Map on Monday: The Spanish and Portuguese Empires

The map above (click to enlarge) depicts the vast reach of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires at their heights, and the time periods at which each portion of their realms gained independence. The map reveals some differences in strategic outlook between the two empires. While the Spanish sought to move inland and plant the Spanish flag (and faith) in new territory, the coastal nation of Portugal tended to retain its colonial lands and outposts along the coasts of South America, Africa, and Asia. Here we see the Spanish as a landed empire and the Portuguese as a maritime empire. Nevertheless Portugal gave South America its largest nation, Brazil, and bestowed on it the Portuguese language.

Another feature that stands out is the independence of much of Latin America prior to the active colonial divisions of Africa. Long before European nations began entering the African hinterlands, nations such as Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Peru, Brazil, and Bolivia had gained their independence.

The Portuguese and Spanish were two very different cultures but they were also deeply united by their common Catholic faith. Their robust military and imperial character was forged in the experience of expelling the Muslims from their rule on the Iberian peninsula. Portugal and Spain  helped return Christianity to its character as a global faith. From the Americas to Africa, from the Arabian Sea to the Pacific Ocean, missionaries brought the Faith to lands across wide oceans and over harsh lands. It was from the Spanish and Portuguese Empires that Christian nations were forged. One Asian example of this is the Philippines -- Asia's largest Christian nation. It is no small fact that the immigrants who come to the United States across our southern border share with us the Christian faith. We meet them in our churches. The Europeans undergo a very different experience when their southern neighbors enter their lands. To paraphrase Philip Jenkins: immigration from the south transforms the US from a Christian country into a more Christian country. We can thank the Spanish and Portuguese for that.  

May the global Catholic nations awaken, and may our Christian nation awaken as well to our shared brotherhood. One Church, many nations.

This post originally appeared on Anthropology of Accord on December 1, 2014.

Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, June 11

by Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CHURCH

POPE SETS UP MECHANISM TO REMOVE BISHOPS - A TRUE REFORM: His official statement (motu proprio) As a Loving Mother.

What is seismic about this is that findings of negligence can be grave cause for removal. No doubt the  Francis skeptics will miss this true breakthrough. The pope has made a significant policy initiative and Michael Winters has a good overview. But we must be on guard. Since the 1980s, homosexual-friendly bishops and priests have continually worked themselves onto the oversight committees of "child protection" to ensure those committees would never really uncover and punish the clergy corruption at the heart of the scandals. That is why it is a very good internal move that there is no overall commission but established dicasteries who will carry out these removals. It is also of great practical importance that this is not a penal act but removal from office which will let things happen much faster. We have argued that a true penal system is necessary for the Church to reform the clergy but that must not slow the more immediate goal of getting bad priests out of the parish and negligent bishops out of the chancery. Prudentially it is important there there are no new definitions of crimes or law here.  Thus there can be no ex post facto claims that removals can be effected only for negligence after 2016.

PUTTING GOD FIRST - LEARNING FROM AFRICAN CHRISTIANS: Catholics urged by African Cardinal Sarah to turn toward God in liturgy. Methodists heavily influenced by growing African congregations reverse their support for Abortion Roe Decision and abortion advocacy group.

METHODISTS, MRS. CLINTON, AND AFRICAN CHRISTIANS: The Methodist General Assembly has voted to withdraw from the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Rights. The worldwide Methodist church is in a great battle between traditional Methodists in America allied with African members against white American progressives who aligned the Church with an aggressive pro-abortion group under a religious mantle. The story here.

MUSLIMS AND CHRISTIANS - THE REAL STRATEGY IN RELIGION: Muslims converting to Christianity.

THE CATHOLICS AND ORTHODOX: A primer on the oldest split in Christendom by Aidan Nichols O.P.

RICH ATHEIST INDIVIDUALISTS VS. THE RELIGIOUS HUMANITY: A convincing demographic communal argument. Nietzsche is dead, but God is still around; and Africa knows it even if Europeans are clueless.

