Trafalgar 200
Tomorrow it will be exactly 200 years since the battle of Trafalgar where Lord Nelson won a famous victory for England over the French armada. As I watch Sky News, and the interesting politically correct descriptions of the “re-enactment” that will take place by a massive fleet of ships from around the world, it suddenly dawned on me that we were not here talking about an event from the mists of time. This happened just 2 centuries ago.
It feels so much part of a more distant past to me. Yet, how the world has changed in this time. France and England are now in union with each other (if not bosom buddies), and Europe is a very different place. No longer can any war be won because of a superior navy. If we look forward 200 (or even just 100) years from now, what new alliances might emerge? What new hostilities will have replaced the current ones? And will America have lost its leadership position, just as England has lost hers in the past 2 centuries? We know for sure that the world will look vastly different in 100 years time. Working out in which ways is critical to our success between now and then.
All obvious comments I know, but it took a significant memory to trigger them.
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Thinking about the shape that war once took reminded me of something I read in Gladwell’s book titled ‘Blink’. He talks about a war ‘game’ between the red and blue teams in a quest by the States to be better prepared for the future of war where they realized that it would never again be an open, area head-to-head confrontation. In the game the blue team had all the best intellegence and info systems at their disposal yet were basically butt-kicked by a red team led my a Maverick who thought out the box. Makes for some intersesting reading especially when something like ‘The Art of War’ is a popular business book and war analogies are common place in board room thinking and planning. Wars will continue to take place it is just that, even in war, the ‘rules of engagement’ have changed!
It is also a mere 200 hundred years ago that the civilised populace of France murdered thousands of their own just on the rumour of sympathy to the nobility. To ensure that they are never regarded as sympathisers, French women would pin the genitals of the executed to their dresses. This was normal practice, frightening! this is the civilised French, who now regard themselves as custodians of the world’s peace loving citizens. Things change quickly on planet earth. I wonder if Rwanda’s Tutsi and Hutu will be the ‘new’ french 200 years from now?
It was also Argentina who recorded the highest economic growth at the beginning of the 20th century. South America was then very much the ‘asian tigers’ of their day. A hundred years later and latin america have imploded under the weight of the drug trade, poverty, misplaced ideologies ineffective government. Could it be that south east asia will follow suit a hundred years from now?
England was considered invincible only 100 years ago, their colonies were conquered in much the same way as the USA is installing ‘friendly’ governments around the world. Could it be that America will be the lapdog of the next super power (China) a hundred years from now?
One thing we can be sure of is that the world will look very different 100 years from now.
I sometimes wonder how “uncivilised” we will look in 100 years’ time. Surely nobody has ever thought of themselves as uncivilised – in each age people have assumed that they were living appropriately for the era. Just as we do today.
What practices, ethics, policies and structures that we take for granted today will look archaic in just a few decades time?