Geoffrey Watson
Born & bred in London.
Nationality Australian.
Residence Hong Kong.
Ed.: PhD (U. Queensland)
Retired.
Interests - Nature, Mathematics, IT, Egyptology, UK History, Puppets, etc. etc.
Location HK SAR
Activity
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
I think that the description: "Essentially the reals are any number which can be written as a decimal, possible an infinite decimal." is a bit confusing.
Surely you can't "write" an infinite decimal? And the ones that you can write (i.e. finite decimals) are just a subset of the rationals.
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
(x-4) squared is x^2-8x +16 and is >= zero (= when x=4).
So 8x-x^2-16 <=zero, and so 8x-x^2 -16-2=8x-x^2-18 <=-2 < 0
The graph is a negative parabola with min at x=4, y=-2=6/(sqt 6) + 2 = 2 +sqt(6)
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
Can anyone explain how slave owning and compensation actually worked?
For instance I have read that John Gladstone, who got the biggest payout, owned several plantations. So he would have benefitted from the apprenticeships as well as the compensation and could have ploughed the latter back into the business or on a country house. But I also found that...
-
Of course they are that is my point.
-
@TimKendall If you are really interested in this topic have a look at the link. Besides investigating in detail the parliamentary debates in Britain and France it discusses how Abolition was handled in general.
For instance Table 0.2 in the book lists how it was handled in different colonies, and whether compensation and/or apprenticeships were used. ...
-
@BradleyWilson @SophiaLewis Did you get an error?
If not - then note that what the link does is download a MiscroSoft Word version. In some set-ups browsers can download files without telling you - so check in wherever your download files go to see if you can find timeline.docx.Also you need to be able to edit MSWord (docx) files.
-
This is a myth.
Before 2015 no one knew when it was paid off. After 2015 we knew that it had been paid off but not when - i.e. we then at least knew that it was paid off sometime between 1835 and 2015!!!
-
The "ordinary person" did not even get a vote until 1867 and then it took another 50 years before the "ordinary working man" got one. These issues were all decided by the rich and powerful.
However there were always at least 2 groups in the Commons, so there was often a pro and anti view on imperialism.
-
It seems like yor school curriculum wasn't very well balanced, but you miss the point. It is about building a better world and learning from your mistakes.
When Britain seized islands in the Caribbean and started producing sugar they adopted the same behaviour as other European countries who were already there - they started importing and using slaves. ...
-
Geoffrey Watson replied to Alison Duce
@AlisonDuce This response is often voiced to support the return of objects, such as those in museums, that have been legally bought in times past.
The answer is that unless we have evidence to the contrary the whole discussion is moot.
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
The Cathedral analogy doesn't work - it is far too narrow. Most museums are exceptions - the presenters themselves immediately broke out to discuss one. Likening museums to churches might work, but I haven't followed this up.
Nowadays Cathedrals themselves are a bit like large Country Houses, we visit them to see old stuff and think about how previous... -
Geoffrey Watson replied to fran b
@AlanRoberts Often bringing in "Critical Theory", which has its own initiates and priesthood, is a red flag that ordinary people, and many academics, won't be able to go much further.
Politics should be kept out of these sorts of courses.
-
Geoffrey Watson replied to fran b
@IanF The tower has its own connections to slavery: https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/history-and-stories/edward-francis/#gs.fhdiui
-
Geoffrey Watson replied to Karen Westendorf
Its like the difference between strongly believing that we should not use fossil fuels, and changing your lifestyle so that you personally have no reliance on them while everyone else contines as usual. Abolition was a systemic change.
The death rate of under 2% on the 1793 voyage was at the low end for any type of crossing. There were regulations for...
-
I did not make it clear that I was referring to arguments used in parliamentary debates. These are analysed in "Between Blood and Gold" by Frédérique Beauvois https://books.google.com.hk/books/about/Between_Blood_and_Gold.html?id=42noCwAAQBAJ (this preview includes most of the Epilogue (i.e. the conclusions))
After analysing debates in both the French...
-
It is not ethnicity it is "station in life".
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
I really don’t know. Too much labelling would be like making every fashion shop or computer store having to mention the Asian sweat shops that helped produce their products. It would be counter productive.
As others have said the wealth of the British Empire came from a system that oppressed most of the home population as well as, for part of its history,...
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
Overlong for what it said. Couldn’t understand why it was set in 1745, probably a Scottish thing. Also why did he set out to shoot the runaways, and then why did he change his mind?
