Africa: One Continent Or Two?

Students are routinely taught to memorize Africa as one of the earth’s seven continents. It’s usually listed as the second-largest, after Asia.

While physically one landmass, Africa is historically and culturally divided. It might be useful to think of Africa as two continents. The Sahara Desert effectively divides the North from the South. In the past and in the present, interaction between these two parts of Africa is limited.

Civilizations developed rather differently. In the North, there were interactions with Asia and Europe over the millennia and centuries. The South was largely isolated. The gene pools are different — the usual markers of skin color, facial features, and hair types distinguish the North African from the Subsaharan African.

The Sahara Desert divides Africa as effectively as the Atlantic or the Pacific divides the Americas from the rest of the world, as historian Tim Marshall writes:

The top third begins on the Mediterranean coastlines of the North African Arabic-speaking countries. The coastal plains quickly become the Sahara, the world’s largest dry desert, which is almost as big as the USA. Directly below the Sahara is the Sahel region, a semi-arid, rock-strewn, sandy strip of land measuring more than 3,000 miles at its widest points and stretching from Gambia on the Atlantic coast through Niger, Chad and right across to Eritrea on the Red Sea. The word Sahel comes from the Arabic sahil, which means coast, and is how the people living in the region think of it — as the shoreline of the vast sand sea of the Sahara. It is another sort of shore, one where the influence of Islam diminishes. From the Sahel to the Mediterranean the vast majority of people are Muslims. South of it there is far more diversity in religion.

Prior to the appearance of Islam, North Africa was as religiously diverse as Subsaharan Africa. Jews, Christians, and animists lived in a peaceful coexistence along with a variety of other tribal belief systems. In the late 600s, the Islamic conquest of North Africa changed the spiritual landscape.

By around 700 A.D., Muslim armies converted large numbers of North Africans to Islam. Those who didn’t convert were sometimes allowed to retain their native religions as they lived in various forms of servitude or slavery. Some clung too fiercely to their beliefs and were killed for that reason. Synagogues and churches were often destroyed and replaced by mosques.

By contrast, Subsaharan Africa retains a more balanced menu of religions. Although Muslim invaders made some progress there, they did not dominate the region as they had in the North. In the Sub-Saharan region, native religions have survived, whereas they were largely exterminated in North Africa. Likewise, Christianity has persisted in the South, but is nearly extinct in the North.

Subsaharan Africa hosts a diversity of climates and correspondingly a diversity of agriculture. A larger variety of crops is grown there than in the North. Agricultural products are a major export for Sub-Saharan nations, as are a variety of ores from the area’s mines. Exports include: uranium, copper, bauxite, and gold.

Good Economic Thinking Keeps the Peace: The Coolidge Administration Eases Tensions Between European Powers

After the November 1918 armistice, the Treaty of Versailles in the following year, and a series of treaties which addressed the various details of the postwar settlements, Europe was left with a tenuous peace. The tensions between the belligerents of WW1 remained significant. Most of these tensions revolved around economic factors.

The reparations required by the treaties, along with international debts on both sides of the conflict, created unstable circumstances, as various nations found themselves with crushing payment schedules, some of which were simply impossible. If there were significant defaults, or if there were refusals to negotiate the terms, economic tensions could morph into the resumption of armed combat.

President Calvin Coolidge was determined to reduce these strains and maintain international peace. A group of his appointees focused on the European economies: Andrew Mellon, Charles Dawes, Frank Kellogg, and others. Among the others was Seymour Parker Gilbert, whose career included a stint in the Treasury Department before he dealt with the European situation, as the New York Times reported in February 1927. The Times explained that Parker Gilbert was the person to have the title of Under-Secretary of the Treasury:

It is a comparatively new office. Secretary Mellon created it in 1921 to give added dignity and authority to his brilliant young aide, S. Parker Gilbert, now Agent General for Reparations. The elderly Secretary, unfamiliar at first with the organization of the Treasury and with public life in Washington, found in Gilbert, then less than 30 years of age, a veritable tower of strength, and promoted him to sit at his right hand.

Gilbert stayed in that position until 1924. Then he became Agent General for Reparations. His task was to monitor reparations payments, mainly those from Germany. He also was in a position to point out when it was time to renegotiate the terms of the reparation payment schedules, and to advise in those negotiations. Ensuring reasonable and smooth renegotiations of the payment schedules was central in keeping the peace in Europe.

