Germany demanded that France cede French Congo to Germany in exchange for a withdrawal of German troops from Morocco.
Turkish troops ambushed Albanian rebels at Ipek.
Last edition:
Showing posts with label French Empire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label French Empire. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 15, 2026
Friday, July 3, 2026
Monday, July 3, 1911. Panther arrives.
The SMS Panther arrived off of the coast of Agaidir.
A British merchant marine strike with the strikers largely prevailing in their demands.
Lightning struck the south-west comer of the Anglican Christ Church Cathedral in Fredericton, New Brunswick, rusling in a major fire doing damaged to the structure and causing its bells to fall.
It was restored.
William Howard Taft visited Marion, Indiana.
Gen. José González Salas, who had served in Diaz's army, was appointed Secretary of War and Navy of Mexico.
Last edition:
Sunday, July 2, 1911. Krazy Kat debuts.
Wednesday, July 1, 2026
Saturday, July 1, 1911. The Agadir Crisis commences.
Germany delivered the unwelcome news to France that Germany had dispatched the SMS Panther with troops to occupy Agadir, part of French Morocco, on the pretext that it was to protect German citizens there.
The action would bring Europe to the edge of war.
Australia introduced compulsory military service for men ages 12 to 26, although half were exempted in various ways.
The Jewish Literary Society was closed by Imperial authorities in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
It was a Saturday, and the Saturday before Independence Day.
Last edition:
Friday, June 30, 1911. The Navy acquires an airplane.
Monday, June 1, 2026
Saturday, June 1, 1946. Cochin China.
French High Commissioner Georges Thierry d'Argenlieud recognized a French controlled "Autonomous Republic of Cochin-China" in French Indochina in violation of the Ho-Sainteny agreement. The proto state, which had been a pre World War Two administrative unit, would later become South Vietnam and would lead directly to the French Indochinese War.
Ho Chi Minh was in France negotiating under presumptions raised by the Ho-Sainteny agreement at the time.
Georges Thierry d'Argenlieu is an unusual figure as he was a French diplomat, Admiral, and a Catholic Priest. From a family of naval officers, he started off in life in that path before becoming a Priest in the 1920s. During World War Two he was recalled to naval service and would serve the Free French. He was an ardent Gaullist and it was that, rather than an opposition to Communism, that pushed him towards the creation of Cochin China.
Seriously devout, upon retiring from naval service in 1947, he entered a monastery, where he died in 1964 at age 75.
The Senate granted Truman emergency powers to end strikes. The House had done so the prior week.
Second World War Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu was executed.
Romania tends not to get that much attention in the West and therefore Antonescu, who remains a large and controversial figure in Romania, does not. His reign was abhorrent and attendant with all the crimes that the Nazis afflicted during World War Two. He none the less retains a small following.
Last edition:
Thursday, May 30, 1946. First post war Indianapolis 500.
Tuesday, May 26, 2026
Wednesday, May 26, 1926. Riffians surrender.
Flag of the Rif Republic.
The Riffians surrendered, bringing to an end the Rif War.
Last edition:
Tuesday, May 25, 1926. Ukrainian assassination in Paris.
Labels: 1920s, 1926, Calvin Coolidge, Crime, law, Personalities, Russian Civil War, Ukraine, Ukrainian National Army
Saturday, April 11, 2026
Thursday, April 11, 1946. Nostra culpa.
Einstein warned "I believe that the abominable deterioration of ethical standards stems primarily from the mechanization and depersonalization of our lives ... Nostra culpa!"
First powered flight of the X-1.
X-1 in flight.
Forced labor in French overseas territories, which had allowed for annual conscription for government projects, was banned.
The final edition of the China Burma Indian soldiers newspaper the Roundup was published. It was a reprise of the war, and on its last page ran a selection of pinups, a feature of the newspaper with its pinups being a bit racier than Yank's.
In the last issue of this series (1946) we ran a story from the Rocky Mountain News about pregnant German women. I.e., women who had become pregnant by American troops to whom they were not (and could not be, at that time), married. The news ran the story in a somewhat lighthearted fashion, but that didn't match the reality.
