The various newspaper digitization projects have allowed intellectual historians an unprecedented look into the codification of ideas. Previously, scholars argued that, through the careful study of texts transmitted over the wire, they could track the dissemination of a phrase from New York to the Canadian wild. The problems with this approach were, first, that it was an argument, not a comprehensive database; second, that it assumes ideas transmit best in print; and third, that as an argument it relied on a unidirectional model in which everything invariably flowed from the same source, through the same channels, to the same destinations. When common sense suggested otherwise, that is, when an idea clearly originated in Savannah instead of New York, the means of dissemination remained the same, only now the idea worked its way north to New York before being routed into the same pool and distributed through the same channels to same destinations.
I’m oversimplifying, obviously, and I’m not even trying to account for concepts primarily transmitted via the spoken word. The Great Awakening, for example, began anywhere people felt pain and had tents. It spread down from upstate New York and up from Florida and out from Appalachia with ease because it took the form of a common recognition, as if everyone woke up one morning and convinced only God could improve their awful lot. The lazy way to account for such mass recognitions invokes the language of biological warfare: weaponized ideas contaminate air and water alike, such that those who breathe what’s “in the air” swiftly follow Derrida, while those who drink what’s “in the water” embrace Foucault. Evidence that someone dumped a francophilic compound into the cooling system or water supply never consists of an epidemiological study of all breathers or drinkers; instead, we are presented with a measurement, in decibels, of the howls produced by the ecstatic afflicted. Measuring how intensely people predisposed to shouting actually shout is not, I contend, the best means of discussing the pervasiveness of a certain idea.
Suppose we wanted to know when Americans first came to realize that wars to their distant east and west were not two very large conflicts but one world-historical war. As mass realizations go, this one falls under the category of ideas anyone could have had, had he but thought about it a bit; and after 1 September 1939 everyone thought about it a bit more. But they didn’t call it World War II or the Second World War. Newspapers spoke of the Sino-Japanese War and the European War, but as 1939 came to a close, America does not seem to have connected the two—at least not idiomatically. If you want to know when, precisely, Americans understood they were in the midst of a second world war, there are two ways to find out:
- find the first mention of “World War I” (not “the First World War,” for reasons I’ll explain shortly)
- find the first mention of “World War II” or “the Second World War”
Lest I seem too gushing about these databases, let me preface my remarks on the first search by noting that finding relevant entries for “world war i” in a database is a damn chore. Even when you limit the search to the years in which the shift would’ve most likely occurred—say, 1939 to 1941—you’re still presented thousands upon thousands of false positives. You have your memoirs and editorials:
During the World War I enlisted for service and went to France . . .
You have your academic studies:
Fluctuation of the Populations During the World War I: Germany and France . . .
You have your OCR artifacts:
With all that noise, you might think it best to change the signal to something louder but equally ordinal, like “the first world war,” but then you encounter another difficulty: Americans, always a confident lot, flipped fate the bird by referring to WWI as “the Great War” or “the First World War.” They meant “the First World War” not as we do, i.e. “the first of two,” but as “the first in which the entire world became a combat theater.” Our best bet, then, would be to look for the first appearances of “World War II” or “the Second World War.” So when did Americans come to understand that the wars raging on opposite sides of the globe were different aspects of a single conflict?
Not immediately. After Hitler invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, the LA Times wrote of “the European crisis” (“British Mobilize Army and Fleet,” 1) and the New York Times provided “Bulletins on Europe’s Conflict” (1). By 2 September, the United Press Syndicate noted that “[w]ithin a few hours the British and French parliaments are likely to declare war on Adolf Hitler’s greater German Reich and the second great world war may be under way (“Allies Ready to Enter War,” 1) and Walter Lippmann’s “Estimate of the Situation” was that the conflict would come to be known as either “the European war” or “the white war” (LA Times, A4). Lippmann was hesitant to call the conflict a world war because—presentist accounts of eurocentrism to the contrary—most people refused to consider a war fought by Britain, France, Germany and Italy sufficiently worldly. Japan had taunted the British, but instead of continuing that fight, Britain recalled the Royal Navy and, alongside the prides of the Polish fleet, prepared for the European war. This meant the war would have a largely European theater, because, as Lippmann wrote, “[t]he United States is too strong for Japan.” The Sino-Japanese War would continue, but because the western powers wouldn’t be drawn into it, this was to be a fight for “mastery of the Old World,” not the whole world.
