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gammija · 11 months

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idly thinking about an AU where Jon and Martin do manage to land in the same world, in roughly the same location, but separated by time.

Lots of time.

Jon arrives in Britain, in 1988. Martin also arrives in Britain, also in the 80's - the 1780s. Maybe it's the Web putting the pieces in new starting positions, maybe it's just happenstance. Who can say.

The first thing Martin does is look for Jon, of course. Unfortunately, he realizes pretty quickly that, if Jon is here, he's not anywhere near him. But Martin's not giving up that easily. If he's going to find him, he needs resources. So, with a knack for lying to wealthy old men, and using a minimal amount of historical knowledge, he makes a modest name for himself. Hopefully enough so that Jon will be able to find him, when he looks for him -

Because Martin hasn't been able to find a trace of him yet. Not as a real person in the world, and not as a reference in any old texts or stories about odd appearances of men with alien clothes, lots of scars, or piercing eyes.

A few years pass, without Martin finding any sign of Jon. Slowly, he has to come to terms with a few facts:

Firstly, that the Fears are definitely also in this world. In his search for Jon, he's come across far too many accounts that sound eerily familiar. Though they seem to have popped up in the world around the same time he did; He doesn't have any earlier records that consistently line up with the patterns he's familiar with. Which most likely means that they - he - are responsible for their existence in this world... Martin tries not to think about it.

Secondly, thankfully, this must mean that Jon didn't arrive centuries before he did, living and dying without anyone taking notice, which Martin had gotten more and more worried about. He wouldn't have arrived without the Fears being there too. No, if Jon is going to appear in this world, (and Martin is not going to think about the alternatives), he'll arrive in his future.

Maybe so far into the future that Martin won't even live to see him. In which case, however much he'd like to avoid thinking about it, Martin has to create something here and now. Something that will last beyond his lifetime. Something Jon will be able to find as soon as he looks for Martin, so at least Jon won't have to wonder what happened to him, will know that he did not arrive completely alone, that Martin did not abandon him.

Thirdly... through his search for Jon, Martin has amassed quite a little collection of esoteric and weird stories. And, though he did it 200 years in the future, he does have some experience running an organization that ostensibly researches the supernatural, which would also be a good way to keep track of any potential new Jon leads. He thinks of naming it after Jon, of course, but it's not like Jon is going to look for his own name first, is he? And it'd raise more questions than if he named it after himself.

Cue the bittersweet ending where Jon falls out of the sky on a sunny day in the middle of London, asks for someone named Martin Blackwood, and finds Blackwood Organization, a public collection of ghost stories dating back to the 1800. He is given a set of personal letters from the founder, to be hand delivered only to a man called Jonathan Sims as soon as he would walk in the door.

...Or -

After yet another few years, in which Martin has set up his organization and is part of a decent network of people with similar interests (though he dislikes most of them), he bumps into someone. Jonah Magnus. It's an incredibly odd experience, though in hindsight, it was bound to happen, considering the information he's after. Martin has the urge to kill him right there, but the man doesn't seem to be from the future. He's just a creepy guy. Younger than Martin, too, which is also weird. But he manages to shake it off, and doesn't see him again.

Though he does keep tabs on him. Seeing him has set Martin thinking. He's been getting older, and his modern constitution isn't faring great in Georgian times. The organization is doing okay, but he's not sure yet if it's really going to survive after he's, well, gone, which would defeat the whole point. With a few more years, could he make it stronger? Could he maybe even reunite with Jon in person?

Furthermore, with the Fears being now well established, it's only a matter of time before someone tries a ritual. No, Martin isn't going to try and do one first, that'd be really stupid, not to mention evil. He just has to make sure that the world actually survives for Jon to appear in it.

A plan begins to form. One he really doesn't like. But one that, the more he considers it, is very possible. He's quite sure now the Fears mostly operate on vibes. Sure, he's maybe not a full avatar, but through letting the public read stories about the fears, hasn't he kind of spread awful knowledge? Hasn't he seen a lot of terrible things in turn? The Eye was already fond of him, according to Jon.

And even if it were to go wrong... Martin would die in either case, and the only other person suffering would be Jonah. He can't find it in himself to feel too awful about that.

Jon falls out of the sky on a sunny day in 1986. After a short and panicked search, he walks through the doors of the Blackwood Organization, Hilltop Lane 148, Oxford. The receptionist greets him. She seems somewhat shocked as she does so, tells him to take a seat as she makes a call. He doesn't know what else to do, so he sits. The chairs are surprisingly comfortable.

A few minutes later, someone he doesn't at all recognize enters the foyer. He looks at Jon, stops, freezes. Jon stills as well.

The man is unfamiliar in every way. He's short, for one, his skin a darker complexion, hair curling in a way his never did. But those eyes, as soon as he sees them, he recognizes. Those are the eyes of the man he trusted to kill him.

