Hewson’s reaction to what Keating believed was a perfectly proper speech to the Queen had touched a nerve. It was a deep insult, and almost certainly intensified by the press reaction to Annita’s missing curtsy. And it probably awoke another half-buried memory, that of his father’s brother who had been captured at the fall of [...]
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In September 1960, Lumumba was dismissed by Kasavubu, and in turn Lumumba dismissed Kasavubu. The constitution did not allow for either of these moves. After a few days of confusion, Lumumba was definitively overthrown in a bloodless military coup led by the very person he had just appointed head of the army, colonel Mobutu. Lumumba’s [...]
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Fifty years later, it is astonishing to read some of the colonial and early post-colonial writings about the Belgian Congo which is described as ‘our Congo’ or its inhabitants as Nos Noirs, our blacks.
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Tags:Africa·colonialism·racism
The other important protagonist in the early history of the Congo Français was Prosper Augouard. Born in 1852, ordained in the congregation of the Holy Spirit, he arrived in Gabon in 1877. Missionaries of the time had to be highly motivated for their life expectancy in Africa was just three years. Augouard was more robust [...]
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Tags:Africa·Christianity·Colonisation·religion
Brazza signed a treaty with a chief on the north side of the river, and planted the French flag. The chief could not read French and did not realise that he had conceded a large piece of land to France rather than merely getting some kind of protection and trading rights. Meanwhile, on the south [...]
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Tags:Africa·colonialism·History
Salaries have not risen in line with inflation, the rupee has declined steadily against the dollar, and those of us who once had substantial family estates have seen them divided and subdivided by each – larger- subsequent generation. So my grandfather could not afford what his father could, and my father could not afford what [...]
(Kipling) sees clearly that men can only be highly civilized while other men, inevitably less civilized, are there to guard and feed them. Again, it’s Orwell’s ruthless realism that sets him apart from other progressive writers. Particularly progressive writers of his time.
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Tags:Civilisation·military·Rudyard Kipling·Security
The (British) Empire was peaceful as no area of comparable size has ever been. Throughout its vast extent, nearly a quarter of the earth, there were fewer armed men than would be found necessary by a minor Balkan state. Very droll and typically Orwellian. For a strident socialist, he was always very realistic about the [...]
Tags:british empire·violence·war·warfare
In Moulmein, in lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people—the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me.
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It was about forty yards to the gallows. I watched the bare brown back of the prisoner marching in front of me. He walked clumsily with his bound arms, but quite steadily, with that bobbing gait of the Indian who never straightens his knees. At each step his muscles slid neatly into place, the lock [...]
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