II. GEOPOLITICS AND NATIONS ROUND-UP

NATIONS, RELIGION AND FASCISM: A very negative article about Russian thinker Ivan Ilyn but plenty of information makes it worthwhile to read. There is a growing intellectual and moral sloppiness among the Western elite to equate a vigorous defense of religion and nation as Fascism. Nationalism is not Fascism - and it is nationalism that is rising (by George Friedman of Stratfor).

PHILIPPINES - THE CATHOLIC DRAMA IN ASIA: The new President of the Philippines is a
"cross between Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump." In this most Catholic of all Asian nations he professes "a belief in God but not religion." Several bishops opposed him and he wasn’t shy in blasting their interference. He is an enthusiastic proponent of capital punishment, and comes to office as a man who cleaned up the notorious crime-besieged Davao City. He also is a man who was sexually abused in the Jesuit high school where he was educated. He may see clerics who commit capital crimes, and then say they are against capital punishment, as more special pleaders than moral prophets.

From Foreign Policy (the magazine) daily briefing a few quotes remind us that soon an International Court will rule against China by applying international law of the sea to territory China has claimed historically as China. See our Map on Monday: the South China Sea for a discussion of important distinctions. Two quotes.

“All the islands, where we are doing reclamation, are Chinese islands, are Chinese territory,” Wang Xining, a deputy director-general at the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a recent interview.

“The Philippines maintains that the decision of the tribunal, once rendered, will be legally binding and should be accorded due respect by everyone, including China,” said Jose Cuisia, the Philippine ambassador in Washington, told FP.

IF BRITAIN EXITS THE EU - ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, WALES WILL CONTINUE TO SEEK THEIR COMMUNAL IDENTITIES: A talk on the the Christian roots of England by Aidan Nichols O.P. He refuses to reduce the Church in the secular world as an advocate of certain issues. He quotes Christopher Dawson and reminds English Catholics that England herself is a Christian entity. He does not advise taking an anti-Anglican or anti-throne position. They too are breakwaters against the modernist secular tide. I have read Fr. Nichols before but I didn’t understand what a METAPHYSICAL resource he is. He swims in the deeper waters where we must navigate to present anew Christianity and the nations. An excerpt:

"In the second chapter of The Realm I argue that England is historically inseparable from Christianity. Here my chief witness is St Bede, whose History of the English Church and People shows how the genesis of the idea of England is inseparable from the conversion – even if the English nation had not yet acquired its own State form, an event usually dated to the dynastic union achieved under King Athelstan in 927. To put it rhetorically, England was born in the waters of Baptism. It came to natural life, sociologically, as it entered supernatural life, sacramentally. The inability to disengage the identity of England from its ecclesial context – the covenant community of Baptism –means that a memory of the metaphysical will always haunt the English soul."

INDIA, IRAN,  AND AFGHANISTAN - THE ALLIANCE TO TEMPER PAKISTAN: How the great game is played by Iran and India.

IS THERE A US STRATEGY FOR THE MIDEAST IN SIGHT? Bacevich says no.

MILITARY SECURITY INDUSTRY COMPLEX: From 'Foreign Policy Daily Report':

Recently retired U.S. Army General John Campbell might not be commanding American and NATO forces in Afghanistan any more, but he has been appointed to the board of directors for defense behemoth BAE Systems. In a statement, Michael Chertoff, chairman of the company’s board of directors - who is also founder of the Chertoff Group, a D.C. advisory firm, senior counsel of mega law and lobbying firm Covington & Burling LLP, and former secretary of the Homeland Security Department - said Campbell’s “knowledge and perspective on the U.S. military’s needs around the world will be highly valuable.” BAE employs over 32,000 people in the U.S., UK, Sweden, and Israel, and had sales of over $10 billion in 2015.

ISRAEL AND RUSSIA: Keep paying attention to these growing signs of cooperation. What will also be striking is how neo-con journalists are going to suddenly be open to Russia now that they see a green light from Israel.

III. SEXUAL ORDER: THE CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION

WOULD SPORTS TEAMS BE STRONGER IF THE GIRLS PLAYED? Australia’s top women soccer team vs. boys under fifteen. You don’t want to know what happened.

