Understanding America

With all the stress about obtaining a passport for our daughter, I quite forgot to assemble a collection of interesting books for our trip, or rather forgot to bring the ones put by.  You need something to read over here.  I met up with an old friend who is a book collector, and luckily he’s been able to lend me a few books meantime.  He’s an American and so his books are different to typical British choices.

The first one I’ve tucked into is quite a find.  Basically it’s about slavery in Virginia.  But it’s not the normal modern media version of slavery which gives you all the gory detail and little of the history.  This book gives you the history with only as much gore as is necessary to tell the story, but no more.   The real story, as so often, is far more nuanced than you would imagine from the Hollywood version of the topic.

From the book’s cover

The book is titled ‘Slavery and War in Virginia.  1772-1832.  The Internal Enemy’  By Alan Taylor.  It is highly recommended.  The summary on the cover reads –

This searing story of slavery and freedom in the Chesapeake by a Pullitzer Prize-winning historian reveals the pivot in the nation’s path between the founding and the civil war.

The American character of today is already recognisable in the descriptions of the people, their insecurities, beliefs and their actions.  You could see how someone like Donald Trump might emerge from the drama played out inside the pages, and how much the typical British naval officer despised such types, especially during the events of the war from 1812-1815, which nearly brought the embryonic US to its knees.

The country could easily have been destroyed, but for some reason, before the country collapsed,  Britain made peace on terms of the boundaries that existed before the war began.  The British soldiers and sailors who had the US on the mat (bar the occasional setback like at New Orleans where US troops dug in mowed down British infantry advancing over open ground, which was to be the next phase of warfare with much higher casualties) were shocked by the deal.

Tap Blog readers might suspect input from bankers, ever mindful of the need to keep another war brewing while you complete the current one.  Slavery is a great foundation for war at all times throughout history, creating an internal enemy which can be turned to fight their oppressors.  No doubt the Civil War was already on the drawing board in 1815, and the bankers were readying their longer term moves, planning their next killing.

Slavery not only makes money.  It also ensures war is closer and easier to foment, which is why bankers can’t quite find a way to ever end it.  Reading this book, my understanding has advanced a long way – of a subject which is highly emotive and dark, but is essential to understanding how the world is run, and how the American psyche was formed.