The best aircraft carrier of World War Two?

I enjoy doing these little discussions on topics that ‘everyone knows’ the answer too. (And frankly, arguing a highly debatable issue is always fun.) I particularly enjoy challenging what ‘everyone knows’. I may not get the perfect answer, but I often get a good discussion.

My favourite example of this is those who try to suggest that the M4 Sherman was the ‘best’ tank of the war. It was, at best, a functional design when it appeared in 1942, but had fallen behind the pace by 1943, and was certainly a deathtrap against the infinitely better German Panthers and Tigers. The only positive thing you can say about it from 1943 on was that it was available in such vast numbers that you could sacrifice several of them to get each Panther (pity about the crews…) But you can also say that about the Russian T34, which – as ‘everyone knows’ – was a contemporary and much better tank (certainly a better candidate for ‘best’ tank of the war). In fact the continued production of an obsolete model like the Sherman almost certainly had a negative effect on the prosecution of the war. Which means that the Sherman was a worse choice than the alternatives the Americans could have produced for 1944 and 1945 – not least for American crews.

So moving on to aircraft carriers. ‘Everyone’ knows that the Essex class was the best carrier of the war. Why do they know this? Because there were lots of them and they seemed to work pretty well. Oh, and none actually sunk, even when put out of action.

Did they have the biggest airgroup? No that was the Midway class (which in fact had a designed air group - 130 - that was soon realised to be too big for a single ship to manage in combat). Could they take the most punishment and remain operational? No that was the Illustrious class? Were they the longest surviving in service? No that was the Colossus and Majestic classes (some of which served into this century).

So what makes them possible contenders for ‘best’? Well they were bigger than anything completed to fit into the interwar treaties, because they were started after those treaties lapsed. This gave them an advantage over British or Japanese designs in pure space. They were fast, and long ranged. They were flexible, and could adapt to bigger aircraft. And they tended to survive bomb or kamikaze damage, even when gutted by fire, or after having their combat capacity removed by a single bomb damaging the deck or burning the air-wing.

What makes them not contenders? Well they could be put out of combat operations by a single bomb. They could be reduced to a gutted wreck that would need six months in drydock by just about anything that happened to hit them. (On 12 occasions Essex class vessels were seriously damaged by air attack, and what happened to USS Franklin and USS Bunker Hill are good samples of the weaknesses of the design.) For something so much bigger than the British or Japanese equivalents, they were suprisingly innefficient by comparison.

So what alternatives are there? 

Once again, that depends on when and where.

I hate statements that suggest that the best tank of the war was the Panther. It wasn’t there until 1943? By 1945 the Stalin, Patton and Centurion were all better. What can you sensibly say about best?

There is also the issue of where. British carriers are usually decried for having too small airgroups in European operations. But this is because the Pacific practice of having 50% of aircraft in permanent deckparks could not be considered in European waters. Once British carriers arrived in the Pacific they too had 50% deck parks, and HMS Indomitable for instance, with a hangar area 85% of that of USS Yorktown, operated 72 aircraft in the Pacific compared to the Yorktown’s 80 odd. Which means that British carriers could have operated bigger air groups in Europe, if anyone had considered that wise. 

No one did.

The difference being that if a bomb hit a deckpark, the planes tended to catch fire. In British carriers, even with Pacific style deck parks, that tended to be the end of the problem, and the other planes below deck could usually be used to continue operations after some concrete had been poured on any dents in the deck. In American or Japanese carriers, burning deckparks usually led to exploding ships, or at the very least months in the dockyards. Certainly continued air operations were not very common (though it did happen once or twice, which just shows that anything is possible, not that anything is actually likely).

So at what time and where are significant issues in comparing carrier abilities. Or perhaps, which designs were most successful for what purpose?

Early experimental carriers:

The carriers from the Great War and the 1920’s included HMS’s Argus, Hermes, and Eagle, INS Hosho and Ryujo and USS’s Langley and Ranger (and the French Bearn). All served during the Second World War, but mostly as escort or transport or training vessels. Those that were involved in operational duties tended to be easy targets, and HMS Argus in particular must have been a very lucky ship to have survived her various combat missions unscathed. The only one of these experimental models with a lengthy, and surprisingly successful, combat career was HMS Eagle, which fought for two years against the Italian and German navy’s and airforces, before finally succumbing to a torpedo in 1942. None of these vessels can count as very succesful as fleet carriers, but all were invaluable as escort, training or transport carriers. Given that they had to be operated within their limits, they were pretty successful carriers.

The interwar conversions:

Many of the early battles of the war was fought with interwar fleet carriers, a number of which were rebuilds of First World War battleships or battlecruisers. HMS’s Furious, Courageous and Glorious; INS’s Akagi and Kaga, USS’s Lexington and Saratoga. All of these vessels showed potential, but all had flaws. We will never know how effective Couragous and Glorious might have been, because both were early losses before their potential could be tested. This is a shame because the three half sisters had pioneered carrier group offensives in the Mediterranean in the 1930’s, and arguably three decks with 130-140 operational aircraft in Europe (would have been closer to 200 with deck parks in Pacific) was a better and more efficient (and survivable) option than most of the two deck alternatives operating similar numbers later in the war. Certainly Furious, with the smallest airgroup of the three, was still invaluable for most of the war.

