1003
Canadian sailor William Hall was summoned over to India to help face down the Indian Mutiny.
William Nelson Hall (1827-1904) had every reason to love the Royal Navy. Under instructions from the Admiralty in London, the Navy had helped his parents and thousands of others to escape slavery in Maryland. The Halls were resettled as free citizens in Nova Scotia, where William was born, and he repaid the Navy handsomely during the Indian Mutiny thirty years later.
Picture: From Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted December 17 2017
1004
During the Indian Mutiny, over a thousand men, women and children were trapped in the Commissioner’s residence at Lucknow.
The Indian Mutiny in 1857 saw many of the East India Company’s sepoys (Indian soldiers) join with angry princes to protest at the Company’s disrespectful and corrupt administration. The revolt turned nasty, and in June that year things looked bleak for the Company’s staff at Lucknow, in the former Kingdom of Oudh.
Picture: © Khalid Ahmed, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 3.0.. Source.
Posted December 15 2017
1005
King Louis XIV of France raised rebellion in Ireland to put his own man on the English throne.
Throughout the 1680s, King Louis XIV of France nibbled away at countries along the French border from Holland to the Alps, while his ally Turkey harassed them from the other side. Only William, Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, offered any real resistance, but his navy was too small do anything about it until 1688, when an extraordinary stroke of luck came his way.
Picture: © Kenneth Allen, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted December 13 2017
1006
Richard Hannay sees for himself how political activists trick decent people into supporting their quest for power.
Early in the Great War, Richard Hannay is in Constantinople, in pursuit of a German secret agent named Hilda von Einem. Hilda has duped a dreamy Muslim mystic into believing Germany shares his vision for society, and as Sandy Arbuthnot explains, that could be very bad both for the Arab world and for England.
Picture: © Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (Austrian National Library), Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted December 12 2017
1007
The Parliament of Scotland tried to liberate itself from London’s strangling single market.
‘Protectionism’ means stifling competition and imports to safeguard domestic industry and so tax revenue. Most European governments were guilty of it in the seventeenth century (they still are) and the Scots were feeling the pinch of it.
Picture: Via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted December 6 2017
1008
Anglo-Saxon poet Cynewulf wonders at the mystery of the Bethlehem manger, where all the light of heaven was shining.
Cynewulf (possibly the 8th century bishop Cynewulf of Lindisfarne) reflects on Christmas and the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, and praises God for sending his Son, God of God and Light of Light, to earth as one of us, to bring his dazzling sunrise into the night of this life.
Picture: © Ian Capper, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted December 4 2017