God’s Shadow

Title: God’s Shadow – The Ottoman Sultan Who Shaped the Modern World

Author: Alan Mikhail

Publisher: Faber, 2020 (First)

ISBN: 9780571331932

Pages: 479

 

The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 was a turning point in history. They soon enforced their control over the trade routes between the East and West. European merchants were denied direct access to Asia, forcing them to procure the wares through Ottoman traders at immense profits to the latter. In the aftermath of this cataclysmic event, a sultan named Selim the Grim (1470 – 1520) assumed the throne. In addition to the trade controls, he sought to overcome his rivals by force and unify the entire Middle East under his banner. The discovery of Americas was an unintended consequence of the European attempt to avoid the Ottomans and to reach Asia by an alternate route through the Western Atlantic. Defeating the Mamelukes who controlled Mecca and Medina, Selim appropriated the title of the Caliph of Islam in 1517. People reverentially called him God’s Shadow on Earth Selim’s territorial expansion upset the balance of power in other central Asian kingdoms and European monarchies. Babur’s expulsion from Samarkand and his eventual invasion of India is an aftereffect of Selim’s ignoring his plea for help and decision to support Babur’s rival. Reformation of European Christianity also owes its origin to Ottoman threat at their doorsteps. All these make Selim the Grim an ideal choice of study with revealing discoveries on the impact he had made in re-forging the flow of history. Alan Mikhail is an American historian who is a professor of history at Yale University. His work centres on the history of the Ottoman Empire.

 

The political changes that took place in the fifteenth century Near East are neatly summarized in the book. After roughly a century of squeezing the Byzantines, the Ottomans overran Constantinople in 1453 and promptly renamed it Istanbul. Mehmet the Conqueror’s grandson Selim transferred the empire into a global power by subjugating the Shiite Safavid dynasty in Iran and annexing the territory of the Egyptian Sunni Mamelukes. This made them the superpower of the Middle East. For many centuries since 1450s, the Ottoman Empire controlled more territory and ruled over more people than any other world power. The Europeans were losing captives, commercial influence and territory to them. It was the Ottoman monopoly of the trade routes to the East, combined with their military prowess that pushed Span and Portugal out of the Mediterranean, compelling merchants and sailors to become global explorers.

 

The hero of the book sports an unfriendly epithet of ‘Grim’, because of his ruthlessness in eliminating rivals that included his own half-brothers and nephews. He killed every blood relation that blocked or was likely to block his way to the throne. It is also said that he often kicked the decapitated heads of those he executed. Selim regularly led the raids that brought slaves – mostly Christian, mostly white – into the empire. They were then sold in the Ottoman markets to the highest bidder. The empire collected taxes on their sale. Blacks were also taken as slaves, but they were mostly castrated and employed as eunuchs guarding the harems. Racism was here added to the vice of slavery. Selim enhanced the ferocity of his soldiers by fanning their greed. He let go of his portion of a fifth of the spoils which the fighters could share among themselves. White slaves were used for training as elite soldiers and sex slaves. Teenage Christian boys were seized from their homes and taken to Ottoman centres of power. They were then forcibly converted to Islam and enlisted into a superior military wing knows as Janissaries. The Christian girls were similarly converted and taken as concubines.

 

A curious thing to note in these recordings of medieval history is the crucial role religion plays in shaping military encounters and its equal disregard in forming opportune political alliances. Political partnerships crossed religious boundaries even in crusades. Pope Innocent VIII colluded with Mamelukes for an attack against Ottomans along with Cem, a pretender to the Ottoman throne. Christian kingdoms had given asylum to Cem as a tactical countermeasure to check Sultan Bayezit who was Cem’s half-brother. Duplicity was integral to early modern negotiations. The Pope offered to keep Cem as a prisoner if Bayezit agreed to a set of conditions like freedom of worship to Christians, unhindered access for pilgrims to Jerusalem and a fee for the proper upkeep of the royal hostage. Bayezit readily agreed and paid 120,000 gold ducats in advance as fee for three years. He also gifted the head of the lance that allegedly pierced Christ’s side during the Crucifixion. The Pope gladly accepted the offerings and duly confined Cem to house arrest till his death.

