A Short History of the WorldWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
History
A Short History of the World
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
World history
Here was a complete disregard of the fact that the people who talk
German and base their ideas on German literature, the people who talk
Italian and base their ideas on Italian literature, and the people who
talk Polish and base their ideas on Polish literature, will all be far
better off and most helpful and least obnoxious to the rest of mankind
if they conduct their own affairs in their own idiom within the
ring-fence of their own speech. Is it any wonder that one of the most
popular songs in Germany during this period declared that wherever the
German tongue was spoken, there was the German Fatherland!
PORTRAIT OF NAPOLEON (CORONATION)
PORTRAIT OF NAPOLEON (CORONATION)
_(From a print in the British Museum)_
In 1830 French-speaking Belgium, stirred up by the current revolution
in France, revolted against its Dutch association in the kingdom of the
Netherlands. The powers, terrified at the possibilities of a republic
or of annexation to France, hurried in to pacify this situation, and
gave the Belgians a monarch, Leopold I of Saxe-Coburg Gotha. There
were also ineffectual revolts in Italy and Germany in 1830, and a much
more serious one in Russian Poland. A republican government held out
in Warsaw for a year against Nicholas I (who succeeded Alexander in
1825), and was then stamped out of existence with great violence and
cruelty. The Polish language was banned, and the Greek Orthodox church
was substituted for the Roman Catholic as the state religion ....
Map: Europe after the Congress of Vienna
In 1821 there was an insurrection of the Greeks against the Turks. For
six years they fought a desperate war, while the governments of Europe
looked on. Liberal opinion protested against this inactivity;
volunteers from every European country joined the insurgents, and at
last Britain, France and Russia took joint action. The Turkish fleet
was destroyed by the French and English at the battle of Navarino
(1827), and the Tsar invaded Turkey. By the treaty of Adrianople
(1829) Greece was declared free, but she was not permitted to resume
her ancient republican traditions. A German king was found for Greece,
one Prince Otto of Bavaria, and Christian governors were set up in the
Danubian provinces (which are now Roumania) and Serbia (a part of the
Jugo-Slav region). Much blood had still to run however before the Turk
was altogether expelled from these lands.
LVII
THE DEVELOPMENT OF MATERIAL KNOWLEDGE
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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