The Japanese and American monsters were twice the size of British conversions, but all proved very vulnerable. They were too big and unmaneouvrable to avoid torpedo’s, and the sheer size of the air-wings made their refuelling and re-arming processes a disastrous weakpoint. Kaga and Akagi were incapable of withstanding bomb hits, and their aviation fuel systems were easily primed bombs. Lexington was lost not directly from a torpedo hit, but from the similar weaknesses in safety and damage control that were revealed thereby. Saratoga was astonishingly lucky to survive two torpedo hits and a Kamizaze attack, despite having been put into drydock for months on each occasion. It is a tribute to her improved safety procedures as the war went on, but it is notable that her aircraft capacity went down to about 70 (equivalent to ships less than half her size) as part of this improvement of safety. She also had only one working lift for most of the war, so her flexibility in combat was never as great as her size, or the size of her air-group, would otherwise suggest.

An interesting side point here is that the size of the two American super-carriers (and the tendency to put them on opposite sides in interwar naval games), means that the Americans failed to develop multi-carrier techniques until well into the war. At Coral Sea for instance the Americans ‘Task Forces’ were well separated, at a time when the British (who needed more smaller carriers for the same effect), or Japanese (who had bet everythig on a ‘hit harder and first’ strategy), concentrated their available carriers in defensive rings. The American ‘doctrine’ here was years behind the other two, which is an fascinating issue to grow out of such big conversions.

The ‘treaty’ carriers:

This group, mostly commissioned in the late 1930’s, are the most interesting. HMS Ark Royal, IJN’s Soryu and Hiryu, USS Yorktown and Enterprise. Again, all were quite competent vessels. Again all had weaknesses.

The Yorktown's were a good workmanlike design, but terribly vulnerable to fire. Unlike Japanese carriers, they did not blow up and sink when hit (in fact they were almost impossible to sink even when the USN tried hard to do so to damaged ones), but they could be reduced to un-flightworthy, and sometimes imobile hulks, by relatively minor damage.

The Soryu and Hiryu were fundamentally flawed in the weakness of their defenses. A single hit anywhere could convert them to floating bombs, just waiting for their own aviation fuel to finish their demise. They were the ultimate expression of attempting to use the biggest possible airgroup to hit your opponent first, and hope your oppnent never got a chance ot hit back. Unsuprisingly, they were revealed as time bombs when someone did get to hit back. Yorktown and Enterprise were somewhat tougher, but also capable of being put out of combat by a single hit. (Though with a much better chance of surviving to go into dock. )

Ark Royal was probably the best, and in many ways was the pinnacle of the interwar designs. A good airgroup of 60+ (even without deckpark!). Fast, maneouvrable, with an extremely powerful anti-aircraft armament, and enough armour to continue operations after the sort of the damage that usually sunk or drydocked Japanese or American carriers. Her main problem was the poor quality aircraft available early in the war (which was largely an issue of the Fleet Air Arm only coming back to naval control in 1938.) 

She served magnificently until late 1941, and, with her long term partners – the heavily modernised battlecruiser Renown and the cruiser Sheffield and their destroyer escorts – she pioneered the techniques later thought of as ‘Fast Carrier Task forces’. Had she survived until the availability of Wildcat's, Hellcat's and Firefly's instead of Fulmar's; and Barracuda's and Avenger's instead of Swordfish and Albacore's: her value would have increased even more.

She was unfortunately sunk by a single torpedo, possibly due more to the new Captain’s panicked attempt to evacuate the crew quickly rather than see what damage control could achieve. (Admittedly the suprisingly quick capsizing of the Great War design Courageous was in his mind.)

It would have been fascinationg to see what Ark Royal, with a deck park lifting her airgroup towards the 90-100 mark, could have achieved in the Indian Ocean or Pacific. She would certainly have been transferred to fight the Japanese in the Indian Ocean had she survived a few months longer, as she was more suitable there, leaving the heavily armoured Illustrious class in the more vulnerable Mediterranean fleets.  For a design limited to 22,000 tons by treaty, she was an astonishing achievement. All the sadder that her loss to a single torpedo revealed design and handling flaws that should not have been fatal.

The ‘compromise’ carriers:

The USS Wasp was squeezed into the American program to use up a few thousand spare tons of treaty allowance. Despite being a 1930’s effort, she suffered all the problems of the earlier experimental builds in being an overly optomistic attempt on inadequate tonnage. Her theoretical 70 aircraft capacity was based on not embarking any of the bigger torpedo aircraft, and in fact her airgroup was more like 60 in service anyway. Her protection was fatally flawed, and indeed, in the case of torpedo defense, practically non-existent. She served well as a transport carrier, but her use as a combat vessel was – as in the case of the early experimental designs – an act of unwarranted optimism by desperate superiors who should have known better. Torpedo hits caused the same uncontrolled aviation fuel explosions that bedevilled other Japanese and American carriers. She did not belong in fleet combat.

The Japanese equivalents of Wasp were the Zuiho and Shoho. Sneaky attempt to build carriers disguised as submarine depot ships. With small airgroups (no bigger than the old experimental carriers) they were really the forerunners of the American Independence and British Collossus class light fleet carriers, but without the survivability. As escort carriers they were successful designs. As fleet carriers they were not. By contrast their larger but slower sister Ryuho was treated as a training carrier, and can be considered a success in that role.

The ‘war is coming’ carriers:

The early wartime launches all tended to be modifications of designs based on the treaty limits. The HMS’s Illustrious, Formidable and Victorious, and the USS Hornet (a slightly bigger repeat of the 5 year old Yorktown design). The Hornet joined her two sisters in the glory of winning the battle of Midway. She also joined with Yorktown to demonstrated conclusively both the toughness of fundamental American constructions techniques (both carriers stayed afloat long after being abandoned, despite multiple attempts to sink them), and the vulnerability of American carriers to having their flight decks and air groups put out of operation by hits that would not sink them.

