The Crime of Sati
According to an ancient custom in India, widows would voluntarily mount their dead husbands’ funeral pyres and be burned alive. The British put a stop to this practice in 1829.
“La Eme”—The Mexican Mafia
Robert Ramirez delves into the history of the infamous La Eme, better known as the Mexican Mafia, one of the most brutal organized crime groups in existence.
No Longer a “Dark Age”: Susan Oosthuizen’s “The Emergence of the English” (2019)
When the Roman legions withdrew from Britain, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes arrived and, so history tells us, violently displaced the existing Romano-British. But that’s not true, according to Susan Oosthuizen’s new book.
The Chartist Robin Hood: The Poems of W. J. Linton (1812–97)
Chartists writers loved drawing inspiration from England’s medieval past; in their campaign for political reform, which better figure could they choose than England’s famous outlaw from the Middle Ages?
The Politics of Victorian England’s “Vicious Republican”: G. W. M. Reynolds (1814–79)
“I only strive to arouse the grovelling spirit of the industrious millions to a sense of the wrongs under which they labour.”
Bandits and Robbers of India
“I will warn him that he will not find my robbers such romantic, generous characters as those who occasionally figure in the fields of fiction. He will meet with men strangers to that virtue of robbing the rich to give to the poor. They give to the poor indeed, but it is as spies and instruments of their own crimes, or at least in order to avoid detection.” –Charles Macfarlane, 1833.
The Flemish Revolt: Pierce Egan’s “Quintin Matsys” (1838)
Pierce Egan’s “Quintin Matsys” is like the Belgian “Les Miserables”; the people of Antwerp rise up and take to the barricades to overthrow the evil aristocrats who oppress them.
Life of a Little-Known Chartist
“A plebeian fighting for the poor and rewarded with poverty.”
No point in legalizing weed for recreational use
When looking at the states where recreational marijuana use has been legalized, all the great things that activists promised said would come with legalization never happened.
Sedition
“The distance is never great between contempt of the laws and open resistance to them.” – Justice Fitzgerald.
