Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Results 1 to 20 of 31

Thread: Origins of American Bellicosity

  1. #1
    Council Member
    Join Date
    May 2008
    Posts
    4,021

    Default Origins of American Bellicosity

    This article, Blood Brothers, The Dual Origins of American Bellicosity, by Stephen Peter Rosen (2009), was linked on another thread. The author's thesis is:

    The United States will remain an unusually warlike nation in the years to come, and the reason is that we are in fact an unusually warlike people, despite having become wealthier and more multi-ethnic over the years. Our warlike nature resides in the lingering influence of the early environment and demography of British North America, subsequently reinforced by the impact of the War for Independence, the Civil War and World War II. My argument is that the United States had two near-simultaneous foundings, one by Scots-Irish people ready to fight when challenged, and one by Puritans ready to use force when legally authorized. The founding experiences of the Frontier and the Revolution mingled the distinct but mutually reinforcing predispositions of these two groups, producing an American national culture united in the idea that being an American citizen meant being ready to fight and die in its wars. What divided these two groups, and divides them still, was not the question of whether to fight, but of when.
    It strikes me that the many (all ?) here at SWC, interested in US military history, might have more than one critique of the author's argument - as well as multiple agreements and disagreements with specific points of that argument.

    If so, this is an opportunity to weigh in on topics which continually show up in more current-oriented threads.

  2. #2
    Council Member J Wolfsberger's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Location
    Michigan
    Posts
    806

    Default Odd.

    I have to keep reminding myself that there is not necessarily any maliciousness behind our domestic peace movements, since that is a strong streak within US culture dating almost to day 1.

    Does he speak to it?
    John Wolfsberger, Jr.

    An unruffled person with some useful skills.

  3. #3
    Moderator Steve Blair's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Location
    Montana
    Posts
    3,195

    Default

    The whole "Scots-Irish" thing is, IMO, really overdone. It MIGHT be there if you really want to reach for it, but I honestly don't think that anything Rosen is talking about is especially "unique" to Americans. If anything I might take the position that our reputed bellicosity has its roots in the (possibly perceived) existence of outside threats to the existence of the nation and from emulating the example of the British in many ways.
    "On the plains and mountains of the American West, the United States Army had once learned everything there was to learn about hit-and-run tactics and guerrilla warfare."
    T.R. Fehrenbach This Kind of War

  4. #4
    Council Member
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Posts
    1,188

    Default

    The Scots-Irish thing is there, maybe not as strong as some want it to be but they were a factor to be reckoned with in the earlier frontier days, of course I'm biased having Indian and Brit fighters/ancestors going back to those days. Geography has been referenced many times in this forum and I know people who still eat alot of venison year round, despite having town jobs. Apples v oranges, more attuned with nature v being a violent people maybe, where a broken leg could end you faster than a tomahawk and more died from infection than a scalping knife or an outlaw's gun. Bad whiskey took a few too you know.......
    Last edited by goesh; 08-10-2009 at 03:27 PM. Reason: spelling

  5. #5
    Council Member
    Join Date
    May 2008
    Posts
    4,021

    Default Hey Wolfie,

    read the article and your question will be answered - maybe

    As to the Scots-Irish thing, I think the author missed half of the equation. The folks from Scotland and Northern Ireland (primarily Ulster), whether called Scots-Irish or Scotch-Irish, are exemplified by Andy Jackson (both parents from Ulster - Carrickfergus). As early as them were the Famine Irish from Southern Ireland (primarily Munster) in the 1600s and 1700s (many famines in Munster), many of whom settled in the South (Virginia being prime real estate) and who were usually Anglicans. The huge migration of Famine Irish occured in the 1800s (Potato Famine, etc.), who largely settled in the North and came along with their RC priests - also some of the same ilk settled in the South - and both got to fight each other in the Civil War.

