Tag: History

Archaeological 'treasures,' including 2,400-year-old fruit, discovered at ancient Egyptian city

Archaeological “treasures,” including Greek ceramics and 2,400-year-old wicker baskets filled with fruit, have been discovered at the site of the ancient sunken city of Thonis-Heracleion, off Egypt’s coast. Thonis-Heracleion was Egypt’s largest Mediterranean port before Alexander the Great founded Alexandria in 331 BCE. A team from the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology (IEASM), led by… Read More Archaeological 'treasures,' including 2,400-year-old fruit, discovered at ancient Egyptian city

Dilip

Prasenjit Duara – The Chinese World Order in Historical Perspective (2019)

The Imperialism of Nation-states or Soft Power    I seek to grasp the genealogy of China’s Belt and Road (BRI) in relation both to the imperial Chinese world order and the historical sequence of forms of global domination, i.e., modern imperialism, the ‘imperialism of nation-states’ during the inter-war and Cold War period as well as… Read More Prasenjit Duara – The Chinese World Order in Historical Perspective (2019)

Dilip

Book review: Pleasure Domes and Postal Routes – How the Mongols Changed the World

Two millennia ago, in his Records of the Grand Historian, the Chinese scholar Sima Qian concluded that no empire could be ruled from horseback, and later histories seemed to confirm the view that imperial authority must be vested in cities. The great fourteenth-century scholar Ibn Khaldun developed a now familiar theory that “the rulers of a… Read More Book review: Pleasure Domes and Postal Routes – How the Mongols Changed the World

Dilip

Tom Engelhardt: Biden's indirect admission highlights the steady decline of American empire

It was all so long ago, in a world seemingly without challengers. Do you even remember when we Americans lived on a planet with a recumbent Russia, a barely rising China, and no obvious foes except what later came to be known as an “axis of evil,” three countries then incapable of endangering this one?… Read More Tom Engelhardt: Biden's indirect admission highlights the steady decline of American empire

Dilip

Daniel Immerwahr: The Strange, Sad Death of America’s Political Imagination // AV Lecture: How to Hide an Empire

The world didn’t expect much from Edward Bellamy, a reclusive, tubercular writer who lived with his parents. Yet if he lived small, he dreamed big, and in 1888 he published a phenomenally successful utopian novel, Looking Backward, 2000-1887. It told of a man who fell asleep in 1887 and awoke in 2000 to electrified cities,… Read More Daniel Immerwahr: The Strange, Sad Death of America’s Political Imagination // AV Lecture: How to Hide an Empire

Dilip

Rana Mitter: China’s Communist party has rewritten its own past – but the truth will surface

A new museum commemorating the history of the Chinese Communist party (CCP) opened in June in Beijing as part of the runup to the party’s 100th anniversary. Online images of its collections show reverential black-and-white photos of the dozen or so young men who gathered at the party’s founding meeting in Shanghai in 1921. Those activists, one of… Read More Rana Mitter: China’s Communist party has rewritten its own past – but the truth will surface

Dilip

Rumsfeld’s much-vaunted ‘courage’ was a smokescreen for lies, crime and death. By Richard Wolffe

It is customary, at times like these, to gloss over the failures and foibles of recently deceased officials: to paint a portrait in broad brush strokes about their achievements and qualities and public service. In the case of the newly departed Donald Rumsfeld, the defense secretary who led the catastrophic war in Iraq, this would be… Read More Rumsfeld’s much-vaunted ‘courage’ was a smokescreen for lies, crime and death. By Richard Wolffe

Dilip

Oxford University’s South Asian Studies Programme’s comments on Venkat Dhulipala

First posted September 12, 2018 I will open this comment with an anecdote. Some months ago, whilst exercising in the gym I visit, the senior trainer was talking politics with someone. He is a friendly individual and I normally do not converse whilst exercising. He happens to be an admirer of Narendra Modi. On this… Read More Oxford University’s South Asian Studies Programme’s comments on Venkat Dhulipala

Dilip