Btw, 19th century historian Bain says that while history has generally been kind to Patkul (Massie certainly has), treating him as a fearless patriot, he was actually quite awful to his peasants and just wanted the freedom to continue oppressing them.
Me, raised on stories of the slave-owning Founding Fathers: I don't know if it's true in this particular case, but the logic checks out!
Well, quite. Tim Blanning wrote a review of the latest G3 biography for the London Review of Books, which seems looks like it‘s general tone is „G3: Slandered by Americans from Thomas Jefferson to Lin Manuel Miranda“ , „G3: A Much Better Man Than Most Of Your Founding Fathers Put Together“ and, to quote a contemporary (Samuel Johnson), „Taxation No Tyranny (Damn Yankee Tax Dodgers)“. Ever since reading the mighty rethoric welded against G3 in the American Revolution it always amused me that of all the Hannover Kings, Farmer George, arguably really the nicest, most virtuous of the bunch (and not just because he was the only one to not cheat on his wife), got to stand in for British Tyranny (tm), presumably because „Damn the British Parliament and British PM!“ doesn‘t have the same ring to it, but I‘m baffled this is treated as something new (either by the book or Blanning as the reviewer). (And it’s absolutely hysterically funny that Miranda writes him as the embodiment of Britpop, given that G3 didn’t have a flamboyant bone in his body. That’s what his son the Regent, aka Prinny, is there for.) I mean, maybe it‘s relatively new in the US? Despite Alan Bennett having an international stage and film hit with „The Madness of George III“ decades ago? Literary efforts aside, I don‘t recall G3 being presented as evil in my school days.
Otoh, it‘s a bit rich if the biography argues the slave owning Founding Fathers (plural, because it‘s cheap to pretend Jefferson was the only one - he so was not!) are worse than G3 because of the slave owning; the man did head an Empire which wasn‘t founded on paid labor, to put it mildly. On the third hand, Blanning‘s review claims the book argues that the first legal successes of the anti-slavery movement in Britain directly (notably the case that forms the heart of the movie Dido) contributed to the Colonials wanting their independence.
Aaaanyway: wanting independence for yourself while oppressing someone else really is a fine international tradition. To choose some non-British, non-US example that hits closer to home, the German states sold the war against Napoleon as the „Freiheitskriege“, with „liberty from the French Yoke“ being a big catch word. Except, of course, that a lot of the German freedom fighters also wanted the freedom to take back the granting of all civil rights to Jews, which they promptly did once the French were gone.
C11 and FW: another bit of difference might be that FW managed to actually sell most of his nobility on this whole service to the state (as many sons in the army as possible)/Prussia austerity idea by basically inventing the whole „Prussian mentality“ concept? Not single-handedly; like I noted in my write ups of the two F1 biographies, F1‘s teacher Danckelmann comes across as a proto FW style Prussian two generations early. But still. It‘s undeniable that if you compare Prussia pre FW‘s reign to Prussia ever after, FW managed a large scale mentality change - did C11 anything comparable?
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Re: Great Northern War: Johann Patkul
Date: 2021-11-17 08:14 am (UTC)Me, raised on stories of the slave-owning Founding Fathers: I don't know if it's true in this particular case, but the logic checks out!
Well, quite. Tim Blanning wrote a review of the latest G3 biography for the London Review of Books, which seems looks like it‘s general tone is „G3: Slandered by Americans from Thomas Jefferson to Lin Manuel Miranda“ , „G3: A Much Better Man Than Most Of Your Founding Fathers Put Together“ and, to quote a contemporary (Samuel Johnson), „Taxation No Tyranny (Damn Yankee Tax Dodgers)“. Ever since reading the mighty rethoric welded against G3 in the American Revolution it always amused me that of all the Hannover Kings, Farmer George, arguably really the nicest, most virtuous of the bunch (and not just because he was the only one to not cheat on his wife), got to stand in for British Tyranny (tm), presumably because „Damn the British Parliament and British PM!“ doesn‘t have the same ring to it, but I‘m baffled this is treated as something new (either by the book or Blanning as the reviewer). (And it’s absolutely hysterically funny that Miranda writes him as the embodiment of Britpop, given that G3 didn’t have a flamboyant bone in his body. That’s what his son the Regent, aka Prinny, is there for.) I mean, maybe it‘s relatively new in the US? Despite Alan Bennett having an international stage and film hit with „The Madness of George III“ decades ago? Literary efforts aside, I don‘t recall G3 being presented as evil in my school days.
Otoh, it‘s a bit rich if the biography argues the slave owning Founding Fathers (plural, because it‘s cheap to pretend Jefferson was the only one - he so was not!) are worse than G3 because of the slave owning; the man did head an Empire which wasn‘t founded on paid labor, to put it mildly. On the third hand, Blanning‘s review claims the book argues that the first legal successes of the anti-slavery movement in Britain directly (notably the case that forms the heart of the movie Dido) contributed to the Colonials wanting their independence.
Aaaanyway: wanting independence for yourself while oppressing someone else really is a fine international tradition. To choose some non-British, non-US example that hits closer to home, the German states sold the war against Napoleon as the „Freiheitskriege“, with „liberty from the French Yoke“ being a big catch word. Except, of course, that a lot of the German freedom fighters also wanted the freedom to take back the granting of all civil rights to Jews, which they promptly did once the French were gone.
C11 and FW: another bit of difference might be that FW managed to actually sell most of his nobility on this whole service to the state (as many sons in the army as possible)/Prussia austerity idea by basically inventing the whole „Prussian mentality“ concept? Not single-handedly; like I noted in my write ups of the two F1 biographies, F1‘s teacher Danckelmann comes across as a proto FW style Prussian two generations early. But still. It‘s undeniable that if you compare Prussia pre FW‘s reign to Prussia ever after, FW managed a large scale mentality change - did C11 anything comparable?