    Except for the religious differences, it is hard to see that much difference in how the Scots-Irish and Famine Irish reacted to challenges - very much clan-based (using the Scottish term) and sept-based (using the Irish term), for the same type of extended families. All of which is historical since the Gaelic speakers (Q-Celts or Goidelic) of Scotland and Ireland were known from Roman times into the early Middle Ages as Scotti. And, there were also Picts in Ireland, though not as many as in Scotland.

    So, if we view all of these Scotti and Pictish descendents as something of a collective herd of cats, their influence on the US military has been and still is obvious. If someone were to set up a poll here at SWC asking about some ancestry from Scotland or Ireland, I suspect a large percentage would be affirmative.

    As to these folks from Scotland and Ireland, I fail to see their history as being particularly bellicose in external matters. One can certainly point to four characteristics: (1) faction fighting amongst themselves; (2) defense of their self-interests domestically (sometimes well; oftentimes badly); (3) service as professional soldiers or mercenaries under the flag of other countries; and (4) something of a propensity for gradual domestic migrations when under pressures (military, economic or population).

    -----------------------
    My looksee at the New England Puritans has been less personal (my English ancestry is minimal and not American colonial English). However, in looking at the history of a good chunk of my wife's ancestors, I've gained some appreciation for what the New England Puritans were and were not. Also, I looked at them from the standpoint of the Canadian Marines; that is, as opponents over a couple of centuries of warfare (including the two US invasions of Canada). My overview is that there was a lot of Cromwell's Roundheads in the New England Puritans, just as there was some Cavalier influence in the South. How far one can take that in analysing present-day US foreign policy and the reactions to it, is something less than that argued by the author.

    I thought the quote from the Brit officer (included in this snip from the article):

    The Puritan experience in the War of Independence reflected this institutionalization of collective violence. The war in New England was a righteous war, authorized and often organized by the New England “black regiment” of Calvinist clergy. As Charles Royster wrote in A Revolutionary People at War (1979), “both those who admired the American Protestant ministry and those who ridiculed it could agree that preachers carried the revolution to large numbers of Americans.” Royster quotes Royal Army Major Harry Brooke, a soldier deployed to Boston who was eloquent on the subject of the clergy and the rebellion: “It is your God damned Religion of this Country that ruins the Country; Damn your religion.”
    is a thought that more than a few have had in dealing with present-day religious fanatics.

  6. #6
    Moderator Steve Blair's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Location
    Montana
    Posts
    3,195

    Default True, but...

    you also have to consider that many Americans during the earlier years of the country claimed German ancestry. They made up a good chunk (largest ethnic group after the Irish) of the Regular Army prior to the end of the 19th century, and there was real concern in some quarters about the public willingness to get involved in World War I due to said "German influence." It's also worth noting the impact that the Prussian Army system had on folks like Sherman, Sheridan, and Emory Upton. Most of the regimental reorganization plans that surfaced during the 1880s made at least passing reference to the German "community system" where a regiment would have a home station and conduct its recruiting there. That and the reference to Ohio before the Civil War as "America's Prussia" is certainly interesting...

    That said, it's much more likely that the claimed "American character" is really a combination of all these factors...for good and ill. Efforts to ignore that blending, attributing it to one ethnic group or the other, really miss the point. IMO, anyhow.
    "On the plains and mountains of the American West, the United States Army had once learned everything there was to learn about hit-and-run tactics and guerrilla warfare."
    T.R. Fehrenbach This Kind of War

  7. #7
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    Florida
    Posts
    8,060

    Default Steve's right, we're mongrels...

    Which is but one reason many Europeans have an ill concealed disdain for us.

    Steve Blair:
    The whole "Scots-Irish" thing is, IMO, really overdone. It MIGHT be there if you really want to reach for it, but I honestly don't think that anything Rosen is talking about is especially "unique" to Americans. If anything I might take the position that our reputed bellicosity has its roots in the (possibly perceived) existence of outside threats to the existence of the nation and from emulating the example of the British in many ways.
    I'm inclined to disagree on the extent of the Scotch Irish infusion for the reasons I outline below. My personal; view is that there is a streak of American bellicosity and that it is the result of a number of things and the Scotch Irish influence is only one and not that critical. I think you're correct in that much of it hinges on outside threats -- or even the perception of them -- and that is a British inheritance. As are the Scotch Irish...

