An elderly relative of mine was commenting a few week ago about how bright L was and also one of her cousins, my brother’s three-year old. She added that they’d benefited from having educated mothers who hadn’t rushed back to work as soon as they were born. In some ways it was a very old-fashioned pre-feminist comment; the problem is, I could also see her point.

The care of small children is the crunch-point for what I would call career-orientated feminism: the view that the principal aim of a woman should be to have as successful a career as possible. (Success in this view is generally taken to be judged by how well-paid and prestigious a job is, although not inevitably). This is by no means the only possible sort of feminism, but it’s one that is still a significant factor. One key argument by such women is that taking any substantial time out from work harms one’s career prospects (and is therefore a bad thing). The options for family life that tend to be presented in such cases are 1) not having children, 2) the new mother returning almost immediately to full-time work combined with full-time professional childcare, 3) ‘marrying down’ and having your husband/partner do the childcare.

Such women are depressingly right in their conclusion that any kind of career break is likely to harm their upward progress. The problem is that it’s very hard to adopt any of their suggested options and have what I would regard as a good quality of family life. 1) of course, eliminates family life altogether, which is a perfectly reasonable option, but one which many women (and men) would not be happy with. The problem with 2) is what kind of experience your child gets. I am not one of those mothers who believe that daycare is some kind of evil force that irreparably harms children and L has had part-time daycare from about 6 months. But a child in full-time daycare is likely to lose out in terms of individual attention. L would not get five books in a row read to her at daycare (or nursery school or primary school), even though that may be what she really wants. (Actually, she doesn’t always think five is enough, but that’s a different matter). And it’s quite hard to fit such ‘quality time’ around a 9-5 job (let alone a 8-7 job). Given that exposure to adult conversation and lots of books are two of the most effective ways towards early intellectual development that is an issue.

One alternative, for the really prosperous, is a nanny. There was a recent article about how parents were increasingly looking for nannies with educational skills such as languages and music (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2079539,00.html). This may solve the problems of educating small children, but it still leaves a problem: imparting feminist values. This is the central dilemma for career-orientated feminists: if you want your child to be brought up believing that a career is crucial, you should not be entrusting most of their formative care to those whose preferred occupation is childcare. More socially conscious feminists are likely to be unhappy about too much outsourcing of childcare to often poorly paid and exploited female workers (some daycare is good, but some isn’t, and some au pairs and nannies are badly exploited). Even the expensive option of a professional nanny doesn’t solve the problem of who is a more effective role model for a small child: a mother working full-time or a nanny always there.

Trying to involve your husband/partner in childcare as much as possible (a modified option 3) is, on feminist grounds, a better idea anyhow, since it tackles the presumption that children are solely a woman’s responsibility. In practice, it’s twice as difficult to rearrange two jobs to include childcare responsibilities. There are also problems in the calculating approach of ‘marrying down’. Firstly, it is in danger of starting to treat a husband/partner in an instrumentalising way: as a means to an end not an end in himself. Secondly, extremely career-orientated women tend to have a wider problem in their approach to childcare. They often see it as intrinsically menial and demeaning and (by extension) those who do it as less valuable. Treating an employee in this way is corrosive enough: treating a husband in this way seems even more destructive. (In contrast, I have tried hard to remember that those caring for L have important professional skills, even if they don’t have my educational qualifications. The ability to be patient with a stroppy toddler (let alone several) is, arguably, a greater achievement than being able to translate medieval Latin).

I am left with a paradox: if I want my child to have a sound feminist upbringing, I have to forfeit some of my own career prospects. Most of the time that seems like a price worth paying, but not always. It would be nice to think that changing attitudes to the work-life balance will mean L doesn’t have to make such a choice, but I’m not optimistic.

Disclaimer: the following post discusses genocide as a historical problem. It is not intended to discuss the morality of genocide, which I regard as a hideous crime.

A friend of mine recently heard a talk by Dr Ben Kiernan, who is writing a general/global history of genocide. After he discussed some incidents of genocide in the ancient world, he said that genocide was much less frequent in the Middle Ages, but then reoccurred more frequently in the early modern era. My friend, not a medievalist, wanted to know if I agreed there was less genocide in the Middle Ages and if so how I accounted for it. Here, in response are my thoughts.

The first problem in thinking about genocide for the Middle Ages is that we don't have that much evidence, especially for the early Middle Ages, which may be crucial. We know of a lot of tribes which are mentioned in early accounts that then disappear from the records. There was even a recent conference on this, under the wonderful title of Ethnonemesis (as a parallel to ethnogenesis, which a lot of early medievalists study). Because we have so few records from the periods, we don't know what happened to members of such tribes (were they killed or not?), let alone what the intentions of other cultures were towards them. For example, the lack of Celtic placenames in most of England suggests that culturally they were overwhelmed by the Anglo-Saxon invasion. But there is no consensus between scholars on how many Anglo-Saxons actually came, let alone whether the Celtic population was killed, driven out or simply absorbed.

