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In most of their history, Genoa and Venice were competing for the Eastern and Southern Mediterranean like two hookers battling for a sidewalk.
Nassim Taleb • Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder
John Locke, who held that individuals had a right to turn natural resources that belonged to no one into individual property for personal use, through labor. The Lockean idea justified all manner of accomplishments and violations in American history, including the colonial seizure of Native lands and the justification of resource extraction via the
... See moretheatlantic.com • The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing
En conclusion, Grotius, d’un côté, rend hommage au « peuple libre105 » qui, en Hollande, s’est servi de son droit de résistance pour se débarrasser du joug d’un prince despotique106, et, de l’autre, il justifie sans problème l’esclavage et même cette sorte de chasse aux « bêtes sauvages » menée en Amérique contre les Peaux-Rouges.
Bernard Chamayou • Contre-histoire du libéralisme (POCHES ESSAIS t. 416) (French Edition)
Karl Marx called it ‘primitive accumulation’ – the initial influx of capital from the colonies which allowed the nations of Western Europe to kick-start the industrial revolution.
Tristram Hunt • Ten Cities That Made an Empire
interlopers like Sir Edward Michelborne
John Keay • The Honourable Company: History of the English East India Company
Historians think Vesey was born in Bermuda in 1757. He was sold to a planter in Haiti, who ultimately returned Denmark to his original owner because he had epilepsy. Once Vesey’s master settled in Charleston, a cosmopolitan hub, Vesey became literate. At a crossroads of history, his story is yet another reminder of the breadth of the antebellum Sou
... See moreImani Perry • South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
For many years after 1806—for 111 years, to be precise—the only way a senator could be made to stop talking so that a vote could be taken on a proposed measure was if there was unanimous consent that he do so, an obvious impossibility. And there took place therefore so many “extended discussions” of measures to keep them from coming to a vote that
... See moreRobert A. Caro • Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson III
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Original Classic Edition): An American Slave
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