The Dawes Plan, implemented in 1924 under the leadership of Charles Dawes, initiated the first round of refinancings among the European nations, but it was also conceived as merely the first step in the process of bringing about realistic refinancing. The Dawes Plan did not consider itself to be the definitive answer to the situation, but rather merely a first step. Parker Gilbert would take the next step, as historian Erich Eyck writes:

Dafür, daß die Reparationsfrage jetzt akut wurde, ist in erster Linie der Reparationsagent Parker Gilbert verantwortlich. Der Dawes-Plan hatte ausdrücklich auf eine definitive Lösung verzichtet und sich nur das beschränkte Ziel gesetzt, einen Übergangszustand zu schaffen, in dem die deutsche Wirtschaft wieder aufgebaut und das Vertrauen zu ihr wiederhergestellt werden konnte. Diese Aufgabe war nach Parker Gilberts Ansicht gelöst; nun war nach seiner Meinung der Zeitpunkt für die endgültige Lösung gekommen, wobei Deutschland seine Aufgabe „unter eigener Verantwortung ohne ausländische Überwachung und ohne Transferschutz zu erfüllen hat”.

Gilbert remained active in the European finance scene for a number of years, constantly engaged in diplomacy, as the New York Times reported in December 1928:

In an effort to straighten out the remaining difficulties in the way of summoning the experts’ commission for the final settlement of Germany’s reparations debt, Parker Gilbert, the Agent General, had a conference lasting one and one-half hours with Premier Poincare today.

Parker Gilbert brought the Dawes Plan to its expected culmination, and worked on developing some plan that would be the next step in resolving Europe’s financial situation, as journalist Catherine Bowen reported in February 1929:

For four years Seymour Parker Gilbert, the Agent General of Reparations, directed the Workings of the Dawes Plan to a conclusion that certainly cannot fall far short of the highest hopes of its founders.

One central point in the discussions of debts and reparations was that several European nations were eager to press Germany to make the payments required of it; the Treaty of Versailles and various other treaties had demanded impossible sums of money from Germany. Reparations were also initially demanded from Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey; those demands were later dropped, and Germany alone remained to be tortured by an unrealistic payment schedule.

Part of the Dawes Plan had included loan guarantees for Germany; Germany could borrow the money needed for reparations payments. Lenders were willing to loan the money to Germany once the Dawes Plan had guaranteed that the money would be repaid.

Catherine Bowen noted:

As Mr. Gilbert foresaw, the Dawes plan has played its full part, and it is about to be replaced by a new agreement. An experts committee, recently appointed, is to make a complete and definite settlement of Germany’s reparations debt.

But these same nations, demanding from German strict compliance with an unachievable payment schedule, were themselves loath to repay their own debts. France, for example, had borrowed huge sums from the United States.

As Charles Dawes and Parker Gilbert adjusted Germany’s payment schedules, Andrew Mellon began negotiating France’s repayment of the money it had borrowed from the United States.

Parker Gilbert worked with Hjalmar Schacht, the president of the German central bank, and with Julius Curtius, Germany’s minister of economics. On the French side, there was at least a bit of enthusiasm for any plan which would ensure payments from Germany: the French hoped that the reparations payments would act as a sort of economic stimulus in France, an idea first promoted at a conference in the town of Thoiry in 1926. That conference included Gustav Stresemann and Aristide Briand, among others, as Erich Eyck reports:

Übrigens stand Schacht durchaus nicht allein in Deutschland. Aus der Wirtschaftsminister Curtius setzte sich dafür ein, Gilberts Anregung aufzunehmen, und auch in der Öffentlichkeit wurden viele Stimmen dafür laut, allerdings auch manche dagegen. Der Reparationsagent bemühte sich indessen, bei den Regierungen der Ententeländer Stimmung für eine endgültige Regelung der Frage zu machen. Für den wichtigsten Gläbiger, Frankreich, hatte sie besonders deswegen einen Reiz, weil dies bei Wegfall des Transfersschutzes hoffen konnte, einen Teil der deutschen Reparationsschuld zu kapitalisieren und zu kommerzialisieren, mit anderen Worten auf das Programm von Thoiry zurückzukommen. Außerdem stand es vor der Notwendigkeit, das Mellon-Berenger’sche Abkommen über die Zahlungen an die Vereinigten Staaten bis zum 1. August 1929 zu ratifizieren, da es sonst vierhundert Millionen Dollar sofort bar bezahlen mußte.