The Illustrious class were designed specifically to survive in close proximity to land based air power (ie European waters), and sacrificed airgroup to increase defensive capacity. The result was incredibly tough, and every one of the eventual six ships in the class shrugged off multiple bomb or Kamizaze hits, usually with little more effect than what one USN observer descrbed as ‘sweepers man your brooms’. (A huge effort by the Luftwaffe near Malta was the only time one of these carriers was put out of action, but she survived to fight many more campaigns.) On one occasion a Kamikaze attack caused fires which destroyed half the aircraft on one of the sister ships, but even then she still continued to mount operations. 

The cost was smaller air groups. Initially the class only operated 36 aircraft in the Mediterranean, though 52-57 was more common later in the war once deck parks were possible.

The ‘freed of limits’ carriers:

The later ships of the Illustrious class grew in size as treaty limits were removed, and Indomitable (72+ aircraft) and Indefatigable and Implacable (81+) were quite capable of holding their own with the Essex class in any battle-line. (Particularly given their superior fighter direction abilities, which the American Admiral  had noted when HMS Victorious served with the American Pacific fleet in 1943, and which continued to require markedly smaller CAP’s in 1945).

The Japanese response to the dropping of limits were the Zuikaku and Shokaku, ships often described as the best Japanese carriers of the war. (They weren't actually the best designs, but the better ones were sunk before firing a shot, so I suppose this is an acceptable generalisation.)

They were soon followed by the American equivalent, the Essex class. The Essex’s are renowned for their effectiveness, and (like the Yorktown’s) for their resistance to sinking. But they were remarkably easy to disable by fire, and could be put out of action by single bombs. By contrast the Shokaku class were actually well designed to absorb battle damage (for Japanese ships anyway), and Shokaku was bombed and survived for repair on two occassions (though surviving remained quite different from continuing combat operations after damage).

The Japanese proved that the Shokaku class were not a fluke by designing the magnificent Taiho (my choice for the best Japanese design), which was pretty much a non treaty enlarged copy of the British Illustrious class. The Japanese adopted the British style armour and enclosed 'hurricane' bow that had proved so useful in European waters (and that the Americans were later to adopt in their Midway class). The resulting vessel was probably a better design than the contemporary Essex’s, but unfortunately still had the damage control and aviation fuel issues that the Japanese never overcame. A torpedo could have been survivable had the ship not been in hard action, where, once again, the aviation leaks were not overcome.

It is interesting to compare the American Essex, Japanese Taiho, and British Implacable classes. They finally come to ships of a similar size, with similar capacities. The American ships are a bit larger, and were rated for 91 aircraft. The Japanese were middle sized, and carried between 65 and 84 (never actually served in combat so debatable). The British ships, despite being smaller, were much tougher, and (with deck parks) carried 81 aircraft. Of the three types, the Essex’s were best for Japanese style ‘hit and run’ operations (though Taiho might actually have been better), and the Implacable’s were best for ‘slug it out’ combat operations. (Ie: each nation achieved the best design for its preferred strategic approach.) However the limitation of the late expansion of the British ships design was lower hangers, which limited the types of aircraft they could carrry later in the war. So they had less ability to adapt than their earlier sisters which had higher hangers.

Wartime emergency carriers:

(We will leave aside the escort carriers. Good little ships for convoy escort and aircraft transport, but not suitable for fleet work. The most effective combat trole was to use them as floating airbases to cover invasions. This worked well for the British in the Meditteranean and Indian Oceans, and for the Americans in the Pacific. Some of the British, and most of the Japanese escort carriers were conversions, and most of the American ones purpose built. Within their limits, they mostly did quite good jobs. It is worth noting however that the British were horrified by the lack of fire safety on American escort carriers, and insisted on refitting them to higher standards before using them. This may have been a ‘European waters’ thing, but most American escort carriers when hit tended to respond in the unfortunate fashion of Japanese carriers – see Liscombe Bay for instance – not what was expected of American built ones. Only the 4 Sangamon class conversions from fleet oilers actually demonstrated combat survivability – see USS Chenango.)

So the American version of a ‘wartime emergency’ design was the light fleet cruiser conversions known as the Independence class. These though, were forced on a reluctant navy as a stopgap even before combat began. President Roosevelt became concerned that not enough fleet carriers would be available to cover combat losses while waiting for the arrival of the Essex’s, and demanded compromise vessels. They were too fast and expensive to be ecort carriers, and too small to operate on their own as fleet carriers (and had so little ammo storage that munitions were often carried on the hangar deck - even less protected than Japanese carriers!). But at a time when the Americans had to beg or borrow British carriers to stage diversions in the Indian Ocean or provide an extra carrier for the South West Pacific campaign, they were useful stopgaps. But stopgaps they remained – for good reason, see the loss of USS Princeton – and they were phased out as quickly as possible when real carriers arrived.

The interesting thing of course is that the ‘emergency wartime’ designs were decided by when the nations entered the war. Britain had to start earlier, and therefore reworked an earlier period design. Japan had more time to adapt, and a large part of the timing of Pearl Harbour was based on when the Shokaku class would be ready. The US by contrast didn’t finalise its post Yorktown design until too late to have new ships ready for war. (The name ship Essex, even with wartime pressure on construction speed, did not arrive to see action until May 1943!) As a result the Americans settled on the Essex design (or a slightly enlarged version) for most of the rest of the war.

