11:00 Lois and I need to get to the nearest Royal Mail post-box. We run a U3A Danish group - the only one in the UK, and it's our fortnightly meeting tomorrow. Scilla, the group's Old Norse expert, has asked for a copy of the paperback version of the whodunnit book we're reading together as a group. I have got her a copy from the Danish publisher and so this morning I package it up, paying for the postage online: simples - we don't need to go into a post office any more and breathe in the other customers' exhalations, which is a relief to put it mildly!
the receipt for Scilla's book
It's sunny but chilly in a brisk north-easterly wind - brrrrrrrr!!!!
Lois pops our package for Scilla in the nearest Royal Mail post-box
Lois pops the package into the post-box down the road, and then we do our usual walk round the local football field. And what's the big event of the day for us? It's that we notice the Parish Council have acquired and set up a shiny-new wooden bench near the Council Offices, and there are more on the way, apparently, which makes sense to us. Why have a nice coffee stand like "Whiskers" when there's only one bench to sit on. Duh!!!!!
we start our walk on the football field, and pretty soon we spot a shiny-new
bench (not shown) that the Parish Council have set up near the coffee stand
the Whiskers coffee stand by the Parish Council offices
who's this poor little old man, eh? Lois sets me up with a coffee
Lois joins me and my coffee, with her own drink - a hot chocolate (not shown)
[I can't believe you're presenting this as new material! - Ed]
14:00 It's ANZAC Day today in Australia and New Zealand, and Steve, our American brother-in-law, has drawn our attention to some recipes for ANZAC biscuits on the web. Lois chooses one of these, adapts it slightly and makes some biscuits. We have one with our usual Earl Grey tea on the couch at 4 pm: yum yum!
we try the ANZAC biscuits out on the sofa, while
we wrestle with a difficult crossword (not shown)
I take another look at the book I got for my birthday last month, "The Horse, the Wheel and Language" by David W.Anthony, which is all about the ancient language Proto-Indo-European, spoken about 7,500 years ago between the Black Sea and the Ural Mountains. Proto-Indo-European is the ancestor of almost all European and Indian languages, plus Iranian. Nobody knows for sure what this ancient language sounded like - no writing system had yet been devised for it - but linguistic experts can partially reconstruct it by working back from Latin, Greek, Sanskrit etc.
the "homeland" where the Proto-Indo-European language
was being spoken about 7,500 years ago
The odd thing to me is that the languages that developed from Proto-Indo-European, essentially the European languages like English, French, Spanish etc, have in the last 500 years taken over the world, and have produced almost all the world's technological advances etc.
And yet, if you go back to 7,500 years ago, the peoples who spoke Proto-Indo-European were the no-nothing backwoodsmen of the times, the "hicks", the "hayseeds", the yokels - they foraged for food: ie shot wild animals, caught fish, picked berries etc - they hadn't developed the farming of livestock or learnt how to grow grain. It was their neighbours to the west who were the smart guys, who knew how to farm in this way, and were soon also developing metalworking. However these smart guys have left no trace of their languages in the languages of today. Weird isn't it.
flashback to 7,500 BC: our linguistic ancestors were just foragers.
The smart guys of the time were their western neighbours in the Balkans,
who spoke languages that have not really left any trace in the languages of today - how weird!
Poor smart guys haha !!!!!!
And unlike the "smart guys" who'd invented farming and who were now inventing metal-working, those dumb Indo-Europeans were only just starting to keep a few cattle - and, even then, they still preferred their fish or deer-meat: we can tell this from the bones in their rubbish-tips. What stick-in-the-muds!!! What madness !!!!!!
19:30 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's weekly Bible Seminar on zoom. I settle down on the couch and listen to a bit of radio, the latest edition of Melvyn Bragg's series, "In Out Time".
I've been looking forward to this programme because it's not a subject I know much about - I think we covered it at my grammar school when I was about 14, so not exactly recently haha!
The topic this week is the impact of the Franco-American alliance of 1778. As always, presenter Melvyn Bragg has assembled three experts, all teachers of American History at one or other British university. From their accents, I quickly gather that all three are Americans who have maybe lived in the UK for some number of years.
