The Invasion of Italy

The swinging scimitars of Islam raced, in less than a century, westward from Arabia, devouring Egypt, northern Africa, and Spain. In 732 A.D., exactly a century after Muhammad's death, Muslims attempted a mass military invasion of France, but were turned back by the armies of Charles "the Hammer" Martel. To the east, they had already conquered Persia and Syria; they were partway through Turkey - still known as 'Asia Minor' or Anatolia at the time. As historian Harold Lamb wrote:

Two obstacles checked the rush of the Muhammadans upon Europe. A certain Charles the Hammer, king of the Franks, withstood them in the west. And in the east they were flung back from the walls of Byzantium. But the real reason for the ebbing of the tide was that the Muhammadans had split up into different factions, each holding to its portion of the conquered lands.

The stated goal of Muhammad's immediate successors, the "righteously guided" caliphs, was to establish a single caliphate, dominating Europe, Africa, and Asia. This caliphate would eliminate all other religions, and establish Islam as the only faith for the world. This goal was frustrated, not only by resistance with which Charles Martel and the Byzantines defended themselves, but also by internal divisions and power-struggles. Nonetheless, the amazing military strength of Islam had captured a huge amount of territory, and their occupying armies kept local populations subjugated:

Their conquests brought them face to fact with the barbarians who had quartered themselves on the ruins of the Roman Empire and had become Christians. Europe became the neighbor of near-Asia. The front line of Christendom could look across at the advanced posts of Islam. No-man's land had disappeared.

It seemed as if a stalemate might occur: Islam might content itself with northern Africa, southwestern Asia, Spain, and Turkey. Europe might content itself with what remained to it. But the Spanish were not content to remain subject to a foreign occupying army.

In the west, where Spain was the battleground, the Christian Franks retook the passes of the Pyrenees and gained ground steadily. In the east the Muhammadans gradually edged across Asia Minor.

During the next phase - the second century of Islam - Muslims would organize a sustained invasion and occupation of Italy, or more precisely, the southern half of the Italian peninsula. This objective would require naval power; troops would leave northern Africa from points near Carthage, capture islands along the way, and storm Italy.

It was in the center that the Muhammadans held the upper hand - in the sea itself. The Arabs took kindly to sea. They built ships and changed slowly from warriors to warrior-merchants. They made themselves at home on the islands, especially Sicily, and they sailed up the Tiber almost to the walls of Rome.

In fact, the residents of Italy would suffer greatly at the hands of the Muslims. Italy was in no way prepared to defend itself against an invasion from the sea. Historian Will Durant wrote that

Having conquered Syria and Egypt, the Moslem leaders realized that they could not hold the coast without a fleet. Soon their men-of-war seized Cyprus and Rhodes, and defeated the Byzantine navy (652, 655). Corsica was occupied in 809, Sardinia in 810, Crete in 823, Malta in 870. In 827 the old struggle between Greece and Carthage for Sicily was resumed; the Aghlabid caliphs of Qairwan sent expedition after expedition, and the conquest proceeded with leisurely bloodshed and rapine. Palermo fell in 831, Messina in 843, Syracuse in 878, Taormina in 902. When the Fatimid caliphs suceeded to the Aghlabid power (909) they inherited Sicily as part of their domain. When the Fatimids removed their seat to Cairo their governor of Sicily, Husein al-Kalbi, made himself emir with nearly sovereign authority, and established that Kalbite dynasty under which Moslem

occupational armies in Sicily achieved maximum strength. The Islamic domination over Mediterranean islands was a long and bloody process. The island of Corsica, for example, was first attacked by Muslims from northern Africa in 713 A.D.; Byzantines, Lombards, and Franks were able to defend effectively until 806, when Muslims from Spain - a subgroup of the Islamic armies occupying the Iberian peninsula - also began to attack Corsica. Caught in a pincers movement, Corsica was continually attacked by Moorish Muslims from Spain on the one side, and Muslims from northern Africa on the other side. Islamic troops occupied parts of the island, sometimes for several years, but the Franks continued to defend. Until 930 A.D., frequent Muslim attacks continued.

Starting in 705 A.D., the Muslims of northern African began attacking the island of Sardinia. Due to the savagery of the assaults, the town of Tharros - which had been continuously inhabited for centuries - was permanently abandoned. Other towns, like Caralis and Porto Torres, were evacuated and left empty for several years, but later repopulated when the area became safe again. Such permanent safety would appear after intense fighting in the years 1015 and 1016, when forces from the Italian mainland aided the Sardinians in defending themselves.

The long years of Islamic onslaughts against Crete, Malta, and Sicily were even more vicious. But islands were only an means to an end: the Muslims wanted to invade and hold more territory on the European continent itself. French coastal cities were besieged, like Narbonne, which was occupied by Islamic armies until it was freed by Pepin the Short in 759.

All of this was a prelude to the invasion of Italy. Italian coastal cities had long been subjected to raids by Muslims: a hit-and-run tactic in which one or more ships approached, soldiers from those ships would enter the town, grab anything of value they could take, kill men, rape women, and set the town on fire on their way out. After years of such raiding, a large-scale invasion took place in 841 A.D., in Bari, a port city in southeastern Italy.

Spreading throughout the peninsula, Islamic armies would occupy the southern parts of Italy for several decades. Although they did not permanently hold Rome, it was raided and sacked in 846.

The Italy strategy was conceived by the Muslims as part of a broader approach to Europe - Spain in the southwest, Byzantium in the southeast, and Italy - together with the southern coast of France and various Mediterranean islands - in the central south. This strategy was designed to keep European defenses spread thin; it succeeded to the extent that Spain was held for centuries, and to the extent that the Byzantine territory continually shrank over the centuries.

Whether Europe survived because of its defenses, such as they were, or whether it survived because internal factional competition prevented the harmony needed to coordinate the hoped-for worldwide caliphate, remains unclear. But in any case, the invasion of Italy was a central part of the unfolding events.

China, Too?

Archeologists, paleontologists, and historians have noted that every - or almost every - known civilization practiced human sacrifice in its earliest stages of development. In Mesopotamia, we find it in Sumer and Akkad. Elsewhere in the Ancient Near East, it was practiced by the Phoenicians and Hebrews. Further afield, Egyptians and Persians offered human victims to their idols.

Throughout Europe, the earliest Germanic and Celtic tribes killed adults and children on altars. The practice is found not only in the earliest phases, but also in more advanced stages: the Greeks were engaging in the practice as late as 480 B.C., when Themistocles slew sacrificial victims on the evening before the Battle of Salamis. The Romans, panicking as Hannibal advanced on the city during the second Punic War, gave human offerings to their idols.

North, Central, and South America saw plenty of human sacrifice, not only among the Incas, Aztecs, and Maya, but also among the Zapotec, Olmec, Nazca, Moche, and Chavin civilizations. India engaged in the practice also.

What about China? China seems often to be historically on a different track. Might China perhaps have avoided this atrocity? Sadly, that is not the case. As historians Patricia Ebrey, Anne Walthall, and James Palais explain,

in addition to objects of symbolic value or practical use, the Shang interred human beings, sometimes dozens of them, in royal tombs. Why did they do this? From oracle bone texts, it seems that captives not needed as slaves often ended up as sacrificial victims. Other people buried with the king had chosen their fate; that is, his spouses, retainers, or servants could decide to accompany him in death. Those who voluntarily followed their king to the grave generally had their own ornaments and might also have coffins and gave goods such as weapons. Early Shang graves rarely had more than three victims or followers accompanying the main occupant, but the practice grew over time. A late Shang king's tomb contained the remains of ninety followers plus seventy-four human sacrifices, twelve horses, and eleven dogs. Archeologists often can identify sacrificial victims because they were decapitated or cut in two at the waist.

The 'oracle bones' were bone fragments on which texts were written or inscribed; the bones were then heated, and the cracks which developed as jagged zigzags on the surface of the bone would intersect the text. Priests attempted to discern, from the locations of such intersections, a divine meaning. In this case, the meaning might dictate who would become a sacrificial victim.

From roughly 1500 B.C. to 1045 B.C., the Shang dynasty dominated China. While the practice of burying victims with kings in royal tombs can be construed as a type of human sacrifice, a much clearer form of human sacrifice is when victims are offered directly to idols.

Human sacrifice occurred not only at burials. Divination texts refer to ceremonies where from three to four hundred captives were sacrificed. In 1976, twelve hundred victims were found in 191 pits near the royal tombs, apparently representing successive sacrifices of a few dozen victims. Animals were also frequently offered in sacrifice. Thus, a central part of being a Shang king was taking the lives of others and offering the victims up on the altars.

The example of the Shang dynasty in China, then, strengthens the hypothesis that human sacrifice was a universal, or nearly universal, practice in the ancient world. This, in turn, highlights the significance of Abraham and the Hebrews as the first culture to reject this practice.

Winning the Cold War - Why It was Important

The struggle for eastern Europe and parts of Asia centered on the concept of human rights and civil rights. After 1945, Soviet Communism and Maoist Communism sought to expand and take over neighboring nations. Personal freedom was endangered in places like East Germany or Czechoslovakia.

The series of events which culminated in the West's victory - how the United States and other western democracies won the Cold War - is long and complex. One chapter of that history centers on Poland, and on a movement called "Solidarity" - a labor union which resisted the Soviet occupational government. Led by Lech Walensa, who later became the leader of Poland after it was freed from Communist control, Solidarity created an significant hindrance to the Marxist totalitarian government - but at a high price. Anyone who dared to question the Soviet Communist dictatorship was treated ruthlessly. Historian Ann Coulter writes:

In one famous case from the eighties, the Soviets brutally murdered the charismatic Catholic priest Jerzy Popieluszko, who had spoken out against the Communist regime in Poland, urging resistance and inspiring Solidarity. After arrests and "car accidents" failed to stop him, he was brutally beaten and murdered by three Security officers in 1984 and his body dumped in Vistula Water Reservoir.