The British and Japanese by contrast, experienced the shortfalls of their older designs early enough to start designing new vessels after actual combat and operational experience.

The Japanese emergency ship is the most amazing. They took an incomplete Yamato class battleship, and tried to build a huge version of the British ‘aircraft support carriers’ like HMS Unicorn. The resulting 66,000 ton monster – the Shinano – had a theoretical capacity of 120 aircraft in a hull armoured like a battleship, but in fact was designed ot operate maybe 50 aircraft, and have vast workshops and stores of supplies to support other carriers. The much smaller British versions worked brilliantly, so possibly Shinano would have too, except that she was torpedoed and sunk while still incomplete.

The British went in the opposite direction, and developed proper ‘light fleet’ vessels on the basis of the success of the Unicorn. They had discovered that 30+ knotts speed was not vital for most fleet work, and 25 knotts would be fine. Also, they knew that standing up for slugging matches was not necessary for most aircraft carrier work, so the short term ships could be built on merchant principles, not warship ones. The resulting 10 Colossus and 6 Majestic class carriers were an amazing success. A belief re-inforced by the fact that a dozen of them were in service into the 1970’s, and a couple lasted until this century. They became the ideal peacetime carriers for any nation that didn’t need or want (or couldn’t afford) large fleet carriers. They also became the model for the large number of amphibious assault ships, through-deck-cruisers, and V/STOL carriers built for many nations after these ships finally retired. Half a dozen of them were finished before the end of the war, including several active with the British Pacific and East Indies Fleets, but none actually engaged the Japanese before the surrender.

The late war carriers:

The need to rethink designs was caused by different things in different countries.

For the Japanese it was combat losses, and the recongnition of weakness that involved. The Shokaku class demonstrated toughness and survivability, but were too expensive and complex for emergency mass production. The Hiryu class were much simpler, and with a smaller and better protected aviation fuel supply, might have been more survivable. (Though the solution of pouring concrete over the fuel tanks of the resulting Unryu class does not inspire great confidence.) 17 Unryu's were planned, 6 were laid down, 3 were completed, but only 1 actually made it into service. Too little, too late of course, but that is more a reflection on Japanese industry than on the design. Nonetheless, as virtual repeats of the Hiryu class, they were really too light and vulnerable to take on even a pre-war Yorktown, let alone an Essex or Indomitable. They were possibly the best option, but they were never good enough for what was needed.

For the Americans, the need for changes also came from combat damage. As several Essex’s demonstrated the continuation of concerns over the flamability of American carriers, the fact that they usually survived to be repaired became less of an issue than the fact that a deck in a fleet action could be easily put out of action by a single bomb. The Americans started looking with envy at the British armoured flight decks, and Admiral Nimitz pressed to beg, borrow, or prefereably build, as many armoured carriers ASAP. (Particularly after the Kamikaze’s appeared). 

The obvious response was the Midway class, which – like the Japanese Taiho class – aimed to incorporate British design principles without the size limits of the treaty carriers. (A lot of the motivation being the inspection in the American repair yards of British carriers that had survived multiple hits by German dive bombers.) Unfortunately none were finished in time to see action. But these excellent designs served well for decades after the war, and would have undoubtedly been much more effective in surviving Kamikaze combat than their wooden decked predecessors, had Japan not surrendered earlier than was expected.

For the British, with the luxury of their armoured carriers surviving everything thrown at them, and living to fight again; plus an abundance of light fleet carriers entering service for the expected continuation of the Pacific war, the issue was simply one of getting bigger ships than the treaty limited or modified ships. 

First they enlarged the design of the Illustrious class to be equivalent to the Essex’s in size and airpower, but with greater weight to allow proper protection. The resulting Audacious class were not prioritised, and were put on hold when the war ended, and finished with many design changes at a leisurely rate post war. 

Then, they upsized the succcessful HMS Unicorn and Colossus designs to produce the Centaur class. Light carriers of the same weight as the treaty limit Ark Royal or Illustrious. (The Centaur’s were finished post war, but had long careers. HMS Hermes, now INS Viraat, is still flagship of the Indian Navy and potentially likely to stay in service until 2020 - more than 75 years after she was laid down!).

Finally they came up with their own version of the Miway class, but even a bit larger. The Malta class would have been the final development of wartime technology, and, like the Midways, would have been capable of adapting to steadily increasing aircraft sizes for decades. But they were cancelled uncompleted when it was accepted that there was non chance of them being needed. (Britain had dozens of carriers to potentially use against post war nations who had none, and only a single contemporary who had carriers to fight… their major ally. Much as some Malta class might have been useful in the unlikely event they still been around at the time of the Falklands war, the post war government was probably sensible to think that more than enough capacity was available in 1945.)

Conclusion

So although the Midway and Malta classes were the best carrier designs of the war, neither were really relevant to the war.

Although the Collossus, Majestic and Centaur classes were fabulously successful post war, they were not important in the war.

Although the Yorktown, Essex and Shokaku classes had significant operational flaws in terms of the ease with which they were put out of action, they (and possibly HMS Unicorn) were the best of the unarmoured carriers of the war.

Although the Illustrious class were the best battle carriers of the war, they were constrained in offensive air capacity by the effects of treaty limitations. (I am tempted to think that the Taiho, with its inclusion of all the best parts of the highly successful Shokaku class, PLUS British style armour and hurricane bow, PLUS a large airgroup: might have potentially been even better battle carriers. But the appalling Japanese record with battle damage played true for her as well?’)

