Almost all our readers have heard of the seven wonders. Some might be able to name them. Fewer will know what the seven wonders of the ‘modern world’ are, and anyway naming them invariably causes dispute. The ancient wonders were the more remarkable because they were made by Man, to be seen by Man.
I am expecting to be corrected by ardent bloggers, but I believe a list of the wonders was first made up in the second century B.C. (more…)
Georges Boulanger / en.wikipedia.org
If Georges had been, as his surname suggests, a pastrycook by profession instead of a wholly political general, his patisserie would have been the pride of Paris. Indeed, there might have been Boulangeries Boulanger in every provincial town in Victorian France, packed with customers.
Georges was born at Rennes in Brittany, went to school there, and got into the Army. He served notably in both Algeria and Italy, and fought in the Franco-Prussian War (q.v.) in which he became a Brigadier at only forty-three. (more…)
I would need to be told what other EU countries do about charging road tax to vehicle owners. In Britain it is simply called Road Tax, and you pay according to type of vehicle. The annual sum is set by the government of the day, and the quite enormous income generated by the Tax is supposedly used in the maintenance of roads and everything to do with them. It does not matter if you live in North Yorkshire or South Devon, you will pay the same road tax according to what vehicle you use. It is well known that ‘Spain in Different’, and in the case of the Rodaje the difference is stupefying. (more…)
Artist’s impression of a battle in the Franco-Prussian War / en.wikipedia.org
These modern days of a loving relationship between Germany and France force a wry smile. First we watched with a certain quantity of concealed amusement as Frau Merkel exchanged kisses with the slightly smaller M. Sarkozy; now that the French have replaced the Monsieur with the socialist cipher M. Hollande, the Merkel smile is falsified a little more, as she shoves François in the right direction at one of those ‘G’ Meetings our leaders like so much. (more…)
The irony of a Vichy gendarme saluting a Nazi official before the Arc de Triomphe / es-wikipedia-org
Three-fifths of France fell to Nazi Germany soon after World War II was declared, though the French army and navy were larger than those of the aggressive Germans. The government moved to a spa town in unoccupied France called Vichy, and on the 10 July, 1940 the National Assembly authorized (by a vote of 569 to 80) the assumption of full powers by the elected Prime Minister, a hero of the First War called Marshal Pétain, pending promulgation of a new constitution. (more…)
Felipe II painted by Antonio Moro / blogs.ua.es
There were nearly two hundred years between the births of these two triumphant kings of France and Spain respectively. I shall use the anglicised version of their names. The French Philip came to be known as ‘Augustus’ as well, as if he were a Roman emperor. He did not appear to object to this magniloquence. (more…)
Turkey was known by the unfriendly sobriquet of ‘The Sick Man of Europe’ during most of the 19th century; the Eastern Question is a collective term for the problems in south-eastern Europe accelerated and exacerbated by the weakness of the Ottoman Turkish Empire; certainly also by animosities of its successors. We shall divide these contentious problems into three principal groups, which tended to overlap, mainly in the 1860s and 70s.
Group A: neighbouring large empires try to benefit themselves at the expense of Turkey:
Russia encroached on the Ottoman Empire through the wars of Catherine the Great (1768 – 74; 1787 – 92), in which she secured the Crimea, and obtained rights in the Danubian Principalities, plus recognition rights for the Orthodox Church in Constantinople (now Istanbul), by treaty in 1774. Russia had fought an indecisive war with Turkey (1806-12) and intervening (or rather interfering) on behalf of Greece in 1828, advancing across the Balkan mountains and imposing the Treaty of Adrianople in 1829. A general desire across Europe to anticipate and if possible avoid the disintegration of the Empire led directly to the Crimean War (q.v.). It must be remembered by students that war in the Crimea meant direct military confrontation between the two great Victorian powers, Britain and Russia, and it might, had it been treated more seriously, have led to a European war. The choice by both sides of commanders who should have been contentedly smoking a pipe by grazing sheep in some meadow, reflecting on past glories ensured only a minor conflagration, though far too many common soldiers died miles from home.
One of the British commanders had constantly to be reminded that he was fighting the Russians, not the French – as he thought. This might have been because he had fought at Waterloo in 1815.