    JMM:
    Except for the religious differences, it is hard to see that much difference in how the Scots-Irish and Famine Irish reacted to challenges.
    The Scotch Irish and Irish reactions to challenges are similar but there are two major differences. The Scotch Irish don't forget and forgive, the Irish do. One but not the only formative difference was religion, Presbyterianism is not for the faint of heart...

    Another was that while the Irish were mistreated by the British, the Scotch Irish were mistreated by the British and the Irish, had been frequently betrayed by both and when they came to America, quickly found that they were despised by the Puritans, the Anglican, and the Catholics (or those Welsh Methodists...) -- so they, used to fighting, moved to the border lands and away from the coasts to get land of their own and if that meant fighting Indians, so be it. Thus New Hampshire, western PA , VA and the Carolinas got settled and these folks continued to move west as the nation looked that way. They kept fighting Indians and other American as well as each other -- but any fight between them was put on hold if anyone even looked as though they might interfere or take advantage of the fight to do something.

    The Irish and Germans, as Steve said, joined the Army in large numbers -- the Scotch Irish did not; fighting was fun, not work and people telling you what to do reminded them of the British and those snooty Anglicans -- but oh, by the way, give a War -- they'd appear. The Revolution was fought by large quantities of Scotch Irish, each subsequent war has seen a little less obvious participation as other ethnicities proliferated. But they're still out there and some, like me also have some German (thus it didn't offend me to say zu befehl, Hauptman), some English, Welsh and pure catholic Irish. Since I tend to overreact to minor and even inadvertent slights, condescension, provocation or insults, I would suspect the Scotch Irish quotient to be quite high even if I didn't know it was the predominant blood line on both sides. Point is that the mixing makes us what we are -- but that Scotch Irish distrust of "others" (ANY others...), expectation of perfidy and adherence to Family ('my people') pervades us all. The Scotch Irish in early America were noted for their wanton ways -- loud, rowdy and very tough girls, and the genre itself for the huge numbers of kids they had and their willingness, unlike the Catholic Irish and Lutheran or Catholic Germans (much less those Anglicans) to hop in bed with or marry outside the clan or sept (they used both, septs belonged to Clans. Some of the MacGregors are a sept of MacGregor of MacGregor, others of Clan Campbell).

    Oh, and those Europeans -- they also think we're loud, rowdy and excessively tough...

  8. #8
    Council Member Dayuhan's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    Latitude 17° 5' 11N, Longitude 120° 54' 24E, altitude 1499m. Right where I want to be.
    Posts
    3,137

    Default

    Are Americans "unusually bellicose", in any empirically verifiable sense? By what standard? Relative to whom? Is bellicose action a function of inherent bellicosity, or of capacity?

    Europeans may now see Americans as bellicose, but it seems to me that they showed a fair degree of bellicosity themselves in their day.

  9. #9
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    Florida
    Posts
    8,060

    Default Not really unusually so at all, in fact we're not vey warlike

    nor do we do war all that well. We produce a lot of neat stuff...

    The Europeans were for centuries more bellicose than we were or are today -- we simply seem more bellicose to them (and to our Europhiles and our own intelligentsia) in comparison to Europe today.

    That is not empirically verifiable -- I'm suspicion of most things that are -- but I have run it by few people and 99% agree (actually, all seven agreed but my wife is never gonna give me 100% on anything).

  10. #10
    Council Member Dayuhan's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    Latitude 17° 5' 11N, Longitude 120° 54' 24E, altitude 1499m. Right where I want to be.
    Posts
    3,137

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
    nor do we do war all that well. We produce a lot of neat stuff...

    The Europeans were for centuries more bellicose than we were or are today -- we simply seem more bellicose to them (and to our Europhiles and our own intelligentsia) in comparison to Europe today.

