Questões de Inglês

GERMAN SUBMARINES (U-BOATS) (2)

By N.A.M. Rodger

[1]   Warships are built for war, but not only for war. They have always had an eloquent symbolic value as expressions of power, wealth and resolve
[determinação], as instruments of threat or reassurance. They speak this language in peacetime just as much as in war. But ‘language’ should really be in
the plural. Different kinds of warship convey different meanings, in different languages, and the languages are not easy to translate. This applies to all
warships, but especially to submarines. The range of ideas and associations linked with German submarines, for example, in the period of the two world
wars and since, were not the same inside Germany as outside. For many episodes of Anglo-German submarine history there are at least three versions of
the narrative: the British, the German and what actually happened.
[2]   During the Second World War, the British officially described all enemy submarines as ‘U-boats’, regardless of nationality, so that they would all be
tainted [manchados, tachados] by the sinister connotations of the German word, and so that the public would not confuse their activities with the heroic
campaigns of British and allied submariners. Today, most books in English on the First World War still describe Germany’s adoption of ‘unrestricted
submarine warfare’ as the critical point of the naval war, but what they imagine to have taken place bears only a slight resemblance [semelhança] to the
reality. ‘Unrestricted submarine war’ implies the rejection of legal restraints [restrições] that did not exist, for international law as yet had taken almost
no note of the existence of submarines. The German submarine force was divided into different commands that followed different policies and operated
different types of boat, but most of them were occupied with stopping cargo ships on the surface in daylight in coastal waters, then allowing the crews to
escape in their boats before sinking the ships by shellfire or scuttling charges. This was a highly efficient form of attack involving minimal loss of life. In
August 1916 Lieutenant Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière, the captain of U-35, returned to his base having sunk 54 ships, still the record for the single most
destructive submarine patrol in history. The quayside [cais] was black with cheering crowds, ‘and yet,’ he commented, ‘so far we had scarcely had any
adventures. It was all rather humdrum. We would stop the ship, order the crew into the boats, check the ship’s papers, give the crew a course to the nearest
land and sink the prize.’
[3]   This practice was economical and brilliantly successful, but German senior officers were not cheering. It was hateful to German admirals, and even more
to generals, because to them it looked like a concession to civilian values that would ruin Germany’s reputation for Abschreckung (‘frightfulness’ or terror).
They wanted the U-boats to torpedo passenger liners, which was difficult to achieve and had limited military value, because the mass slaughter of civilians,
they believed, would frighten enemies into surrendering and drive neutrals into port. So they ordered the reluctant submariners to abandon surface attacks
in favour of the more murderous, but much less effective, submerged attack. The German submariners knew (as did the British) that the economic blockade
was Germany’s most effective weapon. But economic blockade was an alien concept to German senior officers, and had little to do with victory as they
understood it: they weren’t fighting to win so much as to assert the social values of the German military and claim their rightful status in the command of
society.

Adapted from the London Review of Books 22 September 2016.

GERMAN SUBMARINES (U-BOATS) (2)

By N.A.M. Rodger

[1]   Warships are built for war, but not only for war. They have always had an eloquent symbolic value as expressions of power, wealth and resolve
[determinação], as instruments of threat or reassurance. They speak this language in peacetime just as much as in war. But ‘language’ should really be in
the plural. Different kinds of warship convey different meanings, in different languages, and the languages are not easy to translate. This applies to all
warships, but especially to submarines. The range of ideas and associations linked with German submarines, for example, in the period of the two world
wars and since, were not the same inside Germany as outside. For many episodes of Anglo-German submarine history there are at least three versions of
the narrative: the British, the German and what actually happened.
[2]   During the Second World War, the British officially described all enemy submarines as ‘U-boats’, regardless of nationality, so that they would all be
tainted [manchados, tachados] by the sinister connotations of the German word, and so that the public would not confuse their activities with the heroic
campaigns of British and allied submariners. Today, most books in English on the First World War still describe Germany’s adoption of ‘unrestricted
submarine warfare’ as the critical point of the naval war, but what they imagine to have taken place bears only a slight resemblance [semelhança] to the
reality. ‘Unrestricted submarine war’ implies the rejection of legal restraints [restrições] that did not exist, for international law as yet had taken almost
no note of the existence of submarines. The German submarine force was divided into different commands that followed different policies and operated
different types of boat, but most of them were occupied with stopping cargo ships on the surface in daylight in coastal waters, then allowing the crews to
escape in their boats before sinking the ships by shellfire or scuttling charges. This was a highly efficient form of attack involving minimal loss of life. In
August 1916 Lieutenant Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière, the captain of U-35, returned to his base having sunk 54 ships, still the record for the single most
destructive submarine patrol in history. The quayside [cais] was black with cheering crowds, ‘and yet,’ he commented, ‘so far we had scarcely had any
adventures. It was all rather humdrum. We would stop the ship, order the crew into the boats, check the ship’s papers, give the crew a course to the nearest
land and sink the prize.’
[3]   This practice was economical and brilliantly successful, but German senior officers were not cheering. It was hateful to German admirals, and even more
to generals, because to them it looked like a concession to civilian values that would ruin Germany’s reputation for Abschreckung (‘frightfulness’ or terror).
They wanted the U-boats to torpedo passenger liners, which was difficult to achieve and had limited military value, because the mass slaughter of civilians,
they believed, would frighten enemies into surrendering and drive neutrals into port. So they ordered the reluctant submariners to abandon surface attacks
in favour of the more murderous, but much less effective, submerged attack. The German submariners knew (as did the British) that the economic blockade
was Germany’s most effective weapon. But economic blockade was an alien concept to German senior officers, and had little to do with victory as they
understood it: they weren’t fighting to win so much as to assert the social values of the German military and claim their rightful status in the command of
society.

