Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
William Pitt the Younger, speech in Parliament, November 18, 1783.
Anglosphere
Such is the experience of an Infantry subaltern in his first battle … .
Looking along to our right we saw a brave sight, the bravest possible — a body of cavalry charging. It was none other than the renowned Cavalry of the Guides, which by a wonderful effort had crossed the seemingly impassable nullah, and was now falling with dauntless fury on ten times their numbers of the enemy. They whirled past us, and we, cheering like mad, dashed after them.
Connecting the World
Here’s a nifty map of the world’s undersea cables.
The era of long-distance undersea communication began with the laying of the first Atlantic telegraph cable, completed in August of 1858. Unfortunately, signal quality deteriorated rapidly and an attempt was made to improve communication by increasing the voltage at the transmitting end…a more durable cable was put in service in July of 1866.
Rapid trans-Atlantic communication made a huge difference in many spheres of life, not least in the logistics of international trade. Consider this quote from an English visitor to the US in the pre-cable year of 1852:
If, on the arrival of an European mail at one of the northern ports, the news from Europe reports that the supply of cotton or of corn is inadequate to meet the existing demand, almost before the vessel can be moored intelligence is spread by the Electric Telegraph, and the merchants and shippers of New Orleans are busied in the preparation of freights, or the corn-factors of St Louis and Chicago, in the far west, are emptying their granaries and forwarding their contents by rail or canal to the Atlantic ports.
Pre-cable, transmitting a purchase order across the Atlantic took as long (ignoring the effects of prevailing winds/currents) as the shipment of the physical goods.
Fanny Kemble wrote (circa 1882) about the psychological impact of connecting the continents electrically:
To those who know the rate of intercourse between Europe and America now, these expressions of the painful sense of distance from my country and friends, under which I suffered, must seem almost incomprehensible,—now, when to go to Europe seems to most Americans the easiest of summer trips, involving hardly more than a week’s sea voyage; when letters arrive almost every other day by some of the innumerable steamers flying incessantly to and fro, and weaving, like living shuttles, the woof and warp of human communication between the continents; and the submarine telegraph shoots daily tidings from shore to shore of that terrible Atlantic, with swift security below its storms. But when I wrote this to my friend, no words were carried with miraculous celerity under the dividing waves; letters could only be received once a month, and from thirty to thirty-seven days was the average voyage of the sailing packets which traversed the Atlantic…The distance between the two worlds, which are now so near to each other, was then immense.
“Look here, DilÄwur!”
From, The Story of the Guides, by Col. G. J. Younghusband, C.B., Queens Own Corps of Guides (1908):
At this time it so happened that the most notorious highwayman and
outlaw in the whole of Yusafzai was one DilÄwur Khan, a Khuttuk of
good family belonging to the village of Jehangira, on the Kabul River
near its junction with the Indus. Brought up to the priesthood, his
wild and impetuous nature and love of adventure could not brook a life
of sedentary ease, and therefore, like many a spirited young blood,
both before and since, he “took to the road.” In his case the step was
taken, if not actually with the sanction and blessing of his Church,
at any rate with its unofficial consent. In those days the Sikhs held
by force the country of the Faithful, and Hindus fattened on its
trade. It was no great sin therefore, indeed, an active merit, that
the sons of the Prophet, sword in hand, should spoil the Egyptian, by
night or by day, as provided for by Allah.
To recount all the adventures of DilÄwur would fill a book, and
require a Munchausen to write it; but there was about them all a touch
of humour, and sometimes of almost boyish fun, accompanied often by
the rough courtesies of the gentlemen of the road, which reminds one
of Dick Turpin and other famous exponents of the profession on the
highways of England.
Raise a Glass
Chicagoboyz community member Morgan Norval reminds us that January 22 was the anniversary of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift in 1879 (and immortalized in the famous movie, Zulu).
Morgan adds:
I’ve been to Rorke’s Drift and it was an interesting site. The Lutheran Mission is still there and Isandlwana is a few miles across the river and up the road. Fortunately for the Brits, the Zulus were unfamiliar with the rifles they picked up from Isandlwana as there was bluffs behind looking down on the Brits position at Rorke’s Drift and in the hands of skilled shooters shooting at the defenders would have been like shooting at fish in a barrel. Hollowood did a later move after Zulu called Zulu Dawn which was about the wiping out of the Brit’s regiment at Isandlwana. For one who wants to watch both just flip the sequence and watch Zulu Dawn before Zulu to get the complete historical picture Hollowood style.
(I’ve corrected the spelling of Isandlwana in Morgan’s passage.)