 

Mikhail introduces a new idea which claims that the European push to the West that eventually discovered the Americas was a reaction to Muslim pressure in the Near East and was a part of the crusades. Columbus met Queen Isabella many times and proposed a voyage westward to the court of the Great Khan of the East who was believed to be a powerful monarch eager to accept Christianity for himself and his realm. Columbus planned to make him join forces with Christian Europe against the Ottomans and together they would retake Jerusalem in an epic battle that would destroy Islam forever. Isabella prevaricated as long as the fall of Granada, the last Muslim principality in mainland Spain, which continued to defy attempts at subjugation. After the city’s conquest in 1492, which was also the first major victory of Christianity against Islam since its formation, Isabella granted the funds Columbus wanted to organize his fleet. He even carried speakers of several Middle Eastern languages on his New World journeys to communicate with Eastern Nestorian Christians in Asia! The Europeans likened the Aztec Civilization in Mexico to a Muslim one as a psychological device to make an enemy of them. Cortes claims to have seen 400 mosques in Mexico and called Montezuma a sultan.

 

This book makes a claim that Selim’s rule shaped the modern history of the world and backs it up with plausible arguments of support. The discovery of Americas and Babur’s invasion of India have already been mentioned. In addition to these, Selim began the tussle between Sunnis and Shiites of Iran which continues to this day. He invaded and defeated the Safavids of Iran. The Safavids returned the fury by instigating Shiites residing in Ottoman provinces to rebel. The author affirms that Selim moulded the Ottoman Empire into a global military and political force. The contours of today’s Middle East and Mediterranean remain the same as he set. The histories of the continents he united continue to follow paths he first cleared. The wars he started and led have still not ended.

 

An unfortunate streak seen throughout the text is the deliberate effort to please hardline Muslim interests that are inclined to justify violent acts against Civilization. The book comes down heavily on crusades. It is argued that European plans for a crusade against the Muslim world have not yet disappeared. Mikhail makes jihad out to be a pious religious duty enjoined on believers to better the world! According to him, jihad means only a personal struggle to accept the summons to follow the path designated by God. Thus jihad makes one a better individual (p.142) and what we now see in the world is a ‘modern-day distortion’. The author even differentiates between the slavery practiced by Muslims and Christians and says that in Islam, slavery was temporary and provided a conduit for upward mobility. This is in total disregard to historical facts which inform that Muslims were the major slaver-raiders in Africa who coerced unsuspecting black men and women into slavery and then sold them off to Europeans. Condonation of forcible kidnapping of boys and girls into slavery by a modern historian is shocking, to say the least. This book makes an all-out attack against Christian symbols of power in an obvious bid to cozy up to Muslim vested interests. The illicit affairs of Pope Alexander VI are given as an irrelevant aside to the main narrative. The author’s remark that in an Islamic state, non-Muslims enjoyed more legal options between their own religious courts and Islamic sharia courts, or even to claim that they were treated at par with the Muslims, is making a mocking irony of the fate of non-Muslims who were downgraded as Dhimmis. It is such irresponsible writers who help foster a sense of victimhood in young Muslims and make them feel that their religion is wronged in the past and present. The book’s observation that Islam made much of European civilization (p.92) is simply laughable.

 

The book is easy to read but difficult to appreciate due to the blatant appeasement of jihadi elements. The narration is very slow and diffused in the first half of the book where European explorations to Americas and early modern European history claim most of the narrative. It can be established that as compared to the abundance of background details, the main narrative often pales into insignificance. A lot of Ottoman paintings from Topkapi Palace are included but these fail to impress the readers on account of their lack of depth and fidelity to real lifeforms.

 

The book is recommended.

Rating: 2 Star

 

The Dirty War in Kashmir

Title: The Dirty War in Kashmir – Frontline Reports

Author: Shujaat Bukhari

Publisher: LeftWord, 2019 (First published 2018)

ISBN: 9789380118727

Pages: 95

 

Lots of books have been written on the Kashmir issue which still remains a concern on India-Pakistan relations. After exhausting all options – diplomatic, statecraft, social engineering, religious indoctrination and even outright war – Pakistan is no nearer to what their goal had been in 1947. At last, they resorted to terrorism and ethnic cleansing of the Valley’s Hindu Pundits to push for separation from India. Thousands of lives were lost on both sides, but India stood uncharacteristically firm, whichever party was in power. It was crystal clear from the first that Pakistan’s aim to separate Kashmir from India is only the first milestone in staking claim to other regions of India where the Muslims are in a majority. After decades of strident militancy, India revoked the special status accorded to Kashmir by repealing articles 370 and 35A of the Indian Constitution. Was the government right in resorting to this extreme step? Was there no other way to make the militants see reason? We need some first-hand reports from Kashmir to answer these questions. These are provided by Shujaat Bukhari in this book which is a compilation of reports published in the Frontline magazine. Bukhari was a journalist based in Srinagar and the correspondent for Frontline. He had founded Urdu- and Kashmiri-language journals and was president of the Abadi Markaz Kamraz, a literary forum to promote the Kashmiri language. He survived three assassination attempts, but the militants finally gunned him down outside his office on June 14, 2018.

 

Bukhari points out a subtle change in the complexion and leadership of militancy after 2011. The participation of locals in the armed struggle began to increase. Earlier, the percentage of foreign to local members was something like 70-30, but the ratio is now reversed. The spike came in 2016 with the killing of Burhan Wani, who changed the nature of the militancy and re-ignited the anti-India movement at the people’s level. His killing caused unprecedented unrest in which nearly 100 people were killed. The hanging of Afzal Guru, who was convicted of the attack on Parliament in 2001, had earlier induced a similar spurt in local militancy. The author claims that 88 local youths enrolled for militancy in 2016. The insignificance of this figure is evident if you remember that the population of Kashmir Valley is nearly seven million! Clearly, a minuscule gang of armed youths make themselves visible and their voices loud by suppressing the collective groan of the majority using terror tactics. They eliminate mainstream politicians, independent journalists and sow terror to dissuade people who wish to vote in elections. To widen their spectrum of violence, they have now begun targeting the family members of Kashmir’s police force.

 

This book talks about militant violence in Kashmir as the inevitable outburst of a population who are denied any kind of political engagement. However, the author’s own arguments don’t support such a conclusion and in fact identifies religion as a motivator for the separatist tendency. In the early 1990s, the Hindu Pundits were forcibly evicted from the valley, while the militants had almost wrested power from the state and were roaming freely. They had public support too. Thousands chanted on the streets, “Kashmir banawon Pakistan, Bataw varaie, Batneiw saan” (We will turn Kashmir into Pakistan, with Kashmiri Hindu women, but without their men). But Bukhari claims that a 2010 study revealed that 72% of the respondents in the age group 15-18 believed in religious tolerance and coexistence of religions (p.37). However, this assertion falls to the ground if we examine the utterances of more vocal elements in Kashmiri society. Zakir Musa, a Wani-associate, had threatened to hang Hurriyat leaders for talking about a solution to the Kashmir problem that was not based on religion (p.42). This makes it amply clear that the militancy is now led by jihadi elements who share the mindset of those terrorists who operate in Syria, Afghanistan or Pakistan. Further evidence comes in the form of violent attacks on innocent Hindu pilgrims on their way to Amarnath Cave in Kashmir. The terrorists continue to target the pilgrims – 35 were killed in an attack on Pahalgam base camp in 2000, 13 lives were lost in Sheshnag in 2001, 9 were gunned down in Pahalgam in 2001 and a 2017 attack at Anantnag killed 7 people. The only glimmer of hope in this all-pervading darkness of religious bigotry was the vehement condemnation of the civil society and business community against these dastardly acts.

 

Bukhari lashes out at the central government in denying Kashmiris a political solution to the crisis. He accuses Narendra Modi for worsening the situation by following an unflinchingly stern response to militancy. It is claimed that the rising violence in 2017 is not a law and order problem, but the result of New Delhi’s denial on the political front and refusal to political engagement. New Delhi is reported to have lost whatever space it had gained so far. The fiasco of abysmally low voter turnout is an indication of the abject failure of the administration. The Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) enforced in the state gives the soldiers extraordinary authority to encroach on normal state functions. Prior government sanction is made mandatory for erring personnel and these permissions are increasingly delayed in most cases. Besides, army personnel can choose to be tried in the forum they desire. Bukhari accuses that they choose civil courts when it comes to accidents as they fear stern punishment from army courts if discipline is violated, while they invariably opt for court martial in the case of human rights violations.

