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On the Feast of St John the Baptist, June 24th, 1497, Venetian navigator John Cabot claimed North America for the King of England.
In 1492, Christopher Columbus reached the Caribbean islands, and was hailed as the first European to see the Americas. But this was not North America, the region where the great English-speaking nations of Canada and the United States would later rise. That was discovered — or rediscovered, since the Vikings had been there long before — five years later in 1497.
Picture: © Mike Edwards, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted June 24 2023
152
Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s famous poem about a suicidal cavalry charge during the Battle of Balaclava on October 25th, 1854.
In 1853, Britain, France and Turkey went to war with Russia. On October 25th, 1854, during the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimea, Lord Raglan ordered a cavalry brigade to raid some small hill-top gun emplacements. Somehow the orders got garbled. What Lord Cardigan read was an order to lead 670 lightly-armed horsemen straight at the main body of the Russian army.
Picture: By Richard Caton Woodville (1856-1927), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted June 22 2023
153
Richard Cobden deplored the way that politicians in Britain justified their wars abroad by portraying other countries as barbarous and backward.
In 1856, Chinese authorities in Canton arrested twelve sailors on a ship out of Macau that was flying British colours, albeit without a current licence. The sailors were released but the British went ahead and bombarded Canton for three weeks anyway, saying that force was all the Chinese understood. Richard Cobden protested in the House of Commons.
Picture: © LMarianne, via the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities in Stockholm and Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.. Source.
Posted June 21 2023
154
Richard Cobden wanted to know why British policy towards China was so different to our policy towards the USA and European powers.
On October 8th, 1856, Chinese authorities in Canton arrested twelve sailors for piracy. Sir John Bowring, governor of Hong Kong, demanded their release, as their ship the Arrow had flown (albeit illegally) a British flag. On the 22nd the obliging Chinese delivered the suspects up; on the 23rd, the Royal Navy nonetheless began a three-week bombardment of Canton. The following February, Richard Cobden expressed his outrage in the Commons.
Picture: By William Daniell (1769-1837), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted June 20 2023
155
Britain’s fear of Russia led her to attempt regime change in Afghanistan, but it cost many lives and damaged the army’s reputation.
Jawaharlal Nehru has been telling his daughter about the rise of the Punjab State under Ranjit Singh, who died in 1839. From there he passes on to the stirring events unfolding to the north-west. The British East India Company, then ruling most of India, had been struck by a sudden fear that Nicholas I’s Russia might invade Afghanistan and threaten their Indian monopoly.
Picture: By Elizabeth Thompson (1846-1933), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted June 20 2023
156
Ordinary people put too much faith in the judgment of experts, which is bad for us and bad for the experts.
In The English Critic (1939), NL Clay urged his readers not to let themselves be daunted by expert authority, slick advertising or mesmerising jargon. Every opinion deserves to be weighed and tested; and failing to subject the opinion of experts and professionals to scrutiny not only leaves the ordinary man a slave to fads and fashions, it coarsens the experts and professionals too.
Picture: By Georgios Jakobides (1853-1932), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted June 19 2023