Although the conversion carriers served well, they all showed significant limits, and most were lost due to them (and in the American case these also had a baleful effect on carrier doctrine).

The experimental carriers actually served very well, as long as they were not used for actual combat…

The usual balance for successful battleships is between speed to engage, armour for defense and gunpower for offence. For aircraft carriers it turns out to be between speed to engage and escape, air-group size for offense, armour or toughness for protection and defensive firepower. The best carrier of the war appears to have been the best compromise. A carrier with the air group capacity to do well in the Indian Ocean or Pacific, and the armour to be capable of staying in action after combat damage, and firepower and toughness to have a reasonable chance of surviving in European waters.

Given that every one of the wartime carrier had major design flaws, the best compromise appears to leave the Ark Royal. (I think that despite the fact that her particular design flaws led to her loss to a single torpedo, because, on balance, I believe a non explosive torpedo weakness seems a better choice than a highly explosive torpedo or bomb weakness. For a ship I would want to serve on anyway.) 

Frankly, until you get to the Midway or the Malta, they all had their own design flaw problems that made them less than perfect, so the idea that any wartime carrier was ‘ideal’ is dubious.

It is amusing that the Ark Royal, possibly the ideal carrier for the Indian/Pacific conflict, served her whole combat career in the far more dangerous European waters that she was less than ideal for. That she did so well there just emphasises her flexibility.

Victims of Middle Class Morality – Aboriginal Prisoners as modern welfare

(Another rant I’m afraid)

It has been a bit appalling recently to hear Australia’s political class (particularly journalists) get on their high moral horse about the treatment of women in India. These are the same people who get equally moralistic about how terrible it is for the Australian government to ‘intervene’ in the even more appalling conditions of Australian Aboriginal women and children.

Middle class morality in the late 19^th century led to mission stations to help Aboriginal communities learn ‘self-sufficiency’. The original idea was to train Aboriginal communities to settle and grow their own food, and produce an excess that could be traded or sold for profit and to improve the community. One of my early teachers (who worked on such a station as a Lutheran missionaary), managed to convey the surprise that the ‘whites’ felt when they discovered that people’s of a hunter-gatherer culture had no idea of ‘surplus’. They had spent so many generations just collecting what they needed for that day, and having to abandon any excess for lack of capacity to store or transport it, that the idea of gathering a surplus to trade was too foreign to deal with. They grew only what they needed, and then stopped. The ‘Protestant Work Ethic’ missionaries were stumped.

In the early 20^th century, middle class morality was in favour of ‘opportunity’. Both Mission and Government attempted to train men in farming or shearing or herding skills – such as were in demand at the time – and women for jobs as nannies and dometic servants and cooks – again the jobs on offer at the time. In fact the male training went particularly well, and the entire northern part of Australia came to pretty much rely on casual or itinerant Aboriginal stockmen, and benefitted immensely. (Training women as domestic servants could be considered a bit more 'American plantation' thinking in the good old days of the land of cotton I suppose, but I am not sure what realistic alternatives there were for undereducated black women at the time, so I will limit my criticism to a nice modern cringe.) But it was not to last.

Mid 20^th century middle class morality led the Union movement to insist on full time work (male single wage families being the concept derived from the Harvester Decision) as the only possible employment choice for labourers in Australia. Punitive penalties for daring to employ casuals or itinerants meant that Aboriginals were offered a chioce. Full time work under union rules, or no work. Unsuprisingly, the still nomadic tribal backgrounds of most Aborigines made this no choice at all. The cynical (me for instance) could suggest that the Australian Union Movement successfully drove competition, from yet another non white race (like the Chinese) who would work for less that whites, out of the marketplace. For the best of motives of course.

Fortunately the federal government had its own fit of morality, and admitted that if Aborigines were condemned to work (or not) in the same conditions as whites, then they would also have to be supplied with the same unemployment benefits as whites. Again, they failed to understand the effects of this.

Naturally, hunter-gatherers still worked on the principle that you only put in the effort needed to survive, and then stopped working. The new government ‘sit-down money’, meant that the amount of work necessary to survive dropped to virtually nothing. So many stopped working at all. The closure of the remaining ‘self-sufficiency’ farming missions was pretty immediate: often due to people simply leaving the tools where they stood in the field and walking away.

At about the same time, the myth of the ‘Noble Savage’ came back into vogue. A group of pompous and self righteousmiddle class civil servants in Canberra decided that the ‘moral’ thing to do was to force aboriginal communities to become more 'traditional communities', by which they apparently imagined some sort of pure and traditional self managing co-ops. Co-ops with communal property, and no individual property rights to speak of. In other words, Communism having proven a disastrous failure amongst the corruption of the modern world, middle class idealogues determined to forcibly impose it on the much ‘purer’ liffestyles of the noble savages.

It will surprise no one to learn that such an ideology leads to disgusting and criminal results, no matter where it is forcibly employed. Australia’s Aboriginal communities are one of the last places in the world to endure such appalling stupidity… along with that other bastion of communist idealism:  North Korea.

Modern middle class morality has it that all the problems of Aborigines are because of ‘white invaders’, and that they would be better off without us. This perspective – which can best be described as the ‘reservation’ or perhaps ‘living zoo’ viewpoint – is of course, mindless ideology rather than reality. 

