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“Many people believe that it is OK to be like China for a time, because when the crisis ends we can go back to being like Britain again. These people are making a serious mistake. We cannot switch in and out of totalitarianism at will. Because a free society is a question of attitude, it is dead once the attitude changes.”
― Snake Oil: How Xi Jinping Shut Down the World
― Snake Oil: How Xi Jinping Shut Down the World
“Ask yourself which electoral systems have been widely replicated across the globe. The answer is clear: not ours. We've been very powerful in exporting democracy, just not our form of democracy. By contrast, other systems, those characterized by proportional representation and parliamentary selection, hae been widely embraced throughout the world.”
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“[T]he sheer magnitude of Britain’s commitment and loss at Gallipoli made it seem vital years later that she should play a major role in the postwar Middle East to give some sort of meaning to so great a sacrifice.”
― A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and The Creation of the Modern Middle East
― A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and The Creation of the Modern Middle East
“In fact there was an outside force linked to every one of the outbreaks of violence in the Middle East, but it was the one force whose presence remained invisible to British officialdom. It was Britain herself. In a region of the globe whose inhabitants were known especially to dislike foreigners, and in a predominantly Moslem world which could abide being ruled by almost anybody except non-Moslems, a foreign Christian country ought to have expected to encounter hostility when it attempted to impose its own rule. The shadows that accompanied the British rulers wherever they went in the Middle East were in fact their own.”
― A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East
― A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East
“European statesmen of the First World War era did—to some extent—recognize the problem and its significance. As soon as they began to plan their annexation of the Middle East, Allied leaders recognized that Islam’s hold on the region was the main feature of the political landscape with which they would have to contend. Lord Kitchener, it will be remembered, initiated in 1914 a policy designed to bring the Moslem faith under Britain’s sway. When it looked as though that might not work—for the Sherif Hussein’s call to the Faithful in 1916 fell on deaf ears—Kitchener’s associates proposed instead to sponsor other loyalties (to a federation of Arabic-speaking peoples, or to the family of King Hussein, or to about-to-be-created countries such as Iraq) as a rival to pan-Islam. Indeed they framed the postwar Middle East settlement with that object (among others) in view.”
― A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East
― A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East
Felix’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Felix’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
2,736 books
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104 friends
8,148 books
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371 friends
3,012 books
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17 friends
1,494 books
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578 friends
982 books
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676 friends
313 books
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149 friends
1,989 books
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306 friends
184 books
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264 friends
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