I lean heavily on Lippmann here, but only because he’s representative of the consensus that was forming prior to Japan’s attack on Changsha in late September 1939. The Chinese had been stalling the Japanese by means of scorched earth and slow retreat: the Japanese would “win” a battle by forcing the Chinese ever deeper into their own briar patch. By early 1939, the Japanese Army was in such disrepair that the threat of an American embargo effectively ended Japanese hostilities against the British. The New York Times reported that “[t]he impression in diplomatic circles was that Japan, in view of the European war and the turn-about by Germany on the Russian question, was feeling isolated and was turning toward the United States” (“Japanese Bid Seen for U.S. Friendship,” 1). On 16 September, it seemed that on the basis of the alliances then being hammered out, the conflict could not go global. Exploratory discussions and mutual non-aggression pacts mean little once they end, but for the moment it seemed as if the discussions were as fruitful as the pacts were binding. Acting on the latter belief, Japan took advantage of its pact with Russia to move troops from Manchukuoan border and resume active hostitlities against China.
Thus on 19 September, Americans were faced with the European Crisis and the China Affair. In a letter to the editors of the Wall Street Journal, Walter Parker urged that “[n]o matter what else the United States may do to keep out of war, and to deal with the effects of World War No. 2, it should prepare for the peace that will come some day” (“Letters to the Editor,” 4). Catchy name, “World War No. 2,” and important because it demonstrates that some people—even if they’re limited to Walter Parker—had begun to think of the present wars as a singular sequel to the earlier conflict. The sentiment was there, even if the locution was clunky. In its 31 December edition, however, the LA Times would christen it proper:
Ill-omened and fateful, the year 1939 wove into the pattern of history a chronicle of war and violence. Marking, as it did, the 25th anniversary of the beginning of the World War, it became in itself a starting point for the calculation in the future of the state of “World War II.” (“Review of the Year,” A5).
It’d be better were it stripped of scare-quotes, but those scare-quotes aren’t meaningless. They point to the tentativeness that precedes any codification, and in such surveys, pointing is imoprtant. Anyhow, I know these aren’t the first two iterations of the phrase, but as the databases expand, so too will our ability to pinpoint the exact historical moment when a thing became The Thing.
All of which is an extremely round-about way of asking when, exactly, will we see “the Great Depression II” or “the Second Great Depression” naked in a major media outlet? Moreover, when we feel like we ought to be, and how will future generations figure out when that was?
27 comments
January 18, 2009 at 4:11 pm
saintneko
I’ve been calling it Depression 2.0 for a while now… probably because I was raised by my grandfather who was raised by Depression 1.0. Seeing how that shaped his life – even at age 80 he still got most of his napkins from fast food restaurants – doesn’t leave me too excited for the next few years.
With any luck it won’t be as bad as I fear – but then again I live in a town that two years ago had $400,000+ homes sprouting up on every corner, and the only jobs here are hairdresser, burger jockey, register biscuit or canner (both factory canners as well as the meth-head garbage diggers).
And why am I calling it the big D now? I’m an unemployed student (who isn’t right now, right? ) but I don’t draw unemployment, so I’m not counted as unemployed. Big deal, right? Except that if you take into account people like me, unemployment right now stands at over 13.5%, not the way more media-friendly 7.2% figure that’s currently getting tossed around. Unemployment is huge, and accelerating. It’s the big D alright; hopefully, since we have a sense of history, we can keep it from being as bad as it could be.
January 18, 2009 at 5:00 pm
jazzbumpa
I believe St. N has it right.
When was the Great Depression of the 30’s first called “The Great Depression?” That might offer a clue.
And speaking of which, check out this blog from Paul Krugman:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/17/zero-lower-bound-blogging/
The Fed is already out of bullets.
Further, in 1929, the government had run a surplus for about a decade. Now, thanks to decades of Republican fiscal irresponsibility, we have enormous deficits, and we haven’t started to take corrective action.
January 18, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Russell Belding
Don’t know about when the Great Depression was first named, but it seems as if “depression” only became a word filled with dread after the worst of the Great one had passed. My research of our city’s daily newspaper found a casual reference to “depression” during the downturn of 1921. Also, as early as 1930, the Great Depression was referred to as a “business depression,” carrying no perceived association with real economic calamity.
January 18, 2009 at 6:34 pm
essear
The title of the post had me wanting to say “after being bombarded with cosmic rays, of course, and where do you get off calling Ben Grimm ‘a thing'”, but upon further reading it seems that isn’t where you were going after all.
January 18, 2009 at 7:03 pm
SEK
Maybe not, essear, but it shows you know me well.
January 18, 2009 at 7:37 pm
ekogan
Are there huge tent cities of homeless?
Are there armies of unemployed migrant workers?
Are there armies of starving people?
If that happens, you could call it the Great Depression II,
but I doubt it will – the modern world is much richer in absolute terms than in 1930’s and has a better social security net. Right now,
it ain’t the Great Depression II, it ain’t nothing but a thing.
January 18, 2009 at 8:00 pm
dana
This is a really great post, Scott.
January 19, 2009 at 4:44 am
ajay
Well, ekogan, there weren’t lines of trenches across Flanders in 1941 either.