Hunter-Gatherer societies are violent. Very violent. (Farmers a bit less so, and town dwellers usually much less so, as an inevitable result of the requirements of increased co-operatioin and trade in larger communities.) And ever more shall be so. It takes incredibly wilful ignorance to imagine that a purer ‘noble-savage’ lifestyle would put empahsis on the first word rather than the second.

And so we revile at the ‘stolen generation’ – which is an interesting interpretation under which to lump all the various groups of children taken from violent families, or sent away, or offered apprenticeships or simply abandoned because they were half-castes. (Though there can be no doubt that then, as now, many ‘civil servants’ interpret their authorised powers to suit their own prejudices, rather than what was intended by those who wrote the rules. So no doubt a percentage genuinely were ‘stolen’ from parents who were actually trying to do their best.)

Some pretend even that this was a conscious act of genocide. (Such people apparently being unaware that many half caste children in many tribal commmunities were usually allowed to die at birth, or before government agents could find them.)

So many act appalled at  the very idea of aboriginal children taken away from their families, as though there could never be a reason to take children from violent or abusive parents.

The end result now is that there is virtually no ground upon which abused women or children can be ‘stolen’ from their abusers. No matter how many aboriginal elders and womens groups complain, there is no danger of children being removed from the violence that is inherent in the ‘noble-savagery’ of a ‘hunter-gatherer’ culture. 

This is the place which the moralists who are bemoaning the treatment of women in India have brought us. (I wonder if it is the fact that Indian caste culture is not pure enough to be worthy of their ideological worship that annoys them, or whether the backward elements of Indian culture cannot be accepted because it has not been coerced by those same white middle class socialist moralists?)

Fortunately there is an alternative for modern aboriginal children. Gaol. (Or jail for the modern speller.)

The teacher I mentioned above was somehwat bemused to relate the response of aboriginals from his community when ‘punished’ with a week or two in gaol. “This a good place, next time I bring me brother”.

The Australian did an article recently on the fact that the vast majority of children committed to Dubbo’s jails are Aboriginal. (Though some of them have to offend a dozen times before they get in.) The side comments referred to the fact that at least the teenagers who make it into the gaols are safe from violent abuse by family and relatives, and are even likely to get the 3 nutritous meals a day they have probably never experienced before. (Another article had one aboriginal elder point out that aboriginal youth can and do get a year in gaol for stealing from non-aboriginals, but rarely get charged even with manslaughter for bashing a fellow aboriginal – usually women or children – to death. While a third comments on our refusal to consider the inevitability of our approach.)

It appears that the problem of rescuing children from the violence of their forcibly imposed noble savage society is no longer being undertaken by government agents ‘stealing’ young children. The modern ‘rescue’ comes when the violent and badly abused teenagers escape into the warm embrace of the criminal justice system.

What a tribute to middle class morality.

China now, Imperial Germany then - Democracy, Nationalism and Militance

It has been fascinating to watch the rise of Chinese Nationalism, particularly as expressed by the current argument over a group of rocks (the Diaoyu's) in an ocean that China has traditionally ignored ,or indeed outlawed traders from using.

What is particularly alarming to me though, is the historical parallels it draws with other historical powers making very bad choices for very regrettable reasons.

Just to list some recurring historical issues:

1. Too many young men...

The Crusades (for good or bad, and arguments can be made both ways) can be read as an exercise in exporting excess younger sons of noble and knightly families to find fame and fortune, and of course lands to rule, a long way away from home. (In fact I once did an old fashioned - and statistically suspect - cumulative frequency graph for the crusades, compared to the rise and then fall of population in Europe pre and post the Great Famines of 1314-15, and the Black Death. The steep rise in both prior to 1300 matched beautifully. The rapid fall in population thereafter led to a much flattened gradient that quickly died out.)

This is what nations have almost always done with excess testosterone, from Alexander, Attila and Ghenghis, to Conquistadore and boys from the playing fields of Eton. To paraphrase Mussolini, 'Italy has two many children to support, so we must produce more men to conquor new lands'.

But in China's case a one child policy in a nation biased to male heirs has produced an excess of aggressive young men of military age, with little chance of ever marrying, such as has never previously been seen in human history. Potential problems with militaristic nationalism?

2. Too much propaganda..

The first media war was the Crimean War, where a reluctant British government was driven into a conflict it didn't want by the power of press manipulated public opinion. In the end the Turks deliberately sent their fleet on a suicide mission for the sole purpose of making the British public believe Britain's guarantees had been flouted by the Russians.

A similar media motivated/manipulated war was the Spanish-American War of the turn of last century. (The Democrats and media barons used the media to force the reluctant Republican administration into fairly blatant imperial conquests - including several territories like Peurto Rico and Guam -  still held by the US and still treated as non voting colonies).

China's Communist Party has played with media manipulation for quite a while now, and perhaps it is finally dawning on them that the result may unleash the populist dragon... in a most uncontrollable fashion.

3. Too many chattering classes...

China is also facing the impact of the inevitable rise of an educated middle class that comes with industrialisation, whether you like it or not.

Traditionally this newly awakened group of shallow, but sincere and well meaning, new activists has been an easy target for populist movements and demagogues of all sorts. Think of the cretinous young chattering class opera lovers who think 'a new world awaits beyond the barricades' in Les Miserables, and you get a fair idea. These are the 'useful idiots' who can be convinced to support Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Madame Guillotine (or the even more simplistic and unrealistic formulas of modern green movements!)

