The English – and later the British – spent hundreds of years trying to locate and then navigate through the almost mythical North-West Passage. Several large-scale expeditions, including those of Martin Frobisher, Henry Hudson and John Franklin, came up against an all-too familiar obstacle – the immovable ice.
In the end, Amundsen succeeded by taking a path that few of the English had considered – he spent time learning the habits and skills of the Inuit, who had survived in the harsh Arctic climate for many hundreds of years. The Norwegian survived two winters in the frozen north, with plenty of assistance from the Netsilik Inuit.
Amundsen would later use those same skills to beat the British to the South Pole, too.
Image: Painting of HMS Terror in the Arctic Regions, by William Smyth, 1837.
You can read a brief history of the search for the North-West Passage here.
October 1918, France. Brigadier-General John Vaughan Campbell addresses the men of the 137th Brigade near the St. Quentin Canal during the final weeks of WW1. Thousands of soldiers packed into a single frame, many unaware of what awaited them ahead. A haunting reminder of the sheer human scale of the Great War.
Morning, just wondering if anyone has tried to map the exact route of the tactical withdrawal from Kabul in 1842?
I am currently trying to do so and politely put it's a fucking nightmare. Has anyone who may be better with maps given it a go?
Cheers
Following that, laws were passed in the 1660’s which increasingly restricted the rights of the black population, eventually leading to Virginia's full participation in the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
To read more: Virginia Slave Laws and Development of Colonial American Slavery
Hi all, hope I can ask here. I have a photograph of my 4x great grandfather (1812-1897) in uniform and I've not been able to identify it yet. I haven't been able to find his military records either, but he lived in Hampshire, if that narrows it down!
Nancy was born either in 1751 or 1755 in West Africa, believed to be modern-day Nigeria as it was thought she was of Igbo ethnicity. Her real name is unknown, and it is believed she came to Barbados in her teens or as a young woman. Even though Nancy would have grown up in West Africa, survived the Middle Passage and being sold into slavery, the devastating Bridgetown Fire of 1766, the destructive hurricane of 1780, the Bussa revolt of 1816 as well as Emancipation and Apprenticeship, little is known of her life.
She is known to have lived in Bridgetown at Synagogue Lane and worked for the Daniels family as a domestic servant, for whom she worked for many years, first as an enslaved women and later as a domestic servant after Emancipation. At her death, her age is officially recorded as 116 years old, dying and buried on September 24th, 1871, but oral sources from the family put her age at 120 years old. She is one of the oldest people to have lived in Barbados, achieving super centenarian status.
Edward Jordon, a free colored man (of mixed African and European ancestry), was born in Jamaica's slave society. His father, also named Edward and colored, came from Barbados, where his progressive views had alienated him from the white planter class. Jordon's mother, Grace, was likely a local free colored.
Edward Jordon belonged to the urban middle group of free colored artisans and professionals, who, although more privileged than the mass of enslaved peoples, were barred from enjoying basic civil rights because of their nonwhite status. Accordingly, they could not vote, give evidence in their own defense, nor hold public offices, and in a society where landed property guaranteed status and privilege, the extent of property they could inherit was restricted.
Jordan reached adulthood during the period of great upheaval in the history of the Americas: the revolutionary struggles against colonial empires for the emancipation of colonized territories.
Between 1776 and 1830, these events, as well as the growing abolitionist wave in Great Britain, emboldened free Jamaicans of color, who fought with determination to obtain the civil liberties enjoyed by whites in slave society.
In 1823, the free coloureds of Jamaica presented a petition to the Jamaican Assembly asking for restrictions placed upon them to be lifted, and that free people of colour be allowed to testify in a court of law. However, the Assembly rejected the petition, and continued to deny free coloureds equal rights. The Jamaican colonial government deported the leaders of the free coloureds, Louis Celeste Lecesne and John Escoffery, in an attempt to destroy the movement. These two prominent leaders of the movement were considered by the British colonial government to be Haitian. However, young Jordon joined the movement at this time, becoming a member of the Kingston Coloured Committee. His name is first mentioned in the minutes of a committee meeting on 12 May 1823.
