Today in History: March 31-April 3
Today in History: March 31-April 3
The Spanish Civil War ends, the Marshall Plan is born, and more
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March 31, 1146: At the Council of Vézelay, charismatic monk Bernard of Clairvaux issues his call for a new crusade to support the suddenly beleaguered Christian principalities in the Levant. In attendance was King Louis VII of France, who took up the cross on the spot for what we now know as the Second Crusade. Suffice to say it did not end well.
March 31, 1492: The proto-Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile issue the Alhambra Decree, expelling all Jews from their kingdoms by the end of July. The decree’s goal was two-fold. One, the expulsion of practicing Jews was meant to eliminate their influence on the region’s conversos, those who had converted from Judaism to Christianity. Two, the terms of the expulsion, which required those being expelled to finance their own relocation, were made deliberately onerous in order to encourage more Jews to convert to Christianity as an alternative. Isabella seems to have been the driving force behind the decree, likely influenced by her new confessor, future cardinal and grand inquisitor Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros.
March 31, 1854: The United States, in the person of Commodore Matthew Perry, and Japan, amid the waning years of the Tokugawa Shogunate, sign the Convention of Kanagawa, which permits US ships to use the Japanese ports of Hakodate and Shimoda. Kanagawa, negotiated almost literally at gunpoint with Perry threatening to turn his warships loose on Edo, marks the “opening” of Japan to Westerners after a period of near-isolation that stretched back to the early 17th century. Over the next several years Japanese officials would sign a lopsided commercial treaty with the US along with similar capitulations with France, Russia, and the United Kingdom.
April 1, 1939: The Spanish Civil War comes to its official end when Nationalist leader Francisco Franco announces the surrender of the remaining Republican forces. The March 28 fall of Madrid to Franco’s besieging army had rendered the war pretty much over at that time, so this announcements was a bit anti-climactic. Franco went on to rule Spain, quite brutally as it happens (check out the “White Terror” if you’re unfamiliar, it’s got a very appropriate name), until his death in 1975.
April 1, 1941: An anti-British military coup in Baghdad ousts King Faisal II’s regent, Abd al-Ilah, as well as his prime minister, Nouri Al-Saeed, and restores a pro-Axis (not pro-Nazi, necessarily, but definitely friendly with the Germans) former prime minister, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, to power. Concerned that their empire was about to be severed by a pro-German government in the Middle East, Britain moved in to reverse the coup. The subsequent Anglo-Iraqi War lasted about a month and ended with Gaylani fleeing the country and Abd al-Ilah back in charge in Baghdad.
April 1, 1976: Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne co-found Apple, Inc. If you’ve never heard of Wayne that’s because less than two weeks later he sold his 10 percent stake in the company to the other two for what wound up being $2300. Depending on when you read this Apple is now worth somewhere north of $2.5 trillion, so I think we can all agree he made the right decision.
April 2, 1917: US President Woodrow Wilson speaks to a joint session of Congress to ask for a declaration of war against Germany. In addition to the factors that had sparked war fervor in the United States—German u-boat attacks on US merchant ships and the discovery of the Zimmerman Telegram and fears that Latin America en masse might align with Germany and become hostile to US interests—Wilson made his case for war by appealing to idealistic notions of spreading democracy along with less idealistic notions like the need to secure US commercial interests in any postwar settlement. Congress declared war on April 6. It subsequently declared war on Austria-Hungary in December.
April 2, 1930: Following the death of Ethiopian Empress Zewditu, her regent and designated heir, Ras Tafari Makonnen, assumes the throne under the regal name Haile Selassie. Over the next 44 years, among many other things Selassie oversaw the adoption of Ethiopia’s first and second constitutions, abolished slavery, helped found the precursor to the African Union, and led Ethiopia to become a charter member of the United Nations. He also oversaw a failed effort to integrate Eritrea that sparked a 30 year war of independence, and is sometimes accused of exacerbating ethnic tension by favoring Amhara, particularly to the detriment of the Oromo community. And he’s perhaps best known as the central figure in the Rastafari movement. Selassie was overthrown in a military coup in September 1974 and was executed (though the subsequent Derg government claimed he died of natural causes) about a year later.
April 2, 1982: The Argentine military invades and occupies the Falkland Islands, a British colony that Argentina had long claimed (and still does claim) as its territory. The ensuing 10 week undeclared “Falklands War” ended in mid-June with a decisive British victory. The victory bolstered the flagging political fortunes of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, so that’s…nice, I guess. On the flip side, the defeat was so embarrassing for Argentine President Leopoldo Galtieri that he was ousted days after the war ended and his National Reorganization Process, the military junta that had ruled Argentina since 1976, lost popular support and was forced to restore civilian governance in 1983.
April 3, 1559: The Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis ends the Italian War of 1551-1559, the last in a series of Italian conflicts between France and the Habsburgs, with a Habsburg victory. French King Henry II was forced to forfeit his claims on any Italian territory, but for France the war hadn’t been a total bust. The abdication (and then death, in 1556) of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V resulted in the Habsburg realm being split, with Philip II inheriting Spain and its empire while Ferdinand I inherited Austria and control of the Holy Roman Empire. This ended France’s primary national security concern, its potential encirclement by a unified Habsburg Empire. The wars wound up solidifying Habsburg control over much of what would later become Italy, with independent Venice, Genoa, Florence, the Papal States, and several other small polities sandwiched in between imperial possessions in northern Italy, which were brought into the Holy Roman Empire, and in southern Italy, which were controlled by the Spanish Habsburgs.
April 3, 1948: The United States government enacts the Foreign Assistance Act of 1948, AKA “The Marshall Plan,” earmarking $12 billion to the reconstruction of war-torn Europe. This helped quickly rebuild post-war European economies, though its impact has probably been overstated in subsequent American mythologizing. This in turn helped limit the kind of struggling that might have allowed dastardly leftists to gain political traction in Western Europe and laid part of the groundwork for NATO.