Adapted from the London Review of Books 22 September 2016.

GERMAN SUBMARINES (U-BOATS) (2)

By N.A.M. Rodger

[1]   Warships are built for war, but not only for war. They have always had an eloquent symbolic value as expressions of power, wealth and resolve
[determinação], as instruments of threat or reassurance. They speak this language in peacetime just as much as in war. But ‘language’ should really be in
the plural. Different kinds of warship convey different meanings, in different languages, and the languages are not easy to translate. This applies to all
warships, but especially to submarines. The range of ideas and associations linked with German submarines, for example, in the period of the two world
wars and since, were not the same inside Germany as outside. For many episodes of Anglo-German submarine history there are at least three versions of
the narrative: the British, the German and what actually happened.
[2]   During the Second World War, the British officially described all enemy submarines as ‘U-boats’, regardless of nationality, so that they would all be
tainted [manchados, tachados] by the sinister connotations of the German word, and so that the public would not confuse their activities with the heroic
campaigns of British and allied submariners. Today, most books in English on the First World War still describe Germany’s adoption of ‘unrestricted
submarine warfare’ as the critical point of the naval war, but what they imagine to have taken place bears only a slight resemblance [semelhança] to the
reality. ‘Unrestricted submarine war’ implies the rejection of legal restraints [restrições] that did not exist, for international law as yet had taken almost
no note of the existence of submarines. The German submarine force was divided into different commands that followed different policies and operated
different types of boat, but most of them were occupied with stopping cargo ships on the surface in daylight in coastal waters, then allowing the crews to
escape in their boats before sinking the ships by shellfire or scuttling charges. This was a highly efficient form of attack involving minimal loss of life. In
August 1916 Lieutenant Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière, the captain of U-35, returned to his base having sunk 54 ships, still the record for the single most
destructive submarine patrol in history. The quayside [cais] was black with cheering crowds, ‘and yet,’ he commented, ‘so far we had scarcely had any
adventures. It was all rather humdrum. We would stop the ship, order the crew into the boats, check the ship’s papers, give the crew a course to the nearest
land and sink the prize.’
[3]   This practice was economical and brilliantly successful, but German senior officers were not cheering. It was hateful to German admirals, and even more
to generals, because to them it looked like a concession to civilian values that would ruin Germany’s reputation for Abschreckung (‘frightfulness’ or terror).
They wanted the U-boats to torpedo passenger liners, which was difficult to achieve and had limited military value, because the mass slaughter of civilians,
they believed, would frighten enemies into surrendering and drive neutrals into port. So they ordered the reluctant submariners to abandon surface attacks
in favour of the more murderous, but much less effective, submerged attack. The German submariners knew (as did the British) that the economic blockade
was Germany’s most effective weapon. But economic blockade was an alien concept to German senior officers, and had little to do with victory as they
understood it: they weren’t fighting to win so much as to assert the social values of the German military and claim their rightful status in the command of
society.

Adapted from the London Review of Books 22 September 2016.

