Linda Colley > Quotes

“Strange, awkwardly written, and even shocking, it broke new ground in more than geographical and observational terms.”
― Linda Colley, The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History

“If Bolívar’s increasing melancholy by the 1820s appears particularly marked (‘the only thing one can do in America’, he wrote morosely towards the end of the decade, ‘is emigrate’), this was in part because he had fought too hard for too long, and because he was a man who luxuriated in words. But it was also the case that, from the outset, Bolívar – who was as much a voracious reader as Napoleon – had devoted serious thought to the question of what kinds of political systems might effectually replace Spanish imperial rule in South America while also guaranteeing order and stability.”
― Linda Colley, The Gun, the Ship and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions and the Making of the Modern World

“There is traditional mosaic work and glazed tiles in geometric designs, but there is also a smattering of Western consumer goods: ‘several fine European pier glasses with very handsome hangings’ in the royal apartments, for instance, and ‘in each room is a fine gilt branch for wax candles’.60 This is not a straightforward act of emulation of Western tastes, however. In Islamic tradition, light possesses a divine quality as the visible manifestation of God’s presence and reason. As he consistently tries to do, Sidi Muhammad has borrowed from the West with”
― Linda Colley, The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History

“In 1784, he will also order his corsairs to capture a US merchant ship, the Betsey. Once they are taken hostage, the Sultan uses the members of the Betsey’s crew as bargaining tools, and in 1786 the US Congress agrees to a treaty establishing full diplomatic relations with Morocco.49 There are clear and significant”
― Linda Colley, The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History

“By Jamaican standards, this level of slave-ownership on the part of a skilled craftsman was not unusual. The 157 inhabitants of Port Royal who were registered as slave-owners in 1738 laid claim on average to nine slaves apiece.22 But to Milbourne Marsh, an English incomer with no property beyond the contents of his sea-chest, the sight of this level of affluence in a fellow shipwright must have been startling, and it is unlikely that it was merely physical and emotional attraction that drew him initially to James Evans’ wife.”
― Linda Colley, The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History

“In terms of voting rights for males, some of these documents were strikingly democratic. Again, Mexico serves to make the point. In the years immediately before independence, what became this territory had officially been governed in accordance with the constitution of Cádiz, which, as we have seen, excluded most Blacks from active citizenship. But, in 1821, the Mexican warlord General Agustín de Iturbide eliminated these racial restrictions and expanded the local franchise. He ‘effectively enfranchised every man over eighteen who had employment of any kind’.”
― Linda Colley, The Gun, the Ship and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions and the Making of the Modern World

“British merchants became notably more aggressive and successful in exploring extra-European markets, and Crisp’s progress, from a concentration on Mediterranean commerce to involvement in ever more distant seas, perfectly exemplified this trend.”
― Linda Colley, The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History

“This was the innovating constitutional heaven brought into being by Spanish American independence struggles; and, in some regions, the impact was dramatic and long-lasting. By the mid nineteenth century, the political life of large stretches of South America was more inclusive in terms of social class and race – though not gender – than in the United States or much of Europe.”
― Linda Colley, The Gun, the Ship and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions and the Making of the Modern World

“agrees to establish a proper Consul in Morocco.47 For Consul, read commerce. Sidi Muhammad has perceived that, in order to consolidate his own authority and to restore Morocco’s viability as a stable and prosperous polity, any suspicion of the non-Muslim world must be balanced by more normalized relations and positive engagement based on trade. He may conceivably aspire to be Caliph of the West, and he certainly wants to forge closer alliances with fellow Muslim rulers. But he also wishes to foster connections with other parts of the world in order to develop his country’s commerce and thereby increase his own revenue.”
― Linda Colley, The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History

“By the same token, Bolívar went on, and for all that they were rebelling against a Spanish king, a modified variant of monarchy might still be useful for ensuring ‘solidity’ in the new Venezuela: The veneration professed by the people for their monarch is a prestige that works powerfully to augment the superstitious respect given to that authority. The splendor of the throne, the crown, and the purple; the formidable support provided by the nobility; the immense wealth accumulated in a single dynasty over generations; the fraternal protection that all kings provide to each other – these are enormous advantages that militate in favor of royal authority, making it almost limitless. Thought should therefore be given as to how to secure and enhance the strength of the executive. ‘No matter how exorbitant the authority of the executive power in England may seem’, Bolívar warned, it would likely prove insufficient for an independent Venezuela.”
― Linda Colley, The Gun, the Ship and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions and the Making of the Modern World

“He worked as one of the two servants allowed Milbourne in his capacity as ship’s carpenter: ‘servant’ in this context meaning an apprentice under training. Both”
― Linda Colley, The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History

“though, which emerge most sharply from this incident. The workmen’s resentment at Milbourne’s efforts to add some distinction and ornament to his family’s stark lodgings (and perhaps also”
― Linda Colley, The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History

“Now that war was spilling over into different continents, the resulting dispersal of Britain’s naval resources left traditional European frontier sites like Menorca more exposed and potentially vulnerable.”
― Linda Colley, The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History

“Although he did not formally break with Jeremy Bentham until the later 1820s, Bolívar had long been sceptical about what he regarded as idealistic, purely rational schemes of government. Bentham was comfortably distanced for the most part from people who were very poor, or uneducated, or violent, and he had the luxury of writing from the security of his study in the centre of an affluent London undamaged by the ravages of war. Bolívar’s own experience was necessarily very different. ‘The cries of the human race on battlefields or in angry demonstrations’, he warned the delegates at Angostura firmly: rail against insensitive or blind legislators who mistakenly believed they could try out whimsical institutions with impunity. Every country on earth has sought freedom … only a few were willing to temper their ambitions, establishing a mode of government appropriate to their means, their spirit, and their circumstances.”
― Linda Colley, The Gun, the Ship and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions and the Making of the Modern World

“As this suggests, Jamaica was at once brutally divided by racial difference and violence, and in some respects also a cosmopolitan, even tolerant environment.”
― Linda Colley, The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History

“All successful revolutionary leaders have to worry about how to stabilise the new regimes that they create. After the American Revolutionary War, the likes of Alexander Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris had argued for the establishment of a hereditary senate in a still insecure United States quite as fervently as Bolívar did in Venezuela;”
― Linda Colley, The Gun, the Ship and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions and the Making of the Modern World