1902, The Year of the Tank, the Republic of Cuba, and the Farewell to Cecil Rhodes

[The Hersch]

On 6/8/2018 at 4:05 PM, DonRocks said:

Now, every year since 1888 (with the exception of 1902).

ah, 1902! I remember it well.

Wasn't that the year that the Cuban republic was formed, after the US beat poor little Spain to a bloody, whimpering pulp?

The year the Charron, Girardot et Voigt , the first fully armoured "tank", was introduced at the Salon de l'Automobile et du cycle in Brussels? Even looks fun to drive! (q.v.).

The year that miserable old wretch Cecil Rhodes, the worst figure in the whole of European colonization of Africa, finally did the long-suffering universe a good turn by shoving off into eternal damnation?

[DonRocks]

Well, Herschel, you've "plugged the dyke," so to speak. Hence, the dedication to you in the final Tag of the Thread - thank you!

I'll expand on what Herschel - who wished to complete our "When Time Goes By" matrix all the way back to 1888 - has said about the year 1902.

I encourage anyone and everyone to write about topics of interest to them - I will find a place for them, and if there isn't one, I'll either start a new thread, or create a new forum. No topic is off-limits here, and I urge people to spend their precious time writing about the things they love the most. One of those things for Herschel is History.

So, Herschel picked out three things of significance that occurred in 1902:

* The first credible attempt at building a "tank" occurred with the unveiling of Charron, Girardet et Voight. This rather innocent-looking "car" was armored with 7mm-thick plating for the gunner, and equipped with a Hotchkiss machine gun. (I'm not sure what good this would do if the driver got shot, but that's a minor detail - perhaps it was used for transporting money, and the ruckus that would have occurred would have bought some time for the police to arrive.) The funny name is the name of the car company itself, founded in 1901, and active from 1906 until 1930.

* The Republic of Cuba is that "thing" which Fidel Castro overthrew in 1959. In the aftermath of the Spanish-American war of 1898, the U.S. took Cuba away from Spain in that war, and then backed its independence - from 1902-1959, Cuba was a democracy.

* Cecil Rhodes - sounds like a Major League Baseball Player, doesn't it? Rhodes was a mining magnate and Prime Minister of South Africa (then called The Cape Colony) - he was a militant Imperialist, and he and his mining company founded Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe and Zambia) - note that Rhodesia was named after Rhodes, if that's any indication of the man's ego. He also set up the funding for the famous Rhodes Scholarship (so yeah, all you Rhodes Scholars out there have taken dirty money 😜). An unapologetic racist, Rhodes proclaimed the Anglo-Saxon race "the first race in the world," and vigorously advocated for ever-expanding white colonialism, describing black countries as being largely "in a state of barbarism" (What, exactly, were we in, during the Middle Ages?), and was pro-slavery all-the-way. Rhodes also founded, and was the first chairman of the De Beers diamond monopoly, which is, ironically, totally hosing his own people to this very day, peddling relatively worthless pieces of carbon as if they were live-forever pills (they're more like "pay-forever pills"). Herschel is right: By today's standards - and I'd like to believe that by any day's standards - this was not a good person.

[The Hersch]

* The Republic of Cuba is that "thing" which Fidel Castro overthrew in 1959. In the aftermath of the Spanish-American war of 1898, the U.S. took Cuba away from Spain in that war, and then backed its independence - from 1902-1959, Cuba was a democracy.

Well yeah, but it wasn't much good to the Cubans. Under the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship, with the full backing of the US government, Batista revoked all political liberties and spent a couple of decades in power draining the wealth of the Cuban people (into his own bank accounts) and fleecing rich Americans with gambling, drugs, liquor, and prostitution. Castro was a savior.