Monthly Archives: May 2004
Kaplan’s Armenia
Armenia is the quintessential Near Eastern nation: conquered, territorially mutilated, yet existing in one form or another in the Near Eastern heartland for 2,600 years, mentioned in ancient Persian inscriptions and in the accounts of Herodotus and Strabo. Armenians trace … Continue reading
Filed under Turkey
Border Clans vs. Alphabet Nation
Azerbaijan had always been a marchland, conquered by Alexander the Great and fought over by Turkey and Persia for centuries. As with Georgia, Russia entered the fray here relatively late, occupying the area briefly in the 1720s and 1730s and … Continue reading
Filed under Turkey
From Trebizond to Trabzon
Robert D. Kaplan’s Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus (Vintage, 2000) is full of wonderful vignettes of places that were once out-of-the-way, and are now taking on new significance. Here’s a glance at … Continue reading
Filed under Turkey
Samoan Civil Wars during the 1800s
When Andy of SiberianLight linked to my earlier post on the battle of Khalkhin-Gol/Nomonhan between Japan and Russia in 1938, he headlined it Wars nobody has ever heard of, Part 1043. Well, a Russian reader objected that every Russian has … Continue reading
The New (Korean) Woman: From Many Lovers to Nun
Andrei Lankov has an article in the 7 January issue of The Korea Times on The Dawn of Modern Korea: The New Woman, in which he profiles the prominent pioneering Korean journalist and writer Kim Won-ju, better known under her … Continue reading
Filed under Korea
The ‘Modern’ Japanese (and Korean) Taisho Woman
Arts & Letters Daily links to an article in the The Chronicle of 21 May 2004 on The ‘Modern’ Japanese Woman during the Taisho era (1912-26) that asks, among other things: How could one be both Japanese and modern, if … Continue reading
Of Mice and Rats
Can you tell a mouse from a baby rat? After reading these tips, I correctly identified 12 out of 12. (And I didn’t have to count the nipples!) Can you tell the relatively civilized Black Rat (Rattus rattus) of the … Continue reading
Filed under science
Elections in New Caledonia
Head Heeb has been doing a great job keeping up on the recent elections in New Caledonia and French Polynesia. In both cases, the preponderant sentiment seems to be for autonomy, but not full independence. Like Micronesia, perhaps? On a … Continue reading
North Korean Archaeology of Convenience
One of the staples of international academic exchanges with North Korea is an archaeological report on the latest discoveries regarding the tomb of Tangun (also romanized as Dangun), the mythical founder of Korea, born in 2333 B.C. to a he-tiger … Continue reading
Filed under Korea, scholarship
Bulgarian Wrestlers versus Democrats
I regret having to dump a tub of icewater over our (or at least my) enthusiasm for the “Black Sea Mafia” in Japanese sumo, but a “differently informed” perspective on the origins of these wrestlers needs to be considered. The … Continue reading