When Communism manifests its essential nature - the violence which eventually erupts from apparently pacifistic utopian schemes when they encounter obstacles - it becomes clear why the Cold War was so important: had the Communists won, millions of human beings and large portions of the globe would be subjected to slavery and tyranny.

Any scheme for creating an ideal society, no matter how well-intentioned, and no matter how peaceful, creates an immense amount of psychological and emotional pressure: if perfection is within our grasp, we should do everything possible to achieve it! Thus even morally noble utopians gradually persuade themselves that violence is permissible in their cause: yes, violence is bad, but how great an achievement will be the result. From Rousseau to Marx, neither of whom wanted war, interminable bloodshed resulted. The social engineering which arises from the notion that humans and human society are perfectible leads consistently to the violation of rights - the very rights which it hopes to institute.

Phases of Ur

The city of Ur, located near where the Euphrates River flows into the Persian Gulf, has a long history, and is important for many different reasons. So much has happened there, over such long stretches of time, that it is difficult to gain an overview of its rich history. To make its narrative more accessible, it can be broken into manageable segments.

The earliest phase includes the founding of the city, sometime after 4000 B.C., in a transitional era between the neolithic age and the bronze age. The first society to live at Ur did not do so for long, as it was destroyed in a flood which wiped out all settlements in the Ancient Near East. The city was rebuilt by settlers who had a better knowledge of copper, and by a later group - "protoliterate" - which was early in the process of learning to write.

The second phase of Ur's history includes its first two dynasties. By 2700 B.C., Ur had become powerful and wealthy. It became the center of an expanded area, the Sumerian kingdom, which it ruled. It grew to include the whole Mesopotamian Valley. When a Sumerian king died, he was buried with his government officials, servants, and a group of women. By 2700 B.C., this practice was already an old tradition. Inscriptions from this era record that Sargon of Akkad, a ruler from a region north of Ur, was expanding and occupying the region around Ur. Traders from Ur at this time had contact with merchants as far away as India. The magical and superstitious practices of this phase - perhaps not quite yet religions - included human sacrifices, atop ziggurats, intended to persuade idols to grant good weather, good harvests, and military successes.

Sometime after 2200 B.C., Ur had freed itself from Akkad's influence and was once again an independent kingdom ruling the surrounding region. This was the third dynasty. A large and impressive ziggurat was built during this third phase, manifesting complex engineering. It shows that the citizens of Ur had developed advanced principles of architecture, including columns, arches, domes, and vaults, and the sophisticated mathematics needed to design them. The structure demonstrated the principle of entasis, in which an optical illusion is produced: a curved line appears straight, and a straight line appears curved. Some of these architectural and mathematical innovations occurred as early as the first two dynasties.

A fourth phase of Ur's history saw the city lose its political importance, no longer the seat of a major monarch. Its significance in terms of import and export remained for a while, but then it fell into disrepair and neglect.

A fifth phase saw the city's financial and cultural status revived, as it became part of the Neo-Babylonian empire. Between 605 B.C. and 562 B.C., king Nebuchadnezzar II substantially rebuilt the city. Politically, however, Ur was ruled from Babylon as part of the empire, and shared its sudden rise, relatively brief era of supremacy, and quick demise when the Persians overtook the empire.

During the sixth phase, Ur was part of Cyrus's empire, given freedom to carry on its local religion and culture as long as it paid taxes and gave military support to the Persians. The city, however, began to decay, as the Euphrates River gradually changed its course, making agriculture impossible. Sometime after 317 B.C., Ur was abandoned, and the desert sands gradually covered its remains for archeologists to find 2000 years later.

The city is deserted now, visited by archeologists and the most adventurous tourists. Two miles away is a small railroad station, named 'Ur Junction', keeping the ancient name of the great city alive in modern times.

Ur is mentioned often in certain history courses. The city has played significant roles in various scenarios over the ages. But in any discussion of an event relating to Ur, it must first be established, during which phase of Ur's history that event took place. These phases are meaningfully different from one another, and provide the backdrop for such narratives.

Women Removed from Islamic Universities

The Islamic government of Iran has chosen to enforce Sharia law, the traditional law of Muslims, and prevent women from studying at universities. The Telegraph reports that:

Female students in Iran have been barred from more than 70 university degree courses in an officially-approved act of sex-discrimination which critics say is aimed at defeating the fight for equal women's rights.

This is part of the same Islamic tradition which kept women from attending school in Afghanistan.

In a move that has prompted a demand for a UN investigation by Iran's most celebrated human rights campaigner, the Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, 36 universities have announced that 77 BA and BSc courses in the coming academic year will be "single gender" and effectively exclusive to men.

'BSc' stands for Bachelor of Science, and is the British abbreviation; in the U.S., 'BS' is the standard way to refer to such degrees. While women have been barred by the Muslim government from studying many subjects at Iranian universities, men have been barred from none.

Senior clerics in Iran's theocratic regime have become concerned about the social side-effects of rising educational standards among women.

The Islamic leadership - the imams and mullahs - is working to keep women legally and socially inferior to men.

Under the new policy, women undergraduates will be excluded from a broad range of studies in some of the country's leading institutions, including English literature, English translation, hotel management, archaeology, nuclear physics, computer science, electrical engineering, industrial engineering and business management.

Similar measures are being taken in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya. In those countries, unlike Iran and Afghanistan, the measures to oppress women are organized through the political party known as The Muslim Brotherhood. In Iran, such measures are being forced onto the oil industry - a major source of the region's wealth and power - by the ayatollahs. Islam has a commanding hold on the Iranian economy:

The Oil Industry University, which has several campuses across the country, says it will no longer accept female students at all, citing a lack of employer demand. Isfahan University provided a similar rationale for excluding women from its mining engineering degree, claiming 98% of female graduates ended up jobless.

If female graduates are often jobless - a questionable assertion at best - it is either because they face discrimination in the Muslim-dominated industry, or it is because they've chosen to be wives and mothers. In either case, there is no justification for preventing women from studying. Ebadi wrote a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, and to the high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay.

"[It] is part of the recent policy of the Islamic Republic, which tries to return women to the private domain inside the home as it cannot tolerate their passionate presence in the public arena," says the letter, which was also sent to Ahmad Shaheed, the UN's special rapporteur for human rights in Iran. "The aim is that women will give up their opposition and demands for their own rights."

Beyond education, the larger issue is simply personal freedom and individual liberty for women. There are already many regulations in the Islamic state of Iran which prevent women from exercising rights. This latest move simply indicates the trend toward even fewer freedoms for women, removing the few rights or liberties they had left. Until this latest legislation, women had been making substantial progress within Iranian universities:

Sociologists have credited women's growing academic success to the increased willingness of religiously-conservative families to send their daughters to university after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Legal and social equality for women - long a hallmark of cultures in Europe and North America - remains elusive in the Middle East; in these cases, things seem to be getting worse rather than better.

Good Stuff and Bad Stuff in Egypt

Modern Egypt as we know it - in contrast to the ancient Egypt of Pharaohs and pyramids - began with the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. In the early 1800's, Yugoslavian regions like Serbia began to be more autonomous within the empire, and oppressed nations like Greece fought for, and gained, independence and freedom in 1830. Historian William Duiker writes:

Meanwhile, other parts of the empire began to break away from central control. In Egypt, the ambitious governor Muhammad Ali declared the region's autonomy from Ottoman rule and initiated a series of reforms designed to promote economic growth and government efficiency. During the 1830s, he sought to improve agricultural production and reform the educational system, and he imported machinery and technicians from Europe to carry out the first industrial revolution on African soil. In the end, however, the effort failed, partly because Egypt's manufactures could not compete with those of Europe and also because much of the profit from the export of cash crops went into the hands of

landlords who were inexperienced at exporting such cash crops, and who were more interested in ensuring a continued lack of social mobility - keeping Egyptian peasants locked into the strict Muslim class structure which had dominated the region for centuries. These landlords were wealthy and would continue to be wealthy, whether or not the export business was successful. The ones harmed by the failure of export businesses were the peasant class, who stood to experience a modest gain in income, and the middle class, which was tiny but might have enlarged had the exporting been successful.

Egypt's first pass at modernizing - and the results of this attempt - are telling and predicative. Industrialization in any culture is a traumatic process: in England, Europe, and America, it caused urban misery until an economic equilibrium was reached in which child labor, long hours, and low wages were eliminated. But in a post-colonial Islamic nation like Egypt, industrialization goes past "traumatic" and into "utterly destructive" conditions - on top of which, it is doomed to fail. Industrialization was predestined to come to naught in Egypt because the rationalization of processes rests upon a world-view fostered by the calm logic of medieval Scholasticism, and upon the children of Scholasticism: physics, mathematics, and chemistry. Egypt's Muslim population - from peasants to aristocrats - had a worldview which didn't intuitively mesh with the rationalization of processes and industrial engineering management.

The Suez Canal is an example. Duiker writes:

Ever since the voyages of the Portuguese explorers at the close of the fifteenth century, European trade with the East had been carried on almost exclusively by the route around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa. But from the outset, there was some interest in shortening the route by digging a canal east of Cairo, where only a low, swampy isthmus separated the Mediterranean from the Red Sea.

The land route between Europe and the East, which had been the original trade route before the Portuguese discovered the sea route, had become too dangerous, as the caravans traveling in both directions were attacked by raiders. One of those raiders was in fact Muhammad, the founder of Islam. His early source of income had been raiding the caravans traveling the region of Mecca and Medina. Trade between Europe and the Far East declined and languished for several centuries, only to flourish again when the Portuguese route was discovered.