    That is not empirically verifiable -- I'm suspicion of most things that are -- but I have run it by few people and 99% agree (actually, all seven agreed but my wife is never gonna give me 100% on anything).
    European complaints about American "bellicosity" always seem to me reminiscent of a campaign for chastity initiated by a faded whore grown too old to ply the trade... but perhaps that's just me!

  11. #11
    Council Member
    Join Date
    May 2008
    Posts
    4,021

    Default Agree with Steve & Ken ....

    on the German-American contribution to the US military. How could I forget the portrait of GEN Eisenhower on the wall of the German-American family we lived above during WWII and the early 50s - and his portrait as President which replaced it.

    I'm gratified to learn that the Munster Irish have the gift of forgetting and forgiving - a trait clearly exemplified by one of those Virginian Anglican Irish, whose mild character is amply illustrated by the attached .pdf file.

    It's been over 40 years since Jim Mitchell (Ulster Presbyterian) and I concluded, over appropriate beverages and multiple sessions of his Clancy Bros collection, that all Irish, North and South, are the same regardless of their "damned religions". We still think that way (last time we talked, a few weeks ago).

    I have to admit our's is a minority view - and liable to shelling from both sides. Our favorite was the "Old Orange Flute" because it showed the dumbness on both sides of the supposed issue.

    In the county Tyrone, in the town of Dungannon
    Where many a ruction myself had a hand in
    Bob Williamson he lived, a weaver by trade
    And all of us thought him the stout orange blade. ....
    A bit off the mark - and probably more applicable to why Northern Ireland has been bellicose.
    Attached Files Attached Files
    Last edited by jmm99; 08-11-2009 at 02:13 AM.

  12. #12
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    Florida
    Posts
    8,060

    Default Sounds like he was Irish no question.

    But it also sounds as though he was willing to forget and forgive to an extent as after the original challenge he left it alone.

    Until, that is, a certain Scotch Irish gentleman intruded:
    General Mason did not accept (McCarty's challenge), being a Senator of the United States, but after his term had expired, while riding on a stage to Fredericksburg with General Andrew Jackson, the subject of the challenge came up, when Jackson told Mason that his refusal to accept was an injury to his standing and as he was no longer in office he should now challenge McCarty.
    Mason being devious, got McCarty to rechallenge him by taking advantage of of the Celt mercurial temperment.

    Single Barrel shotguns at four paces. Different...

  13. #13
    Council Member
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    California
    Posts
    21

    Default Americans are a self-selected group

    Americans are a “self-selected” group. By that I mean that the people that came here (Irish, English, Scots-Irish, German….) were a little bit different then their countrymen. To l eave home and cross an ocean to a continent unexplored and full of dangers requires a certain mindset (or level of mental illness).

    Let me give a specific example. It has been proven that a higher percentage of the American population suffers from hyperactivity then other countries. Psychologists believe that originally the genetic pre-disposition for hyperactivity was fairly evenly spread throughout the human race. But think about it – you have two bothers living somewhere in Europe. One is hyperactive and one is not - which is more likely to immigrate to the New World. The hyperactive one would more likely move to America. Here he is more likely to meet a woman who is hyperactive and to pass down that trait to his children.

    Who would be more likely to leave England, Ireland or Germany a mild mellow guy he gets a long with people, or the kind of guy who could get into a fight a church? The wild and wooly frontier would appeal more to him then to the more socialized fellow. Over time both “nature” and “nurture” brought out the more aggressive nature in people.

    This is not to say anything bad. Aggression is a survival positive characteristic in many situations (if not carried to extreme). Also, I realize that many people who came here to America did not do so willingly (Africans brought as slaves, the Irish whose only other choice was starve).

