Vada a bordo, cazzo!

Posted on January 21, 2012 by briansandberg

Almost every major disaster seems to have its heroes and its villains.  The Costa Concordia disaster off Isola di Giglio has made Captain Francesco Schettino a villain for allegedly abandoning his ship and Livorno Port Authority Commander Falco a hero for ordering Schettino to return to his ship and to organize its evacuation.

Commander Falco’s repeated orders, transmitted via radio, seem to have been ignored by Captain Schettino, leading an exasperated Falco to exclaim: “Vada a bordo, cazzo!” Millions of people worldwide have now listened to this exchange on La Repubblica, the Telegraph, YouTube, and other media outlets.

The phrase “Vada a bordo, Cazzo!” has gone viral and is now celebrated in Italy and elsewhere with T-shirts.

I suppose that it was inevitable that a mass tourism disaster would have to have a response through global commercialization.

The phrase “Vada a bordo, cazzo!” literally means “Get back on board, dick!”  But, “cazzo” is a much used expletive in Italian that is used to express frustration, much as “shit” is used in English.  So, I would argue that Falco was not calling the captain a “cazzo”, but rather using “cazzo” as a non-personal expletive here.

The Telegraph reports on the phrase and the T-shirts in circulation.

Posted in European Union, Globalization, Italian History, Maritime History, Mediterranean World | Leave a comment

Coffee in the Early Modern Mediterranean

Posted on January 18, 2012 by briansandberg

We take coffee shops for granted today. From global chain like Starbucks to classic Parisian cafés and local American diners, coffee shops deliver caffeine to people around the world.

Coffee consumption became global in the seventeenth century, when a coffee craze swept the Mediterranean and Europe.

A NPR food story offers a whimsical look back at attitudes toward coffee as its popularity spread in the early modern period.

Historians of food, consumption, and mercantilism have been studying early modern coffee production and consumption seriously now for several decades.  Students of HIST 458 Mediterranean World, 1450-1750 will be interested in the NPR story and the broader historical literature on coffee in the early modern world.

 

Posted in Early Modern Europe, Early Modern World, European History, Food and Cuisine History, Mediterranean World, Renaissance Art and History | Leave a comment

Imperial Rivalry in the Modern Mediterranean

Posted on January 15, 2012 by briansandberg

France and Turkey are now contending for political and economic dominance in the Mediterranean in the wake of the Arab Spring revolutions.

Soner Cagaptay, a Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, argues that the imperial legacies of the French Empire and the Ottoman Empire are shaping the current neoimperial policies of both France and Turkey in the Mediterranean region.

The Ottoman Empire conquered most of the Eastern Mediterranean and much of North Africa in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, becoming a major world power. France engaged in early forms of maritime imperialism in the Mediterranean from the sixteenth century before expanding its Atlantic colonies in the Caribbean and Canada. Despite French involvement in latter-day crusading against “the Turk” in the early modern period, France and the Ottoman Empire sometimes acted as allies against their common Habsburg enemies.

As Cagaptay emphasizes, Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt disrupted the political situation in North Africa and the Levant.  French “new” imperialism in North and West Africa in the nineteenth century then led to direct rivalry with the Ottoman Empire.  Echoes of this competition are being felt today.

Cagaptay’s op-ed is available at the New York Times online.

Posted in Comparative Revolutions, Early Modern Europe, Early Modern World, Empires and Imperialism, Mediterranean World, Political Culture | 2 Comments

Libraries and E-book Demand

Posted on January 15, 2012 by briansandberg

All the kinks have certainly not been worked out of the ongoing electronic publishing “revolution”. Public and university libraries are experimenting with various forms of e-book borrowing, but a number of problems with e-borrowing have not yet been sorted out.

The Washington Post reports that DC area public libraries are so far unable to meet the demand for e-borrowing, especially of popular books such as best-selling novels. The following table presents the Washington Post findings:

Historians and other humanities scholars are attempting to develop new strategies for electronic publishing and digital humanities projects. Access to e-books and journal article databases (or the lack thereof) continues to pose significant limitations for using digital humanities texts and hypertexts effectively in or beyond the classroom.

The Washington Post article is available online.