A second issue is land-use patterns. Unless you have overpopulation (which is very rare in the West before early modern times and limited to a few areas even then), there are only a few circumstances when it is useful to gain land without people. Obviously, if the land needs to be cleared before farming, that takes a lot of manpower. Until the mid-nineteenth century or later, when tractors started to come in, arable farming always required a large labour force (some crops still do). Pastoral farming requires much smaller numbers of farm workers, but historically it’s tended to be severely limited by the expense of building up a substantial herd. I suspect only in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries did capital growth make large-scale sheep-rearing/cattle ranching commonplace, which had obvious implications for land-holding from the American West via the Scottish Highlands to the Australian bush. The other time when land without people is useful is when the land contains valuable minerals. The growth of mining technology and (perhaps more importantly) of geological techniques for recognising potentially valuable sites, makes the previous inhabitants of such areas far more vulnerable. The first example I know of someone with specialist knowledge finding a valuable site (as opposed to the locals having known about it) is Giovanni de Castro finding alum at Tolfa in about 1458. (But I’m not an expert on ancient/medieval mining, so there may be earlier examples).

If over the long course of history controlling unpopulated land has rarely been of use, then genocide is only occasionally strategically sensible. It makes far more sense to conquer and then absorb/assimilate the remnants of the conquered into your own tribe/nation/empire, either as subordinated workers or even as additional warriors, thus making you stronger. There are only a few occasions when it 'makes sense' to carry out genocide. One is with irreconcilable opponents, those who cannot be successfully assimilated. (I think the Romans may have come to think of the Carthiginians in that sense, but only after more than 100 years of on-off warfare). The second reason for committing genocide is 'pour encourager les autres': as a warning to other potential rebel cities etc. (I guess the classic example of this would be Athens' treatment of the city of Melos, which Thucydides discusses in some detail). The other (I suspect relatively rare) category of genocide in the premodern world is when the conquering group feels its culture is endangered by assimilating other groups. The main example of this is some of the Old Testament pronouncements of God to the Israelites. (I'm not sure whether there were other religions/cultures that had similar attitudes).

Then a lack of genocide in the Middle Ages would reflect the obverse of these factors. Killing a whole people to make a point to others is a rather extravagant gesture and also harder when you have tribes/polities larger than city-states: you can get much the same effect by destroying just one city (or as Charlemagne did, executing 4500 Saxons). Both Roman and Christian culture stressed the possibilities of assimilation into them: anyone could become a Roman citizen/Christian, if they did the right things and this wasn't (normally) seen as a threat to Romanness/Christianity. (This possibility of assimilation was not true of all ancient identities: it was hard (and became progressively harder) to become an Athenian citizen in ancient Greece and becoming a proselyte (a convert to Judaism) also required considerable commitment and instruction.

The Middle Ages (and the ancient world beforehand) certainly had the concept of peoples/races (there were kings 'of the English' before there were kings 'of England'), but such identities weren't thought of as unchangeable in a way there were later. In fact, there have been scholars like Dominique Iogna-Pratt who have studied the rise of anti-semitism in the Middle Ages to try and work out when anti-Judaism (hatred of a religion) developed into anti-Semitism (hatred of an ethnic group). One of the signs of this change is the attitude towards Jews who converted to Christianity. From the twelfth/thirteenth century these seem to have been regarded with increasing suspicion: there is a sense that there is something still Jewish about them that cannot be removed easily or at all. But the possibility of conversion for Jews and others was still there: even in Spain in 1492, the choice was conversion or expulsion. Expulsions, deportations or other forms of ethnic cleansing are, of course, always an alternative to genocide, and I suspect this is easier when there are still 'open frontiers'.

The ‘rise of the nation state’ in some parts of the west in the later Middle Ages didn’t, I think, necessarily mean a more monocultural society and less ability to tolerate minorities. It did tend to mean persecution of the Jews: expulsions were associated with nation-building in both England and Spain. But Scotland (and perhaps Switzerland) showed the possibility of developing a multi-ethnic nation that still had a strong sense of identity. However, several factors changed in the early modern period. As well as some of the land-use issues I’ve already mentioned, there was an increasing sense of 'race' as a fixed and unalterable property, along with the colonial encounter with humans who were 'more different' than those previously (and so were more easily seen as unabsorbable/incapable of being 'civilised'). Another factor may also have been that some early modern nations seemingly no longer had the 'techniques' (or willingness) for assimilation of the Other that the Roman empire and early medieval civilisations had once had. In particular, I once heard a talk by a scholar called Richard Drayton (then of University of Virginia, now at Cambridge). He was contrasting the early empires (C18 and before) of France and Britain. One of the contrasts he drew was that although the French demanded religious conformity, they were more tolerant of differing cultures in other ways, and followed Roman ideas of collaboration between the conquering and the conquered. In contrast, this only came into British imperialism at the end of the eighteenth century in India. Before this, the British had been unable to cope with situations when they had been vastly outnumbered by the native population and had simply ended up killing or expelling them.

