British History
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘British History’
Contemporary historian Ramanath Aiyar catalogued the ways in which Maharajah Moolam Thurunal led the way in modernising British India.
In 1885, His Highness Sir Rama Varma Moolam Thurunal became Maharajah of Travancore. A close confidant was historian Ramanath Aiyar, who some eighteen years later catalogued the various ways in which the Maharajah had moved Travancore forward in terms of society and industry.
Sir Hubert Parry explained to students at the Royal College of Music that some mistakes are creative whereas others are destructive.
Addressing students at the Royal College of Music in January 1918, Sir Hubert Parry distinguished two kinds of mistake, the mistakes we make when we seize our responsibilities as free men and women a little clumsily, and the mistakes we make when we lazily follow whatever the fashionable thinking may be.
Richard Cobden despaired at British statesmen using the peerless Royal Navy merely to strangle trade in other countries.
The Victorian era saw Britain abandon its colonial ‘single market’ in favour of much greater free trade, but Richard Cobden was not yet satisfied. He urged Parliament to stop using the navy to blockade the ports of its commercial and political rivals – in modern terms, to stop imposing sanctions and punitive tariffs.
An innovative English composer who did not live to fulfil his extraordinary promise.
George Pinto (1785-1806) was a promising talent on the violin and the piano, and an innovative composer exciting the admiration of some of the country’s most prominent musicians. His early death robbed England of a rare talent, leaving it to more famous names to rediscover some of his genius on their own.
Michael Faraday’s tour of Europe included a ‘picturesque’ multicultural event on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius.
In November 1813, Napoleon Bonaparte, smarting from his humiliating Retreat from Moscow, was waging war across Europe. This did not stop Sir Humphry Davy (who called him ‘the Corsican robber’) going to Paris to receive the Napoleon Prize, or young Michael Faraday from going with him, and afterwards they went on to the Kingdom of Naples, then under French control.