Such children, of whom there were at least 200,000 by Allied troops, actually faced pretty rough conditions, as discussed here:
Occupation children
Last edition:
Tuesday, April 9, 1946. The Bomb, the accused, and pregnant Fräuleins.
Friday, December 26, 2025
Wednesday, December 26, 1945. Boxing Day.
Seagulls surround the USS Wisconsin after it dumping of Christmas meal leftovers.
Former Vietnamese Emperor Duy Tân, 45, (Nguyễn Phúc Vĩnh San) was killed in an airplane crash in Central Africa.
As Emperor, he had participated in an anti French rebellion while only 16 years old, an event which lead to the French removing him from his throne. He thereafter went into exile on Réunion Island, where he retained pro independence views. During World War Two he held anti Vichy views and entered the Free French Navy, and then Army, when the island was liberated from Vichy. DeGaulle, realizing how desperate the situation in French Indochina was, was having him returned to Vietnam where he would have been re-installed as Emperor, which would have amounted to deposing Boa Dai, who had sided with Vichy. His untimely death left the Communist dominated Viet Minh as the only real functioning anti colonial force in the region.
Still highly regarded in Vietnam, most Vietnamese cities have streets named after him. His remains were reinterred in Vietnam in 1987.
The Red Chinese won the Gaoyou–Shaobo Campaign in which the Nationalist troops were principally made up of units that had formerly collaborated with the Japanese.
Admiral of the Fleet Roger John Brownlow Keyes, 1st Baron Keyes, who in spite of his age saw some service in World War Two, died at age 73.
Last edition:
Tuesday, December 25, 1945. Christmas.
Tuesday, December 23, 2025
Wednesday, December 23, 1925. Things in Arabia.
Wario2, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia CommonsPeace having been concluded, Nejd troops entered Jeddah.
This was the conclusion of a monumental event that had been decades in the making, recreating, with slightly larger boundaries, the former extent of the First Saudi State which had come to an end in 1818. It also demonstrated the tricky nature of British support, as both sides in the conflict had been supported by the British during World War One, although only the Hashemite Kingdom of Hejaz had been active supporters of the British backed Arab Revolt.
It took oil, of course, to make Saudi Arabia what it is today, and in part what it is, is a house of cards, still ruled by one family.
Henri de Jouvenel was appointed High Commissioner of the Levant, the French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon.
Last edition:
Sunday, December 21, 1925. Premier of Battleship Potemkin.
Tuesday, September 23, 2025
Sunday, September 23, 1945. A call to arms.
The Viet Minh's Resistance Committee of the Saigon-Cholon Region was set up and issued an order calling for non-collaboration with the French. It was effectively a call to arms.
The Egyptian government demanded that British forces withdraw from the Sudan, prior to its incorporation with Egypt.
Last edition:
Saturday, September 22, 1945. Patton spouts off . . . again.
Monday, September 22, 2025
Saturday, September 22, 1945. Patton spouts off . . . again.
In what would prove to be a last straw for Gen. Eisenhower, Gen. Patton expressed skepticism over denazification, comparing the Nazis to Republicans and Democrats.
Patton was growing increasingly frustrated now that peace had arrived. If Eisenhower could have read the comments in his journal, he would have been relieved by this time.
The Huaiyin–Huai'an Campaign ended in communist victory in China.
Former French pows went on a rampage in Saigon and killed members of the Viet Minh and innocent civilians, including children. French civilians joined in.
Last edition:
Wednesday, September 19, 1945. Kim Il Sung returns to Korea.
Friday, September 5, 2025
Saturday, September 5, 1925. Picnic Etiquette
The Saturday Evening Post anticipated the start of school in most localities the following Tuesday.
Ethel Hays portrayed a still familiar type.