The Ottoman Turks, who controlled the area, had considered constructing a canal in the sixteenth century, but nothing was accomplished until 1854, when the French entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps signed a contract to begin construction of the canal. The completed project brought little immediate benefit to Egypt, however, which under the vigorous rule of the Ottoman official Muhammad Ali was attempting to adopt reforms on the European model. The cost of construction imposed a major debt on the Egyptian government and forced a growing level of dependence on foreign financial support. When an army revolt against the increasing foreign influence broke out in 1881, the British stepped in to protect their investment (they had bought Egypt's canal company shares in 1875) and set up an informal protectorate that would last until World War I.

Sadly, Egypt's story is one of financial opportunities gone bad. Although Muslim raiders succeeded in scaring away European traders who wanted to go through the Middle East to get to the Far East, it was a Pyrrhic victory - they "succeeded" in losing a tremendous economic opportunity: if European traders had continued using the land route to the Far East during the early Middle Ages, the countries of the Middle East could have managed this trade for a permanent continuous revenue stream. Trade using the Portuguese route around the southern tip of Africa represented lost opportunities for the Middle East. The Suez Canal was a chance to get back into that game: building, owning, and operating that canal guaranteed steady income. The Portuguese route was no longer the best path - now most shipping would once again go through the Middle East. But why was Egypt unable to operate the canal at a profit, when the French and the British were able to do so? What is it about the culture of Middle East which prevented this success? We cannot blame Arab culture, because the Arabs have been successful businessmen over the centuries. After the rise of Islam, Arabs continued to be astute traders, but it is important to note that not all Arabs became Muslims. The skills required to be a successful trader are different than the skills required to run a corporate operation like the Suez Canal. Although Egypt lost its financial opportunity in the Suez Canal, it would regain its political independence.

National consciousness had existed in Egypt since well before the colonial takeover, and members of the legislative council were calling for independence even before World War I. In 1918, a formal political party called the Wafd was formed to promote Egyptian independence. The intellectuals were opposed as much to the local palace government as to the British, however, and in 1952, an army coup overthrew King Farouk, the grandson of Khedive Ismail, and established an independent republic.

Khedive Ismail ruled Egypt from 1863 to 1879, and King Farouk ruled from 1936 to 1952. Having gained independence from the British, Egypt spent approximately thirty years under a monarchy. Ethnically speaking, Egypt is not a strictly Arab society.

Technically, Egypt was not an Arab state. King Farouk, who had acceded to power in 1936, had frequently declared support for the Arab cause, but the Egyptian people were not Bedouins and shared little of the culture of the peoples across the Red Sea. Nevertheless, Farouk committed Egyptian armies to the disastrous war against Israel.

In the late 1940's and early 1950's, Farouk symbolized the fence-riding character of Egypt's role in the Middle East. Not truly Arab, but often engaged in Arab causes, the Islamic identity of a vocal political faction inside Egypt would sometimes be decisive, or sometimes be overruled by other Egyptians.

In 1952, King Farouk, whose corrupt habits had severely eroded his early popularity, was overthrown by a military coup engineered by young military officers ostensibly under the leadership of Colonel Muhammad Nagib. The real force behind the scenes was Colonel Gamal Abdul Nasser (1918 - 1970), the son of a minor government functionary who, like many of his fellow officers, had been angered by the army's inadequate preparation for the war against Israel four years earlier. In 1952, the monarchy was replaced by a republic.

Under Nasser, and later under Anwar Sadat, Egypt seemed to have a chance to exploit its economic opportunities in a meaningful way - a chance to assume its place at the table of modern, economically significant, nations.

In 1954, Nasser seized power in his own right, and immediately instituted a land reform program. He also adopted a policy of neutrality in foreign affairs and expressed sympathy for the Arab cause. The British presence had rankled many Egyptians for years, for even after granting Egypt independence, Britain had retained control over the Suez Canal to protect its route to the Indian Ocean. In 1956, Nasser suddenly nationalized the Suez Canal Company, which had been under British and French administration. Seeing a threat to their route to the Indian Ocean, the British and the French launched a joint attack on Egypt to protect their investment. They were joined by Israel, whose leaders had grown exasperated at sporadic Arab commando raids on Israeli territory and now decided to strike back. But the Eisenhower administration in the United States, concerned that the attack smacked of a revival of colonialism, supported Nasser and brought about the withdrawal of foreign forces from Egypt and of Israeli troops from the Sinai peninsula.

Nasser's next project was to form a United Arab Republic; the first step was to unite Syria and Egypt in 1958. He hoped to include, eventually, all the other Arab nations, but he was unsuccessful in persuading them to join. The kings of Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia saw that this was a socialist plan to take money away from their kingdoms. Eventually, even the union between Egypt and Syria failed, in 1961. Nasser's political vision continued along the Pan-Arab line: to create political ties between Arab nations. This led to Egypt's close ties to Yemen and Algeria, to Egypt coordinating the anti-Israel activities of the Arab nations, and to Egypt's support for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Nasser was, however, humiliated when Israel gained territory in the Six-Day-War of 1967. He died in office in 1970, and was replaced by Anwar Sadat. Nasser's

socialist approach has had little success, and most governments, including those of Egypt and Syria, eventually shifted to a more free enterprise approach while encouraging foreign investment to compensate for a lack of capital or technology.

The chimera of socialist economics disappointed Egypt. Cultural problems accompanied economic problems.

In 1928, devout Muslims in Egypt formed the Muslim Brotherhood as a means of promoting personal piety. Later, the movement began to take a more activist approach, including the eventual use of terrorism by a radical minority. Despite Nasser's surface commitment to Islamic ideals and Arab unity, some Egyptians were fiercely opposed to his policies and regard his vision of Arab socialism as a betrayal of Islamic principles. Nasser reacted harshly and executed a number of his leading opponents.

By this point, it was becoming clear that peace and progress were permanently impossible for some segments of the Middle East. Although the millions of ordinary people who live there certainly desire both, a variety of cultural or social factors prevent both peace and certain forms of political and economic progress. Whether leaders are sincere or corrupt, Egypt - and one may generalize to a number of other nations in the Middle East - seems to swing back and forth between ruthless secularist dictators and harsh Islamist theocracies. Neither provides a particularly kind environment. Following Nasser's sudden and unexpected death in office, Anwar Sadat became Egypt's next leader.

Sadat soon showed himself to be more pragmatic than his predecessor, dropping the now irrelevant name of United Arab Republic in favor of the Arab Republic of Egypt and replacing Nasser's socialist policies with a new strategy based on free enterprise and encouragement of Western investment. He also agreed to sign a peace treaty with Israel on the condition that Israel retire to its pre-1967 frontiers. Concerned that other Arab countries would refuse to make peace and take advantage of its presumed weakness, Israel refused.

In 1973, the Yom Kippur War took place, as Egypt and Syrian forces attacked Israel. The results were inconclusive. A cease-fire was reached, and Henry Kissinger maintained a fragile peace for the next several years by means of his diplomacy. In 1978, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Sadat signed the Camp David Agreement, which provided a constructive peace for several years. This diplomacy ended, however, by

the assassination of Sadat by Islamic militants in October 1981. But there were deeper causes, including the continued unwillingness of Muslim governments to recognize Israel.

After Sadat's death, Hosni Mubarak became president. Mubarak was president of Egypt for a total of twenty-nine consecutive years. He was overthrown in 2011; the revolutionaries pointed to corruption in government, lack of free speech, police brutality, less than free elections, and economic unpleasantness. Although these serious charges did, indeed, have some truth to them, Mubarek also had some positive features: he had maintained a peace, or at least a ceasefire, with Israel for many years, and had created good trading relations with a number of other nations. The revolutionaries of 2011 took a calculated risk: they got rid of Mubarek without knowing exactly what type of government they would get next. Historian Michael Savage writes that

Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak had long been a U.S. ally and had kept the radical Muslim Brotherhood out of power for more than 40 years prior to Obama's intervention. The president suddenly insisted at the beginning of February 2011 that a transition to a democratic government in Egypt "must be meaningful, it must be peaceful, and it must begin now."

Historians note that Mubarak had good, or at least tolerable, diplomatic relations with a variety of nations, and with U.S. presidents Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush - and even with Obama's first two years in office. What changed, that suddenly Mubarak's removal from office was a demand? Mubarak had acted in the interests of Europe and America - and in his own interests, to be sure - in keeping the Muslim Brotherhood out of power: the Muslim Brotherhood, which represents not the peaceful moderate Muslims, but rather the violent extremists; the Muslim Brotherhood which does not merely have links to terrorist organizations, but which rather explicitly encourages and supports them; the Muslim Brotherhood which takes, not a nominal interpretation of Islam which is conducive to nonviolent coexistence, but rather the most orthodox and literal interpretation of the Qur'an demanding aggression. Hosni Mubarak, whatever his sins, had at least accomplished that much for peace.

The revolution of 2011 hoped for a democratic government, but had no concrete reason to expect one, and no plan was in place to institute one. To the contrary, a plan was in place - a plan unknown to most of the revolutionaries in the streets - a plan to discard the desire for democracy as soon as it had been exploited to remove Mubarak.

With that absurd statement - the idea that transitions of power in the Middle East could be peaceful and could result in democratic governments - Obama revealed one of two things: Either he

had been inadequately informed about the true nature of the situation in Egypt, a failure in information-gathering, or he believed that whatever replaced Mubarak would be better than Mubarak, even though it would not be democratic. Either his

advisors are hopelessly naive regarding what's going on, or he is secretly on the side of Muslim radicals and believes that the overthrow of our allies will hasten their rise to power.

Regarding the accuracy of the information presented to President Obama in various briefings, the question arises whether the true nature of the Muslim Brotherhood has been discerned by those who advise the president:

Less than two weeks after Obama made his mincing declaration that Mubarak must go, his Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood was "largely secular." Within hours, the administration refuted Clapper's absurd claim, reinforcing the fact that its foreign policy is chaotic at best, subversive at worst.