 

What is shocking in the report of a prominent Kashmiri journalist is the total lack of concern to the plight of Kashmiri Pundits who were brutally thrown out of the Valley through well-coordinated acts of murder, rape and pillage in the 1990s. This exodus, which has every right to be equated to ethnic cleansing, finds absolutely no mention in the book’s narrative. What the author riles against in a chapter is a government plan to build a separate township for the Pundits (p.28). This underscores the militants’ program to drive out all non-Muslims from the Valley and perhaps to hoist a theocratic regime in the model of what the Taliban is currently doing in Afghanistan. The author pitches for a political solution in Kashmir without making any clarifying arguments on how to achieve this objective. All the reports in the book were published before the revocation of special status to Kashmir in 2019, which has stirred the entire state politics in a new and unexpected direction. This event eats away at the relevance of the narrative to a great deal.

 

The book is recommended.

 

Rating: 3 Star

 

Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists

Title: Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists – Unleashing the Power of Financial Markets to Create Wealth and Spread Opportunity

Author: Raghuram G. Rajan and Luigi Zingales

Publisher: Collins Business, 2014 (First published 2003)

ISBN: 9789351361756

Pages: 378

 

Capitalism and communism are the two extremities in between which national economies strive for progress. To argue that there is no ideal form of any one system is probably cliché. But that is a fact which keeps the financial systems securely on the middle ground with variations in the proximity to any of the two ends. Capitalism, or free market system, is the most cost-effective way to organize production and distribution that human beings have found till date. Healthy and competitive financial markets are essential or else economies would ossify and decline. When competition slackens occasionally, the incumbent market leaders prefer to stay in power and feel threatened by renewed competition from new entrants from either within the country or overseas. Even though democracy is, by definition rule by majority, that majority is often quite defused and unsure of what their interests are. This makes a well-heeled, focused body of opinion very powerful in engendering legislation that further stifle free competition in the market. In such instances, the society has to intervene in reining in the government from overstepping its mandate of providing a level playing field for all players and trying to erect hurdles against new rivals of the existing participants. This book seeks to create awareness in the society to monitor the descent to market oligarchy and intervene as part of well-informed public opinion to check the unbridled power of incumbents. In other words, this book points to a way through the society can save capitalism from the capitalists. Raghuram G. Rajan was the former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India and a former professor of finance at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. Luigi Zingales teaches entrepreneurship and finance at the same institution. The book was first published in 2003.

 

Not all capitalist countries possess the same type and genre of capitalism. The level of freedom and competition in the financial markets also vary. History has a major role to play in the wide diversity we see at present. For free competitive markets to develop, first of all, the government has to respect and guarantee the property rights of even the weakest citizen. The authors then make a historical comparison of Britain and other countries to establish how this came about. The historical narrative is delightfully simplified, but at the same time, is too simplistic. Moreover, the preconditions for the way it progressed negate any chances of its duplication in any other country on account of their specificity to the situations prevailing in the original country. Finance in an undeveloped system tends to be chubby, uncompetitive and conservative.

 

On several occasions the authors make a clear elucidation of what they mean by markets. It does include the place of exchange for products and services which are also affected by increased competition by domestic and foreign participants. Rajan and Zingler however assert the primacy of financial or capital markets in determining growth. This particular market controls the flow of capital in a society and decides who gets what and how much. It is the just and proper allocation of resources that helps a financial system to flourish by maximizing employment and production of goods and services. It needs to be competitive as well as innovative to remain relevant under fast changing conditions. Exotic forms of economic activities are to be devised routinely. The book describes a peculiar innovation developed in the US to broaden access of the public to finance. Most terminally ill AIDS patients had valid life insurance policies, but that provided no succor to them while they were alive. When they died, their heirs pocketed the insured amount. Some companies devised a clever instrument called viatical for those patients whose chances of recovery were very slim. It linked the life insurance policy of the patient and paid him for basic comforts in the last days, but staked a claim with a profit margin on the amount payable when he actually died. The scheme looks macabre as the company stands to gain only if the client died. Naturally, the company looked for the most critically ill to have any chance of recouping its investment! Such are the ways in which financial enterprises innovate.

