More Against the Days

[Dave Monroe]

"My reading at the time also included many Victorians,
allowing World War I in my imagination to assume the
shape of that attractive nuisance so dear to
adolescent minds, the apocalyptic showdown." (SL,
"Intro," p. 18)

"A pose I found congenial in those days--fairly
common, I hope, among pre-adults--was that of somber
glee at any idea of mass destuction or decline.  Th
modern political thriller genre, in fact, has been
known to cash in on such visions of death made
large-scale or glamorous." (SL, "Intro," p. 130)

Clarke, I.F. Voices Prophesying War:
   Future Wars 1763-3749. 2nd ed.  NY: OUP, 1992.

"Why does the device of the imaginary war spread
throughout Europe from 1871 onwards?  Although it is
apparent that the starting-point for this new type of
fiction is an urgent sense of anxiety over some
problem of the day ....  Behind the European reception
and imitation of The Battle of Dorking stand the
varied and often concealed influences of the new
sciences and the even newer technologies: first, in
the facilities that the electric telegraph offered for
teh rapid dissemination of news; second, and more
profoundly, in the general expectation of change
engendered both by the fact of technological
development and by theories of progress and
evolutionary development.... the world had become a
much smaller place ...." (p. 45)

   "The new literature of the future was the
imaginative and adaptive response of a society that
had learnt to think in terms of origins, growth, and
evolutionary advances...." (p. 48)

   "The sudden emergence of tales about the future,
which were based on Darwinism and on the idea of
progress, followed on the [Franco-Prussian] war of
1870; and in that war two great nations had
demonstrated the fact of technological progress in a
savage struggle to survive." (p. 49)

"The war of 1870 had altered the power system in
Europe, and in a more general way it was considered to
have revealed the working of the Darwinian mechanism
for the rise and decline of species." (p. 51)

   "Already in 1871 the First World War was being
prepared in fact and in fiction.... the nations took
note that if they were to survive they would have to
have the biggest armies and the most murderous weapons
possible...." (p. 51)

"... in 1887 ... the anonymous Plus d'Angleterre ....
translated into English as Down with England .... an
apocalyptic vision of triumph and revenge ....
   "As with all these tales, the plot of Plus
d'Angelterre satrted from a recognized fact in
history.  On this occasion the point of origin was the
ill feeling between the French and British over the
occupation of Egypt in 1882...." (p. 53)

http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/birs/bir61.htm

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19930901fabook5411/i-f-clarke/voices-prophesying-war-future-wars-1763-3749-second-edition.html


Chesney, George.  The Battle of Dorking:
   Reminiscences of a Volunteer (1871)

http://www.blackmask.com/books63c/dorking.htm

After the Battle of Dorking: The Battle of Dorking
   Controversy.  Ed. Anonymous.  London: Cornmarket
   Reprints, 1972.

Childers, Erskine.  The Riddle of the Sands (1903)

http://www.bluemoment.com/riddle.html

http://www.rtpnet.org/robroy/books/rec/rs.html

Fashoda
85; town (now Kodok) in southeast Sudan, 400 miles
south of Khartoum on the White Nile river, "Far up the
Bahr-el-Abyad, in the heathen jungle"; it was founded
by the Egyptian government in 1867; In July 1898,
French General Marchand, coming from the West Coast of
Africa, occupied Fashoda in an attempt to control the
Upper Nile. Britain, which controlled the area,
threatened war and the French withdrew. The next year,
the Sudan became an Anglo-Egyptian condominium; 89-93;
106; 166; 189; 386

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/v/alpha/f.html

Suez Canal
79; In 1956, Egyptian president Nasser seized the Suez
Canal, which was under British-French control.
Anglo-French forces intervened, but differences of
opinion in Britain, the United States and elsewhere,
combined with veiled Russian threats, caused the
British and French to back down; 186; 428; "We [the
U.S.] voted in the Security Council with Russia and
against England and France on this Suez business."
431, 448

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/v/alpha/s.html

See also ...

Ramsden, John.  Don’t Mention the War:
   The British and the Germans Since 1890.
   London: Little, Brown, 2006.

http://www.johnramsden-dmtw.co.uk/

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,23111-2162759,00.html

http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/history/0,,1779626,00.html

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/bookshelf/story/0,,1858431,00.html

And see as well ...

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0211&msg=72984

--- rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think if there was any inkling of a major row
> between the big powers in the early part of the
> 20th C, many probably thought it'd be short and
> victorious campaign ...

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