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Showing posts with label naval battles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label naval battles. Show all posts
October 21, 1805
Tory Historian is mortified by neglecting to celebrate the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar yesterday. Sackcloth and ashes are the order of the day. Instead, time has been spent on reading Gertrude Himmelfarb's The Roads to Modernity, which separates what she calls the three different Enlightenments: British, French and American, and restores the British one to its historic importance.
The three can be characterized as Sociology of Virtue, Ideology of Reason and Politics of Liberty. There were many links between them and cross-pollination of ideas but they were different and led to different political developments.
This is not to say that ideas were the determining factor in each of these countries. The historical situations were obviously, perhaps decisively, different. As Britain had earlier experience a religious Reformation, so it had also undergone a "Glorious Revolution", which gave promise of being a permanent political settlement. France, having had neither a religious reformation nor a political revolution, was, in a sense, ripe for both. And America, having had both as a legacy from Britain, sought the independence that it claimed as part of that legacy.Tory Historian is particularly interested in the distinction Professor Himmelfarb will be making between the British and the American versions of the Enlightenment.
The Battle of Jutland, the largest naval battle of World War I was fought on May 31 - June 1, 1916 in the North Sea, near Jutland. Rather than commenting on it or asking Tory Historian to do so, I shall put up a brief discussion between two Conservative activists and amateur historians, who are very knowledgeable on the subject.
David Herdson describes himself as a Conservative activist, political commentator ( a weekly column with politicalbetting.com, running on Saturday mornings at the moment), with a keen interest in history. This is his brief comment on the battle:
My own view is that Jellicoe got just about all the big calls he made right (his decision on how and whether to form line of battle was spot on and he had 2 mins to call it), that his strategic understanding was correct (keep the fleet in being; deny the Germans access to the ocean), but that the fleet and Admiralty didn't perform as well as they should have done under the circumstances. Much has been made of Jellicoe's decision to break off the action in dusk but that was surely right with the technology in WWI. More should be made of how long it took to make contact in the first place.
Anyone else wants to join the discussion?