 

The authors then make an observation that the first enemies of free market competition are not any external agents but the incumbents themselves who had long become accustomed with the way things are ‘managed’ in business. At first, they group together to prevent the entry of fresh players. India’s much famed liberalisation drive in the 1990s is a case in point. Decades of protectionism, crony capitalism, and misdirected populism had sapped the vitality of the Indian economic system that its foreign reserves were almost totally wiped out and creditors were prepared to lend further only if the nation’s gold reserves were pledged as collateral and physically moved to the vaults of the Bank of England in London. There was near unanimous consensus that the nation urgently needed reforms and should open up its markets for free competition. Still, a group of industry majors formed an informal platform called the ‘Bombay Club’ to oppose the initiative. Prominent among them was Bajaj who was enjoying a very high market share for his products. Capitalism is to be saved from the clutches of this type of capitalists, because they very well know that foreign competitors would make common cause with domestic entrants in making life difficult for domestic incumbents.

 

The book’s claim that the financial markets were not fully free even in developed countries till the 1980s comes as a surprise to many. However, they carefully arrange all the pieces in the puzzle in order. This was because the markets that went down in the Great Depression of 1929 recovered completely only after half a century! The great crash of 1929 shook the Western Civilization to its core. Stock market crash, bank runs and huge surge in unemployment became common. At the same time, economy in communist Russia appeared to be making great strides. Or so the communist propaganda machine made it look like. Revulsion of financial markets welled up among the public and strict government oversight was ensured by legislation. Then came the next big shock in the form of the Second World War. In the first two decades after the war, the system of managed competition (relationship capitalism) worked well in guaranteeing phenomenal rates of growth in a politically stable environment. This was aided by the Bretton Woods Agreement which imposed curbs on the cross-border capital flows. However, the oil shock of 1973 and events that followed it helped bring about the smooth capital flow across nations. This created the political and economic conditions for the resurgence of capital markets.

 

Each chapter in the book begins with an introduction and ends with a summary of the major ideas discussed in the chapter. It also sports a conclusion and an afterword that attempts to focus on the 2008 crash, but this effort is half-hearted. Rajan is remembered for predicting the crash, so the logic of the effort is clear. The remaining text belongs to the year 2003. In a sense, the book thus looks somewhat outdated. A review of capitalism and what to expect from it in future is very interestingly given. Capitalism is not fundamentally flawed. Its biggest enemies are not the firebrand trade-unionists spewing vitriol against it, but the executives in pin-striped suits who extol the virtues of competition with every breath while attempting to stifle it with every action. To ensure a healthy financial market it is essential to keep borders open to the flow of goods and capital. The country’s capitalists will then feel the impact of bad government policies and they will become a force for good, market-liberating reform.

 

Every page of the book rings out loud with the clear logic of the scholarly authors, but one obviously shortsighted observation stands out like a sore thumb. The book notes that there is such overcapacity in telecom bandwidth that if all the six billion people in the world talked continuously for a year, their words could be transmitted in a few hours. No doubt, the authors claim, that we will find new kinds of information to send along these wires and eventually much of this investment will be utilized (p.105). This was written in the early 2000s when data transmission was in its infancy. The authors couldn’t foresee the explosion in data exchange that occurred within a few years. Anyhow, the remark on education reform is novel yet very prescient. They say that “a system of formal education that terminates when one is 25 probably leaves one with too much information relative to what one needs for the first few years of one’s career and too little knowledge for the half century that follows. Would it not make more sense to cut back a little early on and have more formal doses of reeducation later on so that individuals can cope with changes in environment and preferences?” (p.304)

 

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

 

The Churchill Complex

Title: The Churchill Complex – The Rise and Fall of the Special Relationship

Author: Ian Buruma

Publisher: Atlantic Books, 2020 (First)

ISBN: 9781786494658

Pages: 308

 

The relationship between the US and the UK is an interesting and unique one. The US owes the development of its early political systems to Britain, but the two countries soon engaged in a bloody war of independence which the US won. This defeat dimmed British reputation as a world power for some time, but the rise of colonialism and industrial revolution helped it stay at the helm for another century and a half. Eventually, diminishing returns from the colonies and increased competition from widening industry in other nations took their toll on the British Empire. After its pyrrhic victory in the two world wars, the empire was gasping for breath. The colonial system had to be disbanded simply because it had become economically unviable. Britain stared at a future in which it would be relegated to the margins of world history as just another medium-sized western European nation. It managed to avert this fate by hitchhiking on the US’ political strategies to assert their own will in the world. It was Winston Churchill, Britain’s war-time prime minister, who was instrumental in roping in the US as an ally in World War II. Aid flowed freely east across the Atlantic during the war. Most of the time, what the US received in return were grandiose exclamations on the interconnectedness of both the nations’ societies and culture. Churchill coined the term ‘Special Relationship’ to characterize the engagement. The ‘Special Relationship’ waxed and waned to follow events in the late-20^th and early-21^st centuries. This book studies the legacy of Churchill in still maintaining the vitality of the relationship. Ian Buruma is an American political writer with many books to his credit. He was named as one of the 100 top global thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine in 2010. He lives in New York and teaches at Bard College.

