Tag Archives: war

June 6, 2011 · 4:43 pm

This Day in History 6/6: The Normandy Landing

I may have posted on D-Day in the past…I’m not quite sure. It doesn’t really matter, because the event is still important.

On June 6, 1944, the Allied forces of Great Britain, Canada, free France and the United States began one of the biggest amphibious assaults in American history. In invading the Normandy coast of France, the Allies would begin the first real strike into the heart of German-occupied Western Europe.

The invasion was not flawless. Many of the airborne troops missed their drop points as they parachuted behind enemy lines. German defenses, especially in the American zone, were woefully underestimated. Furthermore, the Allies would be pinned to the peninsula until mid-July, when Cherbourg was secured and a clear path made through to Paris.

Nevertheless, the Normandy invasion was a turning point in world history. For the first time since Napoleon, a hegemonic power invaded another not to conquer, but to liberate. It forced Germany into a two-front war it could not sustain. Finally, it gave the Allies some serious light at the end of a dark, blood-soaked tunnel.

I’ve probably posted it before, but here is the landing scene from Saving Private Ryan. Though not entirely accurate, it gives as sense of the horror and gravity of that fateful June morning.

This Day in History 5/31: Treaty of Vereeniging ends the Boer War

The end of the Britsh Empire began on May 31, 1902.

On that day, the Treaty of Vereeniging ended the three-year long disaster known as the Boer War. It began as a dispute over mining rights and sovereignty of the Boer Republics of South Africa, the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. It ended as one of the darkest chapters in British history.

The war was technically “over” in 1900, when the British occupied the Transvaal capital of Pretoria. However, the remaining Boer commandos of the Orange Free State and the Northern Transvaal continued a war of attrition for another two years. It would see unspeakable atrocities on both sides. It would see “scorched-Earth” tactics and concentration camps that would result in the deaths of thousands. It would also see continued and violent repression, mutilation and torture of the majority African native population–a situation not really rectified until almost a century later.

Finally, the Boer War would see British people start to question the need for a colonial empire. Though a victory, the war cost thousands of lives and millions of British pounds. Britons would then start questioning the use of British troops, the entanglement in colonial affairs–even questioning the need for an empire in the first place.

Attached is a nice 5-part synopsis of the Boer War and other African conflicts of the time. It is very even handed, and its short length is perfect for the classroom.

1 Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as African History, Afrikaner, Boer, Boer War, British Army, British Empire, Civil Rights, Colonial Warfare, Colonialism, Commentary, Curriculum, Education, Educational leadership, European history, Great Britain, History, Leadership, Media, motion pictures, movies, Opinion, Orange Free State, Pretoria, Second Boer War, Social studies, South Africa, Teachers, Teaching, television, Treaty of Vereeniging, war, World History

May 16, 2011 · 6:32 pm

This Day in History 5/16: The 1771 Battle of Alamance

Site of the Battle of Alamance at Alamance Bat...

Site of the 1771 Battle of Alamance. Image via Wikipedia

For many years, many people in the Carolinas claimed that the first battle of the American Revolution did not take place on the Lexington Common, but rather in the rugged backcountry of North Carolina.

On May 16, 1771, a group of frontier farmers, known as “Regulators”, fought against the North Carolina colonial militia at Alamance Creek in North Carolina. Since about 1760, The Regulators had waged a decade-long guerrilla war against the colonial government, claiming unfair taxation and corrupt practices on the part of colonial officials–many of which came from the wealthier tobacco plantations in the east.

The War of the Regulation, as it was called, was not a rebellion against British rule–a fact lost on many Carolinians who claim the Revolution began at the Alamance. It was, in fact, a rebellion against local colonial government, which was perceived as corrupt, subjective and prejudiced against the poorer backcountry Scots-Irish farmers that flooded the western frontier. By 1771, the Regulator army swelled to 2000, against the 1000-man militia of governor William Tryon.

The Regulators were confident, if poorly armed. They had dragged the government into a long conflict it wanted to end quickly. Yet Tryon’s massed artillery were no match for the frontier army. After early promise, the relentless cannon overwhelmed the Regulators and the rest fled into the woods.

In a final act of savagery, Tryon ordered the forest burned with the remaining rebels inside. It was a prelude to his better known act of arson: the 1777-1779 punitive campaigns against coastal Connecticut towns where every town from Greenwich to New Haven was plundered and burned.

Although the Alamance was not the start of the Revolution, it brought to a head many of the conflicts that would spark the bigger rebellion four years later. Corrupt colonial officials, high taxation, the suppression and disenfranchisement of the poor: all these factors were dealt with in one way or another by all thirteen colonies.

It was in the backcountry of North Carolina, however, where these problems were first brought into sharp, deadly focus.

Attached is a video about the Battle of Alamance. It gives a good narration of the battle itself and of the Regulator movement itself.