Some years ago, in preparation for a conference, I read Harvard College’s 1650 charter. I learned that the school’s goal was “the education of the English and Indian youth of this country in knowledge and godliness.”
So Harvard was chartered to serve Indian as well as English youth? That surprised me. My knowledge of Massachusetts Indians had stopped in elementary school, with Squanto aiding the Pilgrims.[1] So I wondered, what was the relationship between Massachusetts settlers and Native Americans?
I am learning the answer, as I audit a course on U.S. agricultural history.[2] Agriculture is an important part of the story of that relationship, which fell apart in a disastrous war in 1675. “No problem vexed relations between settlers and Indians more frequently in the years before the war than the control of livestock,” wrote Virginia DeJohn Anderson in a pioneering article on the causes of the conflict known as King Philip’s War.[3] Continue reading “A Clash of (Agri)cultures”
This nation, like much of the world, owes an enormous debt to ancient Greece and Rome. Our political framework, our political philosophies, even our government buildings reflect theirs. Many of our noblest ideas descend from the thinking of Greek philosophers, and Latin words and concepts pervade our language. The epic and lyric poetry of the ancients, their public rhetoric, their art, their musings, their values, and their histories have shaped the way we think and write and govern.
That said, we tend to ignore an unpleasant fact: The ancients were almost constantly at war. To a large extent these societies were designed for war. (They also relied heavily on slavery, but that is a topic for another day.).
Here are two more stories about history I found in recent articles:. One is about the Chinese family, one about the fall of Rome.
The End of the Chinese Extended Family
Nick Eberstadt argues in Foreign Affairs that the past kinship patterns of Chinese will be forced to change. Surprisingly, they haven’t yet.
Reliance on an extended family has been a fixture of Chinese history over 2500 years, he says, and the change will be “absolutely momentous.” In spite of the well-known one-child policy (which ended in 2015), he doubts that the Chinese Communist Party realizes how severe the impact will be on economic growth. Eberstadt is a respected writer about population and demographics who works for the American Enterprise Institute.
Braxton Bragg and Leonidas Polk have military bases named after them, Fort Bragg in North Carolina and Fort Polk in Louisiana.
Congress recently enacted (over President Trump’s veto) a defense funding law that calls for renaming military bases that honored Confederate generals.
