145
Economist Adam Smith warned that when Western commercial interests get involved in policy-making abroad, war and want are sure to follow.
In 1757, a Government-backed trade agency called the British East India Company achieved such commercial and military superiority in India that its board members appointed princes, conquered territories, and dictated social and economic policy. Twenty controversial years later, Scottish economist Adam Smith warned that a company set up to make profits for European clients should not and could not run India for the Indians.
Posted May 15 2023
146
Overwhelmed by a London wedding, William Marston seeks safety in the company of a children’s nurse, but safety is not what he finds.
Towards the close of Henry Kingsley’s Ravenshoe, William Marston has been invited to a double wedding, and being unmarried himself feels a little out of it. His eye lights on a children’s nurse, and gallantly he attaches himself to her only to find that in doing so he has attached himself to her three little charges too — the kind of charge that goes off with a bang.
Posted May 15 2023
147
Our peculiar brand of democracy and liberty is a noble thing, but we should be wary of recommending it to other countries.
Historian Mandell Creighton believed unlike our Continental neighbours, when the English laid down our Constitution we were driven not by ideological purity or a passion for order but by a desire to protect our customs and little oddities. Though this worked well for us, foreign nations had some trouble getting it to work for them — and they were starting to notice it.
Posted May 13 2023
148
The Indian Mutiny began with a revolt among disgruntled soldiers, and ended with the making of the British Raj.
By 1857, the East India Company, a British government agency, had been running India for a hundred years. The Company’s ruthless acquisition of territory, and its high-handed treatment of respected figures and institutions, alienated Indians of all classes; and that May, soldiers in the Company’s militia rose up against their officers. Jawaharlal Nehru explains what happened next.
Posted May 12 2023
149
Incompetence, arrogance and some mischievous propaganda all conspired to throw India into chaos.
In 1757, the British East India Company took control of most of India on behalf of the British Government. The Company employed a large number of Indian-born soldiers in their private army, including Muslims, Sikhs, and in 1857 some of these ‘sepoys’ rose up in rebellion. The reasons were complex, but clearly explained here by two Indian schoolmasters, writing in 1944.
Posted May 11 2023
150
A young Nathaniel Hawthorne recalls a confidential conversation with a tired old horse.
On June 1st, 1816, Robert Hawthorne presented his nephew Nathaniel, a month shy of his twelfth birthday, with a diary ‘with the advice that he write out his thoughts, some every day, in as good words as he can’. It was in this diary that Nathaniel recalled running across an underfed working horse, agonisingly forced to listen as his master ground delicious corn at nearby Dingley mill.
Posted April 30 2023