Jordon wanted to start a newspaper, but a lack of finance prevented him from doing so. Instead, together with another leader of the community of free people of colour, Robert Osborn (Jamaica), they started a bookshop. In 1828, from the success of this bookshop, Jordon and Osborn launched their own newspaper, The Watchman and Jamaican Free Press. Unlike other newspapers, which expressed the views of white planters, The Watchman presented issues of importance to the Jamaican free coloureds, and it forged ties with the humanitarian movement and the Anti-Slavery Society in England.
In 1827, a petition was presented by another free coloured leader, Richard Hill (Jamaica), to the House of Commons. In 1830, when Jordon and his colleagues presented another petition to the Jamaican Assembly, enough pressure was brought to bear to grant free coloureds the rights to vote and to run for public office, which ultimately proved successful. Furthermore, the abolition of slavery was achieved in 1834.
During the Christmas period of 1831, an educated slave and Baptist deacon named Samuel Sharpe led a slave rebellion that became known as the Baptist War. The colonial authorities suppressed the revolt with great brutality, and used the opportunity to clamp down on opposition. When The Watchman printed an editorial calling on the Jamaican authorities to "knock off the fetters, and let the oppressed go free", Jordon was arrested and charged with sedition.
Jordon was eventually acquitted of sedition, but he had to spend six months in prison.
In the postslavery period after emancipation, Jordon abandoned his radical profile and transformed The Watchman into the more moderate Morning Journal, which consistently supported policies for incremental change. In the assembly, where he represented Kingston from 1834 to 1864, Jordon was the leader of the colored professionals who regarded themselves as Creole "nationalists" who opposed the planters' reactionary programs. In 1861 he was the first nonwhite to be elected speaker of the assembly, and in 1854 he was the first colored man to be elected mayor of Kingston. He also held senior administrative positions that previously had been the exclusive preserve of whites. Accordingly, he was appointed to the Legislative Council in 1852, and in 1864 he was appointed receiver general, then island secretary in 1865.
Jordon's career underscored the coloreds' expanding social and political influence. This alarmed the white planter and mercantile classes, and in their hysteria after the Morant Bay rebellion in 1865, they surrendered Jamaica's near two-hundred-year-old representative constitution and embraced the introduction of crown colony government in 1866, thereby snuffing out all elements of elected politics and reintroducing the practice that barred coloreds from holding senior administrative posts.
Edward Jordon died in 1869, disappointed and embittered by this reactionary development in Jamaica's governance structure. In 1875 his statue, commissioned by his admirers to mark his struggles against racial discrimination, was unveiled in Kingston.
In 1875, a statue in his honour was unveiled at what is now St. William Grant Park in Kingston.
Bibliography
.- Heuman, Gad. Between Black and White: Race, Politics, and the Free Coloreds in Jamaica, 1792–1865. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981.
.- Campbell, Mavis. The Dynamics of Change in a Slave Society: A Sociopolitical History of the Free Coloreds of Jamaica, 1800–1865. Rutherford, N.J.: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1975.
.- Frank Cundall, Richard Hill, The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Jan. 1920), p. 38.
.- C.V. Black, A History of Jamaica (London: Collins, 1975), p. 183.
.- Lennox Honychurch, The Caribbean People, Book 3 (1979), p. 87.
.- Black, A History of Jamaica, pp. 156-7.
.- Honychurch, The Caribbean People, Book 3, p. 88.
A photo of King George V and Queen Mary standing on the platform of their royal train during the 1911 Delhi Durbar. The carriage was designed with intricate Indian-style latticework (jaali), blending British royal transport with local craftsmanship. Does anyone know if this specific carriage still exists today, or where it ended up?
Prince Yaswant Singh of Datia state
Hukum Singh of Jaisalmer
Nawab Muhammad khan of bahwalpur state
And Finally Maharajakumar of Benares
Still fascinating how this became one of the defining television moments of post-war Britain.
The 1911 Durbar was the only one that a British sovereign attended. The term was derived from the Mughal term durbar.