The Mellon-Berenger Agreement reduced the amount of money which France owed to the United States, and eased the payment schedules. While France was demanding reparations from Germany, it wanted its debt to the United States canceled, not reduced.

Putin Watches and Waits: His Analysis of the West

In early 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin gained the world’s attention and disapproval by means of his unprovoked attack on Ukraine and the atrocities and war crimes committed during this invasion. Historians began to examine the decades leading up to this assault to understand Putin’s thinking.

Putin’s behavior reveals a certain systematic response to actions by other nations. Parallels exist between Putin’s 2014 invasion of Crimea and his 2022 invasion of the rest of Ukraine. (Crimea is part of Ukraine.)

At least two events seem to have led up to the 2014 invasions: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “reset” presentation to Russian diplomats and President Obama’s “red line” pronouncement regarding the conflict in Syria.

In March 2009, Clinton presented an electrical switch on a piece of wood to Russian diplomats. It was a red-button-type mechanism, the type often used for emergency stopping factory equipment. It bore a label which was intended to say “reset” in Russian. The presentation was botched in several ways: the safety-switch hardware expressed emergency procedures, not deliberate rebooting; the translators had chosen the wrong Russian word, and so the label read something like “overload” or overwork; the label itself was written in the letters of the Roman alphabet instead of the Cyrillic alphabet. The hoped-for symbolism disappeared in a confused and blundered gesture.

Clinton had hoped to communicate that there would be a “reset” in Russo-American relations. Instead, she communicated incompetence. It is not clear why America would desire a reset, given that the U.S. had been able to gain some leverage on Russia during the tenure of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from January 2005 until January 2009.

In an August 2012 press conference, President Obama stated that if the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons, that would constitute the crossing of a “red line” and that there would be “enormous consequences” from the U.S. if such a line were crossed. Obama was quite clear, repeating the phrase “red line” again during the press conference. When the Syrian government did, in fact, use chemical weapons, Obama failed to issue the “enormous consequences” he’d assured the public that’d implement.

These two incidents showed to Putin that the U.S. was not ready to oppose Russian military aggression, and so the Russian Ground Forces invaded Crimea in 2014.

Similarly, the collapse of the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan in 2021 was a signal to Putin that Russia could invade Ukraine in 2022 without significant U.S. resistance.

Another factor which Putin considered was the U.S. failure to commit to assisting in Ukrainian defense. In the 1990s, when Ukraine surrendered its nuclear weapons, American diplomats issued an “assurance” that the U.S. would help Ukraine defend itself if needed. In diplomatic jargon, an “assurance” is not a guarantee or binding treaty. Had the U.S. signed a treaty guaranteeing its willingness to assist in Ukrainian defense, then Putin would have considered that factor before attacking in 2022.

From the Congo Free State to the DRC: A Perpetual Problem by Any Other Name

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is both fascinating and troubled. Not to be confused with its similarly-named neighbor, the Republic of Congo, the DRC is located in the interior of Africa, almost entirely land-locked, except for a single thin sliver of land which leads to an even smaller bit of coast on the Atlantic.

The physical borders of the territory haven’t changed much since 1885, although its political structure has undergone numerous changes, as historian David van Reybrouck wrote in 2010:

In 1885 the region fell into the hands of King Leopold II of Belgium. Leopold named it the Etat Independant du Congo (Independent State of Congo), commonly referred to in the Dutch language as Congo-Vrijstaat. In 1908, in the face of virulent criticism at home and abroad, he transferred his holdings to the Belgian state. It would continue to be called the Belgian Congo until 1960, when it became an independent country, the Republic of Congo. In 1965 Joseph-Desire Mobutu carried out a coup that kept him in power for thirty-two years. During that period, the country received a new name, Zaire. In 1997, when Mobutu was dethroned by Laurent-Desire Kabila, it was renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The “democratic” part required some patience, however, for it was only in 2006 that the first free elections were held in more than forty years. Joseph Kabila, son of Laurent-Desire, was elected president.

The physical boundaries of the territory did “exhibit a striking geographical cohesion,” he notes. They “coincided to a great degree with the drainage basin of the Congo River.”

