Georgian Era
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Georgian Era’
French travel writer Pierre-Jean Grosley toured Georgian London just in time to witness a culinary revolution: the sandwich.
In 1770, Frenchman Pierre-Jean Grosley delighted French readers with his account of a visit to London and of the habits of its citizens high and low. Two years later, Thomas Nugent translated it, and Grosley’s impressions found an equally delighted audience on this side of the Channel. It is to this work that we are indebted for an eyewitness account of the ‘sandwich’ and its ... spread.
A year into his reign as Emperor of France, Napoleon Bonaparte had much of Europe under his government but the United Kingdom still eluded him.
Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned Emperor of the French on December 2nd, 1804. He dreamt of a European empire, and as Jawaharlal Nehru recalls here on land none could resist him. On the seas, however, it was another story. Barely a year into his imperial reign Napoleon was forced to accept two facts: he would never command the seas, and he would never conquer Britain.
Walter Raleigh had many grievances against James VI and I, but for peace with Scotland he was willing to forget them all.
When James VI of Scotland became also James I of England in 1603, Walter Raleigh responded by trying to put James’s cousin Arabella Stewart (1757-1625) on the throne instead. His reasoning had nothing to do with the union of Scotland and England. Now confined to the Tower for an indefinite stay, Raleigh occupied himself in writing a History of the World and declared the Union the best thing James had done.
As Napoleon Bonaparte swept from victory to victory in Europe, he began to think he might add the East to the possessions of the French Republic.
In 1793, the new French Republic began exporting her political ideals across Europe through the French Revolutionary Wars. By 1798, policy was dominated by Napoleon Bonaparte, a brilliant general who made breathtaking gains across southern Europe; but as Jawaharlal Nehru explains, when Napoleon’s eyes strayed towards India he awoke an altogether more formidable enemy.
As Governor of Bengal, Robert Clive hoped to use his powers and his formidable reputation to make the East India Company mend its ways.
As Governor of Bengal in 1757-60 and 1765-66, Robert Clive strove to reform the East India Company’s wasteful, mercenary and supercilious bureaucracy. The Company responded in 1773 with a Parliamentary smear campaign so masterly that to this day, many regard Clive as a microcosm of all that was wrong with British colonialism, but it is hard to see that Clive in Sir John Malcolm’s account of him.
After two punishing years rising to the top of the East India Company’s armed forces in India, Robert Clive could not spare the time to go courting.
By the end of March 1752, Robert Clive was lonely and exhausted. He had almost single-handedly relieved the fortress at Arcot from a French siege, and then captured two French forts at the head of a band of five hundred raw recruits no other officer would agree to command. As he listened to his friend Edmund Maskelyne reading snatches of his letters from home, a resolution formed in his breast.