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A salute to Anacharsis Cloots
So what if imagining that there were no borders got the 18th century "Orator of the Human Race" a date with the guillotine? His heart was in the right place.
Andrew Leonard [2008-05-08]

  • The Brit^H^H^H^H Scottish Empire

    ok, I read Chua's chapter on British Empire last nite and she dare-I-say masterfully contrasted the Dutch/English success at incorporating Jews, Huguenots and Scots into Great Britain versus the contradictions of (often brutally repressive) colonial rule in India (and Ireland).

    um, I thought she might've covered the Glorious Revolution some, but she skipped it entirely and reading the Wikipedia entry* it's still rather opaque to me, so it's probably good that she did :P Anyway, to me, it's rather fascinating reading all the (but not too much**) details to see how well they hang on to theories*** of human histories' 'structures'... like I never would have thunk about it before -- "it's just one fucking thing after another" to quote Lemony Snicket/Harold Macmillan -- as I consciously avoided it in HS/college; give me Kuhn, K.Kelly and Erik Davis, etc! [fwiw, I guess it was watching Malick's _The New World_ and seeing the Turner exhibit at DC's NGA (three times) while it was there that got me on my history kick, where it came 'alive'.]

    btw, you might also find this article on the Flushing Remonstrance noteworthy http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/27/opinion/27jackson.html - "A Colony With a Conscience," cf. the little-looked-at lacunae of those that staid loyal to the Crown (as enshrined by parliamentary democracy/constitutional monarchy) http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/magazine/01wwln-essay-t.html - "Loyal to a Fault"

    cheers!

    ---

    * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glorious_Revolution - possibly more on (impenetrable ;) Jacobites here http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2008/05/ol4-dr-johnsons-hypothesis.html

    ** like internecine intrigue/struggles, revenge feuds -- http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/21/080421fa_fact_diamond -- and other cycles of stupidity writ large, I can only handle so much gory completeness

    *** my recent touchstones being Clark's _A Farewell to Alms_, Gellner's _Plough, Sword and Book_, DeLanda's _A New Philosophy of Society_ and Anderson's _Imagined Communities_

    -- gorgongogol
    [Read gorgongogol's other letters]
    Friday, May 9, 2008 07:15 AM
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