Recent content by SenatorChickpea

What an entertaining snake George Grey was.

Yes, this was sparked by listening to the latest episode of Revolutions but it's been going around my head for a while. What if the Tsar and his family die in the rail disaster at Borki in 1888? The Tsar and, I believe, all his children were in the dining carriage. Supposedly the Tsar rescued...

Though that might be an interesting spur to serious Chinese reform- if after the various internal rebellions are put down, the Qing have to grapple with the de facto loss of control in one of the richer parts of the country.

I rather enjoyed that dry little note on George V's approval of the marriage. That note on the Princely colonel though- I wasn't aware that Indians were allowed to serve in such senior ranks. Was that because the regiment was technically from a Princely (ie, allied) State rather than the Indian...

Good point, for some reason I thought Ward at least was around by the late 1850s. And the Shanghai merchants only really boomed after the Treaty of Tientsin. Alright, how about Canton, as it was? Lots of western merchants and missionaries there. Perhaps if we posit a general collapse of Qing...

While an Emperor Zeng (I know that's not what he'd have been called) is an interesting proposition, if you want a Meiji-esque China then perhaps the easiest method is to avoid the Tongzhi Emperor's death from smallpox in 1875 at age 19. The Tongzhi Restoration was unstable and superficial, yes...

In that case, Shanghai is surely a better bet than Beijing. Have the Taiping sweep down the Yangtze and somehow catch Gordon or Ward off guard as they try and assemble their militias. If the loss of two foreign generals isn't enough- and it's possible that it might not be, given that they were...

Yes, it really does cover everything you'd want to think about when planning a murder. A murder mystery. I'm not planning a murder. The article, it's a good article.

Gabriel Bethlen was forty-nine when he died. That's not a bad innings for the time, but I do wonder- if he'd licked his wounds for another few years only to see the Emperor reel under the Swedish assault, could that have finally been an opportune enough moment for Transylvania to make a serious...

I think the disappointment might also be because, unlike the race to put a man in space, the US had spent the best part of a decade telling its population that they were going to get to the moon. I imagine that there'd also be a feeling that once again the country had let down the vision of the...

This may be a stupid question from a landlubber, but is it really the case that Polynesian vessels are all designated as boats? The definition of 'can fit on a larger vessel' doesn't seem to apply. I mean, when James Cook visited New Zealand the largest Maori waka had crews of eighty people and...

One thing I would note when it comes to anachronism: writing a period piece in a modern style is an absolutely valid artistic choice, so long as it is a choice. I read Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls earlier this year and that doesn't eve attempt to imitate the Homeric and Euripidean...

'Nein- I mean... No. It's... we're having a hoedown.' 'A hoedown?' 'Ja.' 'For 650, 000 people?' 'Right. Yes. It's... the patriotic festival of German-American folk music. Uncle Sam's Apple Strudel.' 'And all those Irishmen milling about outside?' 'They're... interested in cultural...

I suppose it depends upon the nature of the victory. A crushing Prussian defeat seems unlikely- perhaps the French manage to avoid their armies being surrounded in Metz and then the absolute disaster of Sedan. The Prussians keep winning on the field, but unlike the Austrians the French are able...

Good article. You're absolutely right to point out that if WW1 is a milestone in colonial nationalism, it's because the colonies were so deeply committed to it. One minor thing you might be interested in re: New Zealand. If you overlay a map of volunteers from the various iwi (tribes is the...