Sublime

Perhaps the most astonishing lesson of World War Two is that, in the aftermath of total war and unconditional surrender, a hard reset of two very different cultures was possible. Judging from the Allied victory over Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, it certainly seems that one can bomb ideas—by obliterating many of the people who hold them. Kill a s

The British Army produced no first-rate generals during 1939–45. This was partly because it always acted as a junior partner – first to the French in 1939–40, and then to the Americans after 1942 – and partly because it was condemned by its political superiors to ultra caution. The Desert Campaign of 1940–43 was the only one in which the British ex

Europe’s expansion amounted in part to a deliberate assault on the modernizing ventures of other peoples and states. Perhaps it was not Europe’s modernity that triumphed, but its superior capacity for organized violence.

But though the ‘sea states’ coped most successfully with the economic conditions of the period, their strength and importance should not be exaggerated by hindsight. Much of their overseas commercial activity was risky and unprofitable,27 as the misfortunes of the Royal Africa Company, the South Seas Company and the Dutch West India and East India

The underlying problem throughout the period was population: stagnation, worsened by the effects of war, in the seventeenth century; slow expansion after 1700. Deprived of the extra demand generated by a rising population, trade languished.