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Spoilers What Book Are You Reading?
- Thread starter Huntn
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Depends not just on your character, personality, and temperament, but also on your aptitudes, skills and experiences; moreover, some people will accept the necessity to take risks in some environments where they believe that their skills may make a difference, whereas others, they would never dream of going anywhere near any sort of danger, preferring prudence, and signalling a perfectly understandable desire - or instinct - for survival.
For, an adrenalin rush can also spill over into sheer recklessness, impulsiveness, addiction to danger, and poor judgment.
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If you have 25 min on your ride home or wherever consider listening to this reading of The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot read by Sir Alec Guinness
Finished "The Honourable Company: A History of the English East India Company" by John Keay this morning, having spent much of the past three days immersed in it, buried in it, devouring it and reading it.
Admittedly, it is both beautifully written and exceedingly well researched, but I do think that it protests too much, and succumbs to an element of special pleading when attempting to explain away, or justify, or excuse some of the actions of the company, its officers and its directors over the centuries the company existed.
Admittedly, it is both beautifully written and exceedingly well researched, but I do think that it protests too much, and succumbs to an element of special pleading when attempting to explain away, or justify, or excuse some of the actions of the company, its officers and its directors over the centuries the company existed.
That company was not honourable, but more like pirate company.
Some might argue there were honorable pirates, like Grace O'Malley and Samuel "Black Sam" Bellamy.
This is discussed by Moshe Hoffman and Erez Yoeli. They’re game theorists and behavioural scientists from MIT, and their book Hidden Games (which I don't necessarily recommend) busts the myth that all pirates were inveterate rogues.
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Agreed.
This was my point: I must say that I found Keay's frequent quotes - and accompanying comments which amounted to special pleading ('this proves that they really only wanted to trade') - when quoting from the company's directors (in London) who remonstrated - with local factors and officers on the ground - re the costs of building forts, funding artillery, and financing the recruitment of soldiers as costing too much "for we should remember that we are engaged in trade above all" - increasingly irksome.
Likewise, while he does mention the horrific famine in Bengal in 1770, he does so mainly - indeed, almost exclusively - in terms of how it affected the Honourable East India Company, their trade, the price of their shares, as well as their internal - and external - relationships, all relevant to the narrative, granted.
However, inexcusably, and unforgivably, to my mind, there is no mention - whatsoever - of the fact that the company may have played a significant role in generating the conditions (and ruinous consequences) of this famine in Bengal, in that, having compelled farmers to cultivate opium (which the company then proceeded to trade to China to pay for tea), not only were the famers unable (because prohibited, and punished if they contested this) to grow anything else, - such as crops with which to feed themselves or sell to feed their families - this famine also served to ruin the (previously flourishing) economy (and society) of Bengal.
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So, it was dishonourable company from a dishonourable country. All it did was stealing.
They might have also help start a few wars... no?
I'm going to defer to @Scepticalscribe ...
EDIT: I'm actually enjoying Lincoln in the Bardo now.
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Everything is relative, I still disagree with your black and white description. Perhaps it was just a dishonorable time compared to today.
In 250 years hopefully/ comparatively Apple may be described as a "dishonorable company from a dishonorable country. All it did was stealing".
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I've not read a book for a long time, as I've been engrossed in Netflix and Prime films and series. Recently, I came across a discussion between two people, one of whom was very close to Yeltsin, which piqued my interest. This led me to find a link to Yeltsin's autobiography, and I'm going to read it in the original language. However, if you're interested, you can download it in English from here.
Very much so.
Well, yes.
Nevertheless, it is an instructive and educational and informative read.
However, Nick Robins wrote a superlative - an absolutely superb - book ("The Corporation that Changed the World") on the same subject, a book I warmly, and passionately, recommend for anyone who has an interest in such matters.
No.
Not "all".
Rather, yes, it stole, but it also explored, traded, bribed, bought, bullied, coerced, occupied, ruled, taxed (coercively), smuggled (using proxies), and yes, starved (as a by product of compelling farmers on a feudal model of indentured - almost enslaved - agricultural cultivation to grow a profitable crop which benefitted them not at all).
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Dishonourable countries? T'was ever thus...
After all ... what did...
After all ... what did...
Yes, and not just start.
Amitav Ghosh's utterly compelling (superbly researched and written) work on - or, rather, history of - the opium trade - "Smoke and Ashes" - which I am currently engrossed and completely absorbed in - is exceptionally good; I cannot recommend it highly enough.
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One of the best scenes in one of the best films (movies) I have ever seen/enjoyed.
A scene that is both hysterically funny, historically accurate, yet contains a bittersweet and uncomfortable truth.
In fact, I have had discussions that touched upon this very subject (with people in a number of the countries of central Asia) - conversations invariably conducted with the local interlocutors checking - by way of a quick glance over their shoulders - that other ears weren't paying close attention - where they proceeded to mutter, in a low voice, 'you know, the Russians weren't all bad.....they built the roads, the schools, the hospitals...'
And, sometimes, but only if I knew them reasonably well, I might then make reference to this particular (immortal, timeless, wonderful) scene.
Just want to add that I think it is unusual for colonizers to not build infrastructure, especially for transportation, because moving whatever is being extracted (spices, tea, oil, rare earths) and people (workers, prisoners, enforcers) around is key to exploiting a country.
So perhaps some nostalgia or gratitude for former regimes is driven by the very human desire to obscure traumatic experiences in the past.
So perhaps some nostalgia or gratitude for former regimes is driven by the very human desire to obscure traumatic experiences in the past.
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