#is this anything? i dont know!#where does it to from there? also don't know #i just like the set up #tma #the magnus archives #jonmartin #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #gammijart #i guess #tma fic #ish #fanfic #gonna count it #if nothing else at least so i can find it again #tma finale #somewhere else #tma s5 #mag200 #inspired by totk of all things #the tragedy of time travel etc #magnuspod #Magnus Archives #btw if anyone wants to take this idea and run with it or alter it or anything: be my guest #its a fun one to think about because the eye swapping is i think juuust on the edge of what a Martin might reasonably do in character #with s5 clearly establishing that he (thinks he) would rather die than survive on innocent people suffering #but also - if he can tell himself a convincing story where what he's doing is necessary. and the only people suffering are 'bad'#or too far removed from him to be his responsibility - then he'll do what he 'has to'#in jonahs case even enjoy a bit of revenge

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probablyasocialecologist · 10 months

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An innovation that propelled Britain to become the world’s leading iron exporter during the Industrial Revolution was appropriated from an 18th-century Jamaican foundry, historical records suggest. The Cort process, which allowed wrought iron to be mass-produced from scrap iron for the first time, has long been attributed to the British financier turned ironmaster Henry Cort. It helped launch Britain as an economic superpower and transformed the face of the country with “iron palaces”, including Crystal Palace, Kew Gardens’ Temperate House and the arches at St Pancras train station. Now, an analysis of correspondence, shipping records and contemporary newspaper reports reveals the innovation was first developed by 76 black Jamaican metallurgists at an ironworks near Morant Bay, Jamaica. Many of these metalworkers were enslaved people trafficked from west and central Africa, which had thriving iron-working industries at the time. Dr Jenny Bulstrode, a lecturer in history of science and technology at University College London (UCL) and author of the paper, said: “This innovation kicks off Britain as a major iron producer and … was one of the most important innovations in the making of the modern world.” The technique was patented by Cort in the 1780s and he is widely credited as the inventor, with the Times lauding him as “father of the iron trade” after his death. The latest research presents a different narrative, suggesting Cort shipped his machinery – and the fully fledged innovation – to Portsmouth from a Jamaican foundry that was forcibly shut down.

[...]

The paper, published in the journal History and Technology, traces how Cort learned of the Jamaican ironworks from a visiting cousin, a West Indies ship’s master who regularly transported “prizes” – vessels, cargo and equipment seized through military action – from Jamaica to England. Just months later, the British government placed Jamaica under military law and ordered the ironworks to be destroyed, claiming it could be used by rebels to convert scrap metal into weapons to overthrow colonial rule. “The story here is Britain closing down, through military force, competition,” said Bulstrode. The machinery was acquired by Cort and shipped to Portsmouth, where he patented the innovation. Five years later, Cort was discovered to have embezzled vast sums from navy wages and the patents were confiscated and made public, allowing widespread adoption in British ironworks. Bulstrode hopes to challenge existing narratives of innovation. “If you ask people about the model of an innovator, they think of Elon Musk or some old white guy in a lab coat,” she said. “They don’t think of black people, enslaved, in Jamaica in the 18th century.”

#industrial revolution #colonialism #british empire #Jamaica #Cort process

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marmalademouse · 1 month

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Donna, Queen of Goritania

Finally listening to the audio dramas (the ones including Donna at least) and “Death and the Queen” is such a fun story. I’m really sad we didn’t get to see Donna in a 1780’s gown. So I made this… I know Donna wouldn’t have liked the fashion of putting powder in one’s hair, so I let her keep her glorious red hair.

My silly little head canon: At one point during his travels, the Doctor found this portrait on an obscure planet or some kind of transit space station. And of course he took it with him. So somewhere on the TARDIS there is this portrait of the Queen of Goritania and the Doctor rarely dares to look at it, for the pain is too much. But when he does visit it, hours pass without his notice… /Takes place before the 60th anniversary happy ending of course./

(Original portrait: Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, and the wife of King George III.)

#donna noble #tenth doctor #the doctor #dw #dw audios #death and the queen #doctor x donna #tatennant #photo edit #my edit

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historia-vitae-magistras · 7 months

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Is it too much to ask Matt has a good time of it for once 😭

It might! The cringe below might finally manage to kill me but I had a rum so enjoy if at all humanly possible I fucking guess lmao. No trigger warnings in this!

Liverpool, 1780s.

Alasdair didn't like Liverpool. Alasdair didn't enjoy anywhere below the borderlands if he was honest. The further south he went, the more English the accents and attitudes got. But his personal accounts and the Scottish economy were all bound up in Arthur's and England's. The city was an important center of commerce and shipping, but Christ was a hellscape to navigate. A massive barrel of what God only knew nearly flattened him as he ducked between burly stevedores carrying rolls of hammered copper and herring casks. Not ten paces later, he was doubling over to avoid decapitation and not by the preferred broad sword, but bolts of silk heaped over someone's shoulder that swung out like a branch a rider wouldn't see in the dark.

Eventually, the long solid jetty ran nearly half a mile with smaller wharves and docks jutting from it like teeth set in the skull of England. Barges, barques and brigantines floated both at their berths and sailed up the mouth of the harbour and down the throat of the River Mersey. The whole bloody circus acting as if it were the opening of Arthur's mouth, goods being swallowed into the belly of Britain.

He steered himself through the mob of elbows and shoulders, shading his eyes with a hand now and then to read the raised, painted letters on various sterns and bows until he found the ship he was looking for. HMS Triton was emblazoned in yellow. Loaded with cod and wheat for the warehouses, Arthur would be making land at any time and would want to know the state of their finances immediately. He would want to be bent over the tables, figures, and ship manifests and reports. He was always in a foul mood when he had to get off the ship and the profitable year would set his ire to rest before it came to blows at least. He found a post jutting up from the water hung with lanterns unused in the daylight and leaned against it, waiting for his ill-tempered brother to make his appearance.

A quarter of an hour later, they were finally lowering the gangplank. It scraped to a halt as two heaving sailors maneuvered into place. The planks were still skittering on the dock as he was assaulted by the smell of unwashed sailor, tar, fish and a knot of sharp elbows and joints that suddenly hung around his neck. Curses rose into his mouth, and then he was aware of the distinctly sweet smell of polar wind and pine wood. The rush of fondness that came was unconscious, automatic and as human as they ever felt.