Proclamation, September 5, 1925Purpose: To commemorate the cross erected and dedicated at Fort Niagara by Father Millett on Good Friday, 1688Date: September 5, 1925WHEREAS, by section 2 of an Act of Congress approved June 8, 1906 (34 Stat. 225), the President was authorized “in his discretion, to declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated upon the lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States to be national monuments, and may reserve as a part thereof parcels of land, the limits of which in all cases shall be confined to the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected”;AND WHEREAS, Father Millett, a French Jesuit Priest, who came to Canada – then known as New France – in 1667, and who served about fifteen years as a missionary among the Onondaga and Oneida Indians within what is now the State of New York, and subsequently became a chaplain in the French Colonial Forces, first at Fort Frontenac and later at Fort Niagara, did, on Good Friday, 1688, erect and dedicate a cross on what is now the Fort Niagara Military Reservation; and the Knights of Columbus of the Sixth New York District have requested that a suitable site be set apart thereon for the erection of another cross commemorative of the cross erected and blessed by Father Millett;NOW THEREFORE, I, Calvin Coolidge, President of the United States of America, under authority of the said Act of Congress do hereby reserve as a site for the said monument, the following described parcel of land situated within the limits of the military reservation of Fort Niagara, New York, and do hereby declare and proclaim the same to be a national monument to commemorate the cross erected and dedicated at Fort Niagara by Father Millett on Good Friday, 1688, viz:Beginning at an iron pipe on the northerly line of old stone block house (building No. 33) produced, and seventy-four (74) feet westerly from the northwest corner of said block house, running thence eighteen (18) feet westerly along said northerly line produced to an iron pipe; thence northerly at right angles to above line eighteen (18) feet to an iron pipe; thence easterly on a line parallel to the north line of block house produced and eighteen (18) feet distant northerly therefrom, eighteen (18) feet to another iron pipe; thence southerly at right angles to said northerly line of block house eighteen feet to the point of beginning; containing 0.0074 acres more or less.IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.Done at the City of Washington this 5th day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and twenty-five and the Independence of the United States the one hundred and fiftieth.
Centerville, Arkansas hit a still standing record of 112F.
The New Yorker celebrated tennis.
And Colliers discussed Picnic etiquette.
Last edition:
Monday, August 31, 1925. Bombing Ajdir.
Labels: 1920s, 1925, Aircraft, French Navy, Hawaii, Morocco, Peru, Rif War, South America, Spanish Navy, U.S. Navy
Wednesday, September 3, 2025
Monday, September 3, 1945. The new Post War World.
"Japanese soldiers are shown marching through Nanking's residential section. These soldiers are still fully armed but under perfect control at all times. Photographer: Lt. Richard Loeb. 3 September, 1945."
On Monday, September 3, 1945, people woke up to a new world, whether they realized it or not.
The prior day Japan, the last Axis hold out, surrendered.
May people had the day off, as it was Labor Day.
With this entry, we end our daily tracking of events 80 days in the past. When we started tracking events 80 years ago, it was because we were coming up on the 80th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Events of the 1940s otherwise are not really the focus of this blog, and 80 years is an odd period to look back to retrospectively, although no odder, I suppose, than 125 years, 115, and 120 years, which this blog otherwise does, although in the context of this blog's focus, that actually is less odd. The tacking of those other dates fills in gaps left in the focus of this blog when we started posting on the Punitive Expedition from a 100 year focus. Just as here we failed to fill in the dates from 1939 to 1941, which were very much part of the Second World War story, we failed to fill in the dates from 1900 to 1916, which were very much part of the overall story of the event we were focusing on.
We still occasionally post events 100 years past, and 50 years past, although not all that frequently. And we will likely catch some 80 years past when they are very significant. Should this author make to 2030, chances are good that we'll start again with the events of the Korean War, or perhaps just three years from now with the Berlin Blockade.
For now, we're finished with the 80 years retrospectives.
We would note that things were still going on in the Second World War on this date. The war in the Pacific sputtered to a conclusion and in a manner distinctively different from the war in Europe. In Europe, as we have seen, there were some German formations that fought on after the German surrender, but usually because they feared being taken captive by Communist forces. Japanese forces however were often still quite well organized in the field and had not, in many locations, been defeated. Their surrenders were bizarrely formally orchestrated, usually featuring meetings and formal surrender instruments. Of course, Japan had not been occupied at the time of Japan's surrender, which was not true of Germany.
