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There are personalities or events from the past whose memory has survived to this day wrapped in a positive aura although, upon closer inspection, shadows appear. In other cases that legacy leaves no room for doubt.
Churchill and his shadows. Winston Churchill is considered one of the great statesmen of the 20th century and without a doubt his role was fundamental in defeating Nazism. But the Iraqi writer Tariq Ali, who has just published Winston Churchill in Spanish. His times, his crimes, affect the dark side of him. Racism, initial opposition to the female vote or having sown the seeds of the Palestinian conflict are part, in his opinion, of that long black list.
Visionaries and dangers. Few people can be said to have shaped today’s daily life like Steve Jobs, the visionary who 40 years ago already talked about the Internet or iPads. The takeoff of smartphones, starting in 2007 with the first iPhone, transformed society and human relationships. Now, however, many are beginning to question the real impact that these technologies – and their abuse – have on the population.
An uncomfortable memory. The history of Poland is one of the most turbulent in contemporary Europe. One of its biggest scars is the expulsion of millions of Germans after the Second World War, when it absorbed a very important part of what until then had been German territory. Now the Poles are trying to recover the memory carved for centuries by that population.
Christmas Bullet. There is no doubt about the legacy of William Whitney Christmas: he was the creator of the first airplane in which the pilot died on each of his two initial flights. There was no third party. More than a designer, Christmas was more of a charlatan on the level of Victor Lustig, the man who sold the Eiffel Tower twice, or Carlo Ponzi, so popular that today a scam method is named after him. He never went to jail and always had a comfortable life.
The past of Monopoly. Created at the beginning of the 20th century by Lizzie Magie, a brilliant economist who conceived it with anti-capitalist overtones, what is now known as Monopoly was copied by Richard Brace Darrow, who sold it to Parker Brothers. Tens of millions of units of the game were published and the original plea against the abuses of the market economy became a defense of the economic model. The story in The Public Domain Review. (in English)
Frank currency. More about money. Currently, the most internationally accepted currency is the dollar, as was previously the pound. But before the latter, the reference currency for three centuries was the eight real, made from silver from Bolivian mines. This article from the BBC website in Spanish tells it.
General mobilizations. Last month, La Vanguardia published an article in The Economist in which it reported on the difficulties that the Ukrainian army is going through in finding new recruits in the face of the war of attrition that the armed conflict with Russia has become. Although at the beginning of the invasion the Ukrainian government decreed that men between 18 and 60 could not leave the country, enlisting remains voluntary for the majority. But many of the new volunteers do not meet the minimum requirements. “We are encountering people aged 45-47,” complained one officer. “By the time they get to the front, they’re already out of breath.”
Faced with this situation, Ukraine faces a dilemma as old as wars: whether or not to expand mandatory mobilization. Some critical voices point out that the country, in reality, has barely mobilized, while others are against measures of this type.
In reality, a larger or even general mobilization is more difficult to execute today than in other times because it can be much more contested. That, without taking into account the trauma they represent for society. There are domestic examples of both things: on the one hand, the call up of reservists for the war in Morocco was the fuse that set fire to the Tragic Week in Barcelona in 1909 and, on the other hand, the memory of the Quinta del Biberón still endures today. , young people even as young as 17 who were sent to the front at the end of the Civil War.
In the two great wars of the 20th century, the mobilizations between the main powers were enormous. Some estimates indicate that in the United Kingdom 22% of the available population was assigned to military tasks and more than thirty million people served directly in the Soviet army. However, as noted previously, in contemporary times adopting this type of measures is very difficult. South Vietnam, for example, only decreed it when it was about to lose the war to its northern neighbors.