Although Mubarak was an unsavory character - nobody will claim him as a champion of human rights - he did at least maintain a peace effort with other nations in the Middle East, and maintain some degree of domestic tranquility. The seizure of power by the Muslim Brotherhood ensures the increased probability of open war in the region, and violence by the Egyptian government against its own citizens.

In addition to revealing the administration's ineptitude, its positions with regard to Egypt helped reveal where Obama really stands: firmly against a strong ally of the United States and Israel. While the Mubarak regime was dictatorial, it did maintain order in the streets and suppress Islamist radicals. It also maintained peace with Israel.

It is useful to recall the distinction between "Islamic" and "Islamist" - the former refers to a faith, the latter to political ideology and the agenda attached to it. Mubarak had protected the Egyptian people from the oppression of such radicals, and been an ally to the United States. What was to be gained by his ouster? The government which would replace him was not guaranteed to be as friendly to the U.S., and would likely be less friendly. The regime which would take his place would grant no more civil rights to Egyptian citizens, and probably less. The revolutionaries in the streets would be bitterly disappointed. Having gotten rid of a bad dictator, they would find themselves under an even worse government.

Within a matter of weeks, Mubarak stepped down. As ... the Muslim Brotherhood was moving toward taking over Egypt, the Egyptian military stepped in and took charge.

Although some observers still hoped that the military would merely oversee a transitional period, the wiser revolutionaries in Egypt understood quickly that the game was over. They had been duped. Obama's

support of the ouster of Mubarak - under whom Coptic Christians were allowed to worship in peace - has led to the rise of violence toward Christians by Muslims. In October 2011, 26 Coptic Christians were killed and hundreds more wounded in attacks by the Egyptian military. The attack occurred as Christian groups marched through Cairo in protest against the burnings of their churches. Egyptian Muslims pelted them with rocks as they moved along, and by the time they had reached their destination at a radio and TV broadcasting facility, the army started shooting into the crowd and trying to run over the protesters with their vehicles. Observers predicted that the event would cause a massive emigration of Christians from Egypt.

The violent factions which Mubarak had held back were now unleashed - violent scenes like these were free to repeat themselves throughout Egypt. Mubarak was no angel - he was a thug - but he had also engineered a way to keep Coptic Christians and Muslims living together in the same country with a minimum of friction. The occasional incidents of violence by Muslims against Copts prior to the end of the Mubarak regime would be multiplied many times over after he left power.

In the wake of the murder of more than two dozen unarmed Christians by the Egyptian military, the president called on Christians to show restraint! How were they supposed to do that? By allowing more of their brethren to be murdered by the military? The president continued: "Now is the time for restraint on all sides so that Egyptians can move forward together to forge a strong and united Egypt." The loss of life was "tragic," but Christians need to put it behind them?

Observers noted Obama's under-reaction to the open aggression against an unarmed pacifistic religious minority within Egypt.

No international sanctions against the Egyptian military? No condemnation of an obvious hate crime against Christians? No withdrawing of U.S. foreign aid from Egypt?

Reasonable surveillance and reconnaissance certainly would have predicted the scenario of domestic violence which erupted once Mubarak was gone.

After Mubarak's ouster, the Egyptian military demonstrated that it was incapable of maintaining order. Reports began to emerge out of Egypt that indicated there were no police on the streets in Cairo and other cities. Coptic Christians, who make up about ten percent of Egypt's population, were clashing with Muslims, and the result was extensive casualties. Ambulances were nowhere to be seen, and the wounded were transported to medical facilities in garbage trucks. Roadblocks were frequently set up, not by the government, but by lawless thugs who stopped traffic and stole valuables from the occupants of the automobiles they detained. Without a functioning police force, vigilante groups sprang up, taking the law into their own hands. Reports also surfaced that the Egyptian army was partnering with the Muslim Brotherhood to perform "virginity tests" on women who protested in Tahrir Square.

Unspeakable acts of violence against women multiplied, perpetrated by the military, by the Muslim Brotherhood, and by unaligned thugs. Nobody was there to stop them. Around the world, the "girl in the blue bra" became a symbol for women who were mistreated, beaten, and worse by the Muslim Brotherhood. As time went on, it became clear that large and larger parts of the military were controlled, visibly and invisibly, by the Muslim Brotherhood. This eruption of mayhem was predictable. What was the strategy of the Obama administration? Perhaps it thought that if President Obama urged restraint, via TV and radio and internet and newspapers, his influence would steer the Egyptian population.

Just as the revolutionaries in the streets during the "Arab Spring" had their hopes dashed, so also were America's hopes for an ally dashed - Egypt after Mubarak would not be an ally, would not work for peace in the Middle East, and would not restrain the worst excesses of the radical Muslim Brotherhood. Peaceful and moderate Muslims were also dismayed; they are not represented by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Egypt is under military rule with the ouster of Mubarak. Although there remain deep divisions between Islamists and those who favor a secular government, the overwhelming likelihood is that the Islamic Brotherhood will prevail. With Mubarak gone, the transition to either a military government or one founded on Islamic law is guaranteed.

Although there are formalities yet to be accomplished, it is a done deal. While there is a nominal struggle between militarists and the Muslim Brotherhood, the reality is that there are enough connections between the two that the practical effects will be the same no matter which side wins. As the Los Angeles Times reported on July 11, 2012,

Months of multi-stage elections in Egypt have resulted in a slow-burning power struggle between the ascendant Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Mubarak-allied generals of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

With hopes for freedom and democracy dashed, the revolutionaries have gone home. They are not protesting in the streets. They have resigned themselves, after a brief flicker of hope during the Arab Spring, to a long Arab Winter. The L.A. Times notes that "things in Egypt are incredibly quiet."

Whether the new Egyptian president, Mohammad Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood, continues to consolidate his power, or whether the military gains might, is a question of no significant outcome. The case is clear: in a part of the world in which things can never be good, in a part of the world in which the only variation is between bad and worse, Egypt has taken a turn for the worse.

Varieties of Colonization

Over the centuries, countries have founded colonies - this happens so regularly that it may be assumed to be an organic aspect of statehood. But there has been great variety in the colonization process. We may examine (a) the colonies of the Greeks in the Mediterranean Sea and Black Sea area around 700 B.C., (b) the expansions of Islam as colonialism, (c) early European colonial efforts, sometimes recounted under the heading 'the age of exploration,' and (d) later modern European colonialism.

By enumerating these four categories of colonization, we do not mean to assert that other categories do not exist. There are also other forms of expansion which are not colonial: Rome's expansions arguably integrated new territory to an extent which transcended the concept of 'colony' so that the added territory was integrated into the mother country. We also note that colonialism is an ideology which does not lie behind all colonization efforts.

Each of these phases had slightly different motives and methods. Even within the last category, the modern European nations had varying approaches to managing their colonies. Historian William Duiker writes that the economic goals of colonialism

could be realized in cooperation with local political elites, whose loyalty could be earned (or purchased) by economic rewards or by confirming them in their positions of authority and status in a new colonial setting. Sometimes, however, this policy, known as "indirect rule," was not feasible because local leaders refused to cooperate with their colonial masters or even actively resisted the foreign conquest. In such cases, the local elites were removed from power and replaced with a new set of officials recruited from the mother country.

European countries could manage their colonies either through a system of direct control or through a system of indirect control. Each of the two options had advantages and disadvantages.

The distinction between direct and indirect rule was not always clearly drawn, and many colonial powers vacillated between the two approaches, sometimes in the same colonial territory.

An example of indirect control is the British rule of Nigeria, India, and Burma. Local government officials were used; they held office, made decisions, and operated their bureaucracies. They collected taxes and used the revenue in accord with the native governmental traditions. There were even elections and other forms of limited self-rule, especially in strictly local matters. The goal of the British was to continue to develop leaders within the native people. Governmental institutions were patterned on European or English styles but had local rules. For example, the British allowed the Indians to continue many aspects of their caste system. In Africa,

most European governments settled down to govern their new territories with the least effort and expense possible. In many cases, they pursued a form of indirect rule reminiscent of the British approach to the princely states in the Indian peninsula. The British, with their tradition of decentralized government at home, were especially prone to adopt this approach.

By contrast, the French in Somaliland and Vietnam, and the Portuguese in Angola, used a method of direct control. Foreign officials - from France or Portugal - were brought in to rule. There was essentially no self-rule, and the goal was assimilation: to integrate the colony not only economically into the mother country, but to change its society as well. The government institutions, processes, and laws were based only on the home country's patterns, and not on any local or native traditions. France's preference for direct, instead of indirect, control

reflected the centralized system introduced in France by Napoleon. As in the British colonies, at the top of the pyramid was a French official, usually known as a governor-general, who was appointed from Paris and governed with the aid of a bureaucracy in the capital city. At the provincial level, French commissioners were assigned to deal with local administrators, but the latter were required to be conversant in French and could be transferred to a new position at the needs of the central government.

Comparing indirect control of colonies by the British with the direct control of colonies by the French and Portuguese, it might seem at first that the indirect method was more humane and kinder to the native populations. But, in fact, both methods had their advantages. Under the direct control of French colonies in Africa,

Africans were eligible to run for office and to serve in the French National Assembly, and a few were appointed to high positions in the colonial administration. Such policies reflected the absence of racist attitudes in French society as well as the French conviction of the superiority of Gallic culture and their revolutionary belief in the universality of human nature.

Contrasting to the goal of assimilation was a competing goal, seen in alternative forms of colonization, of association: "collaborating with local elites while leaving local traditions alone." Obviously, the British system of indirect control had its own set of benefits for the natives:

One advantage of such an administrative system was that it did not severely disrupt local customs and institutions.

It is important to note that this distinction between direct control and indirect control of colonies applies mainly - almost exclusively - to European colonization efforts from the late 1700's to the early 1900's. Other waves of colonization in history, from the Greeks in the eighth century B.C. to the Islamic conquests and invasions of the Middle Ages, used different forms of management for their colonies.