Indeed, on this day, General Tomoyuki Yamashita formally surrendered the remaining Japanese troops in the Philippines to General Jonathan M. Wainwright. Things like this would go on for days.
Also going on for days would be the British reoccupation of its lost colonial domain in the East. Other nations, notably the French and the Dutch, would try the same, but they'd have to fight their way back in, and ultimately, they lost the fight.
All that is part of the story of the post war world. Colonialism was done for. The British would have the wisdom soon to see that, whereas the French resisted it.
Also part of the post war world would be the rise of Communism.
Communism had been part of the global story going back into the late 19th Century, but the Second World War boosted its fortunes, in part because it aligned itself with anti colonial movements.
The struggle between Communism and Democracy, even imperfect democracy, had already begun before the end of the war. In some places the struggle between Communist and Anticommunist forces was long established. The Chinese Civil War had commenced before World War Two, and it had recommenced before the Japanese surrender. In other places, however, the end of the war brought out movements that had not been significant before. In Vietnam, for example, the Viet Minh has declared independence prior to the Japanese surrender and were moving towards contesting the French for control of the country, something that would be interrupted by the British at first, using surrendered Japanese troops. That a Cold War was on wasn't widely recognized to be occurring as of yet, but that it was is clear in retrospect.
The rise of the United States as a global power, something that many Americans had not wanted to occur before World War Two, had been completed by the Second World War's end. Economically, the United States was effectively the last man standing. 1945 would usher in a post war economic world such as had not existed in modern times. The US became the globally dominant economic power because its factories had not been destroyed, and would enjoy that status well into the 1970s. At the same time, the US became a major military power for the first time in its history, a status which it retains.
The period from 1945 to, roughly 1973/1991, would be sort of an American golden era, albeit one with many significant problems. The legacy of that period haunts the United States today. From 1945 until the early 1970s nobody could contest the US economically and that meant, at home, there were always decent jobs for Americans, no matter how well educated they were, or were not. A college education guaranteed a white collar occupation. That began to come apart in the 1970s and by the late 1980s that was no longer true, although Americans have never accepted the change.
Indeed, that's a major problem today. The US is controlled by those who came of age in this era, and many elderly voters cannot look back past it. When people pine for a return of a prior era, that's the era they hope to restore. But it was never destined to be permanent. World War Two was so massive it destroyed the global economy, but the economy would inevitably recover, and the Cold War against the Soviet Union could never have been won by the USSR. The economy that had come into place in the 1990s was a more natural one, and interestingly restored the global economy to the state of globalization that it had obtained prior to the First World War.
The social changes brought about by the war were likewise massive, and that's been forgotten.
Ironically, one of the most cited social claims about the war is incorrect, that being that it brought women into the workplace. It didn't. That had been going on for a long time, but as often noted here, it was domestic machinery that caused that change. Having said that, the immediate post war economic boom caused a massive introduction of that machinery into homes. People who had never owned a washing machine, for example, now suddenly did. And with the washer and dryer coming in, trips to the laundromat, or hours spent at home working on laundry, both being "women's work", went out. They now had time to go to work. . . or school.
This, as many of the trends we noted, was something that was already occurring. The war accelerated it. Even before World War Two more women graduated from high school than men. College education remained predominantly male, but even at that the number of female college students grew from 9,100 (21% of the total) in 1870 to 481,000 (44% of the total) by 1930, with female university attendance receiving a big boost during the 1920s. The war, however, boosted this. Already by the 1920s the reduction in female labor needs at home had meant that a sizable number of well off and middle class young women could attend college. The Great Depression dampened that, but the end of the Second World War dramatically altered the situation after 1945.
Young men also began to crowd college campuses like never before.