"Holy Christ," He pinched limbs snaking around his neck and flung them off, gripping the slender creature giving him the world's most gentle, affectionate mauling and holding him at arm's length.

"Matthew?"

"Hello, Uncle Alasdair!" Matthew wriggled and looked overjoyed, stuck in an awkward shrug with all his weight hanging from Alasdair's hands under his armpits. Alasdair stared. Getting taller but still small for his age, he dangled there for a long moment as Alasdair stared. He was lighter than Alasdair could remember. Then, all at once, his brain started up again.

"What in hell d'ye think you're doing here?"

"Father's arranged it!" He said, chipper but increasingly nervous. He twitched in the awkward hold. "Did... Did Father not write and tell you?"

"He didn't!" Alasdair exclaimed, annoyed at his brother. He'd have words when the boy was in bed. Really, could Arthur not inform him of the basics? "Christ, Matthew, but you're a surprise!"

"An unwelcome one?" Matthew said a little sadly, and Alasdair recognized all at once that his hold must have been painful; Matthew had interpreted from Alasdair's tone that his presence was an annoyance as it was so often with Arthur.

Alasdair hugged him drawing his nephew and godson to his chest and shifting his insubstantial weight, so he sat on one arm, all affection for him overriding any annoyance for Arthur. "Not at all, wee one,"

He lost track of time momentarily, the curly-haired sprite hugging his neck taking up all the world. The boy's clothes were stiff with salt, but he was so sweet a sight for sore eyes; Alasdair didn't mind if any of the white chalky residues got on his second-best coat.

"How was your voyage? Your ships three weeks late, I half thought the Nuckelavee had gotten themselves a particularly poor meal of bony Englishmen and snapped a wee tender Canadian up for desert,"

"Oh no, just rough seas," Matthew said, looking back at Alasdair. He was smiling but a stone thinner than Alasdair remembered. "We spent a week off the coast of Ireland to let it pass. And made several stops since we weren't transporting anything important,"

Alasdair snorted. "Except your father I suppose,"

"Oh, did father arrive already?"

"I'm sure he'll be along in a moment," Alasdair said, more focused on shifting the weight to one arm and getting out of the way as cargo was unloaded. Activity was up, sailors busier now that the bottle neck of the gangplanks we're down. Alasdair sighed. Arthur could take a year and a bloody day to disembarque he so preferred being at sea sometimes.

Matthew's head popped up, wide-eyed and overjoyed and Alasdair lifted a hand to the head of salt-stiff hair and nudge him out of the way. But the question still came, vibrating with excitement. "Father came with you? To fetch me? Really?"

Alasdair frowned. "With me? Nay. Isn't he with ya, lad?"

The boy's enthusiasm sagged from him and he buried his face into Alasdair's shoulder. "No, sir,"

Alasdair sighed. Of course, he wouldn't spend that much time in close quarters. Sassenach bampot always preferred his own cabin, if not his own ship. He lifted Matthew's weight to his hands so he could be safely deposited onto his own two feet; he asked, "Where's your governess then?"

"Governess?" Matthew asked as Alasdair set him down.

"Aye,"

"Why would I have a governess?" He asked. His big blue eyes proved Alasdair's point. He was likely young enough in human terms to still have one.

"A tutor then?" The wind was picking up now.

Matthew looked at his feet. Alasdair sighed.

"Well, who minded you on the way over?"

"I suppose that'd be the captain. He never spoke to me but no one said ill of him." Matthew said. "I think Lord Kirkland said I should start learning the ropes without being coddled,"

Alasdair snorted. As if Arthur had ever coddled Matthew. Matthew shrank, narrow shoulders inching around his ears as he interpreted Alasdair's incredulity as criticism.

"I tried to do what I told," Matthew said quietly.

"I’m sure you did." Alasdair replied gently. "It's all right. Do you need to fetch anything?"

"No sir." Matthew responded, but he hesitated.

"What is it?"

"The bosun said he would tell father I've done well. Would you speak to him? And tell father? Please? If it's not a bother."

"Aye, of course," Alasdair said. "I don't think you could do anything less even if you’d tried. Let's get you out of the weather before it turns foul,"

"Shouldn't I help unload?" Matthew glanced back nervously

"No, I think you've done enough work," Alasdair bounced Matthew up so his weight sat comfortably on the flat of his forearm.

After a talk with the first mate and bosun, who reported Matthew's work on glowing terms, they returned to the house. Relatively new, it shared its northern wall with the warehouses but had its own water pump and a big copper tub he set the maids to fill with hot water. Peeling Matthew out of his salt-crusted clothes was an ordeal. The boy seemed to be covered in a salt rash from his narrow shoulders down, and his hands were practically in shreds, rope burns and salt welts everywhere on both sides. His ribs showed under his skin.

"Christ almighty, I'm going to clap your father into a stockade," Alasdair muttered as he gently tried to sponge the raw skin clean of salt. "What was he thinking?"

Matthew shrugged, stifling another wince as the sponge touched was looked like a particularly painful place of angry irritation.

"Sorry," Alasdair said. "We'll get something on these, but the salt—"

"I'm like salt-packed green beans."

Alasdair snorted. "And the beanpole. Honestly, did they forget to feed you?"

"Only sometimes!" Matt said chipperly, blowing at the suds and shaping peaks like merengue out of the bubbles. It was strange, sometimes, that even after a century and a half, children remained like their physical age. "I didn't have a friend to bring me anything when it was my turn on watch duty like the other lads, so I had to wait for breakfast a lot."

Alasdair sighed, filling the pitcher and telling Matthew to close his eyes as he dumped more water over his soapy hair and shoulders.

