[lit-ideas] Re: Gerhard Weinberg and Hari Seldon
- From: david ritchie <profdritchie@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2020 15:32:08 -0800
On Feb 16, 2020, at 2:53 PM, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
David,
Since Asimov used the term Psychohistory in his Foundation stories in the
1940s, serialized as individual stories, and then collected and published
them together as Foundation in 1951 all of which preceded the references to
“legitimate” Psycohistory that you referenced and I just read about in
Wikipedia, I suspect those majoring in Psychohistory suffered a good deal of
collegiate abuse: The SF specialty, Asimov’s acolytes, etc.
Indeed.
I have several books by Kegan but am not sure I have the one you refer to.
“The Price of Admiralty.” Keegan originally wanted to be a naval historian.
What sticks with me, apart from his description of battleships of the
Napoleonic era as virtually unsinkable concentrations of artillery, is a
geography lesson. Keegan’s view is that what distinguishes Britain from the
continent is the number and variety of safe harbors which, unlike say those on
the West coast of France, allow sail to enter and exit much of the time.
Getting out of a French harbor when the wind is predominantly from the West is
difficult.
Here’s an example of Keegan’s prose, “The artillery power of the sailing
man-of-war is best convyed by comparison with that exerted by contemporary
armies. Napoleon’s Army of the North of 1815, that destined to give battle at
Waterloo, took 366 guns of 6-pounder to 12 pounder caliber into the field. The
force of artillerymen needed to work this ‘cannon park’ numbered 9000, and the
train of horses to draw it, its ammunition limbers and its supply wagons at six
horses to a train some 5000. Horse fodder, at 20 lb per horse per day,
amounted to 50 short tons, a supply which also had to be collected and
transported at heavy additional cost in human and animal labour. By contrast,
Nelson’s Trafalgar fleet of twenty-seven ships mounted 2232 guns, of which the
lightest was 12 lb in calibre and the heaviest 68lb. The force of men needed
to work this cannon park, at twelve to two guns (since only one broadside was
manned at a time) was some 14,000, their daily supplies some 3 lb per man
(liquids, which had to be transported at sea as they did not on land, added
another 8lb), which the motive power to manoeuvre the whole artillery force and
its crews (though not the attendant capital costs) came free. In short, the
gun power of Nelson’s Trafalgar fleet exceeded that of Napoleon’s Waterloo army
six times, and if it had had to be transported by land—at a speed five times
less—it ouwld have required over 50,000 gunners and 30,000 horses, as well as a
daily supply of some 300 short tones of fodder and 75 tons of food; the
comparable daily intake of solids and liquids was 70 tons. In brief, six times
as many guns, of much heavier calibre, could be transported daily by Nelson’s
fleet as by Napoleon’s army, at one-fifth of the logistic cost and at five
times the speed.
I went to the book-shelf where I thought it was and instead found Jonathan
Dimbleby’s The Battle of the Atlantic, How the Allies Won the War, which I
see I began but didn’t finish.
The book involving sea power that most impressed me recently was Shattered
Sword, the Untold Story of the Battle of Midway by Jonathan Parshall and
Anthony Tully. By “untold” they mean they are heavily using Japanese
documents and histories in their narrative, something histories written in
English hitherto didn’t do. This book was published in 2005; so it will be
old hat to legitimate historians, but it impressed the heck out of me when I
read it a few months ago.
It is good.
They mention Mahan as influencing the Japanese negatively. Not that the
Americans were that quick to emphasize the Aircraft Carrier in their battle
groups, but they were quicker than the Japanese.
At one time I was especially impressed by H. Stuart Hughes – read his
Consciousness and Society and Sophisticated Rebels, and maybe something else
– not sure, but he did impress me – more than Weinberg has thus far. J
He was an impressive man. I was honored to be his penultimate grad student.
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
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