Quote:
Originally Posted by .45cultist
Evidently reading history and common sense aren't prevailing. Those men practiced to repel Indians and French incursions. At least until the regular forces arrived. The training might not have been for European style war, but one needed a plan for counter insurgency (like "King Phillip's War-I forgot the chief's real name) and the like.
|
A man who knows that there was a King Philip's War and that King Philip had a proper Wampanoag name. How splendid! I read a fascinating book on the subject maybe 3 years ago and passed it to a fellow Massachusetts man living in California.
No, reading history is not as common as it should be. Even people who read a lot sometimes shun history. Last month I was at dinner with friends who are avid readers. The dining companion on my right remarked that she usually reads two books at a time--one in hard copy and one on her tablet. She's a novel reader. I remarked that I was very pleased to have finished a 500 page hard cover book, T
he New Russians, in 6-7 weeks. I described the contents, and she said the whole business sounded like torture.
I think, too, that there is a popular mythology about the Revolution that tends to block out contravening information. Even intelligent people believe odd things, such as the idea that militias sprang into being in 1775 just in time for Lexington and Concord.
On a tangent, one of the things has always plagued me about my understanding of history is the number of people involved. There were perhaps 3 million people in the entirety of the American Colonies at the time of the American Revolution. On the scale of the individual, this is a lot of folks. On the scale of modern America, this is a rather small state. Iowa has about 3 million people. A small number of people had a huge impact on the future of a large nation.
Until the advent of the Internet, I struggled with the population issue regarding Greek and Roman history. How many Greeks are we talking about during the golden age of Athens? How many Romans were there during the various Punic Wars? The loss of 50,000 men on the battlefield meant something completely different to societies with 5 million people than the same loss would mean to us.