In the latter part of the nineteenth century the words Indo-China did not mean much to the average European. Map draughtsmen knew the word was applied (by the French) to five dependencies in south-east Asia from 1887. In fact the word stayed until 1954. (more…)
Wyclif or Wycliffe / en-wikipedia.org
The name is also spelled Wycliffe: he was a religious reformer born around 1330. An intriguing thing is that for hundreds of years Wyclif was assumed to be the sole translator of the Bible from Latin into English. This is logically now thought to be untrue, since one man translating the entire Bible (and writing down the translation) would require perhaps sixty years of daily work.
More sensibly, historians now regard him as being ‘one of a large group’ who took part in the enterprise. The result is known as the ‘Wyclif’ or ‘Lollard’ Bible, which was used as standard until the 17th century ‘King James Version’.
He was at Oxford University as an academic and ecclesiastic, publishing various works of philosophy and logic, but became best known for his theological compositions. (more…)
Last moments for George Custer at the Little Big Horn / manataka.org
George Custer was a general in the US army who shouldn’t have been. He was brave but incapable of making a quick decision; he had high political ambitions, but disagreeable in society, holding the opinion that no one else’s should be attended to; his sense of timing was bad; at the time of Little Big Horn he was only thirty-seven years old. His war record in the Civil War was exellent, and he had served in it with some distinction. Ten horses had been shot under him. His impulsive disposition led to a Court Martial in 1867, but Sheridan got him re-instated. (more…)
Inca Atahualpa captured / theinfounderground.com
The Incas were pre-Columbian (which means before the arrival of Christopher Columbus on American shores) native people of western South America. This is what the text books say, but it would be more accurate to describe Incas as the leaders of these pre-Columbian peoples. Before these modern days of all people being equal, the Incas did not feel at all equal to the illiterate peasants they ruled, though they were not over-educated themselves, speaking a language called Quechua, a series of clicks made with the lips, roof of the mouth and teeth. It was not written, and is still spoken and used for communication purposes across the Andes. In the 1960s a communist military President of Perú tried to re-introduce quechua as the official language; he failed. He had a wooden leg, and this was used in a cruel joke by the Peruvians, who nicknamed him Inca Sinchupata (‘Inca Withoutaleg’ – his real name was Velasco Alvarado). (more…)
The Sun King / biography.com
Louis the Fourteenth (XIV) was the King of France for seventy-two years, from 1643 to 1715. He is the great monarch who still startles lighter-minded history students by his best-known quote; “Après moi, le deluge”. He was quite right. The Flood in the form of wars, famine, bloodshed, the French Revolution (q.v.) – all kinds of unrest, came after him. It would not be unfair to state that most if not all of these could have been avoided if Louis had been a different kind of king. (more…)
What was left after the Reichstag Fire / classwarfareexists.com
This is, or rather was the Imperial Parliament of Germany. Here in Berlin the legislature of the German Second Empire and Weimar Republic was planned and expedited. It is extremely old; as a legislative (or law-making) chamber its origins stretch back to the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire (q.v.).
The Reichstag was encouraged and re-instated by Otto von Bismarck (q.v.), forming the representative assembly of those states constituent to the North German Confederation; from 1871 it was the centre of government for the Second Empire. It should be noted that its rôle in the Empire was the passing of legislation: it was not permitted to interfere in federal government, and had limited control over public expenditure. Under the Weimar Republic however, the Reichstag enjoyed greater powers, as the actual government was made responsible to it. (more…)
Yesterday March 25 regional elections took place in two autonomous communities in Spain – Andalucía and Asturias. The results were more or less what were expected, in that the Andalusians voted slightly more for the Popular Party and J. Arenas than the PSOE led by Griñan. Arenas need fifty-five seats in the Andaluz parliament for the all-essential absolute majority. He did not achieve this, winning fifty to the forty-seven won by the PSOE. (more…)
Three enormous ocean liners, built well before the Second War when trans-Atlantic travel was best made by sea, not by air, suffered ends which none of them deserved. They were Lusitania, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary. All were British, though Lusitania’s strong association with the United States was in the end (partly) instrumental in bringing America into the First or Great War. (more…)
Careless students of history may forget that the monarchy of France did not end with the execution of Louis XVI, last King of France before the Revolution (q.v.). There were three more to reign before the Presidency. (more…)
I am greatly indebted to Dr. M, an acquaintance, for using his eagle eye to spot a superfluous ‘of’’ in a line occurring in one of my posts. I suspect it was an impertinent and ambitious ‘of’, escaped from an English lexicon, and managing to insert itself, like a leech, beneath the skin of my article. (more…)