Ferguson rejects the standard explanations of the violent 20th century and even the standard descriptions of what was going on. In his view, it was not the rise of aggressive political regimes or ideologies but the disintegration of supranational empires that created the conditions for intensified, industrialized violence. Here’s a paragraph from his introduction that identifies the three factors he relies on in the balance of the book.

Three things seem to me necessary to explain the extreme violence of the twentieth century, and in particular why so much of it happened at certain times, notably the early 1940s, and in certain places, specifically Central and Eastern Europe, Manchuria and Korea. These may be summarized as ethnic conflict, economic volatility and empires in decline. By ethnic conflict, I mean major discontinuities in the social relations between certain ethnic groups, specifically the breakdown of sometimes quite far-advanced processes of assimilation. … By economic volatility I mean the frequency and amplitude of changes in the rate of economic growth, prices, interest rates and employment, with all the associated social stresses and strains. And by empires in decline I mean the decomposition of the multinational European empires that had dominated the world at the beginning of the century and the challenge posed to them by the emergence of new “empire-states” in Turkey, Russia, Japan and Germany.

By highlighting violent conflict between ethnic groups rather than wars between states, organized violence over the course of the 20th century expands to include all those messy but murderous civil wars that don’t fit neatly into the standard account of wars between states. Germany made war against neighboring states, but also ethnic Germans directed violence against Jews, gypsys, Poles, gays, and the mentally deficient. The Soviet Union fought for its collective life against Germany, but ethnic Russians fought not only Germans but also dozens of minority nationalities, and this went on both before Germany attacked in 1941 and well after it was defeated in 1945. There are plenty of other examples. The rise of the nation-state in the 20th century is linked, it seems, with heightened conflict between peoples and ethnic groups, whether across borders or within them. No one, it seems, can get along anymore.

There’s nothing clever or nuanced about the author’s arrangement or argument. He just bludgeons through the sorry chronicle of murderous ethnic strife in the 20th century, showing it wasn’t limited to Europe and it wasn’t limited to fascism or communism or any -ism. It had more to do with the rise of ethnic identity and assertiveness in the wake of failed empires than anything else. The Far East was a theater of conflict as well as Europe. In the second half of the 20th century (which Ferguson reviews in a 50-page epilogue) conflict moved to the Third World in locations may seem peripheral or remote to First World readers, but the author emphasizes there is nothing marginal or peripheral for those poor souls who get caught up in the genocide of the month.

If there’s a letdown in reading the book, it’s that there is no set of hopeful suggestions for the future laid out, even in passing. And with a new episode of “economic volatility” (Ferguson’s second factor) presently in full-swing, we need some ideas, in particular forces or institutions to counter the violent ends to which ethnic identify is so easily turned. We need, it seems, supra-national forces, institutions, or ideologies that, as cures, aren’t worse than the disease. What are they and how do we get one?

Addressing that question is a book in itself, I suppose, and social cures are harder to identify than social problems. But I would offer religion as one of the few supra-national institutions still active in the modern world that has a track record of successfully bringing together repesentatives from a wide variety of ethnic groups under an umbrella of cooperation and fellowship (the current attempts by several New Atheist authors to paint religion as the primary cause of violent conflict notwithstanding). If religion can’t mute the dark side of ethnic identity that is so prevalent in the world, what can? The UN? Multinational corporations? The benefits of free trade? There aren’t a lot of good candidates. Let’s hope the bleak view of the 21st century implied by a reading of The War of the World doesn’t come to pass.

The material in Chapter One about the two-year rampage of DeSoto and his 600 Spaniards from 1540 to 1542 reminds us how much destruction was visited on Indian communities and culture decades before the first permanent English settlers arrived at Jamestown and Plymouth.  The leading Tascaloosa city of Mabila, with a population in the thousands, was completely destroyed by De Soto.  Everywhere he and his Spaniards went, disease and famine (from confiscating scarce food stores or wrecking crops) followed.  DeSoto treated venerated chiefs with disdain, which undoubtedly clouded the faith locals put in their own cultural and religious beliefs.  The status of local chiefs declined, another blow to native culture and society. 

So disease, depopulation, and cultural decline penetrated the interior centuries before Americans crossed the Appalachians in the 18th century.  Legends of Moundbuilders arose not just in ignorance of ancient American inhabitants but also in ignorance of even the recent history of local Indians.

Chapter Four recounts the stories of those few early Indians who converted to Christianity.  Missionaries who worked with Indians in New England didn’t have much luck, but they were the vanguard of a centuries-long effort of preaching to the Indians.  See if anything jumps out at you in this excerpt from the conversion story related by an Indian named Monequassun (recorded and obviously colored by an English scribe, but still a valuable account).

I confess my sins before the Lord, and before men this day. … I played the hypocrite, and my heart was full of sin.  I learned some things, but did not do what God commanded. …But afterward I feared because of my sins, and feared punishment for my sins. …

I asked a question at the [missionary's] lecture, which was this, “How I should get wisdom?” … But afterward I heard the Word, “If any man lack wisdom, let him ask it of God, who giveth liberally to all that ask, and upbraideth none.”  But then I did fear God’s anger, because of all my sins, because they were great.”