"What do you want for your first decent meal on land?"

Matthew looked up, a little uncertain. He hated requesting things, even when he was asked. Alasdair combed his fingers through the curls and despaired to find them still salt stiff.

"We can have whatever you like," Alasdair said, trying to reassure.

"I don't mind whatever you were going to have." He said quietly, patting absently at a particularly angry-looking patch of skin on the back of his hand. He looked like he wanted to say more, the slightly sad face that consistently predicted being told no even when he built up the courage for something.

"I'm asking what would you like?"

"Is there any fruit?" He asked, all in a rush, looking a little terrified. "Is that all right? Actually no, sorry. Whatever's being cooked is fantastic, I'm sorry."

"Matthew." Alasdair repositioned himself to the side of the tub instead of the back. The lad was still slight for his age and dwarfed by all the suds in the tub long enough for Alasdair to stretch out. For a bizarre moment, he recalled Arthur, even younger, even smaller, with terrified eyes in the waters at Aqua Sulis when he'd been playing and lost track of their mother. "Grapes or apples? Or there are some plums if you'd like those. Won't do to have you keeling over of scurvy on land."

That got him a surprised look.

"Both?" Alasdair asked.

A shy smile appeared, flickering like a candle before the flame found it's footing on the wick. "Thank you,"

"You're welcome. Now eyes shut, need to give you another rinse."

It took four water changes before he was rinsed as thoroughly as Alasdair wanted, and his short cropped curls were soft again. He ate exactly what Alasdair put in front of him, only took the plums Alasdair put on his plate and didn't ask for more but took them, slice by slice. He was a sweet boy. Alasdair put another sliced apple in front of him until it was plain the lad could barely keep his eyes open, properly fed and clothed.

Matthew, fed and sluggish, hung on for a long moment when given what Alasdair meant as a hug good night before he sent him to bed. Alasdair glanced down.

"Sorry." Matthew dropped his gaze to the floor. "Thank you."

Alasdair scooped him up. It's after sundown; the fire burned low when Matthew rolled over in the trundle they'd pulled out from under the primary bed. He was buried in blankets and three household eiderdowns, bundled snug against the night but not yet asleep. There was something stiff in the way he held himself, Alasdair decided as he rolled onto his back and sighed.

"What's on your mind?"

A long, inefficient pause. Not inefficient, Alasdair thought, but nervous.

"Whatever it is I won't be angry."

"Can I ask something of you?"

"You know you can, a bhobain."

"Would you please warn me if Lord Kirkland wanted to... exchange me?"

Alasdair went cold just thinking about it. Without thinking, he'd leaned towards the trundle and scooped the boy, blankets and all, to cuddle him close. In the light of the mostly banked fire, he was shocked to see Matthew wasn't upset.

"Your father wants you,"

Matthew snuggled in his blankets, wriggling until he was perfectly tight between Alasdair's arms.

"He doesn't mind me now so much. But... you'd warn me, right? Please?"

He thumbed Francis' curls off a sharp face that was too like Arthur's as a boy, with eyes as large as they were clever. It was strange how a child made of so much of the two great sources of disquiet in Alasdair's life could be so endearing.

"Listen to me. You belong to the British Empire. That means I get just as much a say as your sassenach bastard of a father, should he change his mind." He didn't want to test that particular statement anytime soon but it felt true enough, saying it. "And I'll never give you up, do you understand me? It's my name you bear and my name you'll keep, understand?"

He got a very fervent nod against his chest.

"No one will ever give you up if I have a say in it," Alasdair said, closing his eyes against the dampness suddenly there. History had taken his mother and all the sweetness Arthur ever had. He kissed Matthew’s forehead. "I can promise you that. You have my name."

"It's just... I had Lord Bonnefoy's too." Matthew said very quietly. "I was part of New France. Now I'm... Not."

Alasdair exhaled the urge to smash Francis' face into one of mother's standing stones and thumbed Matthew's face.

"I stood as your godfather when you were born. Did you know that?"

Matthew shook his head.

"You were too little to remember." Alasdair held him tighter. "But I am. And François... He's always had the gentler climate. Fair weather. Do you understand what I mean?"

"That I'm too cold." Matthew shivered, and Alasdair rubbed a circle in his back like he had when the lad was tiny, not that he was much larger now.

"No. That he can be a fair weather friend. We Scots are made of sterner stuff. You and I." He thumbed an idle curl, pondering the boy. Matthew glanced up, eyes wide and watery. Alasdair looked him in the eye, in what little light was left and repeated himself for emphasis. "You and I, both."

#the ask box || probis pateo #my writing || cacoethes scribendi #matthew || my country is winter #alasdair || my heart's in the highlands #Alasdair and Matt || is mig amharc le dicheall

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simpletale-officiale · 7 months

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Why u have such a cool styleeeee ?!?!

errrrrr........ urm..... pixel brush, size 4.... fluffy cat loaf. do all the lines double, many circle. funny......uuuuuuuuuuuu

The Industrial Revolution, also known as the First Industrial Revolution, was a period of global transition of human economy towards more efficient and stable manufacturing processes that succeeded the Agricultural Revolution, starting from Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840.[1] This transition included going from hand production methods to machines; new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes; the increasing use of water power and steam power; the development of machine tools; and the rise of the mechanized factory system. Output greatly increased, and a result was an unprecedented rise in population and in the rate of population growth. The textile industry was the first to use modern production methods,[2]: 40 and textiles became the dominant industry in terms of employment, value of output, and capital invested.

