Tag: history

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Legacy of a Mughal ruler

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Controversial Aurangzeb “Alamgir, last of the “Great Mughals”, whose empire touched Kabul on one side and Arakan on the other, was described by British Imperialists as “Crooked and Cruel, Dark and Devious”. The Raj-era historian Jadunath Sarkar described him as a bigotd despot who precipitated the “decay of Indian civilization”.  Aurangzeb’s death in 1707 left a divided legacy. India’s current Hindu nationalist government wants to send a bulldozer and raze his grave. His dynasty survived, in one form or another, until the British laid waste to its capital at Delhi in 1857, which lives on the political consciousness of over billion … Continue reading Legacy of a Mughal ruler

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Inequality linking of concentrated wealth, inherited hierarchy to the ideology of tech titans

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Kim Phillips-Fein, historian teaching 20th century American history at the Gallatin School of individualized Study at New York University, in Country of Lords, chronicles a “Shadow Tradition” who fought against America’s founding ideals, offers a critical re-examination of American history by focusing on inequality.  She challenges the belief that America has always moved greater equality, a persistent “Shadow tradition of anti-egalitarian thought published amid sharp anxiety over extreme wealth concentration. 250 years after the Declaration of Independence, the book argues that doubts about equality run from John Adams through social Darwinists, slavery theorists and scientific racist to today’s tech elite Elon Musk’s … Continue reading Inequality linking of concentrated wealth, inherited hierarchy to the ideology of tech titans

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Empress Matilda: Female Lord of the English

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Henry I of England, King from 1100 to 1135, towards the end of his reign, had notoriously  at least 20 illegitimate offspring,  and found himself in a predicament related to the succession. His marriage had been unfortunately less fruitful. His first wife, the pious Anglo-Saxon princess Edith Matilda, produced only two babies before she “ceased to either have offspring or desire them”.  And his second, the much younger Adeliza of Louvain, failed to produce a replacement for his heir presumptive, William who drowned in the White Ship disaster of 1120.  Consequently, Henry’s only legitimate  child was a daughter Matilda,  who in 1127 was formally recognised as … Continue reading Empress Matilda: Female Lord of the English

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Converts interpreted Rome to England

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The twentieth century is understood as an era of growing, inexorable secularism, yet in Britain between the 1890s and the 1960s there was a marked turn to Rome. In the first half of the century, Catholicism attracted more than half a million converts among them fascinating artists, writers and thinkers, after it became an intellectual and spiritual fashion. These men and women joined the church, and what difference did conversion make to them? Henry Scobie a Catholic policeman in wartime Sierra Leone finds himself mathematical blind, as it would be a mortal sin for him not to go to Mass … Continue reading Converts interpreted Rome to England

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Global economic reset

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Dennis Peacocke’s On The Destiny of Nations is designed to provoke a global reaction and a movement especially among leaders, which will help prepare and position people for once-in-a-century opportunity to advance God’s Kingdom amidst a major political-economic crisis lasting perhaps a decade. This is no mere recession, but the beginning stages of a global economic reset that will bring major disruptions and changes over the coming decade. The secular marginalisation of Judeo-Christian values from the public dialogue has helped drive this collapse by creating a values-vacuum prompting massive corruption throughout the financial management systems. Neither capitalism no any other economic … Continue reading Global economic reset

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Politicians who had lost the plot

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San Francisco’s meteoric transformation into a global capital of technology, and how the same creative and political forces that gave rise to its boom nearly engineered its collapse. San Francisco’s Doom since the Gold Rush of 1849 and Bust loop after the pandemic when business flight and surging homelessness appeared to threaten irreversible urban decline.  At the dawn of the 1990s, San Francisco was beautiful if troubled mid-sized metropolis. It was still reeling from the AIDS epidemic and the Lome Prieta earthquake, its economy struck in a post-industrial slump. Once considered to be the capital of the American West, and later … Continue reading Politicians who had lost the plot

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Murdoch’s broken family weaponize his own secrets against him

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Bonfire of the Murdochs is the real succession story of the Murdoch empire. When Rupert Murdoch made a fateful decision about who should inherit his media colossus, he believed that pitting his children against each other would produce the most capable heir. Twenty-five years later that gamble would tear apart one of the world’s most powerful families and trigger a multi-million dollar reckoning in a succession battle featuring betrayals, lawsuits, and revenge plots.  This is the epic family feud, one whose seeds were planted 50 years ago in Australia, when he complicated patriarch left his homeland to conquer the world and … Continue reading Murdoch’s broken family weaponize his own secrets against him

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Linguicide: cultural emergency, as half of 7,000 languages due to disappear this century

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Journalist Sophia Smith Galer who learnt French and Spanish at school  and added Arabic at university, travels across continents and generations to chart How to Kill a Language. She travel to Ghana to Kurdistan to explore minority languages that cling on, despite repression and neglect, and interview their speakers. In Ecuador, she sees first hand how shame deters parents from passing Kichwa onto their children. In Oman, she learns about languages with roots older than Arabic but never officially recognised. Smith Galer rushes to the 93-year-old emigrée’s beside in north London. In Italy, near Placenza where she grew up, she searches for … Continue reading Linguicide: cultural emergency, as half of 7,000 languages due to disappear this century

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Lanes of London

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London Lanes is an attempt to enumerate, name and describe, as far as possible, all the lanes old and new of London. Alan Stapleton examines over 900 London Lzness and writes “In the time of Henry VIII and Elizabeth the houses of London certainly climbed skywards along the narrow lanes. These houses were half-timbered buildings of sometimes eight storeys. But each storey bulged out over the next lower, so that the people on the topmost storey could almost shake hands with their neighbours across the way. Up to the end of the eighteenth century the citizens of London lived in … Continue reading Lanes of London

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Do we have the courage to learn amid “Existential risk”?, a survival kit for the gloomy world

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Award-winning journalist, John Kampfner travel to ten countries confronting our shared challenges with bravery and imagination provides a “survival kit” for a world enveloped in gloom. Kampfner’s Braver New World reveals ground breaking exploration of the countries solving the world’s most pressing problems differently and the lessons for the rest of the world. Democracies often gets paralyzed by fear and populations are turning inward. In Japan, he discovers inter-generational care homes ensuring dignity in later life. He visits Vienna’s century-old housing projects where 60 per cent of resident live in subsidised accommodation without stigma and communities thrive. Taiwan’s health system … Continue reading Do we have the courage to learn amid “Existential risk”?, a survival kit for the gloomy world