Modern History
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Modern History’
On a visit to England in 1782, young German author Karl Philipp Moritz was very excited about riding on an English stage.
In 1782 young German writer Karl Philipp Moritz took a vacation in England. He had certainly earned it. Moritz had worked his way out of hardship by repeatedly reinventing himself as a hatter, a poet, a journalist, a theologian and most recently as a teacher. Later, he would become a professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin. Here he describes a trip to Richmond, on the way to Derbyshire.
A runaway slave is recaptured, and charged with ingratitude by the master who has taken such pains to afford him economic security.
Between 1792 and 1796, John Aikin and his sister Anna Barbauld published a series of children’s stories titled ‘Evenings at Home.’ Among them was an imaginary dialogue in which a plantation owner accused a slave of ingratitude for running away. It is relevant not only to the history of Abolition but also to that politics which promises cradle-to-grave security in exchange for letting an elite shape our world.
The villagers of Mabutso in Southern Africa begged Dr David Livingstone to rid them of a menacing pride of lions.
On February 16th, 1844, Scottish missionary David Livingstone was digging a water channel at his mission near the South African village of Mabotsa when the villagers rushed up, crying that lions had again raided their village and slaughtered their sheep and goats. Livingstone ‘very imprudently’ agreed to go with them and demoralise the pride by shooting one of the dominant males.
William Jerrold saw the new-fangled sewing machine as an opportunity to get women into the professions — but time was of the essence.
By 1854, the recently invented sewing machine was turning out so much work that the demand for seamstresses was falling off. Sewing had long been a poorly paid but reliable backup for single women fallen on hard times, so journalist William Blanchard Jerrold demanded assurances that Victorian society would allow these women the same job opportunities allowed to men.
Shortly before the American Civil War, an attack by pro-slavery militants on the city of Lawrence prompted John Brown to try to clean up Kansas.
As the United States of America lurched towards the Civil War, the State of Kansas found herself torn into two. Two rival ‘governments’ sprang up, each with its own capital, one for a Slave-owning state and one for a Free state. In 1861, Kansas declared for the Union but it had been a close-run thing and some of her sons had not been too nice in their methods.
In 1846, Daniel O’Connell stood up in the House of Commons to draw attention to the Great Hunger in Ireland, and to plead for a swift response.
Between 1845 and 1851, repeated attacks of potato blight led to the deaths of a million Irishmen from starvation and disease and the emigration of a million more. Had Parliament listened to Irish MP Daniel O’Connell, the worst of the Great Hunger might have been avoided; but that would have required the courage to ease up on the reins of power.