Has anyone ever come across a reference to support the claim by von Liebig
that the English removed bones from battlefields on the Continent to turn into phosphate fertilizer?
Any advice on where I might search? I have copied the quote below...
It is interesting, and political (Marx wrote some similar ideas at the same time).
Is this to be taken literally? Thanks in advance. Best, Amy Kohn [log in to unmask]
"England is robbing all other countries of the conditions of their fertility. Already, in her eagerness for bones,
she has turned up the battlefields of Leipzig and Waterloo, and of the Crimea; already from the catacombs of
Sicily she has carried away the skeletons of many successive generations. Annually she removes from the shores
of other countries to her own the manurial equivalent of three millions and a half of men, whom she takes from
us the means of supporting, and squanders down her sewers to the sea. Like a vampire she hangs upon the neck
of Europe, nay, of the entire world, and sucks the heartblood from nations without a thought of justice towards
them, without a shadow of lasting advantage for herself."
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