#barentsz

Feminist Bond thoughts!!! This is my short version but I’m always happy to chat more generally. First off, since I can never resist a chance to plug books: the Ian Fleming novels are fascinating social commentary and compulsively readable pulp fiction, with far less tokenizing treatment of women than the film franchise. 

Now, because intersectional feminism: most Bond films range from kinda to very complicit in what bell hooks called “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” But, you know what? I already know we live in imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. It’s nice to believe that it can be dismantled like a nuclear bomb under Fort Knox or that it’s just as much of a fantasy as a killer bowler hat. And this is why the Craig!007 films are my favorite Bond films.

…Before anyone comes howling for my blood: yes, Connery was the best Bond, I do not and cannot dispute this. 

I mean, holy hell. 

But the Craig!007 films are my favorite Bond films because they are gleefully deconstructing the imperialist/sexist/racist tropes of the Bond franchise. Even Bond’s effortless moving through the world is highlighted (affectionately) as a fantasy, by Q who takes the Tube and has two cats depending on him and never misses a chance to rib 007. Also, Q (with his cardigans, tea mugs, and technical genius) is such a great example of non-toxic masculinity.

Still, the films keep the central, crucial fantasy that sometimes, if you get people within the system who are willing to break the rules just enough, the good guys win and law does mean justice. IRL, my politics tend to be anti-establishment, but the little bobble-head bulldog surviving on M’s desk, symbol of the indestructible Spirit of the People? I CRY.

Was Quantum of Solace a particularly good Bond film? Nah. Is having James Bond protect the water rights of indigenous peoples from European billionaires AWESOME? Absolutely.

(What you are is a dork, James Bond. I love that Craig, like Connery, is a Bond who just wings it a lot of the time, with highly variable degrees of plausibility.)

I have a whole post on Spectre, but the bit from that I’ll highlight here is:

Earlier, parallel torture scenes (in “Goldfinger,” “Casino Royale”) have explicitly threatened Bond’s sex/masculinity as the center of his identity. Here, instead, it’s his memories.

barentsz replied to your post “My books from that academic publisher sale a couple of weeks ago...”

'global microhistory' seems like a contradictio in terminis?

It does, but it isn’t! 

The general idea is to look at global (= large-scale) interconnectedness from a local or otherwise specific perspective, for example by focusing on a specific geographic location (say, a harbour, a town, a sugar plantation, a ship), a type of object or product (like coffee, tobacco, sugar, silk, breadfruit, artworks, books, ...), or a group of people (a family, sailors, immigrants, an ethnic group like Jews or Armenian merchants, etc.). Some people argue that it’s the only way of doing thorough research in global history, and while I personally wouldn’t go as far (there certainly is value in large-scale comparisons and syntheses), the question of how to manage sources in adequate depth (on a phyical and intellectual level) while maintaining a broader geographical and temporal focus is a very pertinent one. (Call it the hot topic in early modern history if you like. XD) 

The book in question is Emma Rothschild’s The Inner Life of Empires, in which she writes a history of the 18th century British empire through the history of the Johnstone family. 

I'm amazed at a mine as sublime landscape though. Was this a thing back in the day? I thought a major part of the sublime landscape was an untouched-ness-by-humans (but I also am not that knowledgeable about the subject)

Ok, this one requires a bit of explanation. 

First off - the thing about German Romantics is that I haven’t found any of them actually talking much about the Sublime (das Erhabene in German) as a concept by that name (though I might have missed things, obviously). A lot of the theoretical discourse seems to be about literary forms, the general purpose of art, the relation between art and science, stylistic devices, philosophy, and composition more than about specific landscapes,* if that makes sense. (And not all of them actually talk about this in a theoretical sense at all.) 

Which isn’t to say that landscapes - and ideas of the sublime - aren’t there, only that ‘the Sublime’ doesn’t figure so much as a topic of discourse. (Also, some of these authors are drawn to certain subjects because they can be used to illustrate/reflect on larger concepts they’re interested in. This is, for example, where the whole middle ages thing comes in, or why folk songs are so popular.)  

Now, the ‘a mine’ thing should probably be expanded to include caves and other underground formations, but in the end it probably doesn’t make that much of a difference. Mines (salt and ores is what I’m thinking of here) might be man-made, but the reason they’re impressive is less because they require technical skill to make and more because they open our eyes to a larger world, both time- and space-wise. Geology, just like mining, forces you to reflect on the fact that the world is much older than you are, and that there are whole life-cycles that went before you (or humans in general). 

The Sublime doesn’t have to be limited to natural phenomena, nor to untouched nature,** and even though Burke primarily thought about mountains when he conceived the idea (not out of nowhere, though), it is essentially a concept in flux. Eventually, it can include everything that inspires both awe and terror (and a reminder of your own insignificance in the grand scheme of things), and has definitely been expanded to include architecture, the ocean, the Arctic, and various underground formations. The point, at least as far as I understand it, is which kind of emotions a specific (natural) feature evokes. 

The reason I picked ‘a mine’ as one of the options is because Novalis was very much into mining, and it shows in his works. Heinrich von Ofterdingen not only has a loving description of a medieval manuscript and a mountain vista, but also a long trip into a salt mine and a bunch of caves. I mean, it’s hardly surprising given that the man studied mining techniques and was working as a mining inspector, but hey. It’s adorable. XD   

(Brentano’s Chronika eines fahrenden Schülers also has a long description of a cave - on top of an equally long and loving description of Strasbourg Cathedral. Which will sound very familiar if you cross the - literary - border to France and take a quick look at Victor Hugo.) 

So, tl:dr: I’m not sure it’s a universal thing, but it’s definitely a thing among some of the German Romantics. And mines and caves are closely related to geology and, e.g., fossil collecting, and thus probably a specific variation of a broader theme.

****

*Novalis talks about nature a lot, but it isn’t usually about specific landscapes. He’s more interested in understanding nature as a giant text (he calls it Chiffrenschrift der Natur), and in bringing art and the sciences back together to form a universal whole. The medium through which he wants to achieve that, naturally, is art/literature. ‘Nature’ in this context is more an ideal original state we have moved away from. It’s less pastoral and more philosophical, if that makes sense?

(There are a lot of other nature concepts floating around, too - landscapes as liminal spaces (e.g. mountains), landscapes as places for transformation, reflection, and emotion, ...) 

** You could even argue that any concept of ‘nature’ (or ‘wilderness’ or ‘civilization’) only exists in relation to our (human) reaction to it. The moment you realize nature is ‘untouched’ it isn’t untouched any more because you’ve already reacted to it. 

1. please recount the brandy story 2. which bossuet do you mean? googling only gave me a high-ranking french jesuit whose biography blurb didn't appear to be unfortunate at all!

1. The brandy story is here

2. The Bossuet I mean is a character from Les Miserables (one of the students) who’s nicknamed after the Jesuit, who was bishop of Meaux. :) This guy: 

In this conclave of young heads, there was one bald member.

The Marquis d’Avaray, whom Louis XVIII. made a duke for having assisted him to enter a hackney-coach on the day when he emigrated, was wont to relate, that in 1814, on his return to France, as the King was disembarking at Calais, a man handed him a petition.

“What is your request?” said the King.

“Sire, a post-office.”

“What is your name?”

“L’Aigle.”

The King frowned, glanced at the signature of the petition and beheld the name written thus: LESGLE. This non-Bonaparte orthography touched the King and he began to smile. “Sire,” resumed the man with the petition, “I had for ancestor a keeper of the hounds surnamed Lesgueules. This surname furnished my name. I am called Lesgueules, by contraction Lesgle, and by corruption l’Aigle.” This caused the King to smile broadly. Later on he gave the man the posting office of Meaux, either intentionally or accidentally.

The bald member of the group was the son of this Lesgle, or Légle, and he signed himself, Légle [de Meaux]. As an abbreviation, his companions called him Bossuet.

