Today, Japan is famous for cheap consumer electronics, fuel-efficient cars, and anime. It’s easy to forget that one hundred years ago it ranked as perhaps the most militarily aggressive nation on earth. Japan’s occupation of Manchuria in 1931 is a case in point. In fact, it’s an easy temptation to compare Japan’s occupation of Manchuria […]
Tag: colonization
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi – Should People Read This Ambitious Novel?
The novel Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi has been around for a few years now. I read it on the advice of a friend. It’s very much a work of historical fiction. The reader begins in the Gold Coast of the eighteenth century and finishes in the United States around the turn of the millennium. Structure […]
Malaria and Sugar in the Caribbean
My last blog entry began the story of how sugar, malaria, and the Columbian Exchange resulted in the living hell of slavery flourishing in the Caribbean. I described the economic reasons why this took place. Today we’ll examine some more implications of this development. It involves the combination of malaria and sugar. To read previous […]
Smallpox and the Columbian Exchange
In my last post about the Columbian Exchange, I mentioned in passing what happened to the Incas and Aztecs when they met with Europeans after 1492. Today, it is time to flesh out that story and how it relates to the Columbian Exchange by describing the importance of smallpox. You might have heard a version […]