CHURCHES AND FEMALE CONSCRIPTION: When Washington DC Cardinal Donald Wuerl (successor to Cardinal Ted McCarrick) was asked if the new policy to let homosexuals serve openly in the US military was a problem for Catholics, he said: "That will have to be worked our politically. The Catholic Church has no position on that." The Catholic Church has a most relevant history in allowing an all-male brotherhood to be inundated with homosexuals. Neither Wuerl nor McCarrick should be expected to be very eloquent about that problem. Why the Church should oppose female conscription.

Failure by Design by Anthony Esolen. The best writer on God, human nature, and sexual differences and gender roles is Mr. Esolen. Here, he reminds us why men and women are homosocial in so many of our most natural interactions.

IV. R&G ROUND UP

TRUMP REFORMING THE REPUBLICANS - A PARTY FOR THE WORKERS:
I (Joshua Green of Bloomberg BUSINESS WEEK) asked Trump what he thought the GOP would look like in five years. "Love the question," he replied. "Five, 10 years from now—different party. You’re going to have a worker’s party. A party of people that haven’t had a real wage increase in 18 years, that are angry. What I want to do, I think cutting Social Security is a big mistake for the Republican Party. And I know it’s a big part of the budget. Cutting it the wrong way is a big mistake, and even cutting it [at all]."

It used to be considered very responsible to look for entitlement reforms (especially delaying the retirement age of social security) as a place to fix the budget. The retirement age of social security is a much more important issue to men who work with their hands than those who push the pen. There are plenty of places to fix entitlements without exacerbating the discrepancy of aging for physical laborers and white-collar jobs. Like open immigration for manual laborers, the issue looks different from the perspective of Mitt Romney vs. a non college-educated male.

MUHAHAMMED ALI - HE WAS THE GREATEST - RIP: This video with the article catches a lot about the best heavyweight boxer of the century. From a LA news article in 1984:

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 2— Muhammad Ali, the former heavyweight boxing champion, who endorsed the Rev. Jesse Jackson's unsuccessful run for the White House, has announced he is switching to President Reagan. Asked to elaborate on his endorsement of Mr. Reagan, Mr. Ali told reporters, ''He's keeping God in schools and that's enough.''

Friday BookReview: The bicycle mechanics who powered men up to the clouds

(first published June 5, 2015)

"The airplane has unveiled for us the true face of the earth."   (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

                       

Begin by refreshing your schoolboy memory of the Wright brothers soaring over the North Carolina beach (this video is only a couple minutes long).

On December 17th in 1903, the first flight lasted twelve seconds; later in the day, their plane was aloft for 59 seconds!

                       

Here are some excerpts from a review of David McCullough's The Wright Brothers. It is by the youngest child of Charles Lindbergh:

Wilbur Wright played the harmonica, Orville the violin. There were two older Wright brothers, Reuchlin and Lorin, and a younger sister, Katharine, a graduate of Oberlin College and a high school Latin teacher. She and the younger two brothers, both lifelong bachelors, lived in Dayton, Ohio, with their father, clergyman Milton Wright. Their mother had died of tuberculosis in 1889. 

The detailed glimpses of the Wright family revealed in the first pages of David McCullough’s superb new book, “The Wright Brothers,” give more personal information than most of us can claim to know about aviation pioneers Wilbur and Orville Wright. Their 1903 manned flights off the Outer Banks of North Carolina at Kitty Hawk “were the first ever in which a piloted machine took off under its own power into the air in full flight, sailed forward with no loss of speed, and landed at a point as high as that from which it started.” 

Few people at the time showed any interest in this extraordinary feat. No reporters were present when the flights took place on Dec. 17, 1903, no representatives of scientific journals, no politicians eager to ally themselves with the enormous promise of aviation...
Dedicated to the dream of flight, the Wrights endured countless setbacks, disappointments and frustrations as they labored to perfect their flying machine. According to one witness, they were “the workingest boys” he ever knew...  

Raised under the benevolent influence of Bishop Wright, the Wright children were encouraged to read widely and learn extensively, not necessarily at school. Orville claimed that “the greatest thing in our favor was growing up in a family where there was always much encouragement to intellectual curiosity.” In high school he started a print shop and published his own newspaper. Wilbur became the editor. 