 

Posted in Academic Publishing, Digital Humanities, Humanities Education, Political Culture | Leave a comment

Wreck of the Costa Concordia in the Mediterranean

Posted on January 15, 2012 by briansandberg

A gigantic cruise liner with 4,234 passengers aboard ran aground near Isola del Giglio, a tiny island off the Tuscan coast, over the weekend. The Costa Concordia had sailed from Civitavecchia, heading on cruise of the western Mediterranean. As the cruise liner passed near Isola del Giglio on Friday evening, it hit an underwater rock formation that cut an enormous gash under its portside waterline. The ship quickly took on water and began to list, forcing its evacuation.

Survivors described their terror and the chaos aboard as passengers scrambled for safety.  The BBC reports eyewitness accounts, many of which made comparisons to the Titanic disaster and to the 1997 film. Most of the passengers were successfully evacuated, but at least 11 people were killed and 24 passengers are still missing. A Korean couple and a crew member were rescued more than 24 hours after the ship ran aground.

Repubblica has full coverage of the disaster.  The BBC provides coverage in English and maps.

The Costa Concordia was a modern luxury cruise liner built by the Italian firm Fincantieri for 450 million Euros and completed in 2006.  Nautical experts and shipbuilders are astonished by the shipwreck, according to the BBC.

The commander of the Costa Concordia has been arrested over his handling of the ship and of the disaster.  Repubblica reports on the charges against the commander and the accusations that he abandoned his ship while passengers were still aboard. Sylvia Poggioli reports from Italy for NPR on the accusations against the commander.  An audio recording of the Livorno port authority ordering the commander back on board his ship is available on the Telegraph online.   NPR provides additional details on the investigation.  La Repubblica is now reporting that commander Schettino was reportedly drinking and dining with a former hostess who has tried to defend him in the press.

NPR reports on the possible approaches to salvaging the Costa Concordia once the rescue operation has concluded.

The wreck of the Costa Concordia raises a number of serious questions about the state of the Mediterranean and the disaster is already provoking heated debate in Italy. Massive luxury cruise liners have become increasingly present in the Mediterranean, as the tourism industry expands.  The concept of the Grand tour of Italy as a crucial part of early modern European noblemen’s education has been extended to the entire Mediterranean and democratized for tourists of wealthy countries.  Historians of the Mediterranean World will want to follow the developments in the Costa Concordia disaster and the debate about its significance for Mediterranean tourism, economic development, ecology, and society.

Posted in Environmental History, European History, European Union, Globalization, Maritime History, Mediterranean World | Leave a comment

Laurent Dubois on the History of Haiti

Posted on January 14, 2012 by briansandberg

As Haitians continues to struggle with rebuilding following the disastrous 2010 earthquake, historians are grappling with explaining the historical roots of Haiti’s current predicament.

Laurent Dubois, a professor of history at Duke University, has written several books on Haiti and on the French Caribbean in the early modern period through the Haitian Revolution. Dubois is now writing a new book entitled Haiti: The Aftershocks of History, dealing with Haiti’s contemporary history.

Laurent Dubois discusses his forthcoming book on NPR’s Weekend Edition.  For information on Haiti’s recovery to date see this NPR report.

Posted in Environmental History, French History, French Revolution and Napoleon, Globalization, Human Rights | Leave a comment

France Loses AAA Credit Rating

Posted on January 14, 2012 by briansandberg

France has lost its AAA credit rating as Standard & Poor’s cut its rating a notch to AA+.

Eleanor Beardsley of NPR reports that “Standard & Poor’s downgraded the sovereign debt of France, Italy, Spain and six other European countries on Friday. The move was highly expected, but it’s still a blow to France and sending shock waves across Europe. France is the eurozone’s second-largest economy, and its downgrade could even threaten Europe’s master plan to stop its debt crisis.”

The credit rating downgrade is expected to play a role in the French 2012 Presidential Election, but President Nicolas Sarkozy is trying to spin the news to strengthen his campaign’s position.

NPR provides coverage online.

Posted in European Union, French History, Political Culture | Leave a comment

New Diplomatic History and Neorealism

Posted on January 13, 2012 by briansandberg

Historians of the “new” Diplomatic History tend to clash with Political Science approaches to International Relations, and especially with Neorealists—who often depict states as “billiard balls” acting against each other on a global pool table.

