Napolean worked hard to free many oppressed groups from tyranny and to give them equal citizenship in the nation states he conquered. Of course he to conquer them first and that tended to get bloody. But on the upside you can look at the stellar success of the CCCP and pan-confederalist collection of borderless nation states under one peaceful prosperous umbrella.

Commie rat bastard stuff, boy. You be careful with that, you hear? Me an' Luke don' like that Russkie stuff, and neither does no one else here in Carver Creek.

(redneck off)

AL, you may already have been referred to the work of Fernand Braudel, whom Schama draws some of his inspirations from. Braudel was the first historian to really flesh out the effects of global trade and ideas, from Mexican silver to Spanish military spending to Chinese tea sales to financing the British Raj to Southern cotton prices to African colonialism to...

The past is the foundation of today, and we often can learn a lot by looking back to great minds, or even just great history. There is after all, little happening now that hasn't happened before - its just now it's on a much more massive scale.

I myself am quite enamored of the Chinese philosophers, especially some of the Taoists and neo-Confucians. It also seems little has changed - tales of corrupt administrations, the need for responsibility, and the importance of husbanding resources and working together are as viable now as they are ever.

Sudan, Nigeria, Congo, SW Sahara, Colombia, Yemen, Lebanon, Ossetia, Chechnya, Georgia, Azerbijan, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia are all experiencing protracted bloody interminable separatist movements that seem to fly in the face of this desire for one ginormous Unicorn ranch.

Human weather. Our own leaders never read about the Athenian expedition to Syracuse, nor Crassus's Roman invasion of Mesopotamia.

I did a google search for "bikini font" and got links to this article, links to fonts, and links to bikinis. But, nothing showed up that explained what a bikini font is.

They are not easy to find, because so they are so DARN small!

With this posting, How the World Works takes over from the War Room, probably for good (unless Walsh brings Grieve or Benen back) the honor of Salon's Best Read. Unfortunately, the competition is shrinking every month.

Glenn Greenwald, please take note. Unless you count Conason and Keillor's weekly contributions, the competition is all yours.

If Anarchasis were a verb (or an object, as in "to commit..."), what would its meaning be? And would that be a good thing, or not?

I think we can all agree on the meaning of "to Cloot."

So why are separatist movements all the vogue now

Nothing new in that. After Waterloo and the Restoration of the Bourbons, the prevailing philosophy in the 19th century was one of controlled separatism, that is certain monarchies/empires were permitted to be sovereign, others were not (ie., Greece as a nation was good, anything part of Austria-Hungary was not, etc.) Since the multinational dinosaur empires (A-H, Germany, Russia, Ottomans) all fell by 1919 Wilson's vision was one of national determination for everybody, but coordinated in the League of Nations (going back towards the goal of Cloots). The disasters of 1933-1945 made such a coordination imperative, and is still seen as such today.

Since the Cold War ended though these ethnic minorities have been breaking the structures imposed on them to keep the CW boundaries clear and defined. Now, more than ever, through the EU, NATO and other organizations, we are closer than ever to realizing Cloots' vision--unless GWB's friends and the Fundamentalists wreck it in the US.

hi, I've been making my way thru Amy Chua's _Day of Empire_ (I'm sure a much easier slog than Schama*) which takes a tour of world history and its great empires (or 'hyperpowers') under the lens of toleration** -- racial and religious. Anyway, I just hit the chapter on the Dutch trading empire that rapidly arose following the 1579 Union of Utrecht establishing freedom of religion and the 1581 establishment of the United Provinces*** and the Oath of Abjuration:

"As 'tis apparent to all that a prince is constituted by God to be ruler of a people, to defend them from oppression and violence as the shepherd his sheep; and whereas God did not create the people slaves to their prince, to obey his commands, whether right or wrong, but rather the prince for the sake of the subjects... [When a prince] does not behave thus, but, on the contrary, oppresses them, seeking opportunities to infringe their ancient customs and privileges, exacting from them slavish compliance, then he is no longer a prince, but a tyrant, and the subjects ... may not only disallow his authority, but legally proceed to the choice of another prince for their defense. This is ... what the law of nature dictates for the defense of liberty, which we ought to transmit to posterity, even at the hazard of our lives."

What's neat is that if it wasn't for Spain's 1492 expulsion of the Jews, the Dutch would probably not have risen to prominence so quickly. By 1625, Chua sez, the (relatively tiny) Dutch Republic sat astride the world, commercially at least. That then set the stage for the Dutch "conquest" of England in the Glorious Revolution... but I haven't quite gotten to that chapter yet :P

cheers!

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* altho he comes up in Chua and btw does a great job illuminating Turner - http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/powerofart/turner.shtml

** cf. Wright - http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/68

*** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Republic

imagine that.

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!

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* 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_