Prior to the Second World War a small minority of men attended, let alone completed, college. In 1940 5.5% of American men had completed a bachelor's degree or higher, which was a higher percentage than women at 3.8%. Moreover, with certain distinct exceptions, American men who attended college were part of a WASP upper class. Indeed, the extent to which Ivy League schools were protestant institutions has been largely forgotten. Princeton, for instance ended its Sunday chapel requirement for upperclassmen in 1935, for sophomores in 1960, and for freshmen in 1964. Harvard, we should not, ended its chapel requirement in 1886 and Yale in 1926, but the point is that most of those who attended private universities were of a WASP heritage. This was less true, of course, of state universities, which often had a agricultural, teaching or mining focus.
World War Two, however, changed all of this through the GI Bill, with newly discharged men heading to university. Included in student body were Catholics, a sizable American minority, who had largely not attended university before.
The implications of this were enormous. Women leaving homes to live on their own before marriage had really started in an appreciable degree the 1920s, although it occurred and was possible before that. My mother's mother, had a university degree prior to that time. Large numbers of young men doing so was really new, with perhaps the only real analogy being the camps of young itinerant workers in the Great Depression.
Of course, the Great Depression had practically acclimated young men to living away from home while young, and then the Second World War certainly acclimated large numbers of them. The new environment was large numbers of young men and young women living away from home, and from very varied backgrounds. Co-ed students from prior to the Second World War would have found a much narrower demographic than they did after the war.
This at least arguably accelerated the blending of distinct cultures within the overall American culture, although that's always been a feature of the United States. Having said that, the "melting pot" of American culture melted more slowly prior to World War Two. With the war having a levelling effect on ethnic differences, they shifted notably.
Prior to World War Two, and for some time thereafter, Catholics, Jews, Blacks and Hispanics were really "others". It's certainly the case that distinctions and prejudice remains today, but the Second World War started the process of addressing them. Catholics fairly rapidly moved from a disdained religious minority, albeit a large minority, to part of the general American religious background, that process complete with the election of John F. Kennedy. At the same time, however, the uniqueness and identify of many of these groups, which had heretofore been quite strong, began to dissipate.
Sudden success and sudden cultural change often has within them the seeds of their own decay and downfall. This seems to have been much the case with the second half of the Twentieth Century as "the American Century". Americans came to very rapidly believe that their postwar economic good fortune was due to some native genius, rather than the good luck of having been outside the range of Axis aircraft. Rapid cultural changes that saw young Americans step right out of high school and into good paying jobs, or off to college for even better paying jobs, all while being outside of their parents homes, began to seem like a decree of nature. Liberalization of culture yielded to libertinism of culture and an attack on traditional value. Everything seemed headed, in the end, in one direction.
It didn't.
The destroyed nations rebuilt, and at the same time, under American influence, democracy spread. This was a huge global success, but it also meant that the US inevitably came to a point at which it could not dominate the world's economies. Advances in technology an globalization ultimately wiped out he heavy labor segment of the American economy while at at the same time the same developments that freed up women from domestic labor enslaved them to the office place. The post war arrogance that bloomed in the late 60s ultimately badly damaged the existential nature of the family in ways that are still being sorted out.
The post war world started to come to an end in 1991 with the fall of the USSR. But like a lot of things, it took and is taking a long time to play out. We're likely in its final closing pages now, as the Boomer generation makes a desperate effort to restore a lost world, but only selectively. Very few really want to return to the point before these developments commenced. The ultimate question remains however if World War Two, which the country had no choice but to fight, resulted in such existential damage to the country, and the world, that much of what came before the war was not only better than what came after it, but that whether the damage of the war was so severe that it cannot be recovered.
On this day, in addition to what has already been noted, British Marines landed at Pennang. Hirohito opened the 88th Imperial Diet.
The Red Army opened Officer's Clubs.
While we won't catalog events hence force on a day to day basis, we will look in more depth at the changes World War Two brought about, for good, and ill.
Last edition:
Sunday, September 2, 1945. Japan signs the Instrument of Surrender.
Labels: 1940s, 1945, Allies, Australia, Blog Mirror, Japan, North Vietnam, United Kingdom, Vietnam, VJ Day, World War Two
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