Paul W. Schroeder, a prominent historian of the Habsburg Empire and European international relations, has heavily criticized Neorealism’s problematic vision of “great power politics” and structural anarchy.  Other “new” diplomatic historians stress the importance of the cultural and social production of information and diplomatic activity.  Diplomacy, they argue, must be understood through its gendered, religious-inflected, and culturally-bound languages, texts, and practices.

Yet, Neorealists forge ahead with their theories of “pure” nation-state politics, assuming that internal political and social changes are irrelevant.  Neorealists largely believe that non-state actors (within, beyond, or between states) have no real influence on global diplomacy.

A recent Atlantic article by Robert D. Kaplan reassesses the legacy of one of the most important lines of Neorealist international relations theory: that of John J. Mearsheimer, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. Mearsheimer has been heavily criticized in the media over the past year or so, in response to his co-authored book on the “Israel Lobby,” but Kaplan focuses instead on Mearsheimer’s broader international relations work in this piece.  Kaplan largely praises Mearsheimer’s theories in an uncritical article that lacks serious analysis of Mearsheimer’s arguments or his detractors’ serious criticisms.

Nonetheless, historians of diplomacy will be interested in this piece and its attempt to bolster Mearsheimer’s reputation and establish his legacy in international relations.

Posted in European History, Globalization, Political Culture, State Development Theory, War, Culture, and Society | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Anti-French Attitudes and American Politics

Posted on January 13, 2012 by briansandberg

French historians and literary scholars are all too aware of the anti-French attitudes in American society.  Anti-French references have long been rife in American popular culture, but took on new virulence in the wake of Franco-German opposition to the Bush administration’s plan to invade Iraq in 2003.  References to “Old Europe”, “freedom fries”, and “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” became mainstays of American humor during the Iraq War, as American politicians and journalists fueled Anti-French sentiments. Opponents of John Kerry attacked his supposed Frenchness during the 2004 United States Presidential Election, perhaps contributing to his defeat.

Anti-French attacks are back again in the current Republican Primaries. A new political ad entitled “The French Connection” produced by Newt Gingrich’s campaign compares Mitt Romney to John Kerry on the basis of their alleged Frenchness. According to the BBC, “Correspondents say the highlighting of Mr Romney’s alleged French-language skills is an attempt to portray him as an elitist, European-style liberal wimp.”

The BBC reports on the Gingrich ad and anti-French attitudes.  The BBC story also has a link to the Gingrich ad, which condemns Romney’s Frenchness by asserting: “He speaks French, too.”

There are, of course, deep historical roots for anti-French attitudes in American popular and political culture.  Despite their common experiences of Revolution, their shared histories of the “Sister Republics”, and their strong alliance through two World Wars, France and the United States have repeatedly clashed over political and cultural issues.  Legacies of Anglo-French rivalry, French defeat in the Seven Years’ War, French intervention in the American War of Independence, the postwar status of Loyalists, and the creation of a bilingual Canada produced anti-French sentiment that was revived in the Quasi-War and the broader Napoleonic Wars.  The Indochina War, French withdrawal from NATO, and the Vietnam War all created serious tensions between France and the United States in the 1950s and 1960s.  Competing cultural trends and models of democracy have led Americans and French people to be wary of their perceived rivals. Richard Pell, Richard Kuisel, Jean-Philippe Mathy, and other historians have investigated the long history of the complex Franco-American relationship.

Posted in Comparative Revolutions, French History, History in the Media, Political Culture | Leave a comment

Negotiating Peace in Afghanistan

Posted on January 13, 2012 by briansandberg

There have been numerous reports of United States diplomatic discussions with the Taliban to negotiate an end to the Afghan War. Almost all wars end with negotiated settlements, so U.S. negotiations with the Taliban are hardly surprising.

But, as the specter of the Vietnam War has hung over the waging of the Afghan War, memories of the U.S.-North Vietnamese negotiations in the early 1970s are informing the negotiating process in Afghanistan.

James Dobbins, an analyst who previously served as a United States envoy to Afghanistan, now openly frames negotiations for an end to the Afghan War in terms of avoiding repeating the end of the Vietnam War. Dobbins’s new book, Afghan Peace Talks: A Primer, examines the peace process in Afghanistan.  I have not yet had a chance to read the book, but hope to get a copy of it soon.

Dobbins provides a summary of his book’s arguments in a Washington Post op-ed.

Posted in Civil Conflict, History in the Media, History of Violence, War, Culture, and Society | Leave a comment