Today in History: November 29-December 2
The Meiji Constitution takes effect in Japan, Napoleon wins at Austerlitz, and more
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November 29, 903: An Abbasid army defeats the Ismaʿili Shiʿa Qarmatian sect in a battle near the Syrian city of Hama. Caliphal forces seem to have more or less overwhelmed the smaller Qarmatian army, which lost several commanders and was eventually surrounded and routed with heavy casualties. Nevertheless this was a fairly minor setback for the sect, which continued to grow in prominence in eastern Arabia and in 930 even sacked Mecca and carried off the Black Stone of the Kaaba. The main outcome of Hama was that the Abbasids were able to seize direct control of Syria and eventually Egypt from the Tulunid dynasty, whose “autonomous” governorship of those regions had grown increasingly independent from Baghdad.
November 29, 1810: Amid the Napoleonic Wars, British forces make landfall at Grand Baie and begin an invasion of the French colony Isle de France. They met little resistance as overwhelmed French forces retreated to the colonial capital, Port Napoleon, and finally agreed to a ceasefire on December 2 and a surrender the following day. The surrender, coupled with the failure of a relief fleet sent by the French government the following year, eliminated the French presence in the Indian Ocean and thereby removed any potential threat to British shipping. France ultimately ceded Isle de France to Britain under its former name, Mauritius.
November 29, 1890: Japan’s Meiji Constitution goes into effect, codifying a semi-constitutional monarchy modeled along the lines of Prussia and the United Kingdom. In principle the charter vested substantial powers in the person of the emperor, though in practice most executive function was meant to rest with a prime minister and civilian government, while the elected Diet was to hold legislative power. Ambiguities over the power dynamics among these institutions may have facilitated the country’s slide into totalitarianism prior to World War II. After Japan lost that war its US occupiers drafted a new constitution, which explicitly limited the emperor to a symbolic role.
November 30, 1853: A Russian naval expedition attacks and destroys an Ottoman supply convoy in the harbor of the Black Sea port city of Sinop. The engagement proved to be the first battle of the 1853-1856 Crimean War, as France and Britain seized on it as a pretext to declare war on Russia and come to the aid of the beleaguered Ottoman Empire.
November 30, 1947: Palestinian gunmen attack several buses carrying Jewish passengers across Mandatory Palestine. The attack was a response to the United Nations General Assembly’s adoption of its partition plan for Palestine the day before and began a five and a half month period of paramilitary clashes and terrorist attacks between Jews and Arabs, essentially a “civil war” within the British colony. That conflict “ended,” along with the UK’s mandate, in May 1948, when joint Arab League forces invaded Israel-Palestine and the civil war became the Arab-Israeli War.
November 30, 1970: As British forces withdraw, the Iranian military seizes control of three islands in the Strait of Hormuz: Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs. Those islands were also claimed by two of the Trucial States, Ras Al Khaimah (the Tunbs) and Sharjah (Abu Musa), but the Iranian claim predated the British occupation of the islands in the 1920s, when they were incorporated into London’s other Persian Gulf protectorates. When Ras Al Khaimah and Sharjah joined the newly formed United Arab Emirates the territorial dispute came with them, and it has lingered to the present day.
December 1, 1640: Portuguese nobles declare John (João) IV (d. 1656) their new king. This is significant in that it meant they were declaring an end to the 60 year old Iberian Union, rejecting the rule of Spanish King Philip IV (d. 1665). The 1640-1668 Portuguese Restoration War ensued, which—as any present day map of Europe will confirm—ended with a Portuguese victory and confirmation of the new monarchy.
December 1, 1828: General Juan Lavalle, having returned from the recently concluded Cisplatine War between Brazil and the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, leads a coup against the government of Buenos Aires Province that became known as the “Decembrist revolution.” The coup reopened the Argentine Civil Wars, a conflict that had begun in 1814 between “unitarians,” who wanted to organize Argentina as a centrally controlled state, and federalists. Lavalle became affiliated with the unitarian cause and his coup ousted (and killed) the federalist governor, Manuel Dorrego. Anti-coup forces coalesced around wealthy rancher Juan Manuel de Rosas and were able to force Lavalle’s resignation the following year.
December 1, 1918: The “South Slavic” (Slovenian and Croatian) parts of Austria-Hungary are united with Serbia and Montenegro as the “Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.” This name was changed in 1929 to the “Kingdom of Yugoslavia” and again after World War II to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This experiment in nation building eventually failed—violently, in case you missed it—in the 1990s.
December 2, 1805: At the Battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon wins what was arguably his greatest victory against a larger joint Russian-Austrian army. The Allies suffered 36,000 dead/wounded/captured compared with only 9000 for the French. The French victory was so complete that not only did it end the War of the Third Coalition, it allowed Napoleon to create the Confederation of the Rhine among the German states that had become French clients. Emperor Francis II was then forced to dissolve the Holy Roman Empire, which had been in existence continuously since 962 and traced its origins back to Charlemagne’s coronation as “emperor of the Romans” in 800. He refashioned himself as “Emperor of Austria,” though, so he wound up OK.
December 2, 1899: A force of just 60 Philippine soldiers is defeated by an American unit some ten times that size at the Tirad Pass in northern Luzon Island. Nearly all of the Philippine fighters were killed, but their defensive action delayed the Americans for several hours and allowed retreating Philippine President Emilio Aguinaldo to escape capture. Sometimes referred to (at least according to a cursory Google search) as “the Philippine Thermopylae,” he battle’s legacy remains prominent.
December 2, 1942: Enrico Fermi and his team create the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction at “Chicago Pile-1,” a rudimentary reactor built under the campus of the University of Chicago. This was the first milestone achievement for the Manhattan Project in its race to build a nuclear bomb before Nazi Germany.