Posts by Pamela
The Pragmatic Sanction of 1713–aka as Girls Can Rule, Too
Back in December, when I was trying to make sense of the tangled succession of the Hapsburg dynasty and Holy Roman Empire, I came across a reference to the Pragmatic Sanction, issued by Emperor Charles VI in 1713. It caught my attention for reasons that will become clear to you in just a moment. …
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Bronislava Nijinska, of the Ballets Russes and Other Dance Companies
I became fascinated by Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in my senior year in college thanks to a class run by the music department.* I had already been familiar with some of the music, and a few of the names. That class introduced me to the company as a convergence of modernisms in the hands of…
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From the Archives: Industrial Espionage
Reading Sarah Rose’s account of how British botanist Robert Fortune smuggled tea plants, and tea workers, out of China in the nineteenth century, made me think about another case of materials smuggled to end a Chinese monopoly. This first ran in 2012. The Chinese produced luxury silk fabrics for several thousand years before they began…
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