Modern History
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Modern History’
The day after the Great Fire of London finally burned itself out, John Evelyn walked through the charred streets.
In 1665, an epidemic of plague claimed some 70,000 lives in London alone. Then on September 2nd, 1666, fire broke out in Pudding Lane, and raged for five days. Casualties were low, but dozens of churches and civic buildings were destroyed, and over 13,000 houses went up in flames leaving some 80,000 Londoners homeless. On the 7th, John Evelyn went wandering among the ashes.
Sir Henry Craik had heard such glowing reports of Agra’s Taj Mahal, that he was afraid it might prove to be an anticlimax.
In 1907, Sir Henry Craik MP went on a tour of India. That December, he made his way south from New Delhi to Agra, where he marvelled at the sixteenth-century fort and the Pearl Mosque of Shah Jahan (r. 1628-58) before following the River Yamuna for a mile or so towards Shah Jahan’s legendary monument to his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. Would it be all that report had made it?
Politicians who demand that everyone in the country unite behind their vision of society are standing in the way of real progress.
In the 1680s, many feared that after Charles II died his brother James would take England and Scotland into a European league of Roman Catholic kingdoms, led by Louis XIV of France. Algernon Sidney could not see how countries and peoples so diverse could possibly require the same laws, or how anyone would think such hidebound uniformity could lead to progress.
Cricketing legend W. G. Grace tells a story illustrating how fellow-batsman K. S. Ranjitsinhji set about winning the hearts of English cricketers.
“Among cricketers” wrote that great cricketing legend Dr W. G. Grace, “‘Ranji’ is exceedingly popular, his open-hearted generosity and geniality having captured all their hearts.” But when K. S. Ranjitsinhji (1872-1933) first came up to Cambridge in 1888, he had yet to win his popularity — even as he had yet to win his crown as Prince of Nawanagar. From this story, it is easy to see how Ranji wore down the barriers.
Sir Sidney Low blamed the recent catalogue of war and revolution on out-of-touch diplomats who had tried to hammer the peoples of Europe into artificial unity.
Looking back in 1915 over the causes of the Great War (which had broken out the previous year) Sir Sidney Low blamed not the nationalism of small states but Europe’s meddlesome political elite. Wrapped up in their own concerns, jealous of their own privileges, and wise in their own conceit, the Powers had imposed an artificial order that they could maintain only by rising violence.
Hassan slipped across to Ithaca because it was in British hands and the Turkish authorities on the Greek mainland must not know what he was going to do.
The British liberation of the Ionian Islands during the Napoleonic Wars presumably displeased the French, and was no doubt disquieting for the Ottoman imperial government that for over two centuries had occupied the Greek mainland. But it was good news for Hassan. He wanted to be baptised a Christian, and for reasons of his own it was imperative that the Turkish authorities know nothing about it.