Bossuet was a gay but unlucky fellow. His specialty was not to succeed in anything. As an offset, he laughed at everything. At five and twenty he was bald. His father had ended by owning a house and a field; but he, the son, had made haste to lose that house and field in a bad speculation. He had nothing left. He possessed knowledge and wit, but all he did miscarried. Everything failed him and everybody deceived him; what he was building tumbled down on top of him. If he were splitting wood, he cut off a finger. If he had a mistress, he speedily discovered that he had a friend also. Some misfortune happened to him every moment, hence his joviality. He said: “I live under falling tiles.” He was not easily astonished, because, for him, an accident was what he had foreseen, he took his bad luck serenely, and smiled at the teasing of fate, like a person who is listening to pleasantries. He was poor, but his fund of good humor was inexhaustible. He soon reached his last sou, never his last burst of laughter. When adversity entered his doors, he saluted this old acquaintance cordially, he tapped all catastrophes on the stomach; he was familiar with fatality to the point of calling it by its nickname: “Good day, Guignon,” he said to it. 

(Whichever translation is on Gutenberg; I’m too lazy to type this up myself) 

It’s a bit of a double pun/inside joke and apparently what Hugo (and many of his fans, myself included) consider humour. XD 

Oh man I’m so curious now about the one I bought! This sounds so cool!

Was that The Old Ways? Because I’m curious about that one, too! (And I’m absolutely going to pick up Underland as soon as the paperback comes out in May because fossils! mines! caves! sleeping kings!*) 

Landmarks is basically a very personal reflection on landscapes & some of the landscape/nature writers that most influenced Macfarlane himself, which I find very fascinating and moving. I really, really like the way he thinks & connects ideas and facts - very associative, very widely read, very curious about everything. 

oh thanks now i have The Sads about Goodsir x)

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‘the spanish empire’s best defense are its mosquitoes’ omg x)))

I’m not even kidding about this one. (Though sometimes ‘inaccessible territory’ also works as an added defense mechanism.)

I mean, it wasn’t a conscious tactic for most of the 16th century (instead the Spanish relied heavily on distance as a protecting factor), but ‘wait till your enemies all drop dead’ definitely worked wonders for Spanish imperial defense during the 17th and 18th centuries.* 

It’s a particularly useful tactic if you’re constantly broke and short on military personnel. So instead of having large standing armies, the Spanish tended to build fortifications staffed by militias recruited locally. One major advantage of locally recruited troops and militias (often including indigenous people, mestizos and blacks/slaves/freed slaves)? They tend to be immune to local diseases because they’ve been exposed to them during childhood and early adulthood. Not so everyone coming over from Europe or other places outside the Caribbean. 

Now, it wasn’t generally known that it was the mosquitoes that transmitted malaria and yellow fever until well into the 19th/early 20th century, but that something was deeply unhealthy about the region was pretty much a known fact. (On the downside, there are also reports about Spanish imperial troops protesting about being transferred to Veracruz because the city/garrison had such a high death rate). 

Particularly deadly places included Cartagena de Indias, Portobelo, Veracruz, and Havana, all heavily fortified and in rather swampy territory or close to other water deposits that breed mosquitoes, and all rather attractive targets for Spain’s colonial rivals because of their importance for the Spanish trade- and communication routes (exactly the reason they were so heavily fortified). 

It usually didn’t go well. 

I honestly recommend reading up on the French siege of Cartagena in 1697, the Caribbean campaign of Admiral Francis Hosier during the War of the Spanish Succession (the man died off the coast of Panama, together with about 85% of all his men), Admiral Vernon’s siege of Cartagena in 1741, and the British siege of Havana during the Seven Years’ War in 1762 (short story: the British did take Havana, but everyone still got sick and died). 

(The tactic didn’t work quite as well against buccaneers - one, because they usually spent time in the area and often acquired immunisation (if they survived), and two because they didn’t always go for the fortified places and preferred to plunder small towns instead.) 

*It worked in favour of other groups in the Caribbean, too, for example during the Haitian revolution or the Nine Years’ War.