 

Churchill was a great orator whose rousing speeches contributed a great deal in quickly channeling public opinion to his project of combating the German might. Churchill stood up against Hitler’s intimidating tactics that exposed his predecessor Neville Chamberlain as a gullible fretter. Chamberlain meekly countersigned Hitler’s annexation plan of Czechoslovakia at the Munich conference in 1938. For a long time, the epithet of ‘Munich’ was attributed to any action in which one party readily capitulated to the other. Churchill helped Britain hold her head high and earned immense respect for his country and himself both at home and abroad. In a sense, Churchill was more popular in the US than in Britain. He had an American mother and his sentimental feelings for the native country of his mother, often expressed in flowery speeches across the US caught the public imagination. His frequent references to the ‘English-speaking peoples’ and ‘Anglo-Saxon kith and kin’ appealed to Americans of a certain age and class. Buruma establishes this idea with a witty narrative and good examples. He places Churchill as an ideal which his successors tried to emulate with varying degrees of success.

 

This book portrays the dilemma of the British state by the middle of the twentieth century. Its colonial assets were slipping away and along with it its prestige on the international stage. All crumbling empires reach such a state in the twilight of their careers. By the end of 1940s, the dusk of empire was beginning to fall. The idea that the Commonwealth nations would enable Britain to continue as a great global power was becoming fanciful. Even though not directly related to the US-UK relationship, the author hints at several facts that expose the effectiveness of national struggles for freedom. It answers the question that whether Britain would have granted freedom to her colonies even if they didn’t pursue a struggle for independence. Buruma remarks that Britain was more concerned with how to hand over power without creating chaos. When the old sources of authority breaks down, vicious civil wars will often follow. British PM Harold Macmillan expressed the idea with a remarkable observation that African leaders were not ready for independence in the late 1960s, but power had to be handed over. He was concerned that if colonial rule is prolonged further, the best and most intelligent people would be in jail whereas they have to learn how to run the country.

 

The author analyses the prospects of the Special Relationship after the world war ended in 1945. Britain eagerly sided with the US in the Cold War with Soviet Union that ensued armistice. Much of the effort was to ensure British relevancy in international platforms. Whenever Britain tried to assert its self-interest, the US had no qualms in snubbing its ‘special partner’. When Nasser of Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal Company in 1956, this was taken as an affront to European interests as the major shareholders were British and French companies. Britain and France invaded the Canal Zone militarily with the help of Israel. The attack was in spite of dire warnings issued by the US against it. The Pound was under severe pressure at this time and the British had to dig into their gold and dollar reserves to maintain its value. The US suddenly refused to lend money as long as the British continued the war. A loan from the IMF was also blocked. When PM Anthony Eden pleaded with Eisenhower to allow British troops to clear the Canal and remain to keep peace, he got a blunt message in return which threatened that “if you don’t get out of Port Said by tomorrow, I’ll cause a run on the pound and drive it down to zero” (p.77). Chastened by this misfortune, the British never overstepped the line drawn by the US and faithfully followed the instructions that came from Washington. This book provides a survey of all major international events from World War II to the term of Donald Trump and examines how the ‘Special Relationship’ fared in each of them.

 

Buruma exhibits the possession of an excellent sense of humour in the narrative. This helps readers appreciate the argument’s logic and go along the way. The US-UK relationship was often portrayed by critics as of a one-sided, servile nature. Britain is often compared to a door mat or a poodle in the American scheme of things. The British always invoked ties of blood, language, culture and values that bind Britain and America. This book does not predict a bright future for this state of affairs as people with no Anglo-Saxon background assume supreme positions of power in the US such as Barak Obama. The book imparts a nice reading experience to all readers and expects only a marginal familiarity with modern world history in return.

 

The book is highly recommended.

 

Rating: 4 Star