  14. #14
    Council Member Dayuhan's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    Latitude 17° 5' 11N, Longitude 120° 54' 24E, altitude 1499m. Right where I want to be.
    Posts
    3,137

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Icebreaker View Post
    Let me give a specific example. It has been proven that a higher percentage of the American population suffers from hyperactivity then other countries.
    I'd be very curious to see the data and the points of origin of the data on this one... I think it's pretty generally recognized that the US medical community is much quicker to diagnose mental "disorders" or the like than those of many countries. Is this a difference in actual incidence or a difference of diagnostic criteria?

    I recall some discussions of ADD/ADHD in an International School setting... among the Western parents these are common household terms; among the Japanese, Taiwanese, and Korean parents there was mystification: they had never even heard of them. Is this a genetic difference or a difference between the emphasis different cultures place on training in self-control and discipline in the home? It wouldn't surprise me to discover that many who are diagnosed as hyperactive in the US might in another culture simply be considered a bit difficult.
    Last edited by Dayuhan; 08-11-2009 at 04:44 AM.

  15. #15
    Council Member J Wolfsberger's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Location
    Michigan
    Posts
    806

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Dayuhan View Post
    European complaints about American "bellicosity" always seem to me reminiscent of a campaign for chastity initiated by a faded whore grown too old to ply the trade... but perhaps that's just me!
    Win.
    John Wolfsberger, Jr.

    An unruffled person with some useful skills.

  16. #16
    Council Member
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Posts
    1,188

    Default

    "I recall some discussions of ADD/ADHD in an International School setting... among the Western parents these are common household terms; among the Japanese, Taiwanese, and Korean parents there was mystification: they had never even heard of them. Is this a genetic difference or a difference between the emphasis different cultures place on training in self-control and discipline in the home? It wouldn't surprise me to discover that many who are diagnosed as hyperactive in the US might in another culture simply be considered a bit difficult.[/QUOTE]" (Dayuhan)

    IMO it is primarily cultural and I suspect our diet predisposes some towards the ADD/ADHD diagnosis' but added is the 'push' from the drug cartels to market and sell their products. Add to the mix harried physicians and psychiatrists being pushed by parents for another quick fix in their fast lane lives and it's about gotten out of hand - they dispense medication in most schools these days. Omega 3 fats and exercise can remedy much of it.
    Last edited by goesh; 08-11-2009 at 01:41 PM.

  17. #17
    Council Member Abu Suleyman's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2007
    Location
    Montgomery, AL
    Posts
    131

    Default Determinism and the Democratic Peace

    This entire article smacks of determinism. To argue that issues at the founding of the United States, and the cultures involved therein have any bearing at all on today's policies requires some sort of mechanism whereby such issues are perpetuated to today. The closest that Rosen comes to that is "Child rearing" techniques of the Scotch-Irish and the Protestants. However, I am pretty sure that outside of a few groups which may still be around, those techniques died out decades if not centuries ago. Sans such techniques, the only explanation for why todays Scots Irish or people of "Puritan" extraction would in any way resemble those of past descent is some sort of genetic/cultural determinism.

    The question then remains, insofar as Scots Irish and Puritans are not unique to the US(Canada, Great Britain, Australia?), why then is such a culture unique to the US. Of course, the answer is, that the US is not particularly bellicose, and our wars are almost always less popular at the time that they are being fought than they are remembered. One example given by Rosen is the Mexican American war, which was actually tremendously unpopular, and opposed broadly by the opposition Republicans, led in part by Abraham Lincoln. I remember reading in Gallup polls that support for WWII in Dec 1941 was about 60%, after Pearl Harbor!

    It is interesting that Rosen would bring up John Mearsheimer in support of his argument, insofar as anyone who has read The Tragedy of Great Power Politics could tell you that according to Mearsheimer, culture has nothing to do with bellicosity, one way or the other. As a structural realist, Mearsheimer argues that structure is what creates bellicosity. Therefore, the real tragedy is not that the U.S. cannot be content with its safety behind borders, but that because of the security dilemma no Great Power can ever be content to simply rest within its borders. The reason that Europe was bellicose in the past, and is now not so, is not that they have received some cultural enlightenment but because they are no longer great powers.

