Imperialism
Déjà Vu All Over Again: Back to Afghanistan
A while back I blogged about Great Britain’s first disastrous attempt to invade Afghanistan. That post barely scratched the surface of the story, so I was delighted when Shelf Awareness sent me Diana Preston’s The Dark Defile:: Britain’s Catastrophic Invasion of Afghanistan, 1838-1842 to review. In The Dark Defile, Preston tells the story of Great…
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Prince Henry, the So-Called Navigator
I’ve been thinking about Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal today, and re-reading bits of Peter Russell’s excellent biography, Prince Henry “the Navigator”: A Life You remember Prince Henry. He’s the first in a series of names that you learned in grade school: Prince Henry the Navigator, Columbus, Dias, Magellan–maybe Henry Hudson if your teacher…
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Déjà Vu All Over Again: Drug Wars
A growing number of addicts. A ruthless business cartel. A country determined to close its borders to imported drugs. Violence and corruption in major cities. Sound familiar? Welcome to the Opium War of 1839. In the late eighteenth century, opium was a key element in the British East India Company’s business plan. The company grew…
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