The last battle of the American Revolutionary War

Naval battle of Gondelour, June 20, 1783 by Auguste Jugelet
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If asked, most Americans would think that Yorktown was the last battle of the Revolutionary War. However, in the years before Yorktown, what had been an English civil war expended to a global war as France, Spain and the Netherlands took advantage of England's problems to declare war on therm. 

That war continued well after Yorktown and even after peace negotiations had begun. As pointed out in the article India: The Last Battle of the American Revolutionary War:  

A preliminary treaty finally came on November 30, 1782, a year after Yorktown… but there was still no formal treaty. Washington remembered what Ben Franklin had said, “The British Nation seems… unable to carry on the War and too proud to make peace.” The politicians were all still talking in Paris. Washington instinctively didn’t trust the British and knew it could be a mistake to lower his guard of them, even while talks were going on. As late as January 1783, from Newburgh, New York, he wrote to Maj. John Armstrong that he suspected Parliament would still “provