I missed the memo. I am just generally anti war and don’t like reading about them. War is all because of dickhead leaders that can’t act decent, treat others right, or talk things out without being little insecure manbabies. And when manchildren in power have their big boi pp insulted they make the less powerful fight for them instead of doing anything respectful. Some rebellions which lead to wars are justified. Gotta stick it back to the empowered manchildren sometimes. But it all comes down to a shitty leader.
I think you missed the joke, it’s not making a point about all wars being bad it’s about middle aged dudes being obsessed with wars
I decided to focus on wars of leftest and/or peasant uprisings. Often heart breaking, but man if you’ve ever enjoyed cheering for the underdog, they are definitely that. Plus, you’re automatically learning about the Class War at the same time :D
May I recommend Summer of Blood: The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 by Dan Jones?
It can be very valuable and interesting to study the surrounding context of a war. Military history with battles and kill counts and discussions of tactics is something I find boring af, but there are endless discussions to be had about how the causes of the American Civil War can be traced back to before even the Revolution and tracing the repercussions of the war all the way up through to current politics.
Think about how the Taiping Rebellion, which killed more than 20 million people, would have affected day to day life in 19th century China - which weakened China and rendered it more vulnerable to European powers. Think the Opium Wars. Think about how Hong Kong was just returned to China in 1999 - and all of the complexities that entailed.
Or how the World Wars depopulated Russia. You had a generation dead or traumatized. Russian alcoholism is usually treated as a joke - trauma can have intergenerational changes in genetic expression.
Wars also make excellent chronological signposts. I’ garbage at dates, but usually wars segment significant social/economic/cultural/blah/blah/blah changes that they help me keep events organized in my head.
Ah… remember when England decided they owned an island that was located inside the territorial waters of another country?
How about no. No wars.
Being fans of mass graves and killing machines is weird.
The seven year war, which is what the rest of the world calls the French Indian war should actually have been called World War One.
It was also started by an incompetent 22 year old George Washington being sent out in his first command who ignored the equivalent of the sergeant put in charge of the new lieutenant advice and executed a French person he shouldn’t have.
The taxes that started the revolutionary war? Those were to pay the war debts on the seven year war. Dude literally led an army to avoid paying the consequences of his actions.
EDIT: it’s also possible to draw “ALL WARS”
In the Pays d’en Haut Anglo settlers were moving in, French forts were rapidly expanding and militarizing, and both colonial powers were jockeying for Indigenous allies and exclusive trade partners. And in Acadia the oaths issue was still unresolved and considerable swaths of the country that France ‘ceded’ to Britain was under the control of the French-allied Wabanaki.
Another war was inevitable, Washington just lit the powderkeg.
The best class I took in college was an intercession course about the Vietnam War. We had to read an entire book pretty much every day, which was great prep for grad school.
I basically learned that the entire war was completely unjustified, it was horrific and brutal on both sides in ways that aren’t talked about, but that ultimately the United States had absolutely no business interfering. Vietnam had spent years under French colonial control, which they overthrew under their own power. They had already asserted a desire to rule themselves.
Tonkin was also a genuine false flag, which just isn’t acknowledged? We manufactured the cause for an extremely unpopular war. So many young man died or were disabled because of something that was pointless.
That class was first that really got me to question the patriotic narrative I was taught about American history in high school.
Vietnam got a rough fucking deal in the 1900s. Shortly after the US left, the Cambodians under Pol Pot invaded, and they were brutal
And Vietnam ended up kicking Pol Pot off which is impossible to argue as anything but a win for humanity.