January 19, 2009 at 5:02 am
Crazy Little Thing
Honestly, I prefer that we call World War Two by its real name: WWII: Die Harder.
January 19, 2009 at 5:51 am
Bill Harshaw
Interesting topic. According to Wikipedia, the Great Depression really should have been “Great Depression II”, with I being the 1873-? depression. (And World War I probably should have been WWxx, given the prior world wars of the 18th century with fighting in Asia, North America, and Europe.)
January 19, 2009 at 6:06 am
AndrewMc
It seems, though, that people can understand something to be true (“the whole world is at war, and those wars are connected”) without necessarily using precise language to describe it.
Are you tracing an idea, or simply the codification of an idea into language? Those things might happen simultaneously, but the two might also occur at different times.
January 19, 2009 at 7:16 am
Barry
ekogan:
“Are there huge tent cities of homeless?
Are there armies of unemployed migrant workers?
Are there armies of starving people?
If that happens, you could call it the Great Depression II, but I doubt it will – the modern world is much richer in absolute terms than in 1930’s and has a better social security net. Right now, it ain’t the Great Depression II, it ain’t nothing but a thing.”
There was an article in The Atlantic Monthly about what a second Great Depression would look like – I’ll be d*mned if I can find it, though.
The short version – a second Great Depression would look very different (more individualized, less collective), and, of course, be much nicer than the first.
At a guess, just as the First Great Depression was probably much nicer than the Panic of 1873.
January 19, 2009 at 7:55 am
Ahistoricality
“Are there huge tent cities of homeless?
Are there armies of unemployed migrant workers?
Are there armies of starving people?”
If that happens, you could call it the Great Depression II….
Food pantries have been doing business like they haven’t in decades. Homelessness is on the rise, and shelters, etc., are stretched pretty thin right now. Obesity is related to poverty: the cheapness of crappy foods and expense of eating well.
This is why it will be known as “Great Depression 2.0”: the same thing, but with different user interfaces….
January 19, 2009 at 8:02 am
eric
When was the Great Depression of the 30’s first called “The Great Depression?”
Here‘s some doofus talking about that.
January 19, 2009 at 8:39 am
jazzbumpa
ekogan –
The things you mentioned happened in ’32-’33, not in ’29-’30.
Patience, my friend.
I doubt that it will play out the same way as the last time, at a detail level in the next few years, but this THING is just beginning.
January 19, 2009 at 9:23 am
chris y
For stamp collectors of this sort of thing, in Britain the agricultural depression of the 1870s was known as The Great Depression until The Great Depression. Also, WWI is still widely known as The Great War in Europe, because for most Europeans its impact was actually greater than round two. Before 1914 or so, the term, The Great War referred, in Europe, to the Napoleonic Wars.
January 19, 2009 at 10:21 am
kid bitzer
also: when did people start referring to it as ‘led zeppelin i’?
January 19, 2009 at 10:40 am
ari
Also, WWI is still widely known as The Great War in Europe, because for most Europeans its impact was actually greater than round two.
Really? I mean the part about WWI’s impact being greater, not the question of nomenclature, about which I have no earthly idea.
January 19, 2009 at 10:44 am
kid bitzer
certainly had greater impact on the landscape of the low-countries and northern france.
trench warfare tore the hell out of the landscape. blitzkrieg just sort of skimmed on by.
and i suspect the same may be true about death-rates for the french people in each war.
January 19, 2009 at 11:55 am
kid bitzer
yeah, a quick look at the wiki-pages suggests french deaths of about 1.7 million for wwi and less than .5 million for wwii.
(excluding jews. as one does.)
January 19, 2009 at 12:08 pm
David M
It is worth considering that we could have a Depression that doesn’t end up being a Second Great Depression. It could be the Lesser Depression or some variation there on.
January 19, 2009 at 2:42 pm
SEK
Thanks, dana. I worked much, much harder on it than I initially thought I would. (It’s part of this other thing I’m writing, on which I should be working now, instead of commenting.)
Andrew:
Are you tracing an idea, or simply the codification of an idea into language? Those things might happen simultaneously, but the two might also occur at different times.
That cuts to the heart of the issue, I think. As an intellectual historian, I’m interested in tracing the idea, but as someone without a time machine, the only way I can do it is by watching it codify. Now, the codification process can be long and unwieldy. I don’t want to give the impression that “World War No. 2” is germinal or, for that matter, representative of the sort of evidence I typically look for. “World War No. 2” also introduces a teleological element I don’t necessarily want in there, because with more complicated coinages the dead ends, the fits, the starts are part the process.
Bill:
According to Wikipedia, the Great Depression really should have been “Great Depression II”, with I being the 1873-? depression.
That first depression’s usually capped around 1899, and the crisis was certainly real—that’s when you have all the debates about repegging the dollar and what-not.
