What history are you reading?

Just finished Rioters and Citizens: Mass Protest in Imperial Japan by Michael Lewis a little while back. It's about the rice riots (rural protests, urban riots and steel and miners strikes (with rioting and dynamite)) in 1918. Only book I've found on the subject, very good. A bit liberal, but very good. Going to write something up for history soonish about it.

I just found a few academic articles about these events as well, not read them yet, and some which deal with the strikes and riots in the ten years previous, and the more traditional ikki (yes they had a special word for rice riots) in the Meiji period, especially around 1868.

While looking for those, I also found a couple of articles about the rice riots in South India and Sierra Leone in 1918/1919 which look pretty interesting, neither of which I knew of. I'm planning to find out more of the lesser known events around 1916-1920, like Brazil. It'd be nice to do a "revolutionary wave" feature on here ready for October - linking to Russia and some of the others.

As well as that, I just got "Contending with Stalinism: Soviet Power and Popular Resistance in the 1930s" out of the library today. I covers the Vichuga uprising of 1932, the Pitelinskii Uprising, Riazan, 1930, and some others. Never heard about these, so looking forward to it.

edit: how's this for productivity?

Lined up on the shelf, I've got a couple of Hungary '56 books: "In the Name of the Working Class", and "Twelve Days" (new one out this year or last), I'm also going to re-read the Andy Anderson, and the things in the library I've not got to yet. edit: just found this PDF of an Aptheker book on it: http://www.kibristasosyalistgercek.net/misc/Aptheker-Truth_About_Hungary_1957.pdf

Once I've done that, I'm going to get some stuff on Czechoslovakia '68/Prague Spring. And France '68 as well.

Then after that, if I can find anything worth reading on it, East Germany '53 and the gulag uprisings and some others around then (maybe Poland '56, stuff like that).

I don't believe you. Or I'm boring. Either way.

Yes please! Wouldn't mind having the whole thing if it's going. Although I can't guarantee to get to it quick.

Well, I think that explains the lack of histiorography. It's really not had that much attention in terms of political literature either. OK new thread on this tomorrow.

http://libcom.org/forums/culture/what-are-you-reading-at-the-moment

Slowly reading Bruno Ramirez, When Worker Fight. It's a study of the history of industrial relations in the US before the Wagner Act and all that. (Leftist trainspotting bonus points: Ramirez used to connected to Midnight Notes or ZeroWork and quotes Mario Tronti in a few random bits.)

You should never judge a book by it's cover, especially when the title suffices.

i just finished a book called "The Long March," by Sun Shuyun. guess what it's about?

i found it to be terribly interesting, though, as it's mostly an account - put together from interviews with actual participants - testifying to the, erm... less than ideal nature of the Communists during the Long March, before, and after (but before the final victory - doesnt deal with that at all). i know that most people here would take it for granted that the CP would've been scummy, even in its earlier history, but what i'd read or heard about it beforehand painted a relatively more idealistic, and decent picture of things. actually had a class on Chinese Communism in school once, and while we did a ton of discussion about how awful things were after the commies took over, my teacher really did fall for the more idealistic line of how they were beforehand - leaving a person to furrow their brow and scratch their head in confusion, that such wonderful fellows might rule so awfully (leading many, of course, to say that "communism just doesnt work" or "socialism just doesnt work" or "you cant have an equal society - look, they tried!" etc etc). people who were actually involved in the march (which was, nonetheless, an astounding feat) - no high-ranking people, mind you - discuss being kidnapped into the army, the ideological fights resulting in massive purge after massive purge, the less than idealistic reality of massive *desertion* at various points of the march, of taking food from peasants who had barely enough to feed themselves (particularly in the part about Tibet), of the strategic and tactical failures made by members of the party who are considered untouchable to this day, the (relative) rehabilitation of Otto Braun... etc.

really good book, if you're interested in chinese communist history.

Recently read Clive Bloom "Terror Within: terrorism and the dream of a British republic" which was disappointing as it includes some irish, Scottish, Welsh nationalists who were also republicans, and English physical force class strugglers who were also republicans and he concentrates just on the "terrorism" - which seems to mean any form of political violence. no sign of islamic republicans and their terrorism! has some interesting stuff in there but lacks proper contextualisation - ie it's not a proper history of "British Republicanism". even includes irish republican invasions of Canada from USA.

