History

Quote of the Day

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Currently reading Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi, which is excellent, and which I highly recommend. I saw a review of it, by A.G. Noorani, which had this to say:

British rule in India was doomed when the rulers introduced their
language in India. You cannot talk a people into slavery in the
English language. “An Englishman is the unfittest person on earth to
argue another Englishman into slavery,” Burke reminded the House of
Commons on March 22, 1775. The effect is the same if “the natives” are
taught English. It brings in its train British history – the Magna
Carta, the Bill of Rights, Parliament versus the Crown, habeas corpus
and the rest, as also concepts like the rule of law. Those who framed
our Constitution were familiar with all this.

This come through very clearly in Guha’s book. The founders of modern India wanted to do at least two things: (1) Get the British out of their country, and (2) preserve what they had learned from the British, including things the British had denied them, like democratic elections.

Forward the Indo-Anglosphere!

Close Enough for PRC Work

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In my last post on China, Zenpundit mentioned that a lot of Westerners are confused about what China is and what it is not. That first post was an attempt on my part to try to create a predictive mental model for the future of Chinese politics. I did not, however, manage to cover even half of the terms I’m trying to cram into the thing. One glaring omission that Chinese people would pick up on right away is that I postulated a separate Canton in a putative breakup scenario. The truth is that there has been no strong Cantonese separatist movement since before the Republic, and currently that trend shows no sign of reversing itself. On the other hand, Canton has never in its entire history been as rich as it is now, nor contributed as much to the coffers of the North as it does today. So I weaseled out and finished with the thought that I just don’t have enough information to weight the terms in my model. Which is true.

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KHANNNNN! (another member of a continuing series)

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The ice storm that clipped both KC and Chicago today, coming as it does after several days of nasty weather, has a lot of us holed up inside and thinking wintry thoughts. We might wonder how the natives of one of the climatically harshest places on Earth deal with it. Or, perhaps, deel with it. So, after considering for a moment whether any other blog can provide puns in Mongolian, graze (Midwesterners [and Mongolians] don’t surf) on over to NYCMongol.com for all your clothing and shelter needs for when you “steppe out.” For those Chicagoan, er, Siberian winters, there’s the cotton quilted deel for a mere C-note-and-a-half, and don’t forget to pick up a pair of (somewhat more steeply priced) boots. Shelter? Get yer yurt right here. You’ll fit right in when our horde (another Mongolian-derived word) of genetically-engineered Temujin-class warriors conquers the world.

Or just pick up a few books. Whatever.

Previous members of series:

Pearl Harbor – 66

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(Click here to see a larger version of this photo in a new window.)
 
From the Naval Historical Center:

The 7 December 1941 Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor was one of the great defining moments in history. A single carefully-planned and well-executed stroke removed the United States Navy’s battleship force as a possible threat to the Japanese Empire’s southward expansion. America, unprepared and now considerably weakened, was abruptly brought into the Second World War as a full combatant. [Read the rest…]