On a structural level the Industrial Revolution asked society the so-called social question, demanding new ideas for managing large groups of individuals. Visible poverty on one hand and growing population and materialistic wealth on the other caused tensions between the very rich and the poorest people within society.[3] These tensions were sometimes violently released[4] and led to philosophical ideas such as socialism, communism and anarchism.

The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain, and many of the technological and architectural innovations were of British origin.[5][6] By the mid-18th century, Britain was the world's leading commercial nation,[7] controlling a global trading empire with colonies in North America and the Caribbean. Britain had major military and political hegemony on the Indian subcontinent; particularly with the proto-industrialised Mughal Bengal, through the activities of the East India Company.[8][9][10][11] The development of trade and the rise of business were among the major causes of the Industrial Revolution.[2]: 15

The Industrial Revolution marked a major turning point in history. Comparable only to humanity's adoption of agriculture with respect to material advancement,[12] the Industrial Revolution influenced in some way almost every aspect of daily life. In particular, average income and population began to exhibit unprecedented sustained growth. Some economists have said the most important effect of the Industrial Revolution was that the standard of living for the general population in the Western world began to increase consistently for the first time in history, although others have said that it did not begin to improve meaningfully until the late 19th and 20th centuries.[13][14][15] GDP per capita was broadly stable before the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of the modern capitalist economy,[16] while the Industrial Revolution began an era of per-capita economic growth in capitalist economies.[17] Economic historians agree that the onset of the Industrial Revolution is the most important event in human history since the domestication of animals and plants.[18]

The precise start and end of the Industrial Revolution is still debated among historians, as is the pace of economic and social changes.[19][20][21][22] Eric Hobsbawm held that the Industrial Revolution began in Britain in the 1780s and was not fully felt until the 1830s or 1840s,[19] while T. S. Ashton held that it occurred roughly between 1760 and 1830.[20] Rapid industrialisation first began in Britain, starting with mechanized textiles spinning in the 1780s,[23] with high rates of growth in steam power and iron production occurring after 1800. Mechanized textile production spread from Great Britain to continental Europe and the United States in the early 19th century, with important centres of textiles, iron and coal emerging in Belgium and the United States and later textiles in France.[2]

An economic recession occurred from the late 1830s to the early 1840s when the adoption of the Industrial Revolution's early innovations, such as mechanized spinning and weaving, slowed as their markets matured. Innovations developed late in the period, such as the increasing adoption of locomotives, steamboats and steamships, and hot blast iron smelting. New technologies such as the electrical telegraph, widely introduced in the 1840s and 1850s, were not powerful enough to drive high rates of growth. Rapid economic growth began to occur after 1870, springing from a new group of innovations in what has been called the Second Industrial Revolution. These innovations included new steel-making processes, mass production, assembly lines, electrical grid systems, the large-scale manufacture of machine tools, and the use of increasingly advanced machinery in steam-powered factories.[2][24][25][26]

#simpletale #simpleverse

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ltwilliammowett · 2 years

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A small copper measure for Rum or Grog, shaped like a small pitcher, between 1780-1805

HMs Leander was a fourth rate, with 50 guns and was launched at Chatham on 1 July 1780. She took part in the Battle of the Nile in 1798 and was then captured by the French. The ship was recaptured by Russia, and returned to the Royal Navy in 1799. In 1805 she captured a French Frigate named "VILLE DE MILAN" off Halifax, Nova Scotia in which a visiting U.S. Sailor was killed. This caused relations between Britain and the United States to deteriorate into what is remembered as the Leander Affair. In 1813 she was converted to being a Hospital Ship and was sold out of service in 1817.

#naval artifacts #grog or rum measure pitcher #late 18th or early 19th century #hms leander #age of sail

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digitalfashionmuseum · 8 months

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White Printed Cotton Dress, 1780s, English.

Victoria and Albert Museum.

#white #cotton #dress #womenswear #extant garments #1780s #1780s England #English #British #1780s Britain #1780s dress #18th century #V&A

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frogteethblogteeth · 1 year

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December, Robert Dighton, England, c. 1785

#look at that cattt #he's sleebing he's asleeb #1780s #georgian era #women #kinda cozy #there's like a square where you can see that the head and stuff are on another piece of paper so wonder what that's about #december #18th century #Robert Dighton #london #england #britain #europe #paintings #watercolor #night

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transmutationisms · 11 months

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& degeneration / degeneracy have even longer and more reactionary histories than i think many people realise—we tend to associate these terms w/ victorian britain & the evolutionary theorising that was taking place between about the 1840s and the turn of the century (chambers -> darwin; also the working-class importation / appropriation of lamarckian ideas that percolated in the penny presses and then in the edinburgh medical schools)—but the history runs back even further. degeneration’s counterpart, regeneration, had currency in the 18th century as both a religious concept and a biological one (as in, regeneration of organs) in france & germany. by the 1750s, claims were circulating that france in particular was morally & physically degenerate, a contention about the biological state of the population that initially finger-pointed primarily at aristocratic luxury, then shifted to blame the urban working poor. over the late 1770s and into the 1780s, this narrative combined w/ the percolating anxiety about the financial condition of the crown (which was essentially bankrupting itself behind the scenes in an effort to maintain control of its colonies & to fight near-constant imperial wars), & by the time the first revolution formally began in 1789, physician-reformers had become adept at presenting it as a socially curative event that would regenerate the entire society by bringing enlightenment moral & physical improvement to the social body in the form of moderate republicanism, continuous ofc w/ ongoing medical management of the individual. under the napoleonic consulate, ‘breeding treatises’ proliferated in which physicians purported to be able to teach people how to select spouses to optimise their children’s health / beauty / moral uprightness, & these ideas followed directly from 18th century breeding experiments on both animals and humans (eg, buffon used to arrange marriages of the peasants on his estate to test his theories about heredity). during the 1820s, public health became more cemented as a specialty & an academic discipline, & after the 1832 and 1848 repeat patterns of revolutionary violence followed directly by cholera outbreaks, the link became even more widely assumed between political unrest (a break w/ the enlightenment liberal project) & disease / death / degeneration. meanwhile all of this was ofc taking place against the backdrop of constant french nationalist concerns about population decline, industrialisation perceived to lag behind that of britain, & the need to promote reproduction for both these reasons (cf. the third republic’s and vichy regime’s natalist policies). all of this to say that degeneration and degeneracy theory have always been nationalist and (proto-)eugenic in character, & victorian britons were already drawing on a well-established tradition in this respect. these are really not concepts that can be divorced from this history.