CULTURE WAR

By James Cuno

[1]   In December 2007, the Italian government opened an exhibition in Rome of 69 artifacts that four major U.S. museums had agreed to return to Italy on
the grounds [base legal] that they had been illegally excavated and exported from the country. Leading nearly 200 journalists through the exhibition,
Francesco Rutelli, Italy’s then cultural minister, proclaimed, “The odyssey of these objects, which started with their brutal removal from the bowels
[entranhas] of the earth, didn’t end on the shelf of some American museum. With nostalgia, they have returned. These beautiful pieces have reconquered
their souls.” Rutelli was not just anthropomorphizing ancient artifacts by giving them souls. By insisting that they were the property of Italy and important
to its national identity, he was also giving them citizenship.
[2]   Rutelli has hardly been the only government official to insist that artifacts belong to the places from which they originally came. In 2011, the German
government agreed to return to Turkey a 3,000-year-old sphinx that German archaeologists had excavated from central Anatolia in the early twentieth
century. Afterward, the Turkish minister of culture, Ertugrul Gunay, declared that “each and every antiquity in any part of the world should eventually go
back to its homeland.”
[3]   Such claims on the national identity of antiquities are at the root of many states’ cultural property laws, which in the last few decades have been used
by governments to reclaim objects from museums and other collections abroad. Despite UNESCO’s declaration that “no culture is a hermetically sealed
entity,” governments are increasingly making claims of ownership of cultural property on the basis of self-proclaimed and fixed state-based identities.
Many use ancient cultural objects to affirm continuity with a glorious and powerful past as a way of burnishing [lustrar, polir] their modern political image
– Egypt with the Pharaonic era, Iran with ancient Persia, Italy with the Roman Empire. These arguments amount to protectionist claims on culture. Rather
than acknowledge that culture is in a state of constant flux, modern governments present it as standing still, in order to use cultural objects to promote
their own states’ national identities.
[4]   In the battle over cultural heritage, repatriation claims based strictly on national origin are more than just denials of cultural exchange: they are also
arguments against the promise of encyclopedic museums – a category that includes the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York; the British Museum, in
London; and the Louvre, in Paris. By presenting the artifacts of one time and one culture next to those of other times and cultures, encyclopedic museums
encourage curiosity about the world and its many peoples. They also promote a cosmopolitan worldview, as opposed to a nationalist concept of cultural
identity. In an era of globalization that is nonetheless marked by resurgent nationalism and sectarianism, antiquities and their history should not be used
to stoke [fortalecer] such narrow identities. Instead, they should express the guiding principles of the world’s great museums: pluralism, diversity, and the
idea that culture shouldn’t stop at borders – and nor, for that matter, should the cosmopolitan ideals represented by encyclopedic museums. Rather than
acquiesce to frivolous, if stubborn, calls for repatriation, often accompanied by threats of cultural embargoes, encyclopedic museums should encourage
the development of mutually beneficial relationships with museums everywhere in the world that share their cosmopolitan vision. Cultural property should
be recognized for what it is: the legacy of humankind and not of the modern nation-state, subject to the political agenda of its current ruling elite.

Adapted from Foreign Affairs November/December 2014.

CULTURE WAR

By James Cuno

[1]   In December 2007, the Italian government opened an exhibition in Rome of 69 artifacts that four major U.S. museums had agreed to return to Italy on
the grounds [base legal] that they had been illegally excavated and exported from the country. Leading nearly 200 journalists through the exhibition,
Francesco Rutelli, Italy’s then cultural minister, proclaimed, “The odyssey of these objects, which started with their brutal removal from the bowels
[entranhas] of the earth, didn’t end on the shelf of some American museum. With nostalgia, they have returned. These beautiful pieces have reconquered
their souls.” Rutelli was not just anthropomorphizing ancient artifacts by giving them souls. By insisting that they were the property of Italy and important
to its national identity, he was also giving them citizenship.
[2]   Rutelli has hardly been the only government official to insist that artifacts belong to the places from which they originally came. In 2011, the German
government agreed to return to Turkey a 3,000-year-old sphinx that German archaeologists had excavated from central Anatolia in the early twentieth
century. Afterward, the Turkish minister of culture, Ertugrul Gunay, declared that “each and every antiquity in any part of the world should eventually go
back to its homeland.”
[3]   Such claims on the national identity of antiquities are at the root of many states’ cultural property laws, which in the last few decades have been used
by governments to reclaim objects from museums and other collections abroad. Despite UNESCO’s declaration that “no culture is a hermetically sealed
entity,” governments are increasingly making claims of ownership of cultural property on the basis of self-proclaimed and fixed state-based identities.
Many use ancient cultural objects to affirm continuity with a glorious and powerful past as a way of burnishing [lustrar, polir] their modern political image
– Egypt with the Pharaonic era, Iran with ancient Persia, Italy with the Roman Empire. These arguments amount to protectionist claims on culture. Rather
than acknowledge that culture is in a state of constant flux, modern governments present it as standing still, in order to use cultural objects to promote
their own states’ national identities.
[4]   In the battle over cultural heritage, repatriation claims based strictly on national origin are more than just denials of cultural exchange: they are also
arguments against the promise of encyclopedic museums – a category that includes the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York; the British Museum, in
London; and the Louvre, in Paris. By presenting the artifacts of one time and one culture next to those of other times and cultures, encyclopedic museums
encourage curiosity about the world and its many peoples. They also promote a cosmopolitan worldview, as opposed to a nationalist concept of cultural
identity. In an era of globalization that is nonetheless marked by resurgent nationalism and sectarianism, antiquities and their history should not be used
to stoke [fortalecer] such narrow identities. Instead, they should express the guiding principles of the world’s great museums: pluralism, diversity, and the
idea that culture shouldn’t stop at borders – and nor, for that matter, should the cosmopolitan ideals represented by encyclopedic museums. Rather than
acquiesce to frivolous, if stubborn, calls for repatriation, often accompanied by threats of cultural embargoes, encyclopedic museums should encourage
the development of mutually beneficial relationships with museums everywhere in the world that share their cosmopolitan vision. Cultural property should
be recognized for what it is: the legacy of humankind and not of the modern nation-state, subject to the political agenda of its current ruling elite.