That was printed in a book of native conversion stories entitled Tears of Repentence, first published in 1653 but regularly reprinted right up to the 19th century — the edition cited in the footnotes was dated 1834.  There’s no basis for thinking that Joseph Smith drew his inspiration from Monequassan’s story, but the parallels do suggest that missionaries and preachers from the 17th through the 19th centuries drew on the same body of sermons and scriptures, passed down from missionary to missionary, to move and inspire their hearers.  In other words, Joseph and Monequassan might very well have heard substantially the same sermons preached by local or travelling preachers citing, among other scriptures, James 1:5.

Chapter Six gives several accounts of the “praying Indian” communities in New England and their sad fate.  Those Indians who converted often gathered to their own small communities and made cultural changes as directed by missionaries, such as adopting European dress and taking up settled agriculture.  However, not all the Euro-Americans were pleased with this development, especially during open conflict between Indians and settlers when tension soared.  As related by Richter (who is quoting a contemporary observer), the Paxton Boys in Pennsylvania added a religious aspect to their racial animosity, believing that

the Indians were the Canaanites, who by God’s commandments were to be destroyed; and that this not having been done by them at that time, the present war [the Seven Years' War] might be considered as a just punishment from God for their disobedience.

The Paxton Boys went on to massacre six Indians at Conestoga, then headed for Philadepelphia to do the same to a group of about a hundred Moravian Indians living there whose crimes, according to Richter, ”seem to have been simply that they were Indians and that they lived prosperously within the province’s boundaries.” A delegation from Philadelphia, including Benjamin Franklin, met these 18th-century ethnic cleansers outside the city and convinced them to abandon their design (in return for publishing their grievances and presenting them to the provincial assembly). Nevertheless, “Indian-hating continued to thrive among the Pennsylvanians.” Once the restraining British officials were out of the way, the Indians fared even worse. In a particularly gruesome episode in 1782, a group of Pennsylvania militia convinced a group of 97 Indians descended from the earlier Philadelphia group to relocate for their own protection, but after the Indians gave up their weapons they were informed they would all be killed. “The Indians spent the night praying and singing hymns.” In the morning, they were herded into two houses and systematically slaughtered.

Funny how we never stop hearing about the Mountain Meadows Massacre and the implication that present-day Mormons should admit and shoulder a measure of guilt for that atrocity. None of the other massacres that litter American history are viewed this way. Do present-day Pennsylvanians feel any responsibility or guilt over this Moravian Massacre? Do Americans? Protestants? What makes the Moravian Massacre of 1782 so forgivable, other than the fact that it was Indians being massacred rather than Euro-Americans?

I’ve just cherry-picked a few interesting examples. If you haven’t read Facing East, it is well worth it to find a copy and do so.

I can’t think of any LDS history book that fits the bill for me. At 16 I checked out Essentials of Church History from the ward library (back when the ward library actually had books) but I don’t recall it made much of an impression on me — the prose doesn’t exactly sizzle. I remember back in grade school I was fascinated with a couple of books on World War II, one on the Battle of the Atlantic with German submarines hunting Allied freighters and Allied destroyers hunting German submarines, the other on the Battle of Britain, with Spitfires and Hurricanes battling Messerchmidts and Focke-Wulfs. But I didn’t consciously identify these as history books and head off to explore the wonders of 909 or 973.  A missed opportunity.

So what was the first book you recall reading in history or LDS history that made an impression on you? And if you have read any Crichton books, you’re welcome to toss those in, too.

Last week I heard Ron Walker conduct a Q&A about Massacre at Mountain Meadows with a small group in Southern California. He made a couple of comments in passing that are worth discussing. When asked for one thing that could be learned from the whole episode, he said that in his view the men who brought to pass the massacre were not evil men, but that there is often not much separating goodness from evil in individuals. He said that he has gained a greater appreciation for the simple virtues like kindness, patience, and gentleness and their effect of keeping us on the right side of that narrow divide.

That response echoes an observation in one of the more touching paragraphs from the book.

For the most part, the men who committed the atrocity at Mountain Meadows were neither fanatics nor sociopaths, but normal and in many respects decent people. The modern age, confronted with mass violence and killings, has rediscovered a fundamental aspect of old theology. “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them,” wrote Russian Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solzyenitsyn. “But the line dividing good and evil cuts through every human being. And who wants to destroy a piece of his own heart.” (p. 128)

In a similar comment, Walker noted that he had changed personally as a result of the roughly ten years spent researching the events related in the book, becoming mellower and more patient. It’s not often that I hear historians comment on how their research has affected them personally. How unexpected that extended contemplation of Mountain Meadows would point to the lesson that simple virtues matter or would move an author or reader to exercise more patience and kindness.