Aside from the point the Americans got involved in that one too eventually...

The series I watched began with the Russian/Japanese war of 1904. That in turn led to the assassination of Franz Ferdinand which kicked off WWI, and what followed is a global conflict that still rages today. Warfare has evolved from entrenched armies facing each other down across battlefields to what we have today.

From what I can recall of it, this is the programme I am referencing: http://www.channel4learning.com/support ... index.html

I can't remember the name of the historian I am referring to. His point was that Europe is not really a continent at all, it is a large space occupied for most of history by various tribes no less similar to each other than those of any other sub continent (India for instance).

The nation states of Europe are a very recent set of geopolitical constructs and highly arbitrary (only a minority of Frenchmen even spoke French as recently as 1850; several distinct languages and ethnic groups in Eastern Europe are in point of fact uttely indistinguishable from each other, and so on). Most states across Europe were until very recently ruled by a small number of noble families of no nationality who warred to maintain non contiguous kingdoms together; such as Spain and Holland.

In between bouts of often sub-continent wide warfare there were a series of shaky treaties, lasting until such time as two dynasties found each other's claims to some piece of land or other intolerable, and then war broke out again. A pattern which (it could be argued) continued uninterrupted until the emergence of the EU, and the EU hasn't been around for anything like as long as the Concert of Europe. So there is hope for Mister Rogers yet; the European dream could all still end with that reign of bloody terror he is so looking forward to - there's precedent.

The idea of each war being a result of or even the continuation of a predecessor is a bit simplistic, but you can argue that WWII was partially a result of German bitterness about the terms of the treaty of Versailles. Then observe how that treaty was a result of French bitterness about the terms under which the Franco-Prussian war was ended.... but those were a result of German bitterness about the Napoleonic wars weren't they? It all gets arbitrary very quickly when you resort to interpreting all links as causes. And reducing the 20th C to a continuous war powered by race and empire is frankly even more dubious than the nonsense I am spouting. Utopian political ideologies did drive the world wars, other factors such as class and race supplied their details.

Pinning WWI on the Russo-Japanese war by way of Archduke Ferdinand would be quite a stretch. Could their thesis have been to do with the shock of losing to a non European enemy causing the Russians to modernise their forces and build railways to deploy them into the field - which forced Germany to reconsider the Schlieffen plan which was predicated on being able to knock France out of a war before the Russians could put an army anywhere near the Fatherland? That interpretation is relatively common. Ferguson could I suppose be trying a maneuver based on a change in Russian diplomacy to support Serb secessionists in Eastern Europe which would I suppose fit his races and empires theory. Not so sure it could be used to make a convincing case for race being a primary driver of WWI though. And I don't get his idea of nationalism not being a factor while race was - many of the races involved having been imagined into being solely to support the establishment of an imaginary nation with an historical title (hello Croatia, Poland, Slovakia).

Neither of us in on very strong historiographical ground here - but at least we have moved away from treating Robocop as a documentary.

you mean its not! god damn it, i knew there was something fishy about my history teachers methods!!!

First of all I think it's overstating it suggesting anyone was treating Robocop as a documentary, but we are definitely taking the baby steps towards privatisation of our security forces. IIRC the idea got scrapped when the coalition took power, but a private company was set to take charge of day to day army training in at least one instance that I know of (I'll post a link if I can find one). There's also the 'security jobs' run on quite a scale that are taken up by ex cops and soldiers.

We've also got companies in charge of police desk jobs now, and apparently the idea is to farm out forensics. It's not too difficult to imagine any government seeing the opportunity to save a fortune but at the potential cost of dedication, inherent and local knowledge, team work and so on.

Our forces obviously are far from perfect, but I think taking a hands-off approach will be quite detrimental to society, maybe in ways we can't even contemplate yet.

EDIT - not exactly what I was looking for, but maybe even worse IMO:

http://www.capita.co.uk/media/pages/rns ... px?id=1866

Anyone who reads Private Eye knows Capita shouldn't be left in charge of keeping milk in the fridge...

Capita? With guns? Jesus effing wept.

While we're all discussing early 20thc history and revisionism and such, perhaps it might be pointed out that prior to the 20thc private companies had the sort of powers tin foil hattists believe in. The east India company anyone? Plus ca change.