It's interesting to hear what a big part money played in the events leading to the two revolutions, the American and the French. Britain had been victorious over France in the Seven Years War (1756-63), but had come out of the war with a lot of problems: lots of debts (a £137 million deficit - Britain's annual revenue was only £8 million - oh dear!), but, on the other hand, Britain now had far more territory to defend in North America and in India than it did before.
The American colonies still had to be defended from the French'n'Indians, and Britain wanted the colonists to help by paying higher taxes. However, the colonists weren't too happy about this because they simply weren't used to paying a lot of tax: the average citizen of Massachusetts paid only 1 shilling a year in tax, compared to average residents of Britain who paid an annual 26 shillings.
The discontent in the colonies led inexorably to the War of Independence. The Declaration of Independence (1776), in its less well-known parts, shows that the colonies had a carefully-worked-out vision of their future as a set of independent states conducting commerce and alliances with other countries, and taking their full place on the international stage.
It's interesting that 2 years later, in 1778, the British Government sent the Carlisle Commission to America to open negotiations with the colonists, bringing a plan sanctioned by Prime Minister Lord North. The plan envisaged that the US Continental Congress would act as the colonies' parliament, with the authority to tax residents, just as long as the Congress recognised the authority of George III. Of course by now the British were far too late in suggesting this plan, although the programme's experts think it would have stood a chance of being accepted by the colonists if it had been proposed just a few years earlier. Damn!
Tonight all three experts seem to be in agreement that the war could not have been won by the colonists without the backing of France. At the Battle of Saratoga (1777) the Americans were largely armed with French muskets, for example.
However, even setting aside the supplies of arms, uniforms, "advisers", 4000 troops, money etc, one of the biggest effects of the the colonists' alliance with France was that Britain had to withdraw a huge part of its forces from America to potentially fight the French worldwide again, and to defend the home base. In 1778 65% of Britain's army units had been in America, but by 1780 this proportion was down to 29%. In 1778 41% of the Royal Navy's strength had been stationed in the colonies, but by 1780, this figure was down to only 13%.
France also brought Spain into the war on the anti-British side, and the power of the French and Spanish navies was a big factor in nullifying the Royal Navy's efforts to prevent the British defeat at Yorktown (1781). Of course France also was meantime spending money it couldn't afford, and the subsequent financial crisis in France and the need to raise taxes was a big factor in leading to the revolution there in 1789. Oh dear, money money money!!
The 1790s were a difficult decade for the fledgling USA. Still a relatively weak country with its own debts to cope with, plus renewed problems with Indian tribes, it couldn't afford to get involved in the continued war between France and Britain and tried as much as possible to steer a neutral course. George Washington and the governing Federalist Party tended to favour better relations with Britain, while the opposition Republicans with Thomas Jefferson leaned towards France.
America signed the Jay Treaty with Britain in 1794, which settled a lot of differences, and among other things, brought the colonies back under the umbrella of the Empire, if only as far as commerce was concerned. The treaty infuriated the French, who then more or less "gave up" on America.
the Jay Treaty between the US and Britain (1794)
What were the longer-term consequences of the Franco-American Alliance of 1778?
The programme's experts tonight seem to think that most Americans today are largely unaware of the aid given by France in the Revolutionary War.
However they think also that there were a number of events that suggest that ties of a sentimental nature have survived the 200 plus years: in 1886, the Statue of Liberty was provided by France as a symbol of joint liberalism at at time when the Third French Republic was finding its feet; US aviators volunteered to fight for France early on in World War I, and after the official entry of the US into World War I, there was the symbolic visit of the American military commander to the tomb of the aristocrat Lafayette, who fought in the American Revolutionary War; and more recently, in 2019, French President Macron visited George Washington's home at Mount Vernon, where President Trump showed Macron the key to the Bastille, which Lafayette had sent over as a gift.
a slightly odd picture from the Guardian Newspaper
of the Macrons and the Trumps visiting Mount Vernon in 2019
All three experts agree, however, that supposed Franco-US links harking back to the Alliance of 1778 are more symbol than substance. Oh dear !!!!!
Fascinating stuff!!!
21:00 Lois emerges from her zoom session and we watch an old Fawlty Towers before collapsing into bed - zzzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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