On Friday, I sent out an “institutional” email blast on behalf of Just World Educational, the non-profit educational org that I founded in late 2015 and have headed ever since. That email/newsletter took me much longer than usual to write, hampered as I am by the eye problem that first struck me in early November… … Continue reading My January Syndrome strikes again…
Last month I blogged this essay, “Language, empire, nation, state”, in which I was exploring the relationships among the emergence of “nation” states in each of Portugal and Spain, the solidification of the two post-Latin languages in each of those polities, and the building by each of their leaders of transoceanic empires. In it, I … Continue reading Benedict Anderson was so wrong
Americans have become increasingly aware of the addictive effects that Facebook and its subsidiary Instagram have on young people. But we should all be even more concerned about Tik Tok, the English-language version of the signature app owned by China’s ByteDance company. TikTok consists solely of catchy, fast-moving short videos– 60 seconds is considered a … Continue reading How Tik Tok hooks (very) young people
Christopher Columbus was born in the bustling north-Italian port city of Genoa in 1451 CE, just a couple of years before the Ottoman Turks captured the great East Mediterranean metropolis of Constantinople (Istanbul) from its longtime Christian emperor. That Ottoman advance sent many of the merchants, financiers, and seaman who had built up Genoa and … Continue reading Columbus in Context
The French and the Anglo-Saxons have gotten into a big pissing match over Australia’s decision to nix a longstanding contract for French-built submarines in favor of a bigger one with the United States (with some UK involvement), for nuclear-powered subs, instead. The French have been understandably miffed by the loss of this substantial contract, and … Continue reading France’s “historic position” in the Indo-Pacific region
Throughout history there have been numerous empires, none of which was built using peaceful means. All were built through the use of greater or lesser amounts of violence. During the 15th century CE, the era in which the first two great West-European transoceanic empires were first being built, there were a number of large land … Continue reading The “innovation” of transoceanic empires with cannons
I’m at the transition point between completing the big essay on the birth of the Portuguese empire, which I published August 30, and sitting down to plan the next essay in the “Big Western Imperialisms” series, the one on Spain. Astute readers of the Portugal essay will have found some references there to the Portuguese … Continue reading Language, empire, nation, state
In the longform essay on the birth and early decades of the Portuguese empire that I published last week, I referred to the uses the Portuguese conquistadors made of “exemplary terror” as they built their trading-forts-based global empire in the 15th and early 16th centuries CE. Any history of this empire contains numerous examples of … Continue reading More on Portugal’s use of exemplary terror
1492? How about 1415 CE? If we’re trying to identify the start-date of the era of Western domination of world affairs that is now lurching toward a close, then the very serious moves that Portugal made, long before 1492, to build a colonial empire in West Africa and the mid-Atlantic should surely trump the voyage … Continue reading Portugal and the origins of “the West”
If you followed most US corporate media coverage you might believe that (1) the only important news in Afghanistan today is what’s happening in and near Kabul airport; (2) all “sane” Afghans want to leave their country; and (3) the best way Westerners can help is by bringing these people to our shores and integrating … Continue reading Beyond Kabul airport: Humanitarian crises in all of Afghanistan