Japan Modernizes

Like China, Japan had for many centuries a political policy of isolationism. But from the early 1800's onward, Japan emerged into world trade, more so than China, and more willingly than China. Historian William Duiker writes:

In contrast to China, where a centralized political system was viewed as crucial to protect the vast country from foreign conquest or internal fractionalization, a decentralized political system reminiscent of the feudal system in medieval Europe held sway in Japan under the hegemony of a powerful military leader, or shogun, who ruled with varying degrees of effectiveness in the name of the hereditary emperor. This system lasted until the early seventeenth century, when a strong shogunate called the Tokugawa rose to power after a protracted civil war. The Tokugawa managed to revitalize the traditional system in a somewhat more centralized form that enabled it to survive for another 250 years.

The Tokugawa era, then, can be defined as stretching from 1603 to 1868, until Japan loosened its isolationism and entered into more regular international trade. Japan's first contact with the modern West was with Portuguese sailors in the mid 1500's; Japan at first became even more isolationist in response to these foreign contacts. In 1853, however, Japan negotiated a treaty with the United States, providing for expanded merchant contact. Not only was Japan changing its foreign policy; it was also changing internally. The Tokugawa rule came to an end, replaced by the Meiji government. Under Meiji rule, the empire worked to modernize itself: semi-democratic deliberative bodies were formed, all social classes were to have a voice in government, all social classes were to have a degree of economic freedom, laws were to be rationalized, and a deliberate examination of other nations was undertaken to find ways to improve Japanese industry and the Japanese economy. Okuma Shigenobu, who was prime minister in Japan when the Meiji era began, and for a number of years in the Meiji era, wrote:

By comparing the Japan of fifty years ago with the Japan of today, it will be seen that she has gained considerably in the extent of her territory, as well as in her population, which now numbers nearly fifty million. Her government has become constitutional not only in name, but in fact, and her national education has attained to a high degree of excellence. In commerce and industry, the emblems of peace, she has also made rapid strides, until her import and export trades together amounted in 1907 to the enormous sum of 926,000,000 yen. Her general progress, during the short space of half a century, has been so sudden and swift that it presents a rare spectacle in the history of the world. This leap forward is the result of the stimulus which the country received on coming into contact with the civilization of Europe and America.

In addition to realizing that Japan's contact with Europe and the U.S. was responsible for its transformation into a modern industrial power, as foreseen by the deliberate Meiji policy of examining systems in foreign nations, Prime Minister Okuma also was active in Japanese politics during the war between Japan and Russia. The outcome of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 altered the thinking of Western governments about East Asia - it raised concerns that Japan's expansionist ambitions and modern weaponry were a serious threat to European claims in the area. Russia's defeat in this was one of many factors which led to the fall of the Czarist government in 1917.

As Japan grew stronger, it established "spheres on influence" in eastern Asia, including the southern end of the Korean peninsula, the island of Taiwan (also called 'Formosa'), and the Chinese coastal city of Amoy (also called 'Xiamen'). This established Japan as a significant regional power, emergent from its isolationist phase. In fact, Japan's participation in World War II grew out of its effort to create an empire in the Pacific.

Recovering from its defeat in 1945 in World War II, aided by the United States, Japan recovered its industrial and economic power. Between the war's end and 1953, the United States gave Japan $2.44 billion dollars in reconstruction aid, even more money in the form of soldiers spending their wages in Japan as they were stationed there, and help in the form of expertise in the rebuilding process and in the form of actual construction as the American military built infrastructure. Japan once again took its place as a significant modern economy.

But Japan faces another problem. Given the carrying capacity of eastern Asia and the Pacific rim, Japan is significantly underpopulated. Despite serious worries in the 1960's and 1970's that there could be a overpopulation problem, the opposite is now true. Sustainable clean air and clean water can be provided for millions more than currently occupy the region, and responsible agriculture and renewable food sources can feed them. But despite this capacity, the population remains dangerously low, causing a number of economic, social, and political problems. Patrick Buchanan writes that Japan is

on the path to national suicide. Japan, its population peaking at 128 million in 2010, will lose 25 million people by 2050. A fifth of her population will disappear and one in six Japanese will be over 80. Japan's median age will rise from 45 to 55. And these projections assume a rise in the fertility of Japanese women that is nowhere in sight.

Japan - or any other nation - needs a large proportion of young people in its society. It is not sustainable to have a large elderly population with relatively few young workers.

In March 2010 came more grim news. Marketwatch reported the birth rate in Tokyo had fallen to 1.09 children per woman and if "current trends continued, Japan's population will fall to 95 million by 2050, from about 127 million now," a loss of 32 million people. At this rate, a fourth of the nation will vanish in four decades. "With as much as 40 percent of its population over 65 years of age," wrote Joel Kotkin," of Forbes, "no matter how innovative the workforce, Dai Nippon will simply be too old to compete."

If the population problems described above actually happen - if Japan is really going to lose a great percentage of its population, and if Japanese don't start having lots of children soon - the social, political, and economic problems caused will not only ruin Japan, but would be large enough to affect other nations: this degree of instability can cause wars. Further, the environmental impact would be disastrous: any hope for sustainable clean air and clean water is predicated upon a population which is growing steadily. The common notion that large populations are bad for the environment is simply wrong: the ideal population grows at a steady and slow pace. This allows for "green" planning, and provides the economic energy to put that planning into practice. The population crisis facing Japan would trigger a total abandonment of any "green" practices because of economic necessities.

Noting that births in Japan in 2008 were 40 percent below what they were in 1948, Nicholas Eberstadt writes, in Foreign Affairs, that "fertility, migration and mortality trends are propelling Japan into ... a degree of aging thus far contemplated only in science fiction."

The Japanese government has recognized the problem, and is attempting to deal with it. As in many other developed nations, cash bonuses and other incentives are offered to parents who have more children. It is not clear, however, that this will be enough to change the trend.

In December 2010, Agence France-Press, citing the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, reported: "On current trends, Japan's population of 127 million will by 2055 shrivel to 90 million." Recognizing the gravity of the demographic crisis, the Democratic Party of Japan, which was swept into power in 2009, planned $3,000 allowances per child and assistance with child care for families with grade-school children. The need seems desperate. In a 2010 Washington Post story on the decline in Japanese students attending U.S. universities, Blaine Harden wrote, "The number of children [in Japan] under the age of 15 has fallen for 28 consecutive years. The size of the nation's high school graduating class has shrunk by 35 percent in two decades."

It is clear that Japan's most pressing need is to have more children. The alternative is that Japan will simply cease to exist.

China in Recent Centuries

Chinese dynasties conceived of themselves as ruling with the “mandate of heaven” - a phrase which corresponds roughly to the absolute monarchies of France and Russia claiming a “divine right” to govern. The Ming dynasty held power from 1368 until 1644. Historian William Duiker writes:

In 1800, the Qing or Manchu dynasty (1644-1911) appeared to be at the height of its power. The Manchus, a seminomadic people whose original homeland was north of the Great Wall, had invaded China in the mid-seventeenth century and conquered the tottering Ming dynasty in 1644. Under the rule of two great emperors, Kangxi (1661-1722) and Qianlong (1736-1795), China had then experienced a long period of peace and prosperity. Its borders were secure, and its culture and intellectual achievements were the envy of the world. Its rulers, hidden behind the walls of the Forbidden City in Beijing, had every reason to describe their patrimony as the Central Kingdom, China’s historical name for itself. But a little over a century later, humiliated and harassed by the black ships and big guns of the Western powers, the Qing dynasty, the last in a series that had endured for more than two thousand years, collapsed in the dust.

The “mandate of heaven” seemed to be over. Many factors were at work during the last century of the Qing dynasty. Contact with other nations increased, despite the government’s longstanding official isolationist policies. Social tensions had long existed inside China, and they grew stronger in the years leading up to 1911.

When Western pressure on the Manchu Empire began to increase during the early nineteenth century, it served to exacerbate the existing strains in Chinese society. By 1800, the trade relationship that restricted Western merchants to a small commercial outlet at Canton was no longer acceptable to the British, who chafed at the growing trade imbalance resulting from a growing appetite for Chinese tea. Their solution was opium. A product more addictive than tea, opium was grown under company sponsorship in northeastern India and then shipped directly to the Chinese market. Soon demand for the product in South China became insatiable, despite an official prohibition on its use. Bullion now flowed out of the Chinese imperial treasury into the pockets of British merchants and officials.

Europeans, especially the English, wanted to correct the trade imbalance and wanted the Chinese to spend their bullion (gold and silver). The word ‘bullion’ refers to precious metals used in trade by weight, instead of in coin form. The most common example is gold bars. (This is different than ‘bouillon’ which is broth!) Creating a favorable balance of trade - making sure that you export as much or more than you import - is a historical factor which drives countries to invent new products, or seek new markets. Europeans wanted to trade with China, but China was not interested in most of the goods the Europeans had to offer. Despite both European and Chinese law against its use, the product that the Europeans had the most success in selling was opium.

When the Chinese attempted to prohibit the opium trade, the British declared war. The Opium War lasted three years (1839-1842) and graphically demonstrated the superiority of British firepower and military tactics to those of the Chinese.

Although the Qing / Manchu dynasty would last another 70 years or so, its decline in power was clear.

Even more ominous developments were taking place in the Chinese heartland, where European economic penetration led to the creation of so-called spheres of influence dominated by diverse foreign powers. Although the imperial court retained theoretical sovereignty throughout the country, in practice its political, economic, and administrative influence beyond the region of the capital was increasingly circumscribed.

Within China’s borders, areas were marked off, to be controlled by Russia, Japan, England, Germany, France, and Italy. It was clear that the imperial dynasty was no longer the actual authority in China. By 1911, the imperial government would fall, and although it was replaced by Sun Yat-sen’s nationalist democracy, instability would mark China from 1911 until 1949. Internal conflicts between nationalists and communists, and external conflicts with the attacking Japanese, prevented the solidification of a durable sociopolitical arrangement.

