutiny. The statue, dedicated in 1876, shows Abraham Lincoln freeing a slave who is crouched below him.

The statue’s subordination of the slave to a white man has spurred calls for its removal. And those calls led to the discovery of a previously  unknown letter from  famed orator Frederick Douglass.

The debate over the statue continues, but my purpose here is to discuss the discovery of Douglass’s letter and how it reflects, if I may say so, a bias of historians. Continue reading “A Magnificent Discovery and What It Means to Me”