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47dd518
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It is indeed the duty of historians to stress the contrast between the standards of the past and the standards of the present. Some fulfil that duty on purpose, others by accident.
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Norman Davies |
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d558f49
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One has to put aside the popular notion that language and culture are endlessly passed on from generation to generation, rather as if 'Scottishness' or 'Englishness' were essential constituents of some national genetic code. If this were so, it would never be possible to forge new nations - like the United States of America or Australia - from diverse ethnic elements.
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Norman Davies |
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95cdb48
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The Fascist utopia, like that of the Communists, was false, and generated immense suffering. But there were those who dreamed it sincerely.
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fascism
utopia
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Norman Davies |
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cc59bac
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To make his point, Ivan staged a sensational demonstration. Some time before Christmas he had arrested two Lithuanians employed in the Moscow Kremlin. He charged them with plotting to poison him. The accusations against Jan Lukhomski and Maciej the Pole did not sound very credible; but their guilt or innocence was hardly relevant. They were held in an open cage on the frozen Moskva River for all the world to see; and on the eve of the depar..
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history
lithuania
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Norman Davies |
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d4ce86c
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Only a Christian culture could have produced a Voltaire or a Nietzsche. I do not believe that the culture of Europe could survive the complete disappearance of the Christian Faith.
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Norman Davies |
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3c9c458
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Wczesniej czy pozniej dekonstrukcjonistow zdekonstruuja ich wlasne metody. "Przezylismy Smierc Boga i Smierc Czlowieka. Z pewnoscia przezyjemy takze Smierc Historii... i Smierc Postmodernizmu."
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Norman Davies |
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d32e4e4
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An ambassador', quipped Sir Henry Wootton, 'is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.
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Norman Davies |
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d0cb89f
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Culture is something that must grow. You cannot build a tree; you can only plant it, and care for it, and wait for it to mature . . .
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Norman Davies |
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724b22d
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the Entente Powers, far from aiding Poland, regarded her activities with irritation. Poland won her independence for twenty years by her own efforts under the leadership of Pilsudski.
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Norman Davies |
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b880a22
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The big question about the hunter-gatherers, therefore, does not seem to be 'How did they progress towards the higher level of an agricultural and politicised society?' but 'What persuaded them to abandon the secure, well-provided and psychologically liberating advantages of their primordial lifestyle?'.1
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Norman Davies |
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431c381
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Reconstructing the past is rather like translating poetry. It can be done, but never exactly.
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Norman Davies |
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f7ed4d9
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Every 30 seconds, it transmitted portions of [a Chopin Polonaise] to tell the world that the capital was still in Polish hands. Angered by the unexpected setback, the German High Command decided to pound the stubborn citadel into submission. In round-the-clock raids, bombers knocked out flourmills, gasworks, power plants and reservoirs, then sowed the residential areas with incendiaries. One witness, passing scenes of carnage, enumerated th..
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Norman Davies |
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5056d69
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That the United Kingdom will collapse is a foregone conclusion. Sooner or later, all states do collapse, and ramshackle, asymmetric dynastic amalgamations are more vulnerable than cohesive nation-states. Only the 'how' and the 'when' are mysteries of the future. An exhaustive study of the many pillars on which British power and prestige were built - ranging from the monarchy, the Royal Navy and the Empire to the Protestant Ascendancy, the I..
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Norman Davies |
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6951150
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The immediate future may be determined by a race between the United Kingdom and the EU over which beats the other to a major crisis.
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Norman Davies |
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d1dca59
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Theorists of propaganda have identified five basic rules: 1. The rule of simplification: reducing all data to a simple confrontation between 'Good and Bad', 'Friend and Foe'. 2. The rule of disfiguration: discrediting the opposition by crude smears and parodies. 3. The rule of transfusion: manipulating the consensus values of the target audience for one's own ends. 4. The rule of unanimity: presenting one's viewpoint as if it were the u..
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Norman Davies |
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2a023c9
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The history of Royal Prussia, which fell into the Polish orbit, is little known to those who approach the Prussian story from an exclusively German perspective. (The subject was actively suppressed by bans and book-burnings when the Hohenzollerns eventually took over.) Yet for 300 years this 'Other Prussia' flourished, not only as a separate institutional entity, but as the source of a separate political ideology and culture, based on conce..
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Norman Davies |
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05848c5
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The title 'Lord of All-Rus' did not possess much basis either in history or in current reality. It came into the same category as that whereby the kings of England laid claim to France. In the 1490s, two-and-a-half centuries after all traces of a united Kyivan Rus' had been destroyed, it had the same degree of credibility that the king of France might have enjoyed if, in his struggle with the German Empire, he had proclaimed himself 'Lord o..
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Norman Davies |
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cf2fe60
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NB. Carlos III of Spain, Carlo I of Parma, Carlo VIII of Naples and Carlo V of Sicily were the same man.
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Norman Davies |
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b0f3359
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By 1939 the Gulag was the largest employer in Europe.
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Norman Davies |
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cc25633
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Arguably, the only fruit of the Crusades kept by the Christians was the apricot.
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Norman Davies |
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cd21653
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We have survived the "Death of God" and the "Death of Man". We will surely survive "the Death of History" . . . and the death of post-modernism." --
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Norman Davies |
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9c1b023
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The Muslim Era of Hegira, which marks the flight of the Prophet from Mecca, corresponds to Friday, 16 July AD 622.
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Norman Davies |
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20490bd
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NOMISMA, MEANING 'COIN', was used by both Greeks and Romans. Our own word 'money' derives, via the French monnaie, from the Latin moneta, meaning the mint, where coins are struck. (In early Rome the mint was situated on the Capitoline Hill in the temple of Juno Moneta.)
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Norman Davies |
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c9e2d8f
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So long as men slaughter animals,' the master said, 'they won't stop killing each other.'1 [KONOPIPTE]
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Norman Davies |
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29a87b2
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According to whether one follows St Luke or St Matthew, the Christian Era began either in the last year of Herod the Great (4 BC) or in the year of the first Roman census in Judaea (AD 6-7).
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Norman Davies |
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f2e423a
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All the nations that ever lived have left their footsteps in the sand. The traces fade with every tide, the echoes grow faint, the images are fractured, the human material is atomized and recycled. But if we know where to look, there is always a remnant, a remainder, an irreducible residue.
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Norman Davies |
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7c8a763
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wars can be traced to a scuffle between a man and a boy, both of whom summon aid to their respective sides.
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Norman Davies |
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a847c25
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The debased coinage of his reign bore his initials, ICR: Iohannes Casimirus Rex. These were taken to stand for Initium Calamitatum Reipublicae, the Beginning of the Republic's Catastrophes.
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Norman Davies |
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0ac9554
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As from the 1490s, the double-headed eagle began to appear as the symbol of state in Moscow as in Vienna, as indeed in Constantinople.
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Norman Davies |
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28d9ee2
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The difference between a referendum and a plebiscite is a fine one. Both pertain to collective decisions made by the direct vote of all qualified adults. The referendum, which derives from Swiss practice, involves an issue that is provisionally determined in advance, but that is then 'referred' for a final decision by the whole electorate. This
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Norman Davies |
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9b2e1a9
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Also in 1492, and also for the first time, the 'new Constantinople--Moscow' may have been given its more familiar label of 'the Third Rome'.
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Norman Davies |
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fd67341
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Grain prices in France, for example, where the supply of coin was relatively scarce, were over seven times higher in 1600 than in 1500.
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Norman Davies |
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8308434
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It was at 'The Little Lodge' I was first menaced with Education. The approach of a sinister figure described as 'the Governess' was announced ... Mrs Everest produced a book called Reading without Tears. It certainly did not justify its title in my case ... [When] the Governess was due to arrive, I did what so many oppressed peoples have done in similar circumstances: I took to the woods. I
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Norman Davies |
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24528d2
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The city of Florence stood in the centre of the squalls and sun-shafts of late medieval Italy. Nurtured on the wool of its beautiful Apennine contado, it grew in the thirteenth century into a thriving community of perhaps 100,000 turbulent souls. Its gold coin, the florin, became standard currency far beyond Italy.
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Norman Davies |
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92cd2c4
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By the seventeenth century the thaler had become a unit of currency all over central Europe. It had also been copied in Habsburg Spain, whose taleros or 'pieces of eight' circulated throughout the Americas. They were known in English as 'dollars'.
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Norman Davies |
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e65e44b
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Maria Theresa dollar of 1751.
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Norman Davies |
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3cedb5a
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Extensive coin hoards, two from eighth-century Central Asia, showed that Novgorod's far-flung trading contacts had never been seriously interrupted, even by the Mongol invasions. [DIRHAM]
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Norman Davies |
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ef61586
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The dirham or dirhem was a coin of pure silver weighing 2.97 grammes, and worth one-tenth of a dinar. It was minted both in North Africa and in Central Asia under various dynasties. It was standard currency in Eastern Europe in the era before local mints existed. Hoards of dirhams have been found all over European Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia, the Baltic States, Sweden, and northern Poland. The largest of them contained over 50,000 coins. B..
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Norman Davies |
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c134b2c
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And now I say unto Thee, take care and take heed, pious Tsar: all the empires of Christendom are united in thine. For two Romes have fallen, and the Third exists; and there will not be a fourth.
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Norman Davies |
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a7a8c09
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Problem dewastacji srodowiska przyciagal uwage greckich wladcow juz na poczatku VI w. p. n. e. Prawodawca Solon proponowal wprowadzenie zakazu uprawiania ziemi na stromych stokach, aby zapobiec erozji; Pizystrat wprowadzil premie dla rolnikow, ktorzy sadzili drzewa oliwne, wyrownujac w ten sposob straty spowodowane wyrebem lasow i nadmiernym wypasem. Dwiescie lat pozniej Platon pisal o spustoszeniu, jakiego dokonano na ziemiach Attyki: l j..
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Norman Davies |
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f268a07
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the Welsh name for 'England', Lloegr, meant 'the Lost Land', I fell for the fancy, imagining what a huge sense of loss and forgetting the name expresses. A learned colleague has since told me that my imagination had outrun the etymology. Yet as someone brought up in English surroundings, I never cease to be amazed that everywhere which we now call 'England' was once not English at all.
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Norman Davies |
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e394d17
|
Historians usually focus their attention on the past of countries that still exist, writing hundreds and thousands of books on British history, French history, German history, Russian history, American history, Chinese history, Indian history, Brazilian history or whatever. Whether consciously or not, they are seeking the roots of the present, thereby putting themselves in danger of reading history backwards. As soon as great powers arise, ..
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Norman Davies |
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54700c7
|
The title 'Lord of All-Rus'' did not possess much basis either in history or in current reality. It came into the same category as that whereby the kings of England laid claim to France. In the 1490s, two-and-a-half centuries after all traces of a united Kievan Rus' had been destroyed, it had the same degree of credibility that the king of France might have enjoyed if, in his struggle with the German Empire, he had proclaimed himself 'Lord ..
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history
lithuania
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Norman Davies |
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edfecde
|
Marcus Aurelius had a marvellous sense of who, and where, he was: As the Emperor Antoninus, Rome is my city and my country; but as a man, I am a citizen of the world . . . Asia and Europe are mere corners of the globe, the Great Ocean a mere drop of water, Mount Athos is a grain of sand in the universe. The present instant of time is only a point compared to eternity. All things here are diminutive, subject to change and decay; yet all thin..
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Norman Davies |