Lauded as one of the world’s greatest writers when he died aged 57 in a car crash 20 years ago, Sebald always had a troubled relationship with his father, a German soldier who fought in the second world war, the biography will show His books are saturated with despair. Over and over again, his… Read More Book review: The secret trauma that inspired W.G. Sebald
Although every proprietor knows his own, … all things, so long as they will last, are used in common amongst them: Thomas Morton regarding the Five Nations in North America Once referring to natural resources and collectively managed land, the notion of the ‘commons’ has expanded across cultural, scientific and digital realms. Can commonality… Read More Thijs Lijster: The commons versus capitalism
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
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
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
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
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
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
Today, 1 July, is the centenary of the police firing in Dharwar during the movement for Non-violent Non-co-operation with the Colonial Government in India 100 years ago. The firing started around 8.20 at night when non-co-operators were picketing market toddy and liquor shops. At least 42 bullets were fired, killing 3 and injuring around 39 persons.… Read More Anil Nauriya: July 1, 2021 is the Centenary of the Dharwar Firing
An excerpt from Kabir, Kabir: The Life and Work of the Early Modern Poet-Philosopher – by Purushottam Agrawal. Why were Kabir’s detractors “forced” to escalate matters up to the sultan? Mostly because they were smarting from having failed so miserably to check his influence themselves. Kabir’s fame was sky- rocketing, despite his obvious lack… Read More Kabir’s search for solitude resembles our search for privacy in totalitarian times
