On This Day

1098: The First Crusade captures the strategically important city of Antioch after an eight month siege.

1940: The last ship of 'Operation Dynamo' leaves Dunkirk, completing the evacuation of 338,226 Allied troops.

Both from BBC.

The first:

The siege of Antioch, as part of the Crusade has a lasting consequence in present day attitudes on both sides of the Muslim/Christian divide.
We continue to play out the battle and the siege and the war and countless lives still get spent.
Celebration of the victory (even in an apparently innocuous 'On this day ..) can do nothing but fuel the bloodshed and hatred.
Why not find an example of good relationships between the Muslim and Christian world?
What was happening on Sicily at this time?
Well, one thing was a fusion of culture a live-and-let-live policy which led to a massive outpouring of building and other cultural activity which serves as a model for latter generations to follow.
There are countless examples of good relations between the two 'cultures' (although, as Sicily shows - that itself is something of a challengable statement - not the good relations, the TWO: Orthodox christians and Catholic christians certainly don't seem to live in the same world - and divisions in Islam show too).
The renaissance is very much a product of the interaction of merchants and traders, princes and clerics from both sides of the divide - and the wonders of Southern Spain under the Muslim world were never really repeated under its christian conquerors.
You doubt this - ask the Jews whose oppression got far worse under the Spanish christians.

If the events of Antioch are distant and apparently minor to my world (although attitudes to Muslims in Romania and misunderstanding of Islam make me hesitant to make so bold a claim), Dunkirk is different.

The first thing to understand is a deep emotional commitment I feel to the events - my father was at Dunkirk - if the evacuation hadn't happened, the chances of me being here at all would be very limited.
In books like 'Atonement' I experience a connection with those characters who experience Dunkirk which is difficult to describe and impossible to explain - this is not history - it is my life.
But for the purpose of this post, that is not the issue.
Relations with Germany are: Why have the British and the Germans managed to go through two World Wars banging away at each other and still come out (comparative) friends?
I think part of it is acceptance of an essential common humanity - acknowledgement of and focus on what is the same, and common economic progress.
(The American film industry certainly thinks there is no difference if the number of British English accents given to Germans in their WWII films is anything to go by).
Russia however seems hell bent on the 'crusader path' - constant showing on the t.v. of WWII films with evil Germans and heroic Russian children who inevitably get slaughtered by the wicked Nazi. Commemoration of victory over the evil German is enshrined in the national calender - Victory Day.

A time to let go ...?

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