Airshow blues

The Airshow continues to make a racket outside the Kitten Kondo. HMCS Montreal is moored just down the street. The temptation to get my hands on 16 Sea Sparrow SAM missiles, an automatic 57mm Bofors and a Phalanx CIWS is strong.

Going Dutch

I have spent a goodly chunk of the last two weeks reading Jonathan Israel's The Dutch Republic: It's Rise, Greatness and Fall 1477-1806. It's part of my long term project to broaden my understanding of the history of early modern Europe. My knowledge of the history of the Netherlands in this period was largely as a sort of adjunct to Anglo-French and Anglo-Spanish conflict. I was aware that there was much more to know but there isn't a whole lot of Netherlands specific history of the period in English. Now 1130 pages, plus apparatus, later I am somewhat less ignorant. It's a colossal, magisterial book which I wouldn't care to summarize. It covers political, diplomatic, social and economic history in some depth and has more than a little to say about art, intellectual life and religion. I finally get where Arminius fits in. For a Brit, it's particularly interesting to see how different key events in British history appear from a Netherlands perspective. I certainly now have a very different perspective on the Glorious Revolution than the one I acquired from classic English Whig historiography. It may even inspire me to read some Spinoza.