January 19, 2009 at 9:35 pm
nnyhav
All this talk of another Great Depression is fear-mongering, which is ok since that’s the only thing selling right now, and the only thing we have to sell is fear itself!
January 20, 2009 at 1:01 am
Michael Turner
I know this makes me fanboyish about Paul Krugman, perhaps to the point of requiring hospitalization, but I’m pretty sure “a thing” becomes “the thing” whenever PK writes “here’s the thing”. Which he started doing very often last year.
Admittedly, “the thing” is not the same as “The Thing”. However, with enough exposure to cosmic rays, one of the things PK called “the thing” will surely mutate into The Thing, and then it will be Clobbering Time.
So maybe we should just call it The Thing, and admit we’re getting clobbered by it? It beats trying to name it Great Depression II, or, more logically but even less likely, trying to call it A Pretty Great Depression, while renaming the previous one The Greatest Depression.
For a while, I tried to get people to start calling it The Great Banana. But it turns out hardly anybody remembers Alfred Kahn these days. If there’s a Yellow Peril lurking here, it’s still the one Krugman keeps talking about: America’s economy turning Japanese. PK’s been alert to that threat for a while. He wrote the following just a little over 8 years ago (in “Having a Banana”, NYT, Dec 2000):
Note how many of those U.S.-Japan differences have disappeared since the stock bubble deflation of 2000. The Fed funds target rate is now effectively zero — that policy lever has pegged. America has had something almost exactly like Japan’s real estate bubble. American consumers have become more conservative, and its baby boomers are now 8 years closer to retirement.
The U.S. can’t get out of this trap with the half-measures on stimulus tried in Japan. Japan had some things going for it that America does not: a major export market, including the U.S. Domestic demand is a lot bigger in Japan than it used to be, but exports still matter a great deal here. In a business confidence survey late last year, the overwhelming majority of Japanese executives responding said that Japan’s economy wouldn’t start to grow again until the U.S. economy improves. Exports from Japan dropped by a third in 2008. China (now perhaps the #3 economy in the world, and now so much America’s factory base that some are talking about “Chimerica”) is getting hurt bad too.
If trade friction heats up as a result of all this, we could end up with The Greater Asia-Pacific Co-Immiseration Sphere. And then The Thing could lead to far worse things. Every major nation-state that has launched itself into a serious program of rapid industrialization has gone into a military expansionist phase. China has been the exception. So far.
I’ve started reading The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, by Adam Tooze. It’s chilling in this context. Could we see National Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, in the coming decade? China certainly has the makings of a lebensraum ideology. And any program of domestic economic rescue and further development in China will certainly reignite the demand for commodities that caused commodity prices to peak so dramatically in the last few years. It’s a sobering prospect, and the argument that we’ve all learned too much from history to repeat it so blindly doesn’t have much force in times like these, when so much history is being repeated so blindly.
January 24, 2009 at 4:45 pm
Bob Locke
I haven’t been very successful at finding out when the general parlance became “WW II” and “WW I” (as opposed to the previous parlance “The Great War” or “The War to End All Wars” for what we now know as WW I).
Last night at a party where there was an Englishman in his 60s, a younger Belgian woman, and a quite young Parisian woman of perhaps 20-25, I was surprised to find that both the Parisian and Belgian still refer to WW I as “quatorze dix-huit” which means 14-18 in French. They do not refer to it as the First World War, though they do refer to WW II as La Deuxieme Guerre Mondiale (or something like that).
Most English still refer to WW I as the Great War and WW II as the Second World War.
When I asked the group when they thought WW II came into general parlance (which would indicate that what had been called The Great War would now begin being called WW I) the Englishman suggested Sept. of 1939 because of not only the Nazi advance on Poland but their advances on England. The young Parisian suggested Dec. 7, 1941 with Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor and the American’s immediate entrance into the conflagration, most certainly making it indeed a World War.
It’s a great question, whether or not the other question about Great Depression I vis a vis Great Depression II ever comes into general parlance–as I believe it probably will, and most certainly has already, though in a jokey way.
January 24, 2009 at 7:59 pm
SEK
Bob (if I may),
Your young Parisian is correct that after 7 December 1941 the war was referred to in the American press as “WWII.” I don’t have it on me now, but the NY Times had an explanatory map above-the-fold with the words “American enters WWII” two days later. But the phrase was there for the picking, so to speak, by the time the Japanese ushered us into the fray.
The LA Times didn’t pick up on its scare-quoted parlance until much later, though, but it’s easy to tell why they did when they did: Pearl Harbor. I’m still fascinated by the (perhaps technophiliac) notion that if enough people scanning enough material into enough databases, we can pinpoint this stuff more precisely, so stay tuned!
March 16, 2009 at 7:21 am
JPool
Sorry for burying this in the archives, but this seemed an appropriate place to say to those Great Depression I snobs (in this case ekogan) who were requesting tent cities of the homeless, here ya go.