We would love to have that article in our library terry, do you still have it in some text format? it'd be great if you could submit it. Depending on word count it could be possible to chop it up/down for our history section too.

No I don't have it in text John, but it is possible to cut and paste from pdf, will do. An earlier version which was on the afed site in text isn't there anymore I think, but was stolen by a dissident republican site and is to be found here: http://irelandsown.net/midnight.html ..hmm I made the anti-nationalist argument a little more explicit in the later version.

While looking for that I came across a bit of a local history on early Whiteboys in Kilkenny here:
http://homepage.eircom.net/~duchas/steeples/SteepleVol1/whiteboys.htm

Yeah catch that is not so much akin to the sources I'm looking for, as the one I would like to see exist!, anything with even a small mention would be good to know about. One day I would like to do a proper study on them.

I take a dim view of putting history into a national (in the geographic sense) box....it means once you leave Tipperary for London you leave the narrative of "Irish history"..thereby removing the 1797 royal navy mutiny, the Chartists, the Eureka stockade etc... from "Irish history". From another point of view it is impossible to understand the history of a particular country without reference to the history of adjoining countries, especially but not exclusivly, when they are in the same state.

You reading the abridged or unadbridged version of Anarchist Voices, syndicalist? I've read the abridged, was really interesting (Kropotkin's daughter is SO angry at everything!)

I ordered the unabridged version, but haven't got it yet unfortunately

Unabridged. I read the abridged and have found the unabridged to be well worth the dollars spent (for me at least). So if you thought the unabridged volume was good, you'll find this one even better---more extensive.

a few months ago i read 1919 and dynamite. many years ago i read sidney hook's autobiography, and the total picture of the US in the 1910s sounds horrible. a level of misery and jingo to match what's going on now.

terry, thanks for your references, that all sounds very interesting.

Two books I've read lately, both of which were written in Hebrew but one available in English:

• Without Fear and Prejudice, by Nitza Erel: a history of Haolam Hazeh, a radical newspaper which was a platform for Uri Avnery's anti-establishment, leftist national liberation ideology. Turned out to be an interesting overview of the underside of Israeli politics during the first stage of the paper's life under Avnery's editorship (1950-1965), before he decided to try and get elected into the Knesset. I had previously read an account of his doings during his first term (a list of his speeches there), which clearly indicates the follies of electoral reformism, though I'm sure that that wasn't the intention.
• Where are all Those Bourgeoisies? The History of the Israeli Bourgeoisie by Amir Ben-Porat: a history of the bourgeois in Palestine from the late 1800's to the present day. I'm reading this right now, and find it do be very interesting, though a lot less readable than the other one. It seems to have some kind of neo-Marxist analysis involving a new bourgeois of professionals, which I will have to look into later; the information is interesting in itself, though.

Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes, on world history 1914-91

Very insightful on the overall pattern of this period:

- 1914- 1945; "the Age of Catastrophe"
- 1947-73: "the Golden Age"
- after 1973 - the "Crisis Decades" (ie, sliding back towards catastrophe....)

etc

Haven't finished it yet, but he doesn't think the prospects for the world social system are very rosy.
Very good early chapter on why war in this period is totally unlike the wars of the previous century and represents a clear tendency towards barbarism, and another one on why the economic crisis of the 1930s was qualitatively different from the cyclical crises of the previous century. I say this because quite a few people on these boards have trouble seeing this.

Shame he doesn't understand revolution or socialism. He's a 'soft' Stalinist in his actual politics. Which contradicts a lot of his insights. He shows for example that between World War One abd World War Two there was a real 'advance' in barbarism. But because of his rock solid committment to anti-fascism, he justifies the 1939-45 war.

I read these over the last year or so and wasn't that impressed and I've got a lot of time for Hobsbawm. They were useful for collecting references and I've got a list as long as my arm to chase, but I don't think they gelled very well at all. Hobsbawm's best is still Captain Swing for my money.

Ret Marut does that book have anything on this: