Imperialism
Sir Richard Burton: Not the Actor, the Other One
Recently I had cause to pull a biography of Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890) off my to-be-read shelf, where it has sat since 1990. I originally bought it because I was writing my dissertation on the way the definition of the Orient changed over time with increasing exposure to the non-Western world and Burton was…
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From the Archives – Word with a Past: Two Bits
Somehow this piece from 2013 seems appropriate post-Super Bowl. (New stories are piling up waiting to be written. Soon, I promise.) One of the favorite cheers for my junior high school’s football team went “Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar, all for our team stand up and holler.” It made no sense to…
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From the Archives: The Birth of the Boy Scouts
In the summer of 1899, no one would have pegged Colonel Robert Baden-Powell as a potential military hero. He had spent the first twenty years of his army career in small colonial wars in Afghanistan and Africa, involved more often in map-making and scouting than in battle. When he wasn’t spying, he spent his time…
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