The river flows through the heart of the DRC and on to the Atlantic: “Each stream, each watercourse empties at some point into that single, powerful river.” So the shape of the country is to some extent natural and organic.

While the land of the DRC exhibits a unity of form, the people do not. The warfare between the various tribes has been nearly constant during some decades. This is one reason for the region’s failure to develop, as historian Tim Marshall explains:

The DRC is an illustration of why the catch-all term 'developing world’ is far too broad-brush a way to describe countries which are not part of the modern industrialized world. The DRC is not developing, nor does it show any signs of so doing. The DRC should never have been put together; it has fallen apart and is the most under-reported war zone in the world, despite the fact that six million people have died there during wars which have been fought since the late 1990s.

The term “developing world” was introduced to replace the category of “third world” in describing various states. But only some “third world” countries develop, while others don’t, so it is a mistake to describe all “third world” countries as “developing” countries.

A big task for historians who write about the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is this: to explain why some countries develop and others don’t. The world has seen clear examples of both paths. What are the cultural, social, and political obstacles to civilization? Which mechanisms exist inside nations to promote or oppose development?

The Nazis Make a Big Mistake: Why Attack Russia?

In June 1941, the German army began its surprise attack on Russia. Hitler had ordered the assault. Russia and Germany had been at least nominally allied up to that point in time.

Many historians see Hitler’s attack on Russia as a strategic and tactical mistake.

By early December 1941, the Germans had advanced to within a few miles of Moscow, but could not take the city. During that same month, the Soviets began a counterattack which drove the Germans back. The Germans would not come that close to the city again, and during the next three-and-a-half years, the eastern front between the Germans and Soviets would see bitter, violent, and tragic fighting.

After enduring the harsh winter, the German army was ready to fight again in early 1942. Instead of driving toward Moscow, the second year of fighting on the eastern front would focus on the southern end of the more-than-1000-mile-long combat zone: the Eastern Front stretched more than 1,600 km from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea.

The details of German maneuvers on the Eastern Front, like the entire Eastern Front itself, and like the entire war itself, were the ideas of Hitler, who overrode the wisdom of his military experts. The Nazi Party imposed Hitler’s war plans on the German people, just as Hitler imposed them on the officers of the German military, as historian Richard Overy explains:

When German forces had renewed their onslaught in the early summer of 1942, Stalingrad had not been high on Hitler’s list of priorities. His one thought had been to secure a decisive annihilating victory over the Red Army and crush his Bolshevik enemy once and for all. With the east eliminated, German resources could then be turned to defeat the western Allies. The issue was where the blow should fall. German army leaders favored an attack at the center of the front, to seize the Soviet capital, Moscow. This was where the bulk of Soviet forces was concentrated; the loss of the city would be devastating for Soviet morale. Hitler thought otherwise. The conquest of the Soviet Union was ideologically inspired, but motivated by material greed. Hitler wanted the industries, the oil and the grain of southern Russia; here was real Lebensraum, or living-space. He reasoned that if Germany captured these resources from the enemy the Soviet war effort would be brought to a halt, while the Third Reich would become all but invincible. On 5 April he issued his Führer Directive for the new summer campaign: a general blow to the south against the Crimea, the Don steppe and the Caucasus.

The Eastern Front would continue to be one disaster after another for the Germans until the end of the war. It would continue to be one victory after another for the Soviets.

Both sides would pay dearly in terms of the many lives lost. Both sides were guilty of atrocities committed against civil populations and against POWs. Both sides cajoled, threatened, extorted, and forced their populations into the war effort, whether it was the civilian home front or the young men conscripted.

There is a curious symmetry in these mirror images: Soviet Socialism fighting against National Socialism — one tyranny against another.

The Western Front, by contrast, was asymmetrical: free societies with free market economies opposing Hitler’s socialist dictatorship.

Despite the parallels between the two belligerents on the Eastern Front, there was at least one striking asymmetry: The Nazis were fighting a war of more-or-less unprovoked agression, while the Soviet Socialists were defending their homeland. This difference was arguably one of the variables which helped the Soviets achieve victory: soldiers defending their homes are thought to be more motivated.

Historians have identified and analyzed Hitler’s numerous mistakes: starting a war on the Easter Front at all; ignoring the advice of his military officers; overestimating the abilities of the German army; and others.