With the triumph of the communists in 1949, under the leadership of Mao Zedong (also spelled ‘Mao Tse-tung’), China was able to assert itself against foreign influences and once again chart its own course, even if that course was disastrous. China regained its sovereignty and autonomy, perhaps at the cost of human rights and individual freedoms. China’s new challenge would be to overcome the oppressor within (Mao and the communists) instead of the oppressors from outside (foreign economic powers).

Many observers speculated that overpopulation would be China’s next major challenge. Widespread food shortages after the 1949 revolution encouraged that view. But it has become clear that the near-famine conditions were due to mismanagement by communist officials, and surprisingly that, instead of overpopulation, underpopulation may be the next major challenge for China. The Washington Post reports:

More than 30 years after China’s one-child policy was introduced, creating two generations of notoriously chubby, spoiled only children affectionately nicknamed “little emperors,” a population crisis is looming in the country. The average birthrate has plummeted to 1.8 children per couple as compared with six when the policy went into effect, according to the U.N. Population Division, while the number of residents 60 and older is predicted to explode from 16.7 percent of the population in 2020 to 31.1 percent by 2050. That is far above the global average of about 20 percent.

The economic, social, and political disaster awaiting a country with such a low birthrate is as bad - or possibly worse - than the cruelties inflicted upon it by either domestic communists or foreign imperialists. Far from being overpopulated - the carrying capacity of Chinese territory with sustainable, renewable, and responsible land management would support a much larger population with food and with clean air and water - China faces a future of economic collapse and social chaos if it fails to have more children. An ideal birthrate is somewhere in excess of 2 children per couple. Patrick Buchanan writes:

Using UN projections of a Chinese population of 1.4 billion by 2050, this translates into 440 million people in China over the age of sixty, an immense burden of retired, elderly, and aging for the labor force to carry and the country to care for. Shanghai is already approaching that point, with more than 20 percent of its population over sixty, while the birthrate is below one child per couple, one of the lowest anywhere on earth. Due to Beijing’s one-couple, one-child policy, which has led to tens of millions of aborted baby girls, 12 to 15 percent of young Chinese men will be unable to find wives. As single males are responsible for most of society’s violence, the presence of tens of millions of young single Chinese men portends a time of trouble in the Middle Kingdom.

As the Chinese government begins to abandon its “one-child” policy, and even in some cases begins to encourage married couples to have more children, the question facing China now is whether or not it is too late, and whether China can rebuild its population. The Chinese can only survive by having many more children than they currently do. But will they do it? Some Chinese couples find the idea of having more than one child, even if that is necessary for the survival of the nation, financially challenging. The Washington Post writes:

Yang Jiawei, 27, and his wife, Liu Juanjuan, 26, said they would love to have two children and are legally allowed to do so. But like many Chinese, they have only the scant medical and life insurance provided by the government. Without a social safety net, they say, the choice would be irresponsible. “People in the West wrongly see the one-child policy as a rights issue,” said Yang, a construction engineer whose wife is seven months pregnant with the couple's first child. “Yes, we are being robbed of the chance to have more than one child. But the problem is not just some policy. It is money.”

Other Chinese couples have the financial ability to have more children, but simply don’t want to, having gotten used to the self-indulgent lifestyle of the “one-child" era. The Washington Post continues, interviewing Wang Weijia, a 31-year-old human resources administrator with an 8-month-old son:

Other couples cite psychological reasons for hesitating. Wang, the human resources administrator, said she wants an only child because she was one herself: “We were at the center of our families and used to everyone taking care of us. We are not used to taking care of and don’t really want to take care of others.” Chen Zijian, a 42-year-old who owns a translation company, put it more bluntly. For the dual-career, middle-class parents who are bringing the birthrate down, he said, it’s about being successful enough to be selfish. Today’s 20- and 30-somethings grew up seeing their parents struggle during the early days of China’s experiment with capitalism and don’t want that kind of life for themselves, he said. Even one child makes huge demands on parents’ time, he said. “A mother has to give up at least two years of her social life.” Then there are the space issues - “You have to remodel your apartment” - and the strategizing - “You have to have a résumé ready by the time the child is 9 months old for the best preschools.” Most of his friends are willing to deal with this once, Chen said, but not twice. “Ours is the first generation with higher living standards,” he said. “We do not want to make too many sacrifices.”

It is a clear law of economics that a nation needs a population growing at a slow but steady pace in order to have a sustainable standard of living. Will China be able to manage it?

India after Gandhi

Mohandas K. Gandhi is probably the most famous Indian in the world. Born in 1869, he studied law in London from 1888 to 1891. His exposure to English legal tradition and political philosophy stimulated his thinking about topics like trial by jury, writs of habeas corpus, and majority rule. Bringing these ideas back to India, as well as to South Africa, his goal to was ensure that people in other countries would follow the British path to civil liberties.

Ironically, as in many colonial cases, the logic by which the Indians would seek their freedom and independence from the British Empire would be the logic of the British culture - the colonies used England's intellectual heritage against it. The arguments would be drawn from the Magna Carta, the works of John Locke, and the English Bill of Rights of 1689.

One reason that Gandhi became so famous was his non-violent approach. Historian William Duiker writes:

In 1930, Mohandas Gandhi, the sixty-one-year-old leader of the nonviolent movement for Indian independence from British rule, began a march to the sea with seventy-eight followers. Their destination was Dandi, a coastal town some 240 miles away. The group covered about 12 miles a day. As they went on, Gandhi preached his doctrine of nonviolent resistance to British rule in every village he passed through: "Civil disobedience is the inherent right of a citizen. He dare not give it up without ceasing to be a man." By the time he reached Dandi, twenty-four days later, his small group had became an army of thousands. On arrival, Gandhi picked up a pinch of salt from the sand. All along the coast, thousands did likewise, openly breaking British laws that prohibited Indians from making their own salt. The British had long profited from their monopoly on the making and sale of salt, an item much in demand in a tropical country. By their simple acts of disobedience, Gandhi and the Indian people had taken a bold step on their long march to independence.

Gandhi would ultimately be successful, but India's independence would be problematic. Long-suppressed tensions inside Indian society, held in check by English rule, burst into the open. Conflicts between Hindus and Muslims emerged from hiding and remain until the present time. While Gandhi freed his country using nonviolent means, a few individuals in his country have used that freedom to engage in violence. Gandhi wrote that

Victory attained by violence is tantamount to defeat, for it is momentary.

In recent years, the violence between Hindus and Muslims has spilled over into attacks on other religious groups:

In September 2009, the London Times reported on the "worst anti-Christian violence" in India's history. In Orissa state, said local officials, "Hindu fanatics tried to poison water sources at relief camps holding at least 15,000 people displaced by mob violence." Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Christ were beaten as they took four orphans into an adoption center.

There is a sad irony in violence taking place in a nation which owes its freedom and independence to a nonviolent leader: both Mother Teresa and Gandhi won the Nobel Peace Prize - and those freed by Gandhi use violence on those who work for Mother Teresa's organization. The same logic - human dignity, human equality - motivated both Gandhi and Mother Teresa; yet mobs exploit Gandhi's freedom to assault Mother Teresa's workers.

This is not a comment critical of India; it is a comment about human nature. Similar stories can be told about many nations. It is a reminder that we need to be vigilant against our own inclinations and desires. Humans are prone to enjoy the fruits of virtues while violating those same virtues.

Greeks and Turks

The island of Cyprus has long been the object of desire - over the years and centuries, the English, the Greeks, the Ottoman Turks, and other powers have controlled, or attempted to control, the island. Its location places it perpetually in the midst of conflicting geopolitical ambitions. In 1960, it became independent, but its Turkish and Greek ethic residents did not blend harmoniously into one nation, and each group wanted to join the island diplomatically to its homeland. Conflicts between the two groups on the island tempted Turkey to send its army in 1964, but LBJ warned Turkey away from such action. Historian Barry Werth explains what happened in 1974:

In July, a Greek military junta had engineered a coup on the Mediterranean island, where ancient ethnic rivalries between Greeks and Turks had neared the breaking point for more than a decade. The junta installed as a president a former guerilla leader who called for enosis - unification with Greece. Kissinger, distracted by Watergate and with no good options, initially cabled both capitals that the United States rejected enosis, and he warned away the Soviets. Beyond that, the U.S. position, oddly aloof given the dangers to the Western alliance and international stability, supported the junta - until it was ousted eight days after the coup.

Providentially, the Watergate scandal was now moving into the past, and American was benefitting from the capable leadership of President Gerald Ford. Ford, in turn, correctly assessed Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as possessing the both the international understanding and the diplomatic skills needed to navigate the complex situation in Cyprus. On Wednesday, August 14,

during the early morning hours, Ford came face-to-face with his first foreign crisis. Kissinger woke him by telephone to say that Turkish forces had launched heavy air and ground attacks and appeared to be on their way toward seizing most of northern Cyprus. The Geneva peace talks had collapsed. Thousands of Greek Cypriot refugees were pouring southward after Turkish planes bombed Nicosia, the capital.

The Turks had already briefly invaded Cyprus in July of 1974; now, approximately a month later, they were doing it again. Within a few days, the Turkish forces took over a little less than half of the island. A ceasefire left the island split between Greeks and Turks. The other split nations in the world at that time (Korea, Germany, Vietnam) were directly the result of the Cold War. The dividing of Cyprus was primarily the result of longstanding tensions between Greeks and Turks, but indirect Cold War implications were present as well, demanding that Ford and Kissinger devise a thoughtful American response. To minimize loss of life, and avert a potentially larger conflict involving other nations in the region, Cyprus was left as a partially-divided territory with an ambiguous status: the Turkish region was not recognized as a legitimate government. It remains in essentially the same condition forty years later.

