There are 3 main elements related to human nature, sociology and geopolitics which are fundamentally misunderstood by mainstream historians. This is understandable despite being naive because we see the same thing in our mainstream journalists understanding of our weekly news as tomorrows history. It is being chronicled for future historians to interpret. It is extremely interesting to note there are some historians who have a fairly acute sense of the utilitarian positioning of modern MSM for special interest agendas, yet seem to have a blunt sense of it materialising throughout the past.
These elements (I must add) are on almost ALL occasions purposefully left out of History:
1) The financial l transaction behind everything not just the ideological.
2) The struggle between sovereignty and empire/ internationalism.
3) Divide & Conquer/ Divide & Rule
When I mention in many articles that history omits the ""Divide & Rule" perspective I refer specifically to social engineering of home societies. Mainstream history does have fairly sound coverage of divide and conquer (sometimes conflated with divide & rule due to the lack of sophistication in mainstream understanding of the difference between shadow power and the power structures put forward for public consumption of the day).
Here is the sort of representation of history featuring divide and conquer as recognised by conventional history:
Africa
During the period of Nigeria being under colonial rule from 1900 to 1960, different regions were frequently reclassified for administrative purposes. The resulting tensions between Nigerian ethnic groups such as the Igbo and Hausa made it easier for the colonial authorities to consolidate their power in the region][16]
Asia
Mongolian Empire
While the Mongols imported Central Asian Muslims to serve as administrators in China, the Mongols also sent Han Chinese and Khitans from China to serve as administrators over the Muslim population in Bukhara in Central Asia, using foreigners to curtail the power of the local peoples of both lands.[17]
Indian subcontinent
Some Indians historians, such as politician Shashi Tharoor, assert that the British Raj frequently used this tactic to consolidate their rule and prevent the emergence of the Indian independence movement.[18] A Times Literary Supplement review by British historian Jon Wilson suggests that although this was broadly the case a more nuanced approach might be closer to the facts.[19] In the same vein, Indian jurist Markandey Katju wrote in The Nation:[20]
Middle East
Some analysts assert that the United States is practicing the strategy in the 21st-century Middle East through their supposed escalation of the Sunni–Shia conflict. British journalist Nafeez Ahmed cited a 2008 RAND Corporation study for the U.S Armed Forces which recommended "divide and rule" as a possible strategy against the Muslim world in "the Long War".[21] British historian Christopher Davidson argues that the current crisis in Yemen is being "egged on" by the United States government, and could be part of a wider covert strategy to "spur fragmentation in Iran allies and allow Israel to be surrounded by weak states”.[22]
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire often used a divide-and-rule strategy, pitting Armenians and Kurds against each other. This strategy no longer worked in the Republic of Turkey because the Armenians were eliminated in the Armenian Genocide.[23]
Europe
- Herodotus, (Histories, 5.3) claimed that the Thracians would be the strongest nation in the world if they were united.
- Athenian historian Thucydides in his book History of the Peloponnesian War claimed that Alcibiades recommended to Persian statesman Tissaphernes, to weaken both Athens and Sparta for his own Persian's benefit. Alcibiades, suggested to Tissaphernes that 'The cheapest plan was to let the Hellenes wear each other out, at a small share of the expense and without risk to himself.[24]
- Tacitus in Germania. chapter 33 writes "Long, I pray, may foreign nations persist in hating one another .... and fortune can bestow on us no better gift than discord among our foes."
- The Romans invaded the Kingdom of Macedonia from the south and defeated King Perseus in the Battle of Pydna in 168 BC. Macedonia was then divided into four republics that were heavily restricted from relations with one another and other Hellenic states. A ruthless purge occurred, with allegedly anti-Roman citizens being denounced by their compatriots and forcibly deported in large numbers.[citation needed]
- During the Gallic Wars, Caesar was able to use a divide and conquer strategy to easily defeat the Gauls. By the time the Gauls united under Vercingetorix, it was already too late for them.[25][26]
- In Revolutions of 1848, the governments which were being revolted against used this tactic to counter the rebels.[27][28]
- The Salami strategy of Hungarian Communist leader, Mátyás Rákosi.[citation needed]
- The colonial authorities in British Cyprus often stirred up the Turkish minority in order to neutralize agitation from the Greek majority.[29][30] This policy intentionally cultivated further animosity between the already divided Greek majority and the Turkish minority (which consists of 18% of the population) in the island that remains divided to this day after an invasion by Turkey to establish the state of North Cyprus (which is only diplomatically recognized by Turkey).[31]
- The partition of Ireland in 1921 was an intentional implementation of this strategy by David Lloyd George, the effects of which are still felt today in Northern Ireland.[32] The Stanford historian Priya Satia claims that the partition of Ireland was in ways a patch-test for the partition of India in 1947.[33] The British civil servant tasked with partitioning India was Lord Louis Mountbatten, uncle of the Duke of Edinburgh; he was assassinated by the IRA in 1979 in Co. Sligo, Ireland.