From my notes, I don't remember Drayton saying what this difference was due to, although he did mention that French imperialism was far more centrally controlled than British, which was largely led by independent groups of settlers. Political traditions may also have had an effect. In some ways, ‘successful’ imperialism requires the same kind of confidence trick that autocracies need. A small group of the elite has to convince a vast number of the subordinated that this is the only possible way to exist and that rebellion is wrong, or at least futile. (In most such situations, the elite don’t actually have overwhelming military force available and if their bluff is called their position may collapse). On the other hand, I imagine Spanish colonialism was also pretty centralised and autocratic, so this may only be one factor.

Perhaps another difference is that France was still expanding territorially in Europe throughout the Middle Ages, so that it needed to remember the techniques of assimilation of previously hostile others. In contrast, England after 1066 had only the minor digestion problems of Wales and Ireland (there's an argument that Scotland never was assimilated even after 1707), and although Spain has the Reconquista, the vast bulk of that happened before 1250. But if any early modernist is reading this blog, I’d be interested to hear their comments.

A few weeks ago there was a row in the US about one of the presidential candidates (John Edwards) having an expensive haircut. If I thought about it at all (I got the story from Obsidian Wings), it would have been as an example of the tendency of the media (UK as well as US) to focus on political trivia as opposed to substance.

And then I started reading Kate Cooper, The Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late Antiquity (Harvard UP, 1996) and a chapter on how Roman politics was precisely about this kind of manoeuvring. As she puts it:

If a man’s enemies were bent on discerning in his private life an intemperance that could compromise the fulfillment of public duty, it was his task to undermine the plausibility of such revelations by a deft broadcasting of his probity.

This hostile observation of others in political terms extended to all aspects of their behaviour. Cicero allegedly said of Julius Caesar:

In all his schemes and all his policy I discern the temper of a tyrant; but then when I see how carefully his hair is arranged, how delicately with a single finger he scratches his head, I cannot conceive him likely to entertain so monstrous a design as overthrowing the liberties of Rome.

Because Roman public life offered such opportunities for a man to gain personal advantage, a powerful moral language was needed to deter corrupt behaviour and denounce those who committed such offences. Cooper focuses on how much classical discussions of a man’s marriage and sexual behaviour were used as a symbol of his wider political fitness. ‘By metonymy, sexual temperance was understood vividly and memorably to index the self-control of a male protagonist in matters other than the sexual.’

A lot of US and UK political rows start to make sense in this framework. For example, Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky becomes significant less because of any perjury involved than because it implies that he is likely to misuse the privileges of office in other ways. He is the kind of man who will take what he can because he can. Similarly, John Edwards’ expensive haircut is not just used as a sign of being out of touch with the common man; the implication (even if unstated) is that a man who spends private money in a wasteful way will do the same with public money.

The Roman analogy suggests that this political emphasis on a candidate’s moral life is not new and not simply a result of the mass media. Another obvious but incorrect conclusion is that it is used in political contests where there is no substantial policy difference between the candidates. But some of the same images were used by politicians like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, who did have very distinctive policies. (Thatcher was presented as the prudent housewife, for example).

I would call the focus on such ‘character’ issues ‘virtue politics’, in a rough analogy with ‘virtue ethics.’ As I understand from my limited knowledge of moral philosophy, unlike ordinary ethics (which focuses on developing rules for how you make an ethical decision), virtue ethics focuses on how someone becomes a person who will make a correct decision. Similarly, virtue politics focuses not on the specific policies of a candidate, but on the fact that the candidate is the sort of person who will make the right political decisions.

It seems to me that there’s been a big move towards this kind of virtue politics in both the US and the UK in the last thirty years (although maybe other will say it’s always been there). In the US, where it is a president being elected, there’s obviously a greater tendency to focus on the man more than the policies, in contrast to a party political system like the UK. I think that virtue politics has become more common in the UK not just because of the Americanisation of politics, but because there has been a series of attempts to make substantial changes to what political parties stand for: the Tories under Thatcher, New Labour, David Cameron’s Conservatives. Focusing on the personality of the leader is not necessarily a substitute for new policies, but a way of embodying them memorably to the electorate.

The other reason that I suspect virtue politics is on the rise is because of the unpredictability of the world. Having a coherent policy on current political issues doesn’t help you with ‘black swan’ events (see previous post) such as the fall of the Berlin Wall or the September 11th attacks. Maybe politicians being chosen because they’re ‘virtuous’ (i.e. their instincts are good) isn’t so bad after all. Perhaps the problem is just that the virtues the spin-doctors are emphasising and the electorates are choosing are the wrong ones (is being a person you’d like to share a beer with really a sufficient virtue for a politician?)

