User Profile

Eric Beckman

ERBeckman@bookwyrm.social

Joined 1 year, 4 months ago

Anti-racist History Educator | Online Tutor

This link opens in a pop-up window

Eric Beckman's books

Currently Reading

2024 Reading Goal

16% complete! Eric Beckman has read 4 of 25 books.

avatar for ERBeckman Eric Beckman boosted
Nicola Yoon: Everything, Everything (2015, Delacorte Press) 4 stars

The main character is a girl who is said to have a disease that stops …

Fast paced while simultaneously moving like a snail....but like in a good way

4 stars

So much happens!! The plot twist was pretty predictable but the writing makes it very easy to become invested. There were a few cringey bits, but overall it was decent! Extra points for a pretty cover:)

avatar for ERBeckman Eric Beckman boosted
avatar for ERBeckman Eric Beckman boosted

For : White Spirit by Apache elder Judy Tallwing (b. 1945), 2012. Resin/silver/garnet/sterling/acrylic/copper/diamonds on canvas. From The American Visionary Art Museum's "The Secret Life of Earth" show in 2019.
BTW "Spirit Bear" aka "Ghost Bear" aka Moksgm'ol isn't a Polar Bear; it's a rare white morph (NOT albino) of Kermode Bear, subspecies of American Black Bear endemic to coastal . It's BC's official mammal & sacred to the region's peoples.

Jon Wilson: Chaos of Empire (2016, PublicAffairs) 5 stars

The popular image of the British Raj-an era of efficient but officious governors, sycophantic local …

Social History of British Governance in India

5 stars

This thoughtful book presents a social history of how people experienced British governance in India from the 17th through the 20th centuries. Wilson argues that this governance was never widely effective in shaping Indian society, but did, nonetheless, deeply affect the governed and the governors.

commented on Chaos of Empire by Jon Wilson

Jon Wilson: Chaos of Empire (2016, PublicAffairs) 5 stars

The popular image of the British Raj-an era of efficient but officious governors, sycophantic local …

In sum:

"In reality, the British proclaimed their strength and purpose when their authority seemed the most fragile. In fact, as we have seen in this book, British power in India was exercised sporadically. It was driven by a succession of short-term visceral passions. It did not have a systematic vision of peace and stability, nor a way of working able to produce order. It created chaos.

Rather than a coherent political vision, British rule in India was based on a peculiar form of power. Fearful and prickly from the start, the British saw themselves as virtuous but embattled conquerors whose capacity to act was continually under attack. From the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, they found it difficult to trust anyone outside the areas they controlled. Their response to challenge was to retreat or attack rather than to negotiate. The result was an anxious, paranoid regime. The British state …

commented on Chaos of Empire by Jon Wilson

Jon Wilson: Chaos of Empire (2016, PublicAffairs) 5 stars

The popular image of the British Raj-an era of efficient but officious governors, sycophantic local …

Before Partition: "Long before 1947, the social and political fabric of India was being divided. Depression, war and the failings of the Raj, were doing their work."

(p. 459). Kindle Edition.

avatar for ERBeckman Eric Beckman boosted

commented on Chaos of Empire by Jon Wilson

Jon Wilson: Chaos of Empire (2016, PublicAffairs) 5 stars

The popular image of the British Raj-an era of efficient but officious governors, sycophantic local …

Wilson extends his argument about the precariousness of British power in India to the railroad era:

"The decades that straddled the great Indian rebellion of 1857 saw the emergence of a new kind of British power in India, based not on violence against people but the capacity to shape the physical environment of the subcontinent. These were years when men like James Berkley and George Clark were given large amounts of money to spend on public works. They saw the construction of irrigation canals and dams, telegraph lines, roads and eventually railways, all attempts to impose British authority on Indian rock and soil with brick, stone and steel. Later imperial bureaucrats and historians suggested this kind of geological imperialism was driven by the effort to improve a society they believed was backward. Others see it as part of the integration of India into global markets, to create what the historian …

commented on Chaos of Empire by Jon Wilson

Jon Wilson: Chaos of Empire (2016, PublicAffairs) 5 stars

The popular image of the British Raj-an era of efficient but officious governors, sycophantic local …

In chapter 6, "Theatres of Anarchy," Wilson argues that the East India Company defeated regional states because of greater access to global credit markets. This conquest, however, did not produce peace or stability. For instance: "The events of 1824 illustrate the limited character of Indian submission to British rule, and the unstable nature of Britain’s conquest. From Barrackpore to Bharatpur, Kolhapur to Kittur, resistance occurred when Indians felt humiliated by the way the Company asserted its power. In reality, stable authority depended on give and take. Each moment of insurgency began when British officers refused to negotiate when their power started to look precarious. Instead, they thought they were the sole judges of what was just and good, and tried, catastrophically, to impose their will without talking to those they ruled. It was their refusal to negotiate that made British power seem so vulnerable and fragile."

(p. 191) Kindle Edition.

Here's Wilson making a related point in re: the more famous battle at Plassey: "Siraj lost because his forces reflected his own limited capacity to assert authority over the constituent parts of Bengali society. Defeat was a consequence of the breakdown of political authority caused by the social upheaval that followed the invasion of Nader Shah. In June 1757, the East India Company was better able to hold a fighting force together than its enemies. The important point, though, is that the real British ability to lead a small body of men on the battlefield did not give them the capacity to command the submission of the province’s twenty million people afterwards. Plassey did not found an empire. It merely ensured that political chaos endured in Bengal far longer than it would have done otherwise."

(pp. 102-103) Kindle Edition.

avatar for ERBeckman Eric Beckman boosted

commented on Chaos of Empire by Jon Wilson

Jon Wilson: Chaos of Empire (2016, PublicAffairs) 5 stars

The popular image of the British Raj-an era of efficient but officious governors, sycophantic local …

Wilson closes chapter 3 by explaining the contingent nature of English imperialism in India under the EIC:

"Anjengo [on the southwest coast of India] was the greatest disaster for British forces in India between the Anglo-Mughal war of 1686–90 and the occupation by Nawab Siraj-ad-Daula of Calcutta in 1756. The sequence of events in this long-forgotten defeat followed the same pattern as later moments of conquest. The Company’s relationship with Indian rulers broke down as they failed to control the flow of money into their treasury. Driven by impatience and motivated by revenge, the Company’s attempt to show its power with violence failed. Defeat was followed by a desire for revenge and for new lands to conquer. The difference between the disaster of Anjengo and later incidences of British conquest had nothing to do with the organization of the British, or even the scale of force at their disposal. Things …

avatar for ERBeckman Eric Beckman boosted