Mexico
United States
Harry G. Broadman opined in Forbes regarding President Donald Trump: "[a]s in his campaign, the President has been successfully—at least to date—pursuing a divide and conquer strategy domestically and internationally to try to achieve his goals. The result is an absence of a robust set of checks and balances to ensure that the best economic interests of the U.S. and the world will be served."[34]
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Sources & Citations re history of geopolitics that have been useful above and beyond links I've included in specific posts on the topic.
Note that It's impossible to give sources that begin to influence ones angle on material, that is a decades long process and involves life experience and paying attention to modern geopolitics, pop culture and sociology/psychology. But here's a damn good try:
- Tragedy and Hope by Carol Quigly
- Ilia Xypolia. ‘Divide et Impera: Vertical and Horizontal Dimensions of British Imperialism’. Critique: journal of socialist theory, vol 44, no. 3, pp. 221-231, 2016. P. 221.
- https://www.academia.edu/42843184/Tragedy_and_Hope_A_History_of_the_World_in_Our_Time
- http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au Archived 25 June 2007 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ “Dell’arte della guerra: testo – IntraText CT”. intratext.com.
- “Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews, Book I, section 159”. Perseus Project. Retrieved 27 August2011.
- “Strabo, Geography, Book 8, chapter 7, section 1”. Perseus Project. Retrieved 27 August 2011.
- “Constitutional Government: James Madison to Thomas Jefferson”. Press-pubs.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 27 August 2011.
- “The Federalist #10”. constitution.org.
- “Immanuel Kant: Perpetual Peace: Appendix I”. Constitution.org. Retrieved 27 August 2011.
- Kant: Political Writings, H.S. Reiss, 2013
- Hall J It’s You and Me Baby: Narcissist Head Games The Narcissist Family Files 27 Mar 2017
- Boddy, C. R. Corporate Psychopaths: Organizational Destroyers (2011)
- “HISTORY OF NIGERIA”. historyworld.net.
- BUELL, PAUL D. (1979). “SINO-KHITAN ADMINISTRATION IN MONGOL BUKHARA”. Journal of Asian History. Harrassowitz Verlag. 13 (2): 137–8. JSTOR 41930343.
- Shashi Tharoor – Inglorious Empire What the British Did to India
- Jon Wilson, 2016, India Conquered: Britain’s Raj and the chaos of empire, cited in a review of Tharoor’s work by Elizabeth Buettner in “Debt of Honour: why the European impact on India must be fully acknowledged”, Times Literary Supplement, August 11, 2017, pages 13-14.
- Markandey Katju. “The truth about Pakistan”. The Nation. Archived from the original on 10 November 2013. Retrieved 29 January 2019.
- Pernin, Christopher G.; et al. (2008). “Unfolding the Future of the Long War” (PDF). US Army Training and Doctrine Command’s Army Capability Integration Center – via RAND Arroyo.
- “The Pentagon plan to ‘divide and rule’ the Muslim world”. Middle East Eye. Retrieved 29 June 2018.
- “France: The Roman conquest”. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 6 April 2015. Because of chronic internal rivalries, Gallic resistance was easily broken, though Vercingetorix’s Great Rebellion of 52 bce had notable successes.
- “Julius Caesar: The first triumvirate and the conquest of Gaul”. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 15 February 2015. Indeed, the Gallic cavalry was probably superior to the Roman, horseman for horseman. Rome’s military superiority lay in its mastery of strategy, tactics, discipline, and military engineering. In Gaul, Rome also had the advantage of being able to deal separately with dozens of relatively small, independent, and uncooperative states. Caesar conquered these piecemeal, and the concerted attempt made by a number of them in 52 bce to shake off the Roman yoke came too late.
- Grob-Fitzgibbon, Benjamin (2011). Imperial Endgame: Britain’s Dirty Wars and the End of Empire. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 285.
- Jordan, Preston Lim (2018). The Evolution of British Counter-Insurgency during the Cyprus Revolt, 1955–1959. Springer. p. 58.
- “International Justice: The Case of Cyprus”. Washington, D.C.: The HuffPost. Retrieved 1 November2017.