Category Archives: Britain
The Financial Ascent of the Dutch VOC
From: The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, by Niall Ferguson (Penguin, 2008), Kindle Loc. 1780-1831: The campaign for a reform of what would now be called the VOC’s corporate governance duly bore fruit. In December 1622, … Continue reading
Soviet Contributions to the Holocaust
From Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, by Timothy Snyder (Basic Books, 2010), Kindle Loc. 6313-6365 (pp. 343-345): During the war, the Soviets and their allies had been in general agreement that the war was not to be understood as … Continue reading
Japanese Hopes for Germany, 1940
From Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, by Timothy Snyder (Basic Books, 2010), Kindle Loc. 3152-77 (p. 164): Thirteen months after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact had alienated Tokyo from Berlin, German-Japanese relations were reestablished on the basis of a military alliance. … Continue reading
Curing Capt. Cook’s Costiveness with Clysters
From: Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before, by Tony Horwitz (Picador, 2002), pp. 218-219: Cook resumed his polar probe during the next southern summer [1773], after wintering in Polynesia. The second approach to Antarctica proved even … Continue reading
Capt. Cook, Guugu Yimidhirr, and Kangaroos
From: Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before, by Tony Horwitz (Picador, 2002), pp. 182-184: Guns weren’t the settlers’ only weapons. Aborigines had little resistance to Western disease, or to alcohol. Chinese immigrants introduced opium, which Aborigines … Continue reading
Alien Encounter at Mercury Bay, 1769
From: Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before, by Tony Horwitz (Picador, 2002), pp. 104-105: Most scholars believe that sailing canoes set off from the Society Isles, or the nearby Cook Islands, between A.D. 800 and 1200, … Continue reading
Filed under anglosphere, Britain, language, New Zealand, Pacific, Polynesia
Cook’s Endeavour: Victualled, Flogged, & Pickled
From: Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before, by Tony Horwitz (Picador, 2002), pp. 16-17, 28-29: ON MY FIRST night aboard the replica Endeavour, I sat down with my watchmates to a dinner advertised on galley blackboard … Continue reading
Kapuscinski on the rise of Idi Amin
From The Shadow of the Sun, by Ryszard Kapuscinski, trans. by Klara Glowczewska (Vintage, 2002), Kindle Loc. 1882-1918: Amin is a typical bayaye [rootless, urban drifter]. He grows up in the streets of Jinja. The town housed a battalion of … Continue reading
Filed under Britain, military, nationalism, Uganda
Japanese Attitudes toward Urakami Christians, 1868-1871
From: American Missionaries, Christian Oyatoi, and Japan 1859–73, by Hamish Ion (UBC Press, 2009), pp. 100-101, 121-122: In June 1868, A. Bertram Mitford, then serving as British consul in Osaka, wrote a most interesting letter about Japanese views on the … Continue reading
Filed under Britain, Japan, nationalism, religion, U.S.
Dutch Burghers Left Behind in Colombo, 1796
From: Being “Dutch” in the Indies: A History of Creolisation and Empire, 1500–1920, by Ulbe Bosma and Remco Raben, tr. by Wendie Shaffer (National U. Singapore Press, 2008), pp. 81-82: The British and Dutch Burgher communities lived — quite literally … Continue reading
Filed under Britain, language, migration, nationalism, Netherlands, Portugal, Sri Lanka
