Page Xxxviii
“When I was a schoolboy,”
– here (and for the whole paragraph) Ferguson introduces a series
of ideas presented by historians in the past that he is about to critique.
“class conflict”—here
Ferguson means conflict between economic classes (e.g. between the
poor and the wealthy)
“Supposed division between the proletariat
and bourgeoisie” – here Ferguson means “between
the poor and the rich”
“political ideologies” –
here Ferguson means political beliefs or programs. Democracy, for
example, is a political ideology that assumes the best government
is one in the people rule
“But what about the role of traditional
system like religions, or of other apparently non-political ideas
and assumptions that nevertheless had violent implications.”
– Here Ferguson argues that there might be other ways of thinking
beyond “political ideologies” that might also cause violence
in the world.“But was it not the case that some of all of these
politities were in some measure multi-national rather than national—were,
indeed, empires rather than states” – Here Ferguson points
out that many of the combatants in the twentieth century were not
nations made up a single ethnicity (“France” filled with
“the French”) but rather Empires made up many ethnicities.
Ferguson uses the word “polities,”
the plural of “polity,” which is a general term to refer
to a geographic area with a corresponding government.
Page XLI
“breakdown in sometimes quite far-advanced
processes of assimilation” – Here, Ferguson means
that there was frequently ethnic conflict even in places where minority
groups were deeply integrated into majority cultures as a consequence
of adapting the customs and attitudes of the prevailing culture.
“this process was
greatly stimulated in the twentieth century by dissemination of the
hereditary principle in theories of racial difference.”
– Here, Ferguson means that ethnic conflict in the 20th century
often occurred because of a relatively new concept that differences
between groups were biological and inherited.
“political fragmentation”
means the fracturing or breaking-up of lands into smaller political
units. If Staten Island broke away from New York City, it would be
an example of political fragmentation.
“the frequency and amplitude in the rate
of economic growth, prices, interest rates and employment”—Here,
Ferguson explains that economic volatility means increasingly frequent
and increasingly large swings in prices, employment, and other aspects
of the economy. ‘Decomposition of multi-national European Empires”—Here,
Ferguson means that for a very long time until the 20th century, much
of Europe had been governed by Empire made up many different peoples
(“multi-national”) but that over the course of the twentieth
century, these Empire broke apart into smaller states, often organized
around a single ethnic group.
Page LI
“is one of those
‘memes’ characterized by Richard Dawkins as behaving in
the realm of ideas the way genes behave in the natural world”—Here
Ferguson observes that the cultural concept that there are distinct
races of people is able to reproduce itself and get passed down from
one generation to another just as a gene might. The irony, as Ferguson
notes, is that the idea of distinct races persists despite the fact
that there is no scientific basis for it. We might as well believe
there are elves.
Page Liii
“This was a profound transformation in
the way people thought.” -- By “This” Ferguson
is referring to the notion that intelligence or character were inheritable
and so the possession of certain races; as Ferguson points out, this
idea was relatively new. People HAD believed that power, privilege,
and property passed down from parent to child, but the idea that intelligence
and character did was a new idea.“one theory asserted that power
should not be a hereditary attribute, and that leaders should be selected
popular acclamation.” – Here Ferguson explains that new
political idea or theories argued AGAINST the idea that political
power should pass from parent to child; instead, the new theories
argued that leaders should be elected democratically.
Page Lvi
“while at the same time owing allegiance
to a remote imperial sovereign”
-- Here Ferguson means that most peoples’ identities were very
local (seeing themselves primarily as residents of village or family,
for example), that also recognized themselves as the subjects of usually
very distant Emperor or King. Indeed, this “imperial sovereign”
might not speak their language. None of this was considered unusual
or even wrong.
“an Ottoman port of Greek provenance where
Jews slightly outnumbered Christians and Muslims” –
Here, Ferguson is using the city of Salonika
to point out how jumbled ethnic identities could be in some regions,
particularly when comparing cities to the surrounding country side.
So, Salonika was a city in the (Muslim) Empire of the Ottoman Turks,
but most of its inhabitants were Jews, and most of those in the surrounding
countryside were Greek-speaking Christians.
Page Lvii
“However, with the emergence of the Nation
state as an ideal for political organization, these heterogeneous
arrangements began to break down.” Here Ferguson argues
that once the idea that the best form of political organization was
a nation state for a single people (France as a nation for the French,
for example, or Mexico as the nation for Mexicans) the patchwork of
various ethnicities jumbled together began to encounter difficulty.“restoring
their sovereignty” – to build themselves back into a nation
organized around a single ethnic group.
“complex patchwork of pales and diasporas”
– Literally, the Pale was the term given to a region of Imperial
Russia in which permanent residence of Jews was allowed, and beyond
which Jewish residence was generally prohibited. Here, however, Ferguson
uses the term to mean not just the Russian Pale, but as a general
term to refer to places throughout Europe to which specific ethnic
groups had been consigned to live. Diaspora refers to a spreading
of peoples beyond what they see as their homeland. Throughout Europe,
many groups had picked up from traditional homelands and scattered
throughout the continent in diasporic communities.
Page LXI
“planned economy” – Here Ferguson refers
to communist countries who had economic systems in which the central
governments made all decisions on the production and consumption of
goods and service. A planned or “command” economy differs
from a free-market economy where prices and decisions about how much
to produce of what sort of good gets decided in the marketplace through
supply and demand.
Page LXI to LXII
“Economic volatility matters because it
tends to exacerbate social conflict. It seems intuitively obvious
that periods of economic incentives for politically dominant groups
to pass the burdens of adjustment to others.” Here, Ferguson
observes that when economic shocks hit countries—the price of
coffee drops in a country that makes most of its money from selling
coffee, for example, groups that are in power try to figure out ways
to make less powerful groups bear the burden of the changes.
Page LXII
“With the growth of the state intervention
in economic life, the opportunities for such discriminatory redistribution
proliferated.” Here Ferguson observes that as governments
became more involved in the economic life of their citizens, the more
opportunities arose for governments to interfere in ways that benefited
some groups at the expense of others.