I’ve seen several articles recently discussing a new book out this month: Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: the Impact of the Highly Improbable (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Black-Swan-Impact-Highly-Improbable/dp/0713999950/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/203-5091590-1107162?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1178519926&sr=8-1). (I’ll say at once I haven’t yet read the book itself). There was quite a good article on it in the Guardian business section (http://business.guardian.co.uk/economicdispatch/story/0,,2068696,00.html), which gives a summary of the theory:

Taleb argues that there are three attributes of a Black Swan. The first is that they lie outside the realm of regular expectations, with nothing that has happened in the past able to point to its possibility. The second is that they have a huge impact. The third is that despite being unforeseeable, human nature means we construct convincing explanations for the appearance of a Black Swan once it has happened.

However, the Guardian has also done another longer and noticeably less good article on the book (http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/politicsphilosophyandsociety/story/0,,2067489,00.html) which discusses current events and history and shows how some people can completely miss Taleb’s point. This starts off by referring to events such as Cho Seung-Hui’s killing spree at Virginia Tech and the September 11th attacks as black swans, which needs a whole lot of more careful thought. Firstly, what counts as a black swan event depends at whether you’re looking at a micro or macro level. Me inheriting a million pounds this year from a previous unknown relative is a black swan event. Somebody in Britain inheriting a million pounds this year from a previously unknown relative is statistically likely to happen. Cho being the attacker was difficult to predict (although some people had apparently warned about him). But when I heard the news on the radio, at one level my reaction was of weary predictability. Such crimes occur fairly frequently in the US and they will continue to occur fairly frequently in the US as long as gun control is so lax. If the massacre had been in Japan (or somewhere else with very tight gun laws) or in the US senate, it would have been improbable.

With the September 11th attacks you again have the question of what the impossible to predict event was. An attempt by Islamist terrorists at a huge attack within the US was not unpredictable: there had already been the World Trade Center bombing, as well as attacks outside the US. The use of planes in this way was unprecedented (as far as I know), but there had been intelligence specialists warning beforehand this was possible. The successful co-ordination of so many hijacks I don’t think could have been anticipated or how many people were killed. So at one level September 11th was a black swan, but not at all of them. It was noticeable that the sense of shock at the attacks (though widespread) was less intense among Americans (and non-Americans) who had experience of cultures where terrorism is not a rare occurrence.

As this suggests, ‘outside the realm of regular expectations’ depends crucially on the point of view of the observer. I can remember being shocked by Princess Diana dying in a car crash: if I’d known beforehand (as some of her security men did) that she often did not wear a seat-belt, I’d have been much less surprised. Maybe George W Bush couldn’t anticipate the effects of Hurricane Katrina; a lot of experts had been able to. (See Barbara Tuchman’s book, The March of Folly (http://www.amazon.co.uk/March-Folly-Barbara-W-Tuchman/dp/0349106746/ref=sr_1_1/203-5091590-1107162?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1178522534&sr=8-1, which now needs an Iraq update, for classic examples of how leaders can get into predictable disasters).

Where the Guardian article really goes off the rails, however, is when it starts talking about history and particularly counterfactual history. Some use of counterfactuals is a valuable tool in history. The article quotes from Ian Kershaw:

"If you look at major historical events, the outcome is not random or simply contingent," says the (non-Marxist) historian Ian Kershaw, whose latest work on the second world war, Fateful Choices, has a counterfactual flavour, though he rejects the label. "There are developments which predispose the outcome, and the job of the historian is to work out what are the predisposing elements, and what is truly contingent."

What is more dubious is that the article starts talking about the theories of Niall Ferguson and other (largely right-wing historians), arguing that the First World War etc happened only as a result of chance and had no great causes. But what the black swan theory suggests is in fact that the entire conservative idea that some big events needn’t have happened is even more flawed. Such views normally rest essentially on the presumption that things could just have carried on as usual: the British could have hung onto North America, the king might have won the English Civil War, the Russian revolution might not have happened. But in fact the black swan theory suggests that shocks to the system happen more frequently than one would expect and that ‘more of the same’ is less likely than you would think. If it had not been Sarajevo, some other unforeseeable event would probably have precipitated the First World War. After all, a war between the Great Powers was not an unimaginable event in the 1910s: there were even people enthusiastic about the possibility. Similarly, if George Washington had lost, would the United States really now be the southern equivalent of Canada? Or would the essential problems of taxation without representation still have festered and led to another attempt at independence? When history suggests rulers and politicians learn very little about changing the system from ‘near misses’, it’s difficult to avoid such ‘unpredictable’ events.