Russia increased pressure on Turkey in the 1870s and pushed on to reach the suburbs of Constantinople by 1878, though this action was stopped by the (abortive) Treaty of San Stéfano. Nothing stopped (or stops) Russian expansionism however, and the tendency was revived under Izvolski in the period 1807-10, winning both British and French recognition in the Constantinople Agreements of 1915 – thought these were of course made invalid by the Bolshevik Revolution (q.v.). Austria meanwhile was not uninterested in acquisition of the western Balkans, and achieved success by the occuopation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1878. She annexed the provinces in 1908, ensuring that Austria, not Turkey would be troubled hereafter by national hostility. International diplomacy was then, as it now, shaky when it came to possibly negative future results of what seemed to be a good idea at the time. In this case, hatred of the Austrians in Bosnia-Herzogina (q.v.) helped greatly to cause the First World War.
Group B: Attempts to prevent disintegration of the Ottoman Empire:
Both Austria (Metternich’s work) and Russia tried to preserve the Empire, for reasons of their own, but the principal rôle of protector was usually reserved for Britain, at least until 1897. Britain tried to prevent Russia getting hold of the important naval base at Oczacov even as early as 1792. Except during the Greek War of Independence, Britain opposed Russia throughout the nineteenth century; she helped Turkey militarily in the Crimean War and applied diplomatic pressure in 1878, seeking to prevent Russian domination of the Straits by the Convention of 1841 closing the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus to foreign warships in time of peace. Meanwhile, Britain tried to persuade the Turks to reform their own repressive governmental methods. Turkey did not like this, and during the visit of the Kaiser (Wilhelm II) to Constantinople in 1898, she began seeking aid and from Germany more than Britain. Germany was delighted and provided important railway and commercial concessions, while she got military instructors in return and actually became Germany’s ally in 1914. See Laurence of Arabia and other articles (q.v.) in General-History.com
Group C: The rise of independent national states:
In what are called the Middle Ages the Turks had conquered all the then nations in the Balkans. But they became a constant headache for the Ottoman Empire, as they have been a headache ever since. The first of these nationalities subjected to foreign rule were the Serbs who revolted in 1804 and then again in 1815 (the year of Waterloo).
Greece then aroused international sympathy in the War of Independence (1821-30) a war in which incidentally the English poet Lord Byron died (of illness), gaining posthumous Greek ascendance to their gallery of Heroes. Rumania received aid from the French after the Crimean War, until their independence was gained in 1878. Three year earlier in 1875 the Bulgarians rose in revolt, eventually securing recognition as an autonomous united principality in 1886. Formal independence followed in October, 1908. The great mass of the Balkan peoples combined against Turkey in the Balkan War of 1812, resulting in a notable enlargement of Serbia and Greece, and the creation of an independent Albania (q.v.). But, and there is always a ‘but’ a bitter rivalry arose between Serbia and Bulgaria, and they fought each other in the Great War.
The last (or so the politicians thought) phase of the by now traditional Eastern Question came about because Mustapha Kemal (Turkish leader) tried to save at least the nucleus of a Turkish national state after the great defeat in 1918. Perhaps the Eastern Question was finally solved in the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, but many historians doubt it.
The Black Hand, a gang involved in the murder of Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo / weebly.com
Often appearing in early spy novels, such as the works of John Buchan, Dornford Yates and Somerset Maugham, the Black Hand was actually a Serbian secret society – Ujedinjenje ili Smrt – which does not mean a black hand at all, but ‘unity and Death’. (more…)
In a recent post on the General-History blogsite, mention is made of these confederate states. Their importance in history, especially American history, is that they were a direct cause (with others) of the Civil War that ravaged the nation in the mid-1860s. (more…)
At one time a British colony, Virginia is a state in North America that consists of ‘tide-water’ land in the central-Atlantic coastal plain of the United States of America. The waters drain into Chesapeake Bay and Piedmont on the eastern side of the Allegheny Mountains.
Jamestown was the first permanent British colony, settled in 1607 by the Virginia Company of London, a company given that name by Sir Walter Ralegh in honour of Elizabeth the Virgin Queen. The colonists survived and became prosperous through the growing, sale and shipment of tobacco. ‘White’ tobacco all round the world is still called ‘Virginia’, as opposed to the blackish product originating from Turkey and the Middle East. The name ‘White’ probably comes from the fact that the plant was originally grown and tended by white servants on the farms, but this did not last long. After 1690 tobacco was cultivated (but not owned) by black slaves. (more…)