AA Bastian 卞曉菁 | باستيان

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James Flint and the 1759 Petition: The Influence of British Intermediaries on the East India Company's China Trade and Sino-British Encounters This article reexamines a pivotal yet understudied episode in Sino-British relations: the British East India Company's 1759 petition to the Qing Emperor. It highlights the critical role of intermed...

Hot off the press & #OpenAccess, see 'James Flint and the 1759 Petition: The Influence of British Intermediaries on the East India Company's China Trade and Sino-British Encounters' by Gongchen Yang: doi.org/10.1080/0308...

This is really fantastic. Thank you!

own heritage. I was brought in Romans, Normans and Tudors. Former colonies, let alone the consequences of that colonialisation, never figured.

It just kind of fits with my experience of being a British Bangladeshi to be honest. It's often difficult for me to gauge how important this stuff is on a

Death by turnip

Been at the archives for two minutes and I'm already annoyed by a surgeon who was born 190 years ago.

Woman’s memoirs give fascinating insight into life in 17th-century northern England Newly reunited manuscripts by Alice Thornton show how she navigated personal crises during tumultuous events such as the civil war

Alice! Top work @hagenilda.bsky.social @cordeliabeattie.bsky.social @sharonhoward.bsky.social et al!

www.theguardian.com/culture/2025...

Opinion | 11 tips for becoming a columnist Here’s my advice for handling the awesome responsibility of this job.

Some professional news: After more than a decade of columnizing at The Washington Post, I'm taking the buyout.
This is my last column. It is my advice to any other lucky pundits who land a perch like this -- with 11 principles I've aspired to, even if I haven't always achieved them:
wapo.st/3TU2fGw

ALEX DE WAAL: So, let me say that I've been working on this field of famine, food crisis and humanitarian action for more than 40 years, and there is no case, over those four decades, of such minutely engineered, closely monitored, precisely designed mass starvation of a population as is happening in Gaza today.

Few if any experts know more about the deliberate use of starvation as a war crime than Alex de Waal. If he says it's happening, it's so.

Me and my book project

Liberalism’s enemies are having second thoughts — Vox Prior to Kanye West, Lawrence Dennis was America’s most famous Black fascist.

apple.news/AxwjbRBIWSoy...

Screenshot of the Library of Congress homepage. The photo is of me interpreting at the National Book festival in 2024. The headline reads: Authors Announced for Sep. 6 National Book Festival.

When interpreting and book world collide. Now to be the one sitting…

I’m in the photo. National Book Festival 2024 photo on the Library of Congress homepage.

Currently thinking/writing a lot about the late-19th anti-Chinese movement, which is an illustrative and highly-relevant-to-the-present-moment case in point

You can zoom with a two finger pinch.

Campop blog #56: >1 in 3 English men in the late 14th C were called John; in 2023 less than 1% of baby boys were given the most popular name, Muhammad. In today's blog Kevin Schurer charts the long evolution of British forenames
@camunicampop.bsky.social
www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/blog/2025/07...

Screenshot of the Times for July 3, 2025. “A trade war escalation could cancel events for next year’s 250th Independence Day—or raise a health and safety nightmare.” With a photo of iconic buildings in Washington DC at night with fireworks.

Here’s a fun one. 99% of fireworks come from China.

Not that Americans won’t figure it out in a year—or maybe not..

But that the current U.S. administration, in being so nativist, is actually doing a great job teaching us how

important the rest of the world is to Americans.

I've been sent primary sources to my phone.

Just amazed for a moment that century old documents can appear in my hand from thousands of miles away.

My main analysis of current events right now is with all the dramatic changes, to expect unexpected consequences.

Looking for what few if anyone could have predicted.

Horne claimed that when he ordered the crew to fight the Boatswain, speaking for them, had replied that 'they had wives and children, why should they destroy themselves when there was no probability of escaping'. The fate of the crew is unclear, but Horne did not command again. [2/2] #NavalHistory

Tan calf gilt binding with a lot of brass furniture. On a round table.

Plates and wheels on the bottom sides and edge of an enormous antiphonal, Madrid 1827. Seen at @quaritch1847.bsky.social. Outing with our London Rare Book School group.

Note that this book was already protected by copyright as soon as it was fixed.

Today in design patents:

D1081787 issued for a bilingual flip book.

I don't know what the inventor was hoping to accomplish with this filing, but it wasn't likely this.

#DesignPatents

Any particular thoughts on this??

At a time of crisis for the History departments across the UK @ihr.bsky.social has made available a unique archive of interviews with leading post-war British historians. They point to the importance of history & the urgent need to defend the profession. historyandpolicy.org/opinion-arti...

By this definition, despite allowing us to save so much more information now, computers are likely to create a dark age in 100 years time. Because there's no backwards compatibility and the earliest digitisation projects are already barely accessible

UKRI funded project on African collections in Italian museums begins Professor Emma Bond leads a new UKRI-funded grant on the African collections of Italian explorer, Luigi Robecchi Bricchetti.

Today is the official start date of our new UKRI funded research project. Looking forward to getting started!

www.mod-langs.ox.ac.uk/news/2025/06...

I’m assuming they’re finding people who are most reachable and amenable/say yes.

But I’d be interested if it was more deliberate.

How many books should have been published but didn't because of the proposal?

How many books got published because of the shiny proposal but shouldn't have because writing the book is a different skill.

Book Proposals require totally different writing skills. It's almost like a grant proposal but you also have to draw people into the writing itself--not just a program.

It's killing me. But I hope I'm finally getting closer now.