When the bicycle craze seized the country in the 1890s, Wilbur and Orville joined the madness... The brothers soon opened a workshop repairing and selling bicycles and sharpening ice skates in winter...  

The Wrights lived in a time of unprecedented innovation and invention. George Eastman of the Kodak camera and Isaac Merritt Singer of the sewing machine were contemporaries. Dayton was home to manufacturers of everything from cardboard boxes to railroad cars. 

Like many other aviation pioneers, the Wrights were skilled designers and builders. McCullough writes that they “proceeded on the Flyer much as if they were building a truss bridge, only with the attention to detail of watchmakers.” Their inventions showed a particularly American blend of ingenuity and imagination. To study the effect of wind on wings, they created a small wind tunnel using a wooden box, a fan and a series of modified hacksaw blades. Unlike some colleagues, however, the Wrights declined financial support from outsiders. Samuel Langley’s experimental airship, the Great Aerodrome, cost $70,000 and plunged into the Potomac on Dec. 8, 1903. The Wright brothers’ “total expenses for everything from 1900 to 1903, including materials and travel to and from Kitty Hawk, came to a little less than $1,000, a sum paid entirely from the modest profits of their bicycle business.” 

Though the triumph of Kitty Hawk went all but unrecognized in America at first, the Wright brothers took their flying machine, now with a more powerful engine, to a pasture known as Huffman Prairie and persevered. They enjoyed ever-increasing success, “routinely making controlled flights of 25 miles or more.” Still, their proposal to sell the machine to the U.S. government was rejected twice, though the British and French governments showed interest. 

The Wrights signed an agreement with a group of French businessmen in 1905, and Wilbur went to Paris. His reception there was likened to that of Benjamin Franklin’s in 1776, so enthusiastic were the French about “the American wonder” and his aerial feats. He was hailed by such acclaimed French aviators as Louis Blériot and Léon Delagrange, and was known throughout France by his first name, pronounced “Veelbare”... 

The transformation of the Wright Bicycle Shop into the “Wright Company for the manufacture of airplanes,” and the following struggles with legal and business matters, reflect the Wright brothers’ central position in the ongoing development of aviation after Kitty Hawk. McCullough’s magical account of their early adventures — enhanced by volumes of family correspondence, written records, and his own deep understanding of the country and the era — shows as never before how two Ohio boys from a remarkable family taught the world to fly.

                                   

Orville and Wilbur in 1910

The finest summing up of the peculiar American genius of the two brothers is this tribute, published recently in 'National Review.'

                                 

UPDATE: Don't miss this conversation between Mr. McCullough and Ken Burns.

                                          

One of the heroes of the "Purple Heart Battalion"

                                   

SHIZUYA HAYASHI was serving in the 65th Engineers in Hawaii when Pearl Harbor was bombed. After the attack, there was uncertainty about what to do with the Japanese Americans in this unit... [The following June] Hayashi and 1,400 other Nisei soldiers were sent to Camp McCoy in Wisconsin, where they formed the 100th Infantry Battalion, the first combat unit in the history of the U.S. Army made up mainly of Japanese Americans. After more than a year of instruction, the 100th became the most intensively trained unit in the Army... It received its colors and the motto it had requested: Remember Pearl Harbor.

In September 1943, the 100th landed at Salerno, Italy, where the Germans were amazed to see Japanese Americans fighting against them...

Late on the afternoon of November 29, 1943, Private Hayashi's platoon was attacking the Germans... The Germans were firing their 88 mm artillery, called screaming mimis by the GIs... In an effort to find cover, the Americans stumbled through a minefield, setting off deadly explosions. A bullet grazed Hayashi in the neck; his commanding officer was shot in the back.

As night fell, Hayashi and two other GIs were separated from the rest of the platoon. After waiting all night to be rescued, Hayashi sent his two comrades to look for help at daybreak. Drawn by their loud conversation, the Germans opened fire and advanced on them. One German, looking for the two men, came within three feet of Hayashi, then fired at point-blank range. He missed, and Hayashi killed him. In the face of grenades and rifle and machine-gun fire, Hayashi rose, alone, and shooting his automatic rifle from the hip, charged a German machine-gun position, killing nine of the enemy. When his platoon tried to advance, and an enemy antiaircraft gun began to lob shells at them, Hayashi returned fire, killing nine more Germans. Then he came upon a boy, perhaps thirteen years old, in uniform, curled up and crying. Hayashi couldn't shoot -- he took the boy prisoner, along with three other Germans.

[from Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty by Peter Collier]

Map on Monday: THE SOUTH CHINA SEA

Geopolitics and Ocean Law in the South China Sea: China, Philippines, and Vietnam 

by A. Joseph Lynch and Dr. David Pence

Understanding the dangerous disputes in the South China Sea between China, the Philippines and Vietnam begins with a few maps, some important history and legal definitions from a treaty signed by over 160 nations but not the United States. The old “law of the seas” assumed a three-mile border for all national coastlines and then open sailing in international waters beyond that “range of a cannon ball” distance. The UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea) in 1982 established several zones of authority as seen in the map below.

Each country has a 200 nautical mile (a nautical mile is equal to 1.1 miles or 1.85 kilometers) Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), in which natural resource claims are exclusive. The twelve nautical mile zones are considered territorial waters in which the country has jurisdiction over regulating use. There are rights of innocent passage by non-military vessels and transit passage for military vessels in narrow straits. The next twelve miles (contiguous zone) is also regulated for taxes and immigration and is a free chase zone if vessels were caught in the inner twelve. These definitions came from the 1982 UN Conference and are sometimes called LOST (Law of the Seas Treaty). China has said it does not accept these international definitions and jurisdiction in the South China Sea where questions of sovereignty must still be settled. The US never signed the treaty because of several disputes about deep-sea mining and the amendment procedures.

China draws the lines very differently. At the end of World War Two, the Republic of China (ROC, soon to be Taiwan) drew the 11-dash line around China and included the Spratlys and Paracel Islands as well as the Scarborough Shoal off the Philippines. Both Taiwan and mainland China are in agreement that these are China’s borders established after a long battle and millions of battle deaths from a local neighbor who invaded across a poorly defended regional sea. When the Chinese make these historical arguments they are often told that in international law, history doesn’t count. They answer that questions of sovereignty are historical matters settled by war and tradition. The 200 mile rule is not meant to replace historical sovereignty claims but establish a uniform law of the sea in areas without competing sovereignty claims. (e.g. Cuba is 90 miles from the tip of Florida.  Neither the US or Cuba can use a 200 mile rule to take resources from the other.)  The red dashed line on these maps mark China’s territorial claim. All the other lines are two hundred mile extensions from various other countries in the region. Obviously there is a lot of overlap. It is not so obvious how all of this is to be resolved. It is not really enough to frame this dispute as innocent smaller countries obeying international law while the big Chinese bullies seek more territory.

The Paracel Islands are found at the northern end of the South China Sea. Claimed by both China and Vietnam, the Chinese defeated the Vietnamese at the Battle of the Paracel Islands on January 19, 1974. Although only seventy-one died in the battle, China argues it won control of the islands and that Vietnam should drop its territorial claims.

Both the Philippines and China lay claim to the Scarborough Shoal (known as Huangyan Island in China), a little more than 100 miles (160km) from the Philippines and 500 miles from China (see map at left).

The claims of the Philippines are drawn from the 200-mile EEZ concept and obviously overlap with China’s map. All of these islands have been uninhabited but they can serve as bases and more importantly mark territories with hydrocarbon, mineral, and fishing resources. Here is a good BBC review of some of the conflicting claims.

The Spratly Islands are among the most contested in the South China Sea. Although composed of fourteen islands, islets, and kays, the Spratlys are also home to hundreds of reefs. Reefs are underwater bars of sand, rock, or coral; and some of these have been the building blocks for China’s so-called artificial islands, which are being built as military outposts -- including an airstrip -- on what they consider Chinese territory.

Chinese and Vietnamese lands are over 400 miles away from the Spratly Islands, yet both have historical claims on the area. Much closer to the islands are Malaysia and the Philippines. Both have airstrips as well on particular islands within the chain.They make their claims from the 200-mile law.  See the map below to better understand the various territorial claims and see where airstrips within the Spratly Islands are located.