Adapted from Foreign Affairs November/December 2014.

CULTURE WAR

By James Cuno

[1]   In December 2007, the Italian government opened an exhibition in Rome of 69 artifacts that four major U.S. museums had agreed to return to Italy on
the grounds [base legal] that they had been illegally excavated and exported from the country. Leading nearly 200 journalists through the exhibition,
Francesco Rutelli, Italy’s then cultural minister, proclaimed, “The odyssey of these objects, which started with their brutal removal from the bowels
[entranhas] of the earth, didn’t end on the shelf of some American museum. With nostalgia, they have returned. These beautiful pieces have reconquered
their souls.” Rutelli was not just anthropomorphizing ancient artifacts by giving them souls. By insisting that they were the property of Italy and important
to its national identity, he was also giving them citizenship.
[2]   Rutelli has hardly been the only government official to insist that artifacts belong to the places from which they originally came. In 2011, the German
government agreed to return to Turkey a 3,000-year-old sphinx that German archaeologists had excavated from central Anatolia in the early twentieth
century. Afterward, the Turkish minister of culture, Ertugrul Gunay, declared that “each and every antiquity in any part of the world should eventually go
back to its homeland.”
[3]   Such claims on the national identity of antiquities are at the root of many states’ cultural property laws, which in the last few decades have been used
by governments to reclaim objects from museums and other collections abroad. Despite UNESCO’s declaration that “no culture is a hermetically sealed
entity,” governments are increasingly making claims of ownership of cultural property on the basis of self-proclaimed and fixed state-based identities.
Many use ancient cultural objects to affirm continuity with a glorious and powerful past as a way of burnishing [lustrar, polir] their modern political image
– Egypt with the Pharaonic era, Iran with ancient Persia, Italy with the Roman Empire. These arguments amount to protectionist claims on culture. Rather
than acknowledge that culture is in a state of constant flux, modern governments present it as standing still, in order to use cultural objects to promote
their own states’ national identities.
[4]   In the battle over cultural heritage, repatriation claims based strictly on national origin are more than just denials of cultural exchange: they are also
arguments against the promise of encyclopedic museums – a category that includes the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York; the British Museum, in
London; and the Louvre, in Paris. By presenting the artifacts of one time and one culture next to those of other times and cultures, encyclopedic museums
encourage curiosity about the world and its many peoples. They also promote a cosmopolitan worldview, as opposed to a nationalist concept of cultural
identity. In an era of globalization that is nonetheless marked by resurgent nationalism and sectarianism, antiquities and their history should not be used
to stoke [fortalecer] such narrow identities. Instead, they should express the guiding principles of the world’s great museums: pluralism, diversity, and the
idea that culture shouldn’t stop at borders – and nor, for that matter, should the cosmopolitan ideals represented by encyclopedic museums. Rather than
acquiesce to frivolous, if stubborn, calls for repatriation, often accompanied by threats of cultural embargoes, encyclopedic museums should encourage
the development of mutually beneficial relationships with museums everywhere in the world that share their cosmopolitan vision. Cultural property should
be recognized for what it is: the legacy of humankind and not of the modern nation-state, subject to the political agenda of its current ruling elite.

Adapted from Foreign Affairs November/December 2014.