Why ‘bad news’ history is more useful than ‘good news’ history.
Our self congratulatory focus on ‘good history’ is an easily made mistake – so often more lessons are learnt from the study of failure than they are from our obsession with success. The tendency to focus on the D-Day landings and their subsequent liberation of occupied Europe makes for great entertainment but it would serve us better to concentrate on the disastrous occupation of Singapore some two years earlier.
So-called Fortress Singapore was penetrated by the Japanese in a matter of days. This was more than a strategic loss for the British Empire; it called time on our imperial pretensions. The Mother country badly let her colonies down.
Historically we had always muddled through; after all we were the British Empire. Consequently the Japanese were not taken seriously as a fighting force. In the face of an Asian enemy we suffered from an extreme superiority complex. Our troops, a motley collection of young boys pulled primarily from India were untrained, scared and reluctant to fight for a Mother country who had not bothered to consult them over the war. And they were unforgivably underequipped. Our bombers were obsolete, there were no tanks and the fleet never materialised. The forces in the Malaypennisular and Singapore were hung out to dry by Great Britain in the face of a superior enemy.
There was never a public enquiry into why we lost Singapore – egg on Churchill’s face was the last thing a Britain on the wane wanted after the war. But lessons could still be learnt from this defeat. To win at war the troops (from whatever country) need to act as one, they need to be properly trained and equipped (that will always cost the British tax payer) and the enemy should never be underestimated. If we can’t meet these criteria war should not be undertaken.
Tessa Dunlop
February 24th, 2010 at 3:06 pm
All true… History is almost always the lesson nobody remembers…
February 25th, 2010 at 8:46 pm
My History teacher back in high-school days said something that has not faded away as the years go by – and those are reaching to the 30+ years mark: “History is a tool that studies past events so we can better understand the present, and properly prepare for the future”. So many destructive endeavors we take upon today could so easily be avoided if we just paid due attention to our past. Makes me wonder what our representatives went to school for…
I’m a newcomer to your blog (following a History Channel program: The Lost Pyramid). Love what I have read thus far
March 15th, 2010 at 1:24 pm
Cinematic history is a useful barameter of whether events are deemed good or bad news history. Hollywood was reportedly under considerable pressure to pump out war films during WWII, but not sure the current regime exerts the same influence at Pixar, Dreamworks or Miramax.
It may be a sweeping generalisation, but good news history tends to be told in real time (presumably for propaganda), whereas bad news stories don’t tend to hit the silver screens until long after events.
It might not be your usual research material but the Daily Mail featured a first hand account from a survivor of the Japanese occupation of Singers. He had been carted off to build the Burma-Siam railway, and not surprisingly had issues with the glamourisation of events depicted in Bridge Over The River Kwai – a film now heralded as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”, but not necessarily, according to his account, historically accurate!
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С уважением,…
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