#ok last post i have to go read about worms or smth #eugenics and degen theory

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stelly38 · 9 months

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LOLOLLLL

I copy/pasted this from Buzzfeed. Dated March of 2015. It's the kind of piss-taking I can totally get behind. They claim they got drunk and had this conversation... this was basically my inner monologue while watching the series completely sober.

Everyone Is Talking About “Poldark” So We Got Drunk And Watched It

Because, you know, Aidan Turner.

If Sunday night Twitter is anything to go by, however, Poldark is mostly a showcase for the brooding charms of Aidan Turner – an unreasonably sexy man last seen being an unreasonably sexy dwarf in Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy – here playing the facially and emotionally scarred Ross Poldark with an unreasonably sexy intensity.

This week we (Daniel Dalton and Hannah Jewell) watched the first two episodes of the show. Here's what we learned.

Daniel Dalton: Had you heard about the show before we watched it?

Hannah Jewell: I knew nothing about this show, other than the fact that it was arousing the middle-aged women of Britain quite effectively.

DD: I knew nothing either. Insert period drama here. I didn’t even know there were books. Shall we start with a plot summary?

HJ: This is a show about dangerous cliffs and even more dangerous men.

DD: This is a show about buying a mine, sexily.

HJ: This is a show about responsible agricultural landownership, but sexy.

DD: This is a show about the one sunny weekend in Cornwall. With sexy results.

DD: Okay, so to summarise, Ross Poldark – Aidan Turner – has been fighting a war and everyone thinks he’s dead and then he comes back all sexy and his ex is about to marry his cousin, who is a proper wet fish.

HJ: And cliffs.

DD: There are three clifftop scenes in the first 10 minutes. Happy cliff, sad cliff, horseback cliff. I lost count after that...

HJ: Pretty sure there was another sad cliff shortly after the horseback cliff.

DD: This is a show about gazing wistfully from clifftops.

HJ: He gets back and his dad is dead and his estate is worthless. He wants to get a loan but no one will lend to him. Poor, sexy Poldark.

DD: It's really hard to get a loan these days, to be fair.

HJ: What year was it set?

DD: Like, 2014 I think. Or 2013. The recession hit everyone pretty hard.

HJ: OK, so it's the 1780s. I googled it. I feel like the whole thing is hinged around this utterly unconvincing love triangle. Like, 'I wonder who she’ll end up with – the wet fish or the dark, rugged, passionate one the show’s named after?'

DD: They put a lot of effort into lighting Aidan Turner's magnificence, and forgot about dramatic tension. I got up to get whiskey every time they talked about arranged marriages or mining. Honestly, any time Poldark wasn’t on-screen I kinda zoned out.

HJ: You kept checking Twitter.

DD: Yes.

HJ: What does Twitter have that Poldark doesn’t?

DD: Personal validation. Everything about Poldark makes me feel terrible about myself. He’s so handsome.

HJ: I may not have been paying attention the whole time either. Mostly I was assessing our whiskey situation.

DD: Here are some questions I had: How does he keep his stubble so on point? In TV, why is it always so easy to rip sheets? Am I just weak? Why does no one in film ever eat quietly? I wanted to stab out my eardrums with a fork. Also, in period dramas, how do they all learn the dance? Is there just one? Do they have a seminar? These are the things I was thinking about while watching Poldark. I was pretty Poldrunk.

HJ: Polsame.

DD: Loldark.

HJ: OK plot. Poldark arrives back in town and of course the wedding is in a fortnight. They would have done it immediately, or in a month’s time, but then they wouldn’t have been able to say “the wedding’s in a fortnight”. It’s the most tragic amount of time. Also, this is why you should never remarry when your lover dies in war. Because they always surprise you later, being alive and well and ruggedly handsome. Every time.

DD: Just never leave, or if you leave, never come back. Or just never love anyone. Love is the worst.

HJ: Remind me to never run through a meadow upon a cliff by the sea at sunset – you’re just asking for future plot trouble.

DD: And for some reason everyone was obsessed with mines. I was like, ‘Wait! Is this a show about a guy getting a mine?’ I felt like I’d been tricked into watching a show about mining by Aidan Turner’s eyebrow game.

HJ: He’s like a sexy venture capitalist. But instead of the next Tinder clone, he’s got like, a shit mine.

DD: And still he stayed and tried to make a go of his mine. The most implausible part was that he didn’t want to leave Cornwall.

DD: Aidan Turner might be a good actor, but I have no idea. He walks around being moody about things. And sexy. He always looks like he forgot what he went into the room for. The answer is always sexiness.

HJ: Man loves to stare out a window. He knows his angles. And his retorts. Poldark loves a zinger.

DD: He does. And he loves hammering things. And building walls with his bare hands. And carrying fairly light bales of straw. He’s a saint. A saint I tell you. Sexily sainting around, with his saintly eyebrows.

HJ: I wanted more Aidan Turner. I felt like I’d been promised more. There was a bit when he was swimming and I was like “OH YEAHHH HERE HE IS ALL NEKKID AND SWIMMING” but it was too far away. And only for like, two seconds.

DD: Even I wanted more. Polboner.

HJ: Like zoom in, BBC. Zoom in. Fuck.

DD: What about Elizabeth?

HJ: Again, it’s like, I see you, I see your proportionate facial structure, I see your ample bosom, I see your forbidden glances, but in the end I’m still like, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

DD: So her whole deal is she used to be with Poldark and now she’s with his cousin, whasisname.

HJ: Francis.

DD: I felt Poldark could do better, to be fair. She seems nice. But also, like, how are you just gonna go ahead and marry his cousin? Poldark is so goddamn sexy. Everyone’s loins would be ablaze at all times in his presence. Her dad would be like, “You better fuck Poldark before I do.”

HJ: It's like a gun in a Chekhov play: If you have a man this sexy in a costume drama, he has to get laid.

HJ: Why was it always sunny in the late 18th century?

DD: They filmed it on August bank holiday. Everyone knows that it’s the only sunny time of the year.

HJ: This would all be much more believable if it rained, like, once. They’re probably saving up the rainy scene for when they do sex. That’s how sex works, see.

DD: Everyone sounds like Hagrid. "Yer a wizard, Poldark." Actually that would have been a better show. Everything is hyper glossy and luscious. It looks like Broadchurch. Like Broadchurch: The Poldark Years.

HJ: Why are Poldark's servants constantly boning? SERVANT MAN CANNOT STOP FUCKING HIS SERVANT WIFE.

DD: There was nothing else to do in the 1780s. You were either fucking or gazing wistfully from clifftops, into distances, etc.

HJ: The servants are like, “Hey, how many stereotypical places can we fuck?” so far they’ve done 1) haystack, 2) meadow.

DD: Maybe they have a checklist. A fucklist. A fuckitlist.

HJ: Being wealthy in the 1780s just meant strolling forlornly through some hedgerows being pursued by a nervous man named Francis.

DD: Wait, who is Francis?

HJ: His cousin. Fishface.

DD: Oh, fuck that guy. I genuinely thought Ross was going to murder him in the mine. “Here, cousin. Come down this mine with me. Let me murder you, in the face. With sexiness.”

HJ: “Maybe we can find you a stronger chin down here.”

DD: Then he tries to drown him. Bit of drowning never hurt anyone.

HJ: Like, you grew up in Cornwall and you can’t swim mate.

DD: His lack of ability to swim is odd because he’s such a wet fish.

HJ: Then there was the maid.

DD: Demelza. They kept calling her "the child" like she’s not the same age as them.

HJ: She’s like, 23. The second she turned up I knew she’d be well fit under all that grime, and that it was only a matter of time before they boned.

DD: Yes. She’s a redhead. Of course she was going to turn out gorgeous. After an angry bath.

HJ: By the fourth episode he'll be like, “I’m such an egalitarian that I *suppose* I'll fuck this hot redhead even though she's a bit poor.”

DD: “Society may be prejudiced against your poverty, but my dick sure ain’t.”

HJ: But no. No sex for her. Not yet anyway.

DD: Just a frolick or two. She had a bath then frolicked in a meadow. There’s really nothing else to do in Cornwall if you're not fucking and you don’t like cliffs.

DD: Speaking of which, there was distinct lack of boning in this.

HJ: Absolutely. Like in this even the IMPLIED boning is rubbish. The best we got was when Francis touches Elizabeth’s shoulder for a second, but it cut away immediately. Not that I would have wanted to see THAT sex.

DD: Imagine fucking that guy.

HJ: He’d just stare at you, stroking himself with two hands.

DD: If this were HBO it would be bone central. Wall-to-wall boning. Cliffs and boning.

HJ: There were THREE potential sex scenes in the second episode and they were ALL cut away from.

DD: What channel is this on again?

HJ: CBeebies.

DD: Clearly this is an issue. Someone needed to fuck. On camera.

HJ: There’s the bit where Poldark was in town and Elizabeth was also in town and she just handed him a pile of linens she had purchased and their hands kinda touched and that’s supposed to pass for sex in this show.

DD: Fuck hands. I wanted their crotches to touch.

HJ: I wanted to see some full-on dick.

DD: We’re terrible people. Maybe Poldark is fine, and it’s us that’s awful.

DD: Honestly, I don’t even know what the big deal is about this show.

HJ: Me neither. I felt like I needed a murder or a boob to keep me going.

DD: Game of Thrones has ruined us. Without murders or boobs, what is there? I’m so unengaged. This is just a bunch of people being miserable near cliffs. I’m not sure I can recommend this.

HJ: If it just had a believable romance.

DD: All it has is Aidan Turner. Maybe that’s all it needs.

HJ: Yeah, to be fair, by the end I was like, ‘Ohhhh, I get it now.’ I was also drunk.

DD: I mean. I'm going to keep watching it. Because Aidan Turner. Obvs.

HJ: Obvs.

#poldark bbc #taking the piss #lololol #period drama #yes to all of this

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taraross-1787 · 1 year

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This Day in History: British Surrender Fort Charlotte

On this day in 1780, the British surrender Fort Charlotte to the Spanish governor of Louisiana, Bernardo de Gálvez. Do you know about Gálvez? He’s the guy that Galveston, Texas, is named for. His efforts were vitally important to the American Revolutionary war effort.

If nothing else, his efforts distracted the British and forced them to maintain another theater of war to the south.