-
The concept of "history is written by the victors" is most apposite within cultures e.g. the wars of the roses, and possibly the US civil war as well. Pre modern-times distance and language barriers allowed different narratives to persist at the same time.
-
Again the context is interesting. I found a study that investigated the arguments used in abolition debates in several European countries. In most of them the Abolitiionists themselves easily accepted the "fairness" argument.
In Britain there was a quote to the effect that individuals should not be financially disdvantaged for doing what the general...
-
Correction:
I originally included "neck" is my search to get just 8 people with metal rings. Using "Collar" I now get 28, which is still very few.However I also found that a similar database (with data from Haiti) also had very few escaped enslaved people with metal collars. So I think that this practice was just used on enslaved personal...
-
Geoffrey Watson replied to Barbara Moseley
@LouiseEdwards That is a myth due to a misunderstanding. Best to forget it.
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
As I stated previously. I doubt that there was real young black enslaved boy posing for the painting.
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
These are both from India I doubt that these were slaves. Enslaved persons were used in the West Indies because there was no other source of labour. Cheap labour was plentiful in India.
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
Since no refernce is given I surmise that this might be from a handbill. They were often used to publicise shady practices. There is a British database of adverts fro "Runaway" slaves in newspapers, is there a similar record of slave sales?
At this period there were no police. Laws were enforced by magistrates who relied on complaints from the public,...
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
I think that it is likely that none of the suggested scenarios is correct.
Of the painter the Enc. Brit says "Kneller’s style was broad and facile [...] Studio assistants painted the draperies and other subsidiary elements in many of Kneller’s portraits.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sir-Godfrey-Kneller-BaronetThus it is likely that the...
-
@CarolynBeckford I thought that to. It was earlier suggested that we might use newspaper reports of runaways to do research, I came across this website https://www.runaways.gla.ac.uk/ which has over 800 newspaper adverts from between 1700 and 1780 (10+ per year) for the return of runaway slaves. Nearly all seem to be in Southern England.
-
The hiring fair was a labour exchange, and if there was an auction at least the worker got the best possible rate for the jobs.
Hiring by the year was advantageous for both employers and employees in the country. Farmers work on a yearly cycle so need to plan ahead, and employees are certainly better off than many in the towns who were on piece-work, or...
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
The only positive thing about the collar is that they were engraved with the owners name - in some parts of the West Indies they banded the enslaved person's skin instead.
-
Are we straying off track here? Country houses?
Daniel Livesay mentions being "simply spotted in the metropole". That is the point. For most of British history African and Indian people have been statistically insignificant in Britain, the UK has not been very diverse and the most important influences from other cultures have been from Europe.
I...
-
Geoffrey Watson replied to Brian Lee
@BrianLee Domestic servants would presumably get full board.
It seems that farmworkers earned about 8/- to 9/- a week throughout the first half of the 19C so a "pension" of 7/- a week wasn't bad.
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
… I also give and bequeath to my late Bond servant Thosmas Rad... the sum of seven shillings a week during the term of his natural life to be paid by my executors and trustees named in my said will being ???? sum
I have allowed him for some time past and I request that he may have manumity given to him ….. -
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
I was interested in the suggestion of using ‘“Escaped slave” and “slave sale” notices in local newspapers’ as a source of information.
I found this thesis, by Julie Wilson, on-line at the University of Texas:
It uses: “runaway slave ads...
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
I have only done genealogical research and, since I now live abroad, I basically use the internet - it is amazing how much is digitised.
For more general stuff, Hansard is a useful one to see what politicians actually said.
-
Re as always we have to take things in historical context.
Legitimacy of marriage was a lot more important to the upper classes in former times, since it had (as its name suggests) all sorts of legal implications for inheritance. Titles for instance, and inherited money and property was often entailed. [Legal] marriage affected both families not just...
-
I interpreted it as Dido wanting to go off to play and enjoy some fruit while Liz, being a sourpuss, just wants to read her book - she seems to be pushing Dido away. Perhaps this was a way of expressing their two different personalities. Certainly if Dido, in her pearls and fashionable feathered hat, is being summoned she is having none of it!
-
I've just finished reading the book "A Woman of Colour" written in 1808. It is about a young West Indian heiress, named Olivia, who is sent to London to seek a husband. Like Dido, Olivia had an African mother. My edition takes its cover illustration from the painting of Dido. (Olivia’s West Indian maid is also called Dido). Its authorship is “anonymous”...
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
Another forgotten "Black" Englishman was William Davidson. Born in Jamaica he was sent to London to be educated. Although born to a wealthy father, he became radicalised and part of the story of the British "class struggle". After a colourful life, that included being apprenticed to a lawyer in Liverpool, he was eventually executed for treason as one of...
-
I also did the Black Tudors course. My take-away message was that there were very few.
-
Geoffrey Watson replied to Paul Marshall
I also don't quite inderstand either.
Its description implies that it was Indian but made for the European market. So I think it represents the close relationship between Britain and India in the past - nothing sinister.
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
Not much.
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
This is a photgraph by the famous indian photographer Raja Deen Layal.
To see the real horror of British tiger hunting view this page: https://www.storyltd.com/ItemV2.aspx?iid=56765
Search for Raja Deen Layal on Google / images you will be amazed.
-
Geoffrey Watson replied to Valerie Ralphs
They are Lord Curzon (the Viceroy) and an unidentified Maharja, photographed in India in 1899.
-
Geoffrey Watson replied to Carolyn Beckford
It could also be interpreted as equality between Curzon and the Maharaja.
-
It is not a woman it is a Maharajh.
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
For the general visitor I would approach it from the point of view of both old and new rulers having similar interests,
I have no idea how to approach this with children, it is like explaining the bodies on a battlefield - beyond a child's understanding.
In a country house - simply factual: Lord Curzon and an unidentified Indian maharaja after a...
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
Don't forget much of the Raj consisted of the Princely States.
It makes as much sense to say that higher Raj offiicials killing tigers was just keeeping up withe "Rajah" Jone's, as to interpret this as symbolically showing they were better than all Indians.
-
.
-
@gordonLevett Britain was a very reluctant democracy. It laggged behind most of Europe during the 19C.
During the First Empire - America, Canada, West Indies, India etc. the rich and the upper classes *were* the British electorate! The "Second Empire" e.g. Africa was a different creature in many ways.
-
@ValerieRalphs "never acknowledging that the English were conquered by the Roman army with its many enslaved soldiers and imprisoned by Hadrian's wall" - are we doing the same course?
-
Just like the Moguls and Rajahs.
-
Geoffrey Watson replied to Sheena R
Surely the two examples are very different. Korea was divded between Russia and the US, and then between China and the US. Both times two large imperialistic powers facing off against each other.
Eire vs NI is a bit like India vs Pakistan/Bangladesh since it was due to a religious divide, but the historical situation is vastly more complex on the...
-
The British Parliament (the Commons) passed a bill to "Nationalise" the EIC in 1783 - but the King vetoed it by threatening the individual aristocrats in the Lords with withdrawing his favour from them if they failed to toe his line.
The British Government has always swayed between the more liberal and more conservative views as politcal power in parliament...
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
Neither is very accurate in its detail.
For instance Paulet Lane did not fight under General Havelock. He died in November 1857 just after the initial siege of Lucknow by the sepoys had been lifted, and the British garrison and civiians trapped inside were rescued.
Cpt Lane married on 2 September 1857 and travelled back to India 6 weeks later. It...
-
Geoffrey Watson replied to Julie Lewis
This is a contentious example.
The Chinese Summer Palace was deliberately destroyed as a punishment/sanction on the Chinese Emperor personally (it was their personal residence) for an obscene act of cruelty he ordered carried out on a British diplomatic mission. The aim was to destroy everything, so putting something in your pocket was the equivalent of...
-
@ShelaghWaddington taking weapons and other arms from the enemy on the battlefield has always been legitimate.
For instance artillery "spiked their guns" if they had to leave them so it would be difficult for the enemy to use them. Captured ships (and submarines/U-boats) were especially often turned to use against their owners after capture.
The...
-
Geoffrey Watson replied to Sheena R
Looting was seen as legitimate and officially sanctioned at the time.
----
To British people, Lucknow was an especially famous episode in the Indian rebellion. The town had a small garrison and contained the residence of the Chief Commissioner of the area.When the rebellion broke out many nearby British people fled to Lucknow, and the residence...
-
Geoffrey Watson replied to June Grof
The word "loot" was introduced from India it was not a criminal practice at the time, pillage or booty would be used for that.
As noted the loot taken at Seringapatam was auctioned to generate "prize" money that would be officially distributed to the troops . There were offcial lists of those who qualified and the amounts they were due. This was not a...
-
I'm not sure that the Hindus like Tipu Sultan as much as the Moslems.
-
He didn't. He wanted to but that great British hero Horatio Nelson destroyed the French fleet at Aboukir Bay near Alexandria. This left Napoleon and his arrmy stranded in Egypt and its attempt on India failed before it had started.
-
Tipu Sultan is not uncontroversial even in India, especially among South India hindus - e.g. a recent book "Tipu Sultan The Tyrant of Mysore" . In today's India pre-Empire history seems to be more contentious than the Raj.
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
At school we studied Clive as the Victor of Plassey, but we much spent more time on another disgraced EIC Governor - Warren Hastings - or at least on his impeachment. Hastings, like Clive, was EIC Governor of Bengal.
Hasting's impeachment before parliament (for similar reasons as those for which Clive was prosecuted) was probably the longest trial in...
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
Researching Clive I came across this article on an Indian web site. I don't believe that it is unbiased as any other. But it does give an idea of the world of intrigue surrounding the collapsing Mughal empire in which Clive found himslf a player: ...
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
RE the intro about the word "loot". I don't believe that what Dalrymple says is correct.
1) An N-gram of the word "loot" between 1650 and 1850 shows no increase in usage in the late 18th Century.
2) Loot and pillage often go together so I compared their history using N-gram, and tracked 1650-1950. Ssince loot is both verb and noun, I also included...
-
Apparently it is a disputed story. However I have the impression that part of the impasse is that some Greeks take the view that anything acquired during any Empire is just "loot". This is a "double whammy" in the case of the marbles. The British acquiring them from the Ottomans must a case of "loot", and anyway the Ottomans claiming ownership of them in...
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
I chose a Chinese mirror painting. https://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/771801
Mirror paintings were an a combination of European technology and traditional Chinese artistry. High quality plate glass mirrors, which could not yet be produced in China, were imported into Canton. Chinese artists then reproduced painted scenes of Chinese life...
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
The most interesting result of the search is that Osterley didn't seem to have any objects from India itself. All the results that I got were either spurious and not Indian (many results were "East Indian"), or Indian but not from Osterly.
-
Geoffrey Watson replied to Tavis Reddick
I've just tried searching. I too had a mysterious "India" connection.
The only link I could find was that one of the references in the detailed description was to: "[4] Y. Sharma & P. Davies, 'A jaghire without a crime': The East India Company and the Indian Ocean material world at Osterley, 1700-1800', in East India Company at Home, 1757-1857, eds. M....
-
Actually I was thinking the opposite! OK, they had to wait 3 years, and we we wait a couple of weeks and the technology was human not electronic, but they have a lot in common.
E.G. https://chinadawgs.co.uk/products/blue-china-personalised-hand-painted-pet-portrait-plate
-
Decorating you dinner service with your personal coat of arms dates back to the Middle Ages. Obviously armorial plate was high value luxury item, so I imagine that gettting one made in China was a way of cutting costs, and Canton has always been a portal for trade with the West.
Indeed, I just checked Wikipedia, it states: "British clients imported...
-
Re the Newfoundland salt fish industry.
This was already flourishing in Elizabethan times. An interesting take on Empire is Lizzie Collingham's "The Hungry Empire". The first chapter - " 'fish day' on the Mary Rose" - is about the salt cod industry.
-
If you look on the Osterley House website you will find that there is amother similar ivory junk. Both are magnificent.
RE the little man - I thought it could be a musical instrument (e.g a Laba https://www.rct.uk/collection/74397/trumpet-laba). If you look carefully with +zoom you can see that there is a brass fitment at the end - and this fits the...
-
I loved the "stalking man-eating tigers" genre!
I love wildlife - but somehow I could forgive the hunters who sat up all night in trees waitng to take a pot shot at a big cat bent on making a meal of some poor railway worker, or drag a small village child out of their hut for a snack. Pity about the goats.
-
@LilyDong England has large deposits of salt accessible both as brine pits and mechanically mined so domestic supply of salt has never been an issue.
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
This web site "https://www.hetwebsite.net/het/profiles/child.htm" suggests that Child was "probably the wealthiest man in Great Britain at the time." He amassed a fortune after the Civil War supplying Cromwell's navy and then went on investing and increasing his wealth after the Restoration.
He also changed the course of EIC policy from trading by making...
-
Sounds just like Britain at the time!
-
Bribery is not necessarily corruption. In some circumstances it is. But offering a financial inducement to prevent conflict is just good diplomacy.
-
@DianeAyres Things turn around. My wife took a job abroad. She works, I am retired. So I am her dependent - I can't open a bank account myself but I am allowed to have a credit card on hers.
-
An accurate neutral name for the conflict is difficult. It did start as a mutiny, with specific military grievances. And surely "The First" in the Indian version must be slightly ironic.?
Uprising? - well it was quite a local conflict. I think "Rebellion" is best,
-
The goverment took control of India gradually. As someone else has posted, at the end of the 18C Pitt created structure where a "board of control" appointed by the government supervised the EIC's Governor, but control was still at arm's length.
-
Geoffrey Watson replied to ian d
The Indian Ocean slave trade had operated for nealy a thousand years before Europeans became involved.
-
Geoffrey Watson replied to michael adlem
And Brazil had the biggest involvement of all in the Atlantic trade, about 40% of all enslaved people.
-
Geoffrey Watson replied to Geoffrey Watson
I set out the way that I heard the story of this common misunderstanding in post a discussing fake news in section 4.2
-
Geoffrey Watson replied to Geoffrey Watson
True. I was contrasting Britain's positive actions in stopping their own Atlantic slave trade, and its later role in abolishing slavery world-wide - especially in Africa - with its role in embracing the worst form of slavery in the first place. That is, how to counter-balance the good and the bad.
-
@BenC Just "fake news".
To repeat myself (but this bit of disinformation is so widespread that debunking it should be repeated as well - how many times has someone in these columns said (erroneously) 'we were still paying it back in 2015' ???).
--- "We can say that the debt was repaid in 2015" ... -
Although Macauley firmly believed in the superiority of European civilsation his family were leading Abolitionists in Britain and Worldwide. His father started the "Anti-Slavery Reporter" which ran until 1980!.
-
@BenC A second thank you for fact-checking.
I was also getting suspicious before I read your post, Hansard has no record of a sitting on the day in question!
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
Ghandi
the Raj
the "mutiny"
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
I learned about the history of mahogany.
In the wider picture (beyond Country Houses) I am still processing how to integrate Caribbean slavery - which combined factory methods and ancient slavery into a monstrous and horrific system - with Britain's prominent place in abolishing the slave trade and lead in outlawing slavery world-wide. The modern (post...
-
Raw cotton was usually from the US in the 19th Century. There was continual agitation in Britain about US slavery through to the Civil war so I assume that most educated people would be aware of the issue from the news. Even if wealthy people skimmed over these issues they would have been aware of them from contact with friends, neighbours and acquaintances...
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
Since cotton was obtained from the US in the 19th Century I don't see how to write a label that illustrates the connection of Hanbury Hall with British Colonial history. The Caribbean cotton industry was overwhelmed by the US when mechanisation came in in the first decade of the 19thC.
I can see that this object is connected with slavery in the US, but...
-
Geoffrey Watson replied to Geoffrey Watson
My gripe is that this is a history course and common myths are being repeated as fact. The debt was probably paid off sometime in the 19th century.
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
I went to school a long time ago and dropped History after O level. But for us history focussed on the social history of Britain, the struggle for rights.
Our family were working class, and Empire was part of class history. The radicals who finally pushed Britain, belatedly, into democracy also were against Empire and the class that ran it.
Also at...
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
I assume that the Empire's relevance to cotton cultivation was via the American colonies prior to independence?
So most of the cotton/slavery connection in a country house would be with the USA not the Empire?
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
. Started with menchanised spinning/weaving (??)
. Factories located on rivers for water power
. Some attempts at model housing estates to accommodate workers
. steam powered pumps and winches used in mines etc
. versatile steam engines developed and factories moved into the cities and coal became king -
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
Apparently mahogany gained its start in popularity in the early 1700s after bad winters ravaged the French walnut plantations. Fance eventually bannied its export, and a replacement for walnut was needed for top-end furniture.
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
I have always thought of Gillray's cartoons as a sort of forerunner of Private Eye. Nothing is sancrosanct, but with a political point behind them. In this one it is obvious that to Mama, the one with surgar savaged teeth, the second point is most important.
-
Geoffrey Watson replied to Cathy Turner
I think that the enslaved people would use images of master as all infinitely cruel monsters to enhance their case, its just advertising.
-
Geoffrey Watson made a comment
We must be careful to judge things according to the situation of the time.
One comment I read previously mentioned the fact the 50% of children of enslaved mothers died before they were 5. Even this needs to be put in context. Yesterday I came across this in a 2013 journal article on life in London:
"[In London] Mortality peaked in the middle of the...
-
Geoffrey Watson replied to Michael Bath
The 1833 Act states that "Slavery shall be and is hereby utterly and for ever abolished and declared unlawful throughout the British Colonies, Plantations, and Possessions Abroad"
An exception in 1833 was for India, Sri Lanka and Saint Helena. The first two were under the control of th EIC, Saint Helena was adminstered by the EIC from 1834. The reasons for...