Berlin Feels the Pain

The city of Berlin is one of the cultural centers of central Europe, along with Prague and Vienna. Museums, concerts, and architecture make this city a goal for educated people from every nation. Naturally, they know how to have fun, too - there are nightclubs for dancing, and stadiums for soccer matches. But this exciting city has seen its difficult times. Historian William F. Buckley, Jr., writes:

Berliners suffered greatly from the defeat of Germany in World War I, though their city's buildings were not much damaged. And then came Adolf Hitler, and World War II.

When the Nazis took over Germany, they created more misery in twelve years than the nation would normally see in a century. Hitler damaged Germany in many ways:

The British air raids began in 1940; the American, in 1942. Potsdamerplatz was taken out early, reduced to rubble by a bombing raid in the 1941. The Reich buildings and older official buildings nearby, along Unter den Linden, were particular targets. But it was not the Allies who destroyed the original linden trees: that had been done before the war, on Hitler's orders, to facilitate the digging of a new U-Bahn (subway) tunnel. The area around the Kurfürstendamm also was hit hard. Block after block of apartment houses had their habitable areas reduced to basement and sometimes ground floor, which survivors of the air raids shared with rats. In April 1945, one and half million Soviet soldiers marched in from the east, determined to take revenge for the Battle of Stalingrad and the siege of Leningrad. By the time Hitler killed himself in his bunker, some fifty thousand Berliners had died and many times that number had fled; 39 percent of all buildings in the city had been destroyed, including more than a quarter of the housing stock.

As devastating as the destruction was, the rebuilding of the city was also amazing. These landmarks were all restored and rebuilt, and are worth studying as cultural and architectural pieces. Potsdamerplatz is a large square or plaza, surrounded by buildings, and featuring trees, fountains, and sculptures. Unter den Linden is a grand boulevard street through heart of the city lined on both sides with linden trees. The city's U-Bahn (subway) system is linked with elevated railroads, streetcars, and local commuter trains to form a masterful public transportation system. Kurfürstendamm is an elegant street defining an upscale shopping area.

Berlin was a major cultural center in the 1800's, and it is still one today - a fact which is astounding, given the horror inflicted on the city, and the destruction from which it rebuilt itself.

Romania's Path to Freedom

Each of the separate Warsaw Pact countries worked to find a path to liberty between 1988 and 1991. Most succeeded. In each of these different Eastern Bloc nations, the route was slightly different, reflecting the unique circumstances of each. William F. Buckley, Jr., writes about Romania:

Until the mid-Sixties, Romania had been, so to speak, an ordinary, well-behaved Soviet satellite. Under Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Romania was totalitarian, but a state in which there was some room to maneuver. When Gheorghiu-Dej died and Nicolae Ceausecscu took over, he set about closing up that room. He strengthened the Securitate, the secret police. They were now the equivalent of the Gestapo, the Stasi, the KGB. He instituted his "systematization" program. Rural villages were destroyed, peasant families forcibly relocated. This anti-kulak-style program was to lead to grand new agricultural collectives, which, however, never materialized. Agricultural production dropped catastrophically. Much of what was produced was sold abroad to acquire the funds necessary to maintain the Securitate.

This application of Marxist principles was perhaps one of the most literal to be found anywhere. The relocation of farmers, collectivization of agriculture, and other steps taken are quite directly from Marx's Communist Manifesto and predictably had disastrous results.

Ceausescu also generated a massive personality cult. His picture was everywhere, printed on posters, woven into tapestries, painted on walls. In Bucharest nine thousand houses and sixteen historic churches were bulldozed in order to create the Boulevard of Socialist Victory - an eight-lane road sweeping up to the Palace of Parliament. Before World War II and the Communist takeover, Bucharest had been the most elegant city in the region. Now, British journalist Anthony Daniels remarked that Ceausescu seemed determined to turn the Paris of the Balkans into the Pyongyang of the Balkans.

Romania's rich cultural heritage was indeed partially destroyed. Architectural masterpieces from the 1600's and 1700's were wiped away to create Stalinist monstrosities in the official style of Socialist Realism. All of which was remembered in the deep collective consciousness of the people of Romania, who were in no position at the time to rebel. But they would watch and wait, and the opportunity would eventually arise.

Ceausescu was not prepared to go quietly ... when opposition started to emerge, Ceausescu moved quickly to cut it down. In March 1989, a group of retired Party and government published an open letter accusing him of human-rights violations and demanding an end to the systematization program. All six signatories were arrested. Efforts to communicate with them were blocked.

Although the communist regime was still in control, and able to quickly silence this dissent, the first cracks in the wall of their monolith had appeared.

Then, in December, protests broke out in Timisoara, a city in the Transylvanian region, near Romania's borders with Hungary and Yugoslavia. The protests were sparked by government harassment of the Reverend Laszlo Tokes, a Protestant minister who had been set upon and stabbed by a band of masked men, almost certainly members of the Securitate. On December 16 the protests evolved into a full-scale demonstration. Ceausescu reacted ... Army and Securitate forces, incuding tank and helicopter units, moved in and started firing. The death toll was estimated at an extraordinary four thousand. The United States, Britain, Poland, and even the Soviet Union issued protests. Ceausescu was not in Bucharest to receive them. He was in Iran, going ahead with a scheduled state visit.

By 1989, there was nothing new about such Stalinist indifference - it had been going on since at least 1924 (Lenin's death and the beginning of Stalin's rise), if not since 1917. But what was new was the cultural climate in which ordinary people began to believe that they did not have to accept such treatment.

On December 20, Ceausescu returned to Bucharest and blasted the "fascists" and "terrorists" who were stirring up dissent. The next day at noon he stood on the balcony of the Palace of Parliament to address his people. Television cameras captured the astonishment on his face when his people began to boo and jeer him. Securitate forces swung into action to disperse the crowd. The first casualties were two young men crushed beneath an armored car. Fighting continued through the night, with an estimated forty dead in Bucharest, and another thirty in Cluj, a small city in Transylvania. But as protests erupted in other parts of the country, reports came in that army units were refusing to help the Securitate forces suppress them.

At this point, things began to change very quickly. With an open split between the army and the state police, everyone but perhaps Ceausescu knew that the end was near.

On the morning of December 22, Radio Bucharest announced that Defense Minister Vasile Milea had committed suicide. Neither foreign diplomats in Bucharest nor the Romanian General Staff believed it: they suspected that Milea had been killed by Securitate officers in retaliation for the army's failure to support them.

As often happens in history, when a totalitarian absolutist regime clamps down with its brutal power in an attempt to quell the unrest, it actually merely makes the unrest worse.

That may have been the decisive event. When one hundred fifty thousand protesters gathered later that day in Bucharest's University Square, the army actively joined them in beating back the Securitate. The insurgents captured the Palace of Parliament, the Central Committee headquarters, and other government buildings. That evening the liberated Radio Bucharest announced the formation of the National Salvation Front, which would include Laszlo Tokes and General Stefan Gusa, chief of the General Staff.

Romania was beginning to breathe the fresh air of freedom. One can try to assign credit for this to Pastor Tokes or to General Gusa, but the majority of the credit must go the people themselves, who had been suffering and who saw a chance to topple the individual and the system which caused their suffering.

Soon after the announcement, Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu, who had fled Bucharest by helicopter that morning, were captured by armed insurgents and handed over to the military. On Christmas Day they were put on trial by a self-described "extraordinary military tribunal" and charged with committing genocide, abusing power, undermining the economy, and stealing government funds. For fear that the Securitate would come in with a last-minute rescue, the army did not disclose the site of the trial, and no outside observers were permitted. However, the proceedings were videotaped, and the entire trial was broadcast on Romanian television the following day. The day after that, we in America could see a short clip on our own television screens - an elderly couple huddled in their overcoats and looking bewildered and almost pitiable. Almost. One of Nicolae Ceausescu's replies to his interrogators reflected his posture: "I am the president of Romania and the commander in chief of the Romanian army. I am the president of this people. I will not speak with you provocateurs any more, and I will not speak with the organizers of the putsch."

Although unpleasant, it was a proper start for the new era in Romania's history to fully videotape and broadcast these proceedings. As painful as it was, this was the new type of openness which Romania needed in order to begin properly a new phase in its national saga.

As for Elena Ceausescu, she was no innocent bystander. She was a Politburo member and first deputy prime minister. A few months earlier, when it appeared that ill health might force her husband to step down, she started jockeying for position to succeed him. Now, at the trial, she occasionally piped up with remarks like "Such impudence! I am a member and the chairwoman of the Academy of Sciences. You cannot talk to me in such a way!"

The couple made it easy for the Romanians. Had they eloquently and humbly defended themselves, they might have gained a modicum of sympathy. They could have never retained any form of power, but they could perhaps have found slightly less harsh treatment. As it was, they only infuriated the people even more.

The trial was not a model of due process (although the Ceausescus were offered a defense counsel, whose services they indignantly refused). But there is no doubt that the couple had done the things they were accused of.

Romania knew it had suffered - and here one is justified in personifying the nation, unlike so many other historical narratives, because the understanding of this misery was ubiquitous in the land - but it could not punish the system. One cannot see to it that a system endures the logical consequences of its actions. One can only ensure that the individuals who operated the system face the consequences of their actions. The system itself cannot be punished, only cast aside. People can be punished.

They were sentenced to death by firing squad. Then there ensued macabre confusion. Accounts differ. Perhaps the officer in charge of the firing squad was apprehensive that the Securitate forces, still active, would storm in before the executioners could do their job. Perhaps he and the squad members were awestruck at having in their power the dictators who had oppressed them for so long. Whatever. The result was disorder. The soldiers didn't wait for the formal order to fire, starting to pull their triggers as soon as the Ceausescus stepped outside the building. No one knows how many bullets were fired, but photographs showed the bloody remains.

