- Pronouns
- he/him
Discuss this article here
-
Hi Guest!
The costs of running this forum are covered by Sea Lion Press. If you'd like to help support the company and the forum, visit patreon.com/sealionpress
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
Caribbean Cold War: Drinking Beer with the CIA
- Thread starter Gary Oswald
- Start date
Ah the halcyon days of isolationism, when the US didn't seek "foreign entanglements"...But in 1856 the US Congress passed the Guano Islands Act, which allowed any US citizen to take possession of any uninhabited island containing guano, or seabird excrement, which was desired as a fertilizer. From 1857 onwards various US companies claimed the Island, including the United Fruit Company which claimed most of Central America, the Atlantic and Pacific Guano Company and the Swan Island Commercial Company which provided hurricane monitoring data to the U.S. Weather Bureau and who used the Island as an animal quarantine station for the transport of cows.
Well that's one of those historical events you couldn't put in fiction if it wasn't real!
- Pronouns
- it/its (you'll get used to the third person thing)
Absolutely fantastic stuff, Gary, principally because the Caribbean as a region is kind of registered by a fair amount of my ilk of casual history enthusiasts as... well, it isn’t registered at all. Really fascinating stuff.
Glad to see you branching out beyond Africa @Gary Oswald , although of course the Caribbean is intimately tied to African history.
One of the paradoxes of Caribbean history I find interesting was how much it was fought over by the European colonial powers due to the wealth of the sugar plantations, whilst simultaneously being a place where the common soldier was absolutely terrified of being assigned to due to endemic diseases, especially yellow fever (hence "fever islands"). In fact the first recorded appearance of "Tommy Atkins" as a phrase (though from context it was obviously already well known) was in a 1743 letter about troops mutinying after being sent to Jamaica - "except for those from N. America ye Marines and Tommy Atkins behaved splendidly". (So apparently us rubbishing the American military is literally older than the US itself).
I've been looking at newspaper coverage of the area during the argument over the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, and it's striking how the planters were described by the press in terms similar to how Ulster Protestants or white Rhodesians were later, causing more headaches to the Empire they were allegedly loyal to than their opponents. (And also the planters' letters complaining about the abolition proposals bear a striking similarity in tone to modern complaints about HS2 and that sort of thing)
One of the paradoxes of Caribbean history I find interesting was how much it was fought over by the European colonial powers due to the wealth of the sugar plantations, whilst simultaneously being a place where the common soldier was absolutely terrified of being assigned to due to endemic diseases, especially yellow fever (hence "fever islands"). In fact the first recorded appearance of "Tommy Atkins" as a phrase (though from context it was obviously already well known) was in a 1743 letter about troops mutinying after being sent to Jamaica - "except for those from N. America ye Marines and Tommy Atkins behaved splendidly". (So apparently us rubbishing the American military is literally older than the US itself).
I've been looking at newspaper coverage of the area during the argument over the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, and it's striking how the planters were described by the press in terms similar to how Ulster Protestants or white Rhodesians were later, causing more headaches to the Empire they were allegedly loyal to than their opponents. (And also the planters' letters complaining about the abolition proposals bear a striking similarity in tone to modern complaints about HS2 and that sort of thing)
- Location
- NYC (né Falkirk)
- Pronouns
- he/him
A darkly amusing read. Let this be a lesson to always have beer on hand.
- Pronouns
- it/its (you'll get used to the third person thing)
Someone should have suggested to Metternich to give out free booze in 1848, then he could have handled the Hungarians in a jiffyThe Douglas-Home trick, a widespread method of diffusing conflict with students.
Didn't work out so well for Nicholas II though.Someone should have suggested to Metternich to give out free booze in 1848, then he could have handled the Hungarians in a jiffy
I was referring to the incident at his coronation.The winter of 1916/17 froze all the vodka, alas.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Started reading these and they are great, I do think the West Indies Federation is an interesting alternate state, though I doubt it would be particularly stable, wouldn’t surprise me if a Michael Manley type figure rose there in the 70s, you get a situation where a coup occurs which, would set off alarm bells across America and Britain.