My History Addiction, a.k.a. The Endless "WHY"

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

That's how it all started, really. There were so many things going on in the world - the various Middle East conflicts, the Troubles (yes, it was the 80's) - when I started to realize that I had no idea how these conflicts or situations had even come about, let alone why. The more I read about any given area, ethnicity or nation, the further back I had to go into that subject's history to find the root.

This, as I'm sure you can imagine, is a well that has no bottom. I got sucked in.

I started with Ireland, and what the deal was with the Six Counties. Why was there this exaggerated sectarianism? We have a great many religions in this country, and we all have to just accept that people follow different ones. So why didn't the Irish? I had to study the political and social systems of Northern Ireland. But the issues seemed (on one side) to stem from the presence of the British government and army. So I had to go back further, to the Irish fight for independence from Great Britain. But why did they want independence enough to fight for it, not once, but in many uprisings spanning a few centuries?

And that's just one country.

I've read about the creation of (the country of) Israel, and the 6 Day War; but I had to go back and read about the history of European and Turkish interaction with the various tribes of Arabs, and the westernization of the Arab world. (T.E. Lawrence's The Seven Pillars of Wisdom gives an enlightening and odd insight - he's so obviously British, but really tried to understand the Arab mindset.) I've barely scratched the surface on this one.

But it did lead me to World War I. So how in the world could the assassination of one man lead to the most horrific of circumstances? I covered the history of Serbia and Bosnia, the Austrian-Hungarians, the formation of Imperial Germany, and then Kaiser Wilhelm II (grandson of Queen Victoria - wow, look up that bloodline). I took a side track into British naval development, and read about Jackie Fisher, David Beatty, and John Jellicoe, and a few of the major (naval) battles of the war. And now I'm on Winston Churchill's "The World Crisis; 1911 - 1918". Did you know part of that war was fought in Africa and in Asia? I do now...and I'll get to both African and Asian history too, eventually. :o)

Oh, and I'm reading about D-Day, and the various beach heads - the plans vs. the actual landings. Onward to World War II - my next project is the war in the Pacific, which I know almost nothing about, and Japan. The project after that is the Nixon years, which will get me to Vietnam. The one after that - Napoleon.

So why ask why? Why not?