Nationalism & Jingoism
Nationalism is a gut feeling of loyalty towards one’s nation, united as one by race, language and history. It is the single most powerful force in modern history and has a few good points, but [...]
Cowboys: the reality
Some cowboys working / teaxasbeyondhistory.net These hard workers guarded cattle and sheep, sometimes horses on the Great Plains of the United States. The work was arduous and the pay little. Cowboys originated in [...]
What was ‘Indirect Rule?’
It was a system of colonial administration, mainly British, by which colonial powers ruled through local chiefs. The concept was not new, as it stemmed from the fact that great African empires had been run [...]
A short history of the PSOE (Spanish Workers’ Socialist Party)
Spain as a modern country is naturally bent towards Socialism, as a direct result of centuries of oppression of workers by the Monarchy, the Church and the Nobles on whose huge estates serfs toiled every [...]
World War II: resistance movement in Russia, France & Italy
The ‘Resistance’ was a term coined for underground movements that fought a courageous but sometimes useless battle against Nazi Germany during the Second World War. The movements aided the Allies in at least four strategies: [...]
Prohibition: a dry America
In every Western you have ever seen a Hollywood cowboy, spurs jangling, goes to the saloon and slaps some cash on the huge counter, saying nothing. The barman picks up the nearest bottle and pours [...]
The brothers Gracchus B.C.
Tiberius Sempronius GRACCHUS was born in 168 B.C and lived only until 133 B.C. The Gracchii were important in Roman politics, but Tiberius became a Tribune only in the last year of his life. He [...]
Jean Monnet: turning in his grave?
Jean Monnet / lewebpedagoguique.com Monnet (1888 – 1979) was, if not the progenitor, at least the clever uncle of the European Union. He was an able administrator and economist who devised and became [...]
The Krupp family: influences
A scene from the film The Damned (1969) a story about the Krupp family / todossobre2webcindario.com The family was based in the industrial Ruhr, in Essen. Their business was founded in a small [...]
Ancient gods at these Olympics
I suppose we are about half way through the London Olympics of 2012 – sad for some, radiant news for others. I suppose I will be accused of being a dry old stick (if not [...]
Laurence of Arabia (article revised 2012)
The real Laurence, later he wrote Seven Pillars of Wisdom’ / luisantoniodevillena.es Thomas Edward Laurence was born in 1888, the son of Thomas Chapman, a member of a distinguished Anglo-Irish family. Thomas had [...]
The Marquis who survived the French Revolution
The Marquis fights in America (against the English) / ushistory.org Marie-Joseph, Marquis de LaFayette, was born in 1757, into a firmly established aristocratic family in a large European country whose people had been [...]
Important American Moneybags: Astor, Mellon & Vanderbilt
Astor / en.wikipedia.org JOHN JACOB ASTOR was born a century before our other subjects in this series ((1763). He emigrated from Germany in 1779 when he was sixteen, to work with his brother [...]
Important American Moneybags: Andrew Carnegie & Henry Ford
Carnegie / andrew.cmu.edu Carnegie was born in 1835, the son of a Scots weaving hand-loom operator. The family left Scotland and emigrated to the United States of America in 1848. Young Andrew worked [...]
Important American Moneybags: John P. Morgan & J.D. Rockefeller
Rockefeller / exito-motivacionysuperacionpersonal.com The 19th and 20th centuries were the twenty decades during which men (and some women) astonished the world by making uncountable fortunes in the vast territories of the United States. [...]
Figures in a Revolution: Jacques-René Hébert & the Sans-Culottes
Hebert / amis-robespierre.org This French journalist and revolutionary was born in 1757, just thirty-two years before the French Revolution exploded on an astonished and cowed world. Hébert was not just a jobbing newspaperman, [...]
What was the Committee of Public Safety?
The term is self-contradictory, but the committee’s founders could hardly call it the ‘Committee of Public Danger’. It lasted only from 1793 to 1795 but greatly damaged France’s reputation and standing in the eighteenth century [...]
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