Everything You Know About Counterinsurgency History Is (possibly) Wrong!

[marct]

Shalom Marc,

Right back at you ....

All fascinating - genuinely - but what correct me if I am wrong, but you are talking about these technologies, enabling behaviours. They are instruments. Radio changed warfare. It cannot change war. Same is true of I.P. technology.
None of them "created ideas." Protestants challenged the hegemony of the Roman Catholics, not the printing press.

You're quite correct that i am talking about these technologies enabling behaviours. Actually, i would go further and say that they changed the selection criteria (both positive and negative) for certain behaviours. Where I suspect we disagree is on the nature of causality. I view "causality" in an inductive format, i.e. by changing the frequency distribution of a particular behaviour, that technology has "caused" that behaviour to change. The social understandings at the time of those changes are the "ideas" which, since they are embedded in the change themselves, are "created" by that change. I know, it sounds post-moderninst, but it actually isn't .

I agree that it was the protestants that challenged the Catholic hegemony in Europe. However, let me note that it had been challenged earlier by "reform" movements internally (e.g. the Fraticelli, etc.), and by groups that just plain out rejected their hegemony either spiritual (e.g. the Cathars) or temporal (e.g. the Stedingers). The Protestants, as a collection of groups, certainly weren't the first but they were successful and, IMHO, one of the main reasons why they were successful was because of the spread of the printing press.

Cheers,

Marc