As with deaths of any brutal ruler, there is a bittersweet emotion - naturally, one is glad that oppressed nation has been freed, and yet it is sobering to realize that after the deaths of thousand of brave rebels, these two additional deaths were still necessary to bring liberty. Both words in the phrase "necessary evil" make themselves felt.

Warehouses broken open by the insurgents after the execution confirmed the widespread belief that, while most Romanians lived in destitution, Party leaders were copiously supplied with luxuries, including beef, chocolate, coffee, and oranges. As Elena Ceausescu was being led to the firing squad, she cried out, "I was like a mother to you!" Mother ate off gold dishes, the kids starved.

In an instant, all the Marxist sloganeering about a classless society, about a people's revolution, and about equality was shown to be a lie. The communist ideology had never been anything more than a facade to cover the dictator's ability to amass personal wealth at the expense of the people. Romania had suffered bitterly for decades so that the ruler and his wife might enjoy the finest luxuries.

Soon after taking power, Nicolae Ceausescu had outlawed Christmas. Now, against the grisly background of his and Elena's execution, with the fighting still continuing, Romanians celebrated the Feast of the Nativity for the first time in more than twenty years.

The great script of history is written to unfold with precise irony - nobody in Romania planned for the overthrow to coincide precisely with Christmas, and nobody in Romania could have manipulated events so exactly even if they had wanted to. Yet the nation received its freedom as its first Christmas present in more than two decades.

Goths, Not Savages

The Goths, the Germanic tribe which controlled most of Europe from the 300’s A.D. to the 500’s A.D., were not primitive cavemen. Some history books still describe them that way; but why? Because the Romans, desperately needing to blame their own decline on someone else, wrote about any other society in such terms.

In fact, the Goths possessed a literate culture, capable of not only producing major scholarly works, but commentaries upon those works. To this day, we possess Gothic commentaries on Gothic translations of the New Testament, and legal contracts written with the subtle sophistication in which lawyers in all cultures and all times pride themselves.

But the Romans could not admit that they had been outwitted, and would rather say that they have been overcome by primitive savages. Thus began the historically incorrect image of the Goths. Historian William Weir writes:

The Barbarians were literally at the gate. It was 408 A.D., and the Gothic king Alaric had led his army from the eastern Roman Empire to journey westward through Greece, across the Alps, and into the heart of Italy. They now surrounded the world’s capital city, controlling all means of transport in and out.

By this time, however, Rome had long ceased to be the world’s capital. The empire had been divided, east and west, and soon the division would become complete, when the Byzantine Empire was recognized as an independent entity. Europe’s Germanic tribes had shown that Rome no longer reigned supreme north of the Alps, and the Persians were demonstrating this same fact at the eastern end of the Mediterranean.

The citizens of Rome could do nothing except bide their time inside the city walls until the detested barbarians decided what to do next. They had no means of communication with the outside world and, worse, had begun to run out of food. Dead bodies started piling up throughout the city, swelling and rotting in the August sun. Then, stories of cannibalism began to spread. People were killing their own friends, it was reported, and eating them on the spot. And some people even heard tales of mothers eating their babies.

Roman imperial power, which once controlled lands from Scotland to Egypt, was now unable even to keep its own capital city secure. Rome was no longer the capital of the world - if indeed it ever truly had been - and now it was not clear if it was the capital of anything at all.

Another story making the rounds was that Serena - niece of the later emperor Theodosius, widow of the Roman general Stilichio, and surrogate mother to the present child-emperor, Honorius - had secretly conspired with Alaric to let the Goths into the city to kill everyone. The claim was based on one truth - her husband’s father was a barbarian, in this case, a Vandal - and numerous leaps of logic that racists were able to make in such situations. Once a barbarian-lover always a barbarian-lover, the thinking went. The senate hastily voted to have Serena put to death; she was strangled immediately.

Such paranoia is typical of empires in decline. Similar mentalities were noted in the last year of imperial Russia before 1917. The Goths were, in fact, open to diplomatic negotiation and even preferred it to open warfare.

Two Roman delegates bravely ventured out from the city and met with Alaric to negotiate his peaceful departure. Alaric’s demands included gold, silver, and the freedom of every barbarian slave inside Rome. “What will you leave us?” asked the delegates. “Your lives,” Alaric replied. Although they were in no real position to do so, the Romans balked at the deal. So Alaric lowered his demand for riches. But he remained firm on the freedom of all barbarians in Rome.

At this point, the Goths have given up their demands for large amounts of money, and are merely asking for the emancipation of slaves. It is the Romans who appear savage, willing to risk war over the principle of preserving slavery: an interesting foreshadowing of the American Civil War. However, before hostilities could begin, calmer heads inside Rome prevailed: Rome desperately desired to preserve the institution of slavery; the Goths wanted to get rid of it. But simple physical calculations showed that the Goths would win overwhelmingly, and so the Romans had to yield, despite their love for the institution of slavery.

The deal was soon settled, and Rome’s gates were opened to deliver the material and human treasures. A mass of 30,000 barbarian slaves poured out of Rome, many of them for the first time in their lives. Alaric kept his word and immediately lifted the siege, allowing for the passage of goods and food to and from the port.

It becomes clear that the Romans were as “savage” - or more so - than the Goths, given that they were almost willing to destroy themselves to defend the institution of slavery, and given that the Goths were willing to back down from their demands for gold and silver simply to free their fellow Germanic tribesmen. Who were the real barbarians here?

Hernan Cortes, Fleeing for His Life

During the first months of 1520, Hernan Cortes and his soldiers spent a number of days in the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan. The politics of the situation were complex and compounded by difficulties in translating. The Aztecs had made allies of some of the neighboring tribal groups - sometimes willing alliances and sometimes forced alliances. Other tribal groups were at war with the Aztecs. The Spanish likewise had both allies and enemies among the locals.

Within the city of Tenochtitlan itself, it was clear that not all the Aztecs were of one mind: some apparently thought that their emperor, Montezuma, was too friendly with Cortes. The situation deteriorated: the emperor went from being the host of the Spaniards to being their prisoner. Cortes decided to leave after the Aztecs assassinated Montezuma, although some say that Cortes killed Montezuma himself. In either case, Cortes decided that it was time to leave. Historian William Weir writes:

Their horses' hooves muffled, the Spanish troops and their Indian allies filed silently through the darkened streets of Tenochtitlan, the fabled city of the Aztec empire. It was raining lightly, and just past midnight on July 1, 1520. Hostility was on every side, but they were not alarmed. "The Aztecs do not fight at night," they had been assured by their commander, the conquistador Hernan Cortes.

Some historians have portrayed Cortes as a butcher who committed killings on a genocidal scale. But in reality the situation, as we have already seen, was complex, and various groups among the Aztecs and other local tribes were engaging in brutal killing among each other. Cortes, in fact, spent much of his time on the run, rather than engaging in brutal oppression. He and his men fled from the city Tenochtitlan, afraid for their own lives:

Then a lantern suddenly shone brightly in the darkness, and a woman's voice shattered the stillness. Out for water, she heard the hoofbeats of the enemy's horses and spotted the shadowy ranks. "Come quickly! Come quickly!" she shouted. "Our enemies are leaving! They are running away!" From a temple top, a priest called out: "Mexican chiefs, your enemies are leaving! Run for your canoes of war!"

The Spaniards now knew that they were in serious trouble. It would get worse. This event would later be known as La Noche Triste or "The Night of Sorrow" in which between 450 and 1,700 Spaniards would be killed along with several thousand Tlaxcalan. The Tlaxcalan were local tribesmen who'd been friendly to the Spanish.

The huge war drum atop the city's giant pyramid sounded, its notes echoing through the city and arousing the populace. Within minutes, volleys of stones, sticks, timbers, anything that could be dropped or thrown, cascaded from the rooftops, knocking marchers to the ground. A torrent of arrows pelted them. Men and women brandishing clubs, stones, and makeshift weapons attacked the fallen, many of whom were weighed down with gold and other loot and could scarcely struggle to their feet. Others rushed to set up the much rehearsed defense of the island city.

Tenochtitlan was a city built on a island in a lake. The island had been reshaped by the Aztecs, and connected to the mainland by bridges and causeways.

In 1520, Tenochtitlan had a population estimated at 200,000. It had been constructed on a blob of land in a volcanic lake in the Valley of Mexico, where the great metropolis of Mexico City stands now. The arriving Spanish marveled at the city, which rivaled in its urbanity the great cities of Europe. Tenochtitlan was linked to the shore by bridges and causeways, set up to allow sections to be dismantled quickly to forestall any attack. Thus Cortes' men had brought with them a makeshift span to cross any gap in a bridge or causeway.

For all its size, and the sophistication of its civil engineering, Tenochtitlan was different from large European cities in one important respect: its society was structured around human sacrifice. No mere sideshow, the frequent bloodlettings, in which healthy young people were dismembered atop the pyramidal temples, were part of the core values of the Aztecs. It was from this society that Cortes was escaping.

Led by Cortes himself, the Spanish soldiers, plus a few hundred Indian allies, now headed for the critical causeway, which would lead them to friendly territory. At its far end, a road would carry them to the land of the Tlaxcalans, many of whom were fighting alongside them. The Tlaxcalans and Aztecs had long been enemies, and the Tlaxcalans were thirsting for a fight.

As the situation unfolded, we see that Hernan Cortes was trying to make a quick, quiet, and peaceful exit from Tenochtitlan. He had no desire for a fight, because he knew that he would most likely lose, being both outnumbered and less familiar with the locale. But a major battle would take place, mainly between the Tenochtitlans and the Tlaxcalans.

Cortes's Indian allies were responsible for the massacre, which Cortes tried to stop. A severe outbreak of smallpox was a major contributor to the fall of Tenochtitlan.

If history accuses Hernando Cortes of anything, it is cowardice rather than butchery. He was simply trying to escape.