Resources on History – European
The excerpt below comes from a 1774 speech by Edmund Burke after his election to represent Bristol in Parliament. He argues that a representative, as he makes laws in a deliberative assembly, is not bound to vote the mandates of those who elected him. Instead, he must exercise his mature judgment, which may lead him to vote contrary to the wishes of his constituency. If he is unable to persuade his constituency of the merits of his action, they may remove him. Accepting the risk of electoral defeat, the representative must lead. Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with…
Read MoreIn the first half of the 20th century, millions of Russians disappeared into the gulags of the Soviet police state. Many of these were condemned on trumped up charges. Unjustly declared enemies of the state, they became victims of communism’s cruel tyranny. Still, in the midst of horrible evil, faithful men proclaimed Christ. And one extraordinary encounter changed not only a man but also the world. James Montgomery Boice recalls: “One of the inmates of the notorious Russian prisons was a Jewish doctor by the name of Boris Nicholayevich Kornfeld. He was a political prisoner of the Stalinist era. But he was treated better than most simply because doctors were scarce. Guards got sick as well as prisoners, and no…
Read MoreNo fiction writer could have created the story of Englishman James Holman (1786-1857). At age thirteen, Holman joined the British Royal Navy and traveled to North America. For much of the remainder of his life he was on the move, never more happy and healthy than when traveling, even after he went blind In his mid-twenties. Disability did not dampen his enthusiasm for life. He studied medicine and literature at the University of Edinburgh, committing large bodies of materials to his capacious memory. Obtaining a machine used by British soldiers to write in complete darkness, he cultivated his considerable skills as a writer. Eventually, Holman set off to explore the world. By his death he was the most traveled man…
Read MoreMy friend Craig put me onto Steven Johnson’s The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic – and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World. Cholera devastates cities, a lethal enemy that, through the centuries, killed millions. The Ghost Map takes us to 1854 when a cholera epidemic ravaged London’s Soho district, and claimed more than six hundred lives. The death toll would have risen higher had not many anxious citizens fled. The dominant epidemiological paradigm of the day designated cholera an airborne disease, the product of foul air associated with overflowing cesspools and unsanitary living conditions. For several years prior to the outbreak, Dr. John Snow, a renown anesthesiologist, suspected the airborne theory wrong. When…
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