A recent example of how NOT to deal with such emerging chattering influences was the Argentinian Military Regime's decision to distract them with what sic-fi maestro David Weber amusingly calls "a short victorious war". Popular outrage against your incompetent and corrupt government rising, declare war on someone you can rely on the idiots to rally against. Las Malvinas sounds easy and popular.. let's invade the Falklands! (Note to idiots... if your government is desperate enough to think this is a clever idea, you are already on the road to disaster. this will just add revolt, possible civil war, and almost inevitable even nastier dictatorship to the mix.)

When I was at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at ANU I managed to provoke a certain scorn by suggesting that Australia was infinitely less threatened by tinpot Indonesian dictators than by the genuine possibility that an elected Indian President might some day need to redirect public anger away from their own party in just such a way... (India, unlike China, actually has the military hardware to invade Australia if it actually wanted to... If a World War Two type situation, where our main protector was just a bit busy somewhere else, ever rose again, India could conquor Australia much, much more easily than Japan could have even considered in World War Two!)

The Arab Spring (a re-run of 1848 if ever I saw one), is just starting to produce the results that might lead to similar threats of 'short victorious wars'. The likelihood of conflict between branches of Muslims and anyone unfortunate enough to be in their way (like Israel, or Christians, or Kurds or other minorities), have been vastly increased by the introduction of democracy. Particularly by letting the brakes off the shallow thinking but well meaning new chattering classes. These are the people who are likely to lead the ignorant masses into the bright new uplands of progress... like communism and nazism and all those other clever new ideas.

China is likely to learn that steering the beast is a lot harder than creating it.

4. An excess of democracy...

Strangely, giving the new classes a say in your society when they are relatively ignorant of the naunces of politics and international relations, does not tend to good results. You get stupidity such as the Napoleonic wars (or the American subset, the War of 1812), or Nazism or Communism, by well meaning idealists leading gullible masses into terrible disaster.

The best example of this is not often recognised as democratic pressure. The decleratioin of war by Imperial Germany in 1914 is usually seen as an imperial war by an imperial regime. But in fact the democratic pressures of the new chattering classes and their Navy League, and Colonial League and all the other democratic movements that were nationalistically aggressive, had a real effect on the pressures the German government felt under, and felt they needed to control or guide.

China may well soon face a perfect storm of exactly the sort of issues that authoritarian regimes cannot cope with when they need new middle classes to run their industrialisation.

A combination of threats...

Ridiculous as it may seem, it is unexpected arguments over useless little islands (Cuba 1898, Cuba 1962, Falklands 1982, now the Diaoyu's)  that are historically more likely to cause regimes to lose control of the tiger they are riding than great and recognisable historical issues they feel they have a handle on.

Danger to government stability comes in many forms, but an oversupply of testosterone, propaganda, idealism and ignorant democratic pressure is the most dangerous of all... for authoritarian regimes as well as for democratic ones.

Maybe China would be better for a Falkland's experience? Pity about the cost.

A Tale of Two Twits: The Emperor of Brazil and the Shah of Iran.

On a trip to Italy recently I became very aware of how the French Revolution, and Napoleon Bonaparte in particular, burst on the scene and overthrew generations of stability with what appeared at the time to be inspiring revolution and reform.

When Napoleon’s fleet forced its way intoMalta –  then the greatest fortress in Europe – many Maltese ran to their positions at the batteries, only to have the French knights of the order of St John turn them back because they were convinced that the impending changes were too wonderful and inspiring to want to stop. (In actuality the French Revolution, and Napoleon in particular, were brutal and rapacious looters, and the Maltese people were forced to revolt within only a few weeks of watching the French pillage their churches and culture).

Similarly the Doge of the thousand year old Serene Republic of Venice, when threatened by Napoleon’s forces, surrendered, and handed his cap of office to a servant commenting “I won’t be needing that any-more”. This surrender is particularly baffling given that fifty years later the  much poorer and weaker Venetians threw out their new Austrian masters, and endured a year long seige with considerable fortitude. The surrender to Napoleon for the Venetians, as for the Maltese, was again more of a feeling of inevitability than from any real weakness or fear, and again was instantly regretted as the rapacious French sacked the great arsenal and looted the churches.

The theme here is that some things that look both wonderful and inevitable at the time, quite quickly prove to be appalling mistakes. Such are the case in the foundations of the Republics of Brazil and Iran.

Brazil was the greatest treasure of the Portuguese crown, to the point that when the royal family fled there during the Napoleonic wars, the prince decided to stay when his father returned home, and Brazil became an independent Constitutional Monarchy with a parliamentary system of government along the British model. 

Brazil therefore entered a golden age, where the entire focus of the governments power was upon the development and improvementof the colony – rather than on looting it for the benefit of the mother country the way most Catholic empires of the period were doing. (Catholic conquistadores often claimed they were after converts, but in practice were seeking loot. Protestant empires tended to be more settle and trade rather than conquor and loot. Orthodox empires were geographically more attuned to the ‘keep the barbarians further and further away from our borders’ approach of the Middle East. And Muslim empires were of course still into the sort of ‘conversion by the sword’ that the Protestants weren’t any longer, and the Catholics weren’t supposed to be since the Pope’s ruling against it…)

Brazil’s golden age saw massive advances in the economy, in education, in human rights for all, and in integrating the mixed races of the state. Democracy was growing, freedom of the press was entrenched, and slavery abolished. Things leapt ahead in great bounds for 80 years, and Brazil looked like a better bet than the United States (undergoing a horrible and debilitating civil war as it tried to catch up on getting rid of slavery), for becoming the great modernising power of the America’s.

