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HBC has collected information on the following wars and crises. Military history commonly focuses on the actual fighting, tactic, weaponery, soldiers, and strategic consequences. Battles and the wars in which they occur often have much more significance than purly military and diplomatic consequences. There are commonly pervasive political, economic and cultural consequences which affect the lives of individuals. One of the many impacts has been fshion. In most cases we have just collected basic information on the conflict and our understanding of fashion impacts are still limited. We have primarily focused on 19th and 20th century conflicts. This is the historical period in which specialized clothing existed for boys. Some of these conflicts had major impacts on fashion. Some of these conflicts had less impact on fashion, but are important to fully understand the sweep of history and the other conflicts we are assesing. We hope to eventually, however, expand our coverage to earlier conflicts as well.
The history of the 20th century is in many ways obsessed with Hitler and the NAZIs and the Holocaust. But of course the NAZIs were not the only mass murders in history nor the most deadly in terms of body count. It is instructive to look at other historical instances of mass murder. While the 20th century has been the most deadly, other mass killings have occurred in many other centuries as well. In all of these historical events, there are no precise records of slaughter and estimates vary widely as to the number of people, almost always primarily innocent civilians, actually killed. In each of these instances there were also profound social consequences.
The course of human history is of course frought with war and crisis. Such events are known at the dawn of human history. We have develped basic information on major wars over time. Roo often children are lost in the historical discussion of wars and other conflicts. Actually they often played important roles. Our intention is to develop information about how children fared during these wars. Over time, children and youth often made up important elements in armies and navies. Often the civilians most affected were children. Our assessment at this time has primary centered in collecting basic historical information on these conflicts. We hope as our site develops to add information about the role of children in these wars and the impact of the wars on them. We began this section primarily to assess fashions styles evolving from military uniforms, but as we collected information decided to expand our focus. Of course we have much more information and images on 20th century conflicts, but we hope to eventually expand our coverage of historical periods as well.
History details countless battles fought over the ages. Many of these battles were of considerable importance, but were not decisive. The British in the American Revolution to their frustration won almost all the battles, but lost the War. The Americans in Viet Nam did win all the battles, but lost the war. There are a small number of battles that have played truly epic or truly decissive roles in determining the history of civilization. Edward Creasy published a thought provoking book in which he identified 15 decisive battles which determined the course of history (1851). He began with Marathon (490 BC) and ended with the land battle Waterloo (1815) ending the Napoleonic Wars. Since Creasy time we might add a few additional battles, although the selection is subject to considerable historical debate. Antitem (1862), Sedan (1870), Verdun (1915), Battle of Britain (1940), Soviet Winter Offensive (1941), Pearl Harbor (1941), and D-Day. Our list of more recent battles is heavily weighted with World War II because so much was at stake. These battles determined the defeat of totalitarian powers that would have created a radically different and in many ways horific world order that would have destroyed Western civilization. Perhaps no struggle was of greater importance since the Mongul Invasions of the 13th century.
There have in history not only been wars and battles of great importance, but ther have also been military organizations that played a major role in history. The most obvious was the Roman Legion which for centuries served as the foundation of the Pax Romana and the Roman Empire. The Mongol armies dominated much of Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe for centuries. The British Royal Navy played a key role in the establishment of the modern world. In the 20th century there are numerous military forces of considerable importance, including the American Navy, the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe, the Red Army, and the Japanese Navy were of great importance. Military forces are designed to project a country's power. Ironically, some powerful military forces can ultimately prove to actually reduce a country's security. The best edxample here is Kaiser Wilhelm's highseas fleet.
Ennumerable wars commonly followed by peace treaties punctuate humn history. Most treaties proved to be mere armed truces. Others have been major turing points in history, marking important historical eras. One of the most important was the Peace of Westphalia (1648) ending the 30 Years War. The Treaty of Paris (1783) availed the new American Republic half a continent. The Congress of Vienna (1815) esestablished the old monarchial regimes after the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. The World War I peace treaties could have brought a new era of self determinism to Europe, but proved to be mere cease fires leding to an even more terrible war. There was a brief hope that the Munich Accords would stabilize Euripe, byr Hitler wanted much more than the Sudetenland. The Yalta and Potsdam accords effectively divided Europe between Soviet Communism and Western democracy and free enerprise. Other treaties created both military and ecomomic allies. The Treaty of Rome (19??) has led ultimately to the shaping of modern Europe and the European Union.
War and conflict is so pervasice in human society that varius authors have suggested this is a flaw in human nature. That is an important if largely unknowable issue. One moden version of this discussion is DNA. Men have adestinctive Y chromosome which they inherit from their father. Sexual selection appears to drive men to dominate others a drive to power. Men with eeak Y chromosmes are able to bread less and that Y chromosme will eventually disappear. Men with strng Y chromosomes bread more. There are some 16 million men in Asia today with the same Y chromosome. They may be the ancestor of Genghis Kahn. One authorcspeculatesthat warfare is in effect the result of aggressive Y chrmosomes struggling to propagate themselves. The same author also describes a genetic war between the Y chromosomes and the mother's mitochondrial DNA. Some mitochondrial DNA may be toxic to sons. This is reflected in families which constantly produce more dauhters than sons or in male homosexuality. [Sykes] All this is highly speculative at this time. But in our rapidly improving understanding of heredity and genetics we may in the future have actual scientific data on questions that philodsophers have struggled with since the dawn of civilization.
Our modern world has evolved in Western Europe and its North American offshoot. It is basically the history of Western civilization. This is to extent politically incorrect as many in the academic community are committed to the ideology of cultural relativity. They believe it is an exercize in xenepobia to focus to intently on Western civilization. It is, however, asimple fact that the West has invented modernity. This is not to say that all aspects of Western civilization are valuable contributions to humsan history. After all, 20th century totalitarianism (both Communism and Fascism) are artefacts of Western Civilization. But they were both threads that were defeated by the major threads of Western civilization and this from the very beginning in ancient Greece centered on the importance of the individual. The paradox of Western civilization was present at this very beginning. The Greek focus on the individal spring frim a slave society. From this focus on the individual came both democracy and an explosion of learning, including scientific insights that would not be replicated until the Renaisance. To the Greek foundation, the Romans added another important element of Western civilization--the rule of law. With the fall of Rome and the Germanic barbarian invasions, the ancient basis of Western civilization was essentially lost. It was not recovered until the Italian Renaissance stimulated interest in the classical texts. And the result was a shift in Ruropean thought from God back to the individual. The Reformation in Germany began as a largely theocratic and nationalistic movement. But there we a range of collateral impacts. It prevented the Roman Church from limiting intelectual discourse, at least in northern Europe. It also as a result of translations of the Bible into the developing "vulgar" languages, stimulated literacy and learning. The Enlightenment took the next step, questioning both religion and absolutism. French phiosophes played a major role in the Enlightenment, but English thinkers like Locke also plyed an important role. The French and British engaged in a world-wide
struggle for dominance in the 18th century which was not finally settled until Trafalgur (1805) and Waterloo (1815). As a result, it would be the English-speaking people that would essentially invent modernity. France was the larger, stronger country, but it was crippled by absolutism, including the Bonapartes, the Revolutionary Terror, and the Bonapartes. France did not overthrow its absolutist traditions until defeat in the Franco-Prussian War gave birth the the Third REpublic. It is no accident that the Industrial Revolution occurred in Britain. The developing democracy, relatively open society, and capitalist system all contributed to the Industrial Revolution. And the Developments in Russia and Germany led to terrible totalitarian regimes in the early 20th century. Britain and France were unable to stand up to these totalitarian regimes by themselves. But Britain's victory over the French allowed them to implant British political traditions in North America and the combined forces of the English-speaking people made possible the victory over totalitarnism.
HBC began as a children's fashion site. We have continued this strong focus on fashion and plan to do so. Gradually we deciced to branch out and use the fashion information as part of a wider discussion of childhood. A reader recently commented that HBC is a massive collection of facts. She is quite right. Our plan has become to ammass a huge archive of children's clothing in different countries and eras and then to use this as the basis for a larger discussion of childhood. Another reader asks us when we began to address historical events like World war II and the Civil Rights Movement why we were doing that. Of course the answer is very simple. While these topics have been addressed in detail by historians, few historians have focused on children in these events and how they were affected. Another reader suggested that we shy away from controversial topics. We have lost some readers because of these controversies we addressed, but we do try to make HBC a forum for readers with a wide range of views. Several European readers in particular have suggested that the past is past and does not need to be dug up. Our view is that readers with that attitude probably don't want to spend time on a history site. Even more to the point, we believe that the clatimistic events of the 20th Century are not well understood and thus we have sought to create an archive with reliable factual information.
Cook, Michael. A Brief History f the Human Race (Norton, 2003), 385p.
Creasey, Edward. The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World from Marathon to Waterloo (London, 1851).
Hunnington, Sammuel.
Sykes, Bryan. Adam's Curse: A Future without Men (Norton, 2004), 311p.
Wilson, A.N. The Victorians (Norton), 724p.
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