Gálvez began secretly helping Americans long he was supposed to. He secured New Orleans so that British supplies could not be sent up the Mississippi—and he looked the other way when the Patriots smuggled supplies through themselves. He expelled all British subjects out of Louisiana.

But then Gálvez really got his chance to jump into the fray: In 1779, Spain declared war against Great Britain.

The story continues here: https://www.taraross.com/post/tdih-galvez-mobile

#tdih #otd #this day in history #history #history blog #American Revolution #America #Revolution #today i learned #Galveston #sharethehistory

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life-imitates-art-far-more · 2 years

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Angelica Kauffman (1741-1807) "Portrait of Sarah Harrop (Mrs. Bates) as a Muse" (1780-1781) Oil on canvas Neoclassical Located in the Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, New Jersey, United States Kauffmann’s portrait of the renowned singer Sarah Harrop (Mrs. Bates), is a rare representation of a self-made woman, the great performer Sarah Harrop (1755–1811), by one of the very few professional women artists of the period. Kauffmann, one of two female co-founders of Britain’s Royal Academy, shows Harrop seated in the wilderness, a lyre at her side and a rolled sheet of music in her hand. The mountain, Mount Parnassos, is the home of the Muses, and the waterfall issues from the Hippocrene spring. The lyre most likely relates toErato, the Muse of lyric poetry, and while the sheet music is an aria from George Frideric Handel’s opera Rodelinda, Queen of the Lombards (1725). The music hints at a personal meaning since "Dove sei, l’amato bene" is sung by Rodelinda's husband, whose longing words must have been chosen specifically for their personal significance in what was almost certainly a marriage portrait.

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apilgrimpassingby · 8 months

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Witch Trial Fact Sheet

(Not every individual claim has a source, but the links included will source everything said here - a lot of them have a lot of relevant stuff, so if I linked for everything it would be putting in the same links again and again).

The witch trials were a relatively small-scale affair - modern historians give a range of 30,000 to 50,000 deaths between 1560 and 1660, the witch-hunting century or 30,000-60,000 between 1430 and 1780. That sounds massive - but it's over a century (so 300-600 a year) in a Europe with a population of 100 million (if you're wondering about population growth, it was much lower in the pre-industrial world - about 10% a century, with the demographic disaster that was the Thirty Years War negating much of that). So in any given year, the percentage of the population being accused of witchcraft was ... 0.0003% to 0.0006%.

It's even starker when you consider that the trials were very unevenly spaced geographically. Of those 30,000-60,000 people killed for witchcraft, 25,000 to 30,000 of them were in the Holy Roman Empire.

Witch hunting was not a solely or even mostly Catholic phenomenon. The biggest, most famous witch trials - Trier, Fulda, Basque Country, Würzburg, Bamberg, North Berwick, Torsåker and Salem. All of them were experiencing the Reformation, while the places with the fewest witch trials were thoroughly Catholic Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Italy. And the Spanish Inquisition killed only two witches.

It was not exclusively women who were killed for witchcraft; around 10-15% of people killed for witchcraft were men.

Similarly, witch trials were not simply (and I personally don't think primarily) about religious misogyny. The witch trials of Iceland and the Baltic countries were about enforcing Christianity on areas that were still largely pagan - and in an age when men accessed learning and political power far more and more easily than women, it's no coincidence that these witch trials mostly targeted men. In many cases, it was about searching for a culprit for the miseries of the Thirty Years War (remember that the Holy Roman Empire killed more people for witchcraft than everywhere else in Europe combined?) and the Little Ice Age. In many of the German trials, it was about enforcing Catholic or Protestant orthodoxy. My own country's (England's) bloodiest witch trials were in the midst of the English Civil War.

Witch trials were not a medieval phenomenon - large witch trials only began in 1430 and the "witch-hunting century" was 1560 to 1660, and the middle ages are generally agreed to have ended between 1450 and 1500.

Not everyone believed in witchcraft even at the time; both the Malleus Maleficarum and Daemonolgie devoted their opening sections to arguing that witchcraft existed - why would they have done this unless there were numerous, vocal or well-established people saying it didn't? And take the Malleus' word for it; "some curates of souls and preachers of the Word of God feel no shame at claiming and affirming in their sermons to the congregation that sorceresses do not exist." And we even have De Praestigiis Daemonum (1563) and The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) making the case for the unreality of magic.

The Malleus Maleficarum was not an official Catholic manual at any time; when Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger submitted it to the University of Cologne theology faculty for approval, they rejected it for promoting torture and teaching erroneous theology. Its use was almost entirely by secular courts.

Burning was not universal - in Britain and the American colonies, witches were hanged. As Daemonologie says, "[the execution of witches] is commonly used by fire, but that is an indifferent thing to be used in every country, according to the law and custom thereof."

Midwives were not more likely to be accused - in fact, they were more likely to be accusers.

Even at the height of the witch trials, some occult practices were widely accepted. In the words of Daemonologie "... diverse Christian princes and magistrates, severe punishers of witches, will not only oversee magicians to live within their dominions, but even sometimes delight to see them prove some of their practices." No less a figure than Thomas Aquinas approved of astrology and had some sympathy for alchemy and divination, and there was a sharp line drawn between "natural magic" such as astrology that called upon powers inherent in creation and was therefore morally neutral and the immoral "unnatural magic" of witches, drawing on the devil.

If you've enjoyed this, you can listen to a performance of Daemonologie, complete with definitions of obsolete and Scottish dialect words, here. (If you're wondering how a treatise can be performed, the book is framed as the dialogue of two characters).

#history #witchcraft #witch trials

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