    In the end, Rosen seems like he is trying to argue against the theory of Democratic Peace, but he picks only one explanation of it. I am simpathetic to his intuition. Nevertheless, he has no mechanism, nor justification past genetics to believe that even if the premises which he sets forward as occuring at the founding are true continue to today. Moreover, he never shows, and I think that there is a great deal of question whether there is reason to believe that the U.S. is more bellicose at all. Attacking only the cultural explanation of the democratic peace with another cultural explanation boils down to claiming that there is no such thing as the democratic peace. Unfortunately, that argument has been had over and over again, in much better publications, and ceased to be interesting a long time ago.
    Audentes adiuvat fortuna
    "Abu Suleyman"

  18. #18
    Former Member George L. Singleton's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    South of Mason Dixon Line
    Posts
    497

    Default Abstratc demographic and linguistic comments

    1. The Gaelic word for Irish is "Scotti."

    2. Thus the use of the term, not matter what meaning some would want to attribute to it, of Scot-Irish linguistically is Irish-Irish!

    3. Our colonial and revolutionary era ancestors were of all faiths, not just one or another. A Mr. Levy, who is buried in downtown Boston, MA in perhaps the oldest city cemtery...I have visited the site of Mr. Levy's grave...was a Colonial era Jew who gave and gave until he died a pauper, having given his great fortune to helping start and save during the Revolutionary War today's America.

    4. In Colonial Virginia the British leaning Episcopalians persecuted and placed a religious tax on the Baptists.

    5. In later years, the Baptists who relocated into Utah fought a huge range war with the Mormons, in which a total of 50,000 of both denominations were killed, not just wounded, killed, in the 1840s into the 1850s in Utah.

    6. To me, and I am an old History major with a minor in Political Science from undergrad days (at the second oldest chair in history in the US...College of A&S, University of Alabama...oldest chair in history being at Harvard U.) we are a polygot nation of growing religous diversity. Frictions, ethnic and religious of the past were overcome, and that will be the case today in the US by the time our next generation or two comes into being.

    In summary, bellicoisity being demographically and religiously defined seems off the wall to me. Real world domestic and foreign affairs are a simplier and truer course to study. War is still the oldest and main means of waging foreign policy by all nations.
    Last edited by davidbfpo; 08-11-2009 at 03:28 PM. Reason: persecured to persecuted; polyglut to polygot

  19. #19
    Council Member Fuchs's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2008
    Posts
    3,189

    Default

    The word "Scoti" is actually Roman and describes tribes from Ireland.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoti

    The Romans called the tribes in modern Scotland "Picti".
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picts

    I don't know how the "Scot" thing moved to Scotland, but "Scoti" isn't the same as "Scots" at all. Well, except that both are based on Celtic tribes.



    B2topic; I wouldn't dig deeper than at most two generations to find reasons for modern phenomenons.

    You may search for a root cause and find it, but that root cause would have become irrelevant if in the meantime another factor had changed the outcome. The lack of such another factor is as important as the root cause.

  20. #20
    Council Member Abu Suleyman's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2007
    Location
    Montgomery, AL
    Posts
    131

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by George L. Singleton View Post
    5. In later years, the Baptists who relocated into Utah fought a huge range war with the Mormons, in which a total of 50,000 of both denominations were killed, not just wounded, killed, in the 1840s into the 1850s in Utah.
    I'm going to assume this is a joke. In the 1840's and 50's there were barely 50k people of any denomination in Utah. In fact, the entire Mormon migration brough about 70k people to what was then known as 'Upper California', and didn't start until 1847. The closest thing I can think of that resembles that was in 1857, and the Utah War, which was between the US Gov't and the local Mormon's. In relative terms it was bloodless, although there was the Mountain Meadows massacre, where over one hundred southerners (mostly from Arkansas) were killed. They may have been Baptist, but they weren't attempting to settle in the Great Basin.

    >Fuch's, I couldn't agree more. That is the point I was trying to make.
    Audentes adiuvat fortuna
    "Abu Suleyman"

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •