For Mocha Musings #4, click here.
Mocha Musings #5: Child of Egypt
For Mocha Musings #4, click here.
Category Archives: Art
For Mocha Musings #4, click here.
Mocha Musings #4: Morocco to Afghanistan
Area: 219,000 sq. mi
Population: 2,750,000
Government: Absolute Monarchy
Scenes: Morocco Leather; City of Morocco; Street Scene in Morocco
previous post I began a series on coffee advertising cards with Middle Eastern themes. One of the most colorful collections is that provided by the Arbuckle Coffee Company. In my great, great aunt’s album there were several Middle Eastern and North African nations represented, but she did not have all the cards. Here is a final potpourri from Arbuckle’s 1889 series, starting with Morocco above. Continue reading Mocha Musings #4: Morocco to Afghanistan
Mocha Musings #3: Turkey and Persia
Area: 63,800 sq. mi
Population: 4,490,000
Government: Absolute Despotism
Scenes: Merchants Buying Carpets
previous post I began a series on coffee advertising cards with Middle Eastern themes. One of the most colorful collections is that provided by the Arbuckle Coffee Company. In my great, great aunt’s album there were several Middle Eastern and North African nations represented, but from a different series than in the Arbuckle’s 1889 series. The 1889 version of Turkey is shown above, but my aunt’s version of Turkey is decidedly more imaginative:
Continue reading Mocha Musings #3: Turkey and Persia
Warren’s Geography #3: What a View of Race
The Human Race as it now exists upon the earth, presents great differences, in language, in civilization, in mental power, and in bodily structure. The three principal theories as to the origin of the race are: – Continue reading Warren’s Geography #3: What a View of Race
Mocha Musings #2: Egypt
In the 1889 series depicting the nations of the world, Egypt also appears:
Area: 11,000 sq. mi
Population: 6,806,381
Government: Turkish Vice Royalty
Scenes: Date Palm; The Obelisk of Luxor; Cotton Barges on the Nile
Warren’s Geography #2: Mirage in the Desert
In a previous post I discussed two lithographs from the 1873 edition of Warren’s geography. One of the more fascinating illustrations is one explaining the desert mirage. Here is the discussion and image from the text.
to be continued …
Warren’s Geography #1
An Elementary Treatise on Physical Geography at the start of the civil war. While rummaging through old books and pictures of my late grandmother I found a copy of the 1873 edition of Warrens’ basic geography text which belonged to my great, great aunt, Ida Hoyt. There are several interesting lithographs in the text on Middle Eastern themes, which I show here.
Continue reading Warren’s Geography #1
Yemen – the return of old ghosts
The British Residency Office, Aden
YEMEN – THE RETURN OF OLD GHOSTS
by Adam Curtis, BBC blog, January 8, 2010
What I find so fascinating about the reporting of the War on Terror is the way almost all of it ignores history – as if it is a conflict happening outside time. The Yemen is a case in point. In the wake of the underpants bomber we have been deluged by a wave of terror journalism about this dark mediaeval country that harbours incomprehensible fanatics who want to destroy the west. None of it has explained that only forty years ago the British government fought a vicious secret war in the Yemen against republican revolutionaries who used terror, including bombing airliners.
But the moment you start looking into that war you find out all sorts of extraordinary things.
First that the chaos that has engulfed the Yemen today and is breeding new terrorist threats against the west is a direct result of that conflict of forty years ago.
Secondly it also had a powerful and corrupting effect on Britain itself. To fight the war both Conservative and Labour governments in the 1960s set up international arms deals with the Saudis. These involved bribery on a huge scale which led to the Al Yamamah scandal that still festers today. Continue reading Yemen – the return of old ghosts