Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2019 April 10

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

April 10

Do we know if the US was going to militarily intervene if the Texas rebels would have been on the verge of losing?

Had the Texas rebels been on the verge of losing their war of independence, did the US make any decision (ahead of time) as to what it would have done in such a scenario? Would it have militarily intervened or would it have simply set back and watch the Texas rebellion be crushed by Mexico? Futurist110 (talk) 02:29, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

Unofficially, America was already heavily involved in the Texas Revolution, numerous empresarios (Colonists originally from the US) had settled Texas, and were still well connected with the political aristocracy in the US, and during the war many battles on the side of the Texians were fought by Filibustering expeditions led by Americans. As early as the beginning of the 19th century, American political forces sought the annexation of Texas, see Texas annexation#U.S. territorial expansion and Texas. Indeed, until the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819 decided the issue, the US considered part, or all, of modern Texas to have been part of the Louisiana Purchase. Throughout the 1820s, while America officially recognized Mexico's control of Texas, nearly all American political leaders sought to obtain Texas eventually through backroom channels and the like. We have no idea of what would have actually happened in the hypothetical scenario you describe, but from the earliest days of the Republic and Manifest Destiny, Texas was always in the plans, even if prior to the 1840s no official policy existed to pursue it. --Jayron32 12:26, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

Makes sense. Thank you, Jayron32! I was simply wondering if the US government actually made any contingency plans in a scenario where Texas was going to lose its war of independence. Based on what you wrote, it looks like it didn't. Futurist110 (talk) 22:56, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

Not that I believe. Texas was something of a political "hot potato", the unresolved slavery issue that dominated American politics in the first half of the nineteenth century hindered anyone from discussing it officially. Neither major party of the day officially advocated for Texas annexation, trying to avoid the elephant in the room of how to deal with slavery in annexed territories, but individually, key members of both parties all wanted to annex it. They just couldn't bring it up. It was messy. This is covered in some of the articles I linked above. --Jayron32 14:34, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for this information, and I will make sure to take a closer look at these articles. In fact, I have looked over one of these articles significantly more right now. Futurist110 (talk) 03:52, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

I would tend to doubt it. I think they'd have waited for another revolt and hoped for better results. Had Santa Anna put down the Texian rebellion, none of the problems that led to revolt would have been addressed. Texas would still be heavily American, minded to separate and too far from Mexico City for the weak central government to control. Not to mention the difficulties of raising and transporting, etc US forces, which proved hard enough in 1846; there would have been a lot less enthusiastiasm ten years earlier with no "American blood spilled on American soil", as was alleged to be the casus belli for the Mexican-American War.--Wehwalt (talk) 08:17, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

Yes, but all of that is doubly so for Mexico defending Texas. Texas was very remote from the population centers in Mexico; part of the reason why Spain and then Mexico accepted the presence of the empresarios at all was because 1) they needed white people from somewhere to settle the land to claim it and 2) they weren't getting any from anywhere else. American southerners were looking for virgin land to set up slave-based plantations, and they were running out of such land in the U.S.; Texas was the perfect investment in that regard. It was a perfect storm for Texas independence; you had what was essentially a bunch of rich, American slave owners moving in rapidly, many of whom were eager to be free from the meddlesome anti-slavery politics of America, you the land was so distant from Mexico City to be functionally independent from them anyway; Mexico had a hard time enforcing Mexican authority in Texas from the start. "Crushing the Texas rebellion" would also presume that you had a stable Mexican state which could concentrate such efforts on a single issue. Mexico was an monarchy under the Plan of Iguala until 1824, then a Federal republic under the 1824 Constitution of Mexico, however it was functionally a military dictatorship under Antonio López de Santa Anna, and by 1835 had a new Constitution as a unitary republic under Santa Anna, the Centralist Republic of Mexico. The Centralist Republic period was one of widespread rebellion across Mexico; the table of contents of that article tells you all you need to know. The Mexican government had a lot to deal with, and letting Texas go was probably in their own best interests. --Jayron32 13:06, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

First language of Scottish kings

Am I correct in thinking that the last Scottish king to speak Gaelic as his first language was Alexander I and that all kings from David I primarily spoke Lowland Scots? Surtsicna (talk) 09:52, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

James IV of Scotland notes that he was the last Scottish King to speak Gaelic, but I don't know that it was his first language. The article Scottish Gaelic notes that Margaret of Wessex spoke no Gaelic and brought up her sons in her own language; at that point it was not really Lowland Scots, Lowland Scots diverged from Middle English many centuries later. Alexander I's first language would have been Old English, i.e. the Anglo-Saxon language. The last native Gaelic speaking king of Scotland would have thus been Malcolm Canmore's brother, Donald III of Scotland. Donald was succeeded by his nephews, both of which were sons of Margaret of Wessex, and would have spoken Old English. The Scots language didn't become distinct from Northumbian forms of what is now called Middle English until the 15th century or so, which would have been sometime during the reigns of the numerous James Stuarts. --Jayron32 12:16, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

File:Alexander III and Ollamh Rígh.JPG shows Alexander III of Scotland at his coronation in 1249, being addressed in Gaelic by the national poet or ollamh rígh Alban. Not sure if he understood what was going on though, he was all of seven years-old. Alansplodge (talk) 12:50, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

It's far more likely by that time that his home language would have been Norman French; his mother was from a Picard/Norman family and England was still using Norman French as the language of the aristocracy, it would seem likely that such trends also permeated into Scotland. See Scoto-Norman, which notes " the Kings of Scotland between the reign of the David I and the Stewart period are often described as Scoto-Norman." Most of the noble families we think of, from that time period, as stereotypically Scottish, such as the Bruce, Balliol, Comyn, were mostly of Norman French origin (from Brix, Manche, Bailleul, Somme, and Comines, Nord respectively) and while most of them would have been at least partially fluent in several languages (including likely the form of English that was in the process of developing into Scots, as well as Gaelic and probably a smattering of Latin) I would not be surprised if Norman French was how they spoke at home. --Jayron32 13:45, 11 April 2019 (UTC)