"The lesson here for contemporary politics is clear and significant. Rather than disavowing our circumstances and dismissing our cultural and intellectual traditions as morally compromised or tainted by history, we ought to be examining the long-term historical processes that have led us to this conjuncture and employing the existing resources at our disposal to surmount its challenges."
#Image attribution: Jakob Schlesinger, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Page URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jakob_Schlesinger_-_Hegel_1831.jpg
"On this day in 1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd president of the United States, died. Here is a British Movietone report with highlights of his life"
"On this day in 1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd president of the United States, died. Here is a British Movietone report with highlights of his life"
"Our analysis of 49 coins from the North Sea zone indicates that Byzantine silver plate was the source of silver for the initial minting of the first post-Roman silver coins in England, Frisia and parts of Francia. From c. AD 750, freshly mined silver from Melle, Aquitaine, was introduced to this North Sea zone, becoming the dominant source following the coinage reforms of AD 793."
How a brawl in 18th-century Constantinople changed what we know about the Vikings
"Ibn Fadlan’s first-hand account of the Rus and their funerary rituals has secured his reputation as an important source for the study of ritual and belief across the Viking world. Nowhere else do we encounter eyewitness insight into this kind of Viking funerary ritual."
Nostalgia: A History of a Dangerous Emotion by Agnes Arnold-Forster review – no place like home
"Quoting Michel Barnier, the EU chief negotiator, she sees the vote to leave Europe as a direct expression of Britain’s “nostalgia for the past”, alerting us to the way that Barnier’s tautologous phrasing suggests a doubling down – Britons really, really want to live in a once-upon-a-time land when foreigners knew their place."
"One of the mysteries surrounding the Royal Cemetery of Ur is the identity of the occupants of the tombs, the sequence of their reigns, and their relationships with each other. Dr. Miano provides an overview of the issues involved."
"The historian’s avowed mission is to reduce the layers and broker the optimal relationship with the distant recorded past. But ultimately, history becomes an asymptote, a line approaching but never quite touching the past."
"The Sumerians innovated with the world’s first written language, cuneiform, on clay tablets, facilitating record-keeping for food supplies and trade. This advancement, alongside their development of a numerical system, laid foundational aspects of modern society."
"Rereading the sources surveyed by Green and Fancy, we have found no evidence in the various texts that would tie the various epidemics/pandemics in Iraq, Syria, and Egypt to plague, supposedly brought unintentionally by the advancing Mongol army that besieged Baghdad in early 1258."
"The modus operandi of men like Hawkins was to sail to Guinea, acquire a cargo of enslaved people, by force and/or barter, and ship them to the Spanish Caribbean and Mexico.91 Here, Hawkins would claim inclement weather had forced him to the area (a tactic used by many illicit traders), offer platitudes to local officials and sometimes promise to help clear out foreign pirates from the area.92 In return, he asked the Spanish to purchase his enslaved people. If that failed, he became aggressive, after which the local elites, often under-manned and in relatively lightly defended settlements, would agree to purchase his human cargo."
"The modus operandi of men like Hawkins was to sail to Guinea, acquire a cargo of enslaved people, by force and/or barter, and ship them to the Spanish Caribbean and Mexico.91 Here, Hawkins would claim inclement weather had forced him to the area (a tactic used by many illicit traders), offer platitudes to local officials and sometimes promise to help clear out foreign pirates from the area.92 In return, he asked the Spanish to purchase his enslaved people. If that failed, he became aggressive, after which the local elites, often under-manned and in relatively lightly defended settlements, would agree to purchase his human cargo."
🇺🇸 "Local and state laws quickly targeted Chinese immigrants, often forcing them to pay fees and abandon their traditional methods of doing things. Government employment, and even the use of public schools, was banned for the Chinese. Courts typically excluded testimony from Chinese immigrants, meaning any legal disputes between Chinese and white residents would almost automatically be decided in favor of the white party."
"Local and state laws quickly targeted Chinese immigrants, often forcing them to pay fees and abandon their traditional methods of doing things. Government employment, and even the use of public schools, was banned for the Chinese. Courts typically excluded testimony from Chinese immigrants, meaning any legal disputes between Chinese and white residents would almost automatically be decided in favor of the white party."
"While it is difficult to assess the level of both political and economic stress in Provincia Judaea, the unrest there, evident by the vast influx of legions and supplementary troops into it during these years, may account for some amount of any additional stress. If, as I have suggested, the locals were responsible for providing supplies and places of rest for their oppressors, it would have harmed the locals’ livelihood. These actions seemed to have laid the groundwork for the revolt, so when Hadrian announced his decision to found Aelia Capitolina over Jerusalem, tensions had reached a breaking point."
"It is about the Land according to the redefined Judaism that emerged in the centuries following the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE. This Judaism replaced the temple cult with Torah study - a study that pertained in part to that very temple cult, that became a portable homeland, and that reconfigured the Land."