But then, tragedy. The Emperor of Brazil got a good idea. He became fascinated with the advances in democracy in various parts of the world, and went out of his way to encourage his nascent constitutional monarchy parliament to remove him and declare a proper Republic. He felt that this was both a wonderful and inevitable step, and that he should not stand in its way. In fact there was little desire amongst the general population for any change, but the new elites of chattering classes were delighted to play with new power. (Though, as in the US revolution, slave owners who wanted to keep their slaves played a dominant role in the ‘reform’.)

Over the next century Brazil became apathetic backwater, and suffered a series of appalling dictatorships. The economy crumbled into a basket case, the rule of law was lost, freedom of the press smashed, human rights dissolved, and conflict between the racial groups became endemic. Within a couple of decades the advances of a century were reversed, and a new system of repression and economic disadvantage locked into place for several generations.

Hooray for a foreward thinker.

In fact had the Emperor of Brazil kept a firm hand on the development of his parliamentary system over several decades, gradually increasing the voter base as property franchise and education improved along with general literacy and the rule of law, then Brazil might have continued to outpace the United States in the America’s. Instead he abandoned an only partly developed system to the mercies of a newly emerging chattering class BEFORE the rest of the citizens had developed the necessary understanding of structure and cynicism of politicial motive to be able to control the new elite. The result was what it always is, elected dictatorships followed by military coups, followed by violent rebellions, followed by more dictatorships, etc. (Suprisingly, it was one of the military governments that eventually got sick of the whole thing and started to re-impose a democratic system… but this time slowly and carefully ove the course of decades!)

A similar thing happened in the great hope of the Middle East, Iran.

Many of the small independent states of the Middle East granted self government in the last sixty years were tribal groups that worked best under their own traditional monarchs. They would take many years to develop the necessary education, literacy, and rule of law to start pushing towards functional constitutional monarchies (in fact Morrocco and Jordan and some of the Gulf Emirates are only now working towards this properly). Unfortunately several other states were forcibly constituted under monarchs who had little direct tribal association with large elements of the population, and these (particularly Iraq) have always been unstable, either as monarchies or as republics. But not any worse than many roughly structured Republics with similar problems (like Turkey and Syria and Libya).

Iran however, should not have had this problem. The ancient Persian culture was still dominant and strong, and the Shah was from a family with great history and loyalty. Minorities were not persecuted the way they were in other Muslim cultures, and their economy was booming. In fact Iran in the early years of the twentieth century was looking as promising as Brazil had a century earlier. It's 1908 Constitutional Monarchy and Parliament structure being a potential model for the entire Middle East on the route to modern statehood.

Yet again, the rulers are largely at fault for what happened next. Shahs' dropped the ball. They overestimated the advances in democracy, and underestimated that backwardness and ignorance of many of the citizens. They tried to structure a new style state before the population had the sophistication and education and cynicism to be ready for it. They finished with a parliament of shallow new chattering elites, willing to try foolish things that looked exciting or inevitable. One Shah had to be deposed for being too pro-German in World War Two. (Fascism looks exciting and inevitable....) His son was possibly even worse. He encouraged his parliament to nationalise foreign assets (Nationalism looks exciting and inevitable...), and the British and Americans reacted badly and instigated coups (the first recognisable modern US coup against a democratically elected government) and interventions that led to eventual collapse of the still underdeveloped political system. The Shah turned for a while to US support (scoring cold war brownie points looks like the way to go....), but the crisis grew worse over the next quarter century, and eventually ongoing debacles led to a final coup.

The result, inevitably, was that modern Iran is a particularly nasty theocratic dictatorship that has fallen economically decades behind its previously pathetic neighboure, and survives now on the sort of paranoia and irrational fear that used to represent the Soviet Union (and still apparently represents those other great republics... Russia and China and North Korea).

Iran went from being the shining hope of democracy and civilisation in the Middle East to being a basket case that has been economically completely overshadowed by the previously despised and backward tiny Emirates across the gulf. It went that way because the Shahs', like the Emperor of Brazil, and like the French Knights of St John or the Venetian council, fell for the concept of wonderful and inevitable advances, without realising that slow and cautious development is a necessary underpinning to any permanent advance.

Similar things happened in many other places that were thrown into ‘independence’ before devolping more than a rudimentary chattering class of lawyers and civil servant elites. If the literacy and education of the vast majority of citizens was not up to the idealism of the small and overly confident new elites, those countries were doomed to even nastier dictatorships than Brazil and Iran. (See almost anywhere in Africa for example.) 

Worse, many states fell to a particularly horrendous political 'shiny new toy', Communism, that usually inflicted economic chaos, and indeed slaughter and injustice, on its own citizens, beyond the wildest dreams of Ghenghis Khan (all in the name of being exciting and modern and inevitable of course...)

Democracy can be a wonderful part of a functioning constitutional system, but only if it is developed slowly over decades or centuries within a literate population, with a rule of law, a free press, and a firm understanding of cynicism in relation to political promises. Otherwise, overly enthusiastic institution of democracy within a largely illiterate and uneducated culture with little experience of rule of law, and virtually no understanding of the cynicism necessary to deal with the ridiculuous promises of professional politicians: leads to very horrible results.

The worst enemy of developing a stable democracy, is pushing it too fast.

The result of people who have been given responsibility for nurturing the development of a country thinking they can take exciting short-cuts, is inevitably appalling.

God save us from well meaning twits.