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Brief article on ‘Roman cavalrymen are depicted hunting down bound and captive indigenous warriors’. I’ve written to the author, Dr Louisa Campbell, to ask if she found anything re the African mounted regiment. Interesting article by Michael Wood: ”Emperor Akbar came to see that no religion can have pre-eminence”. India’s Emperor Akbar ‘was one of the greatest figures in world history’, argues Wood. ‘Confronted by India’s many religions, with their claims to absolute truth, Akbar came to see that no religion can have pre-eminence. Indeed, no religion can be the ‘truth’, in that all faiths are interpretations by men and are either equally true or equally illusory. Hence all should be free to practise whatever faith they choose.’ (Akbar ruled 1556-1605) An important article…. I now want to find a book on this emperor. No surprisingly, given all the Windrush commemorations, there is an article “London is the place for me” by David Olusoga. ‘There’s plenty of feel-good symbolism surrounding the 70th anniversary of the arrival of West Indians on the Windrush’ but, ‘Britain’s nostalgia for this event obscures a more complex story of imperial subjects attempting to exercise their rights in the face of institutional racism.’ He raises important issues. Wonderful full page photo of Mono Baptiste blowing a vast trumpet: ‘the Trinidad-born blues singer entertains fellow passengers on the Windrush’. [In case anyone does not know, ‘London is the place for me’ is from calypsonian Lord Kitchener.] An important article. I wish more of those organising these commemorations would put the Windrush in the context of the economic conditions in Britain’s colonies and the long history of the presence of peoples of African origins/descent in the UK. Mathew Thomson in his article ‘The birth pains of the NHS’ notes that ‘there was the problem of staffing the new NHS… Britain also had to get manufacturing production to full capacity. This would take time, so hospital wards remained empty without the staff to man them, and waiting lists grew longer still. Soon the government would look to immigration for a partial solution.’ I would love to see an article on the doctors of ‘British West Indian’ and African origins working in the UK at that time! (And before 1948!) The interview with Keith Thomas is interesting: ‘speaks about his new book on England’s quest for civilisation’. In England, Thomas says, ‘the tendency to divide the world into two categories of people – the ‘civil’ and the ‘barbarous’ – goes back to classical antiquity, and this distinction carried through into the early modern period…’ Should be an interesting book – In Pursuit of Civility: manners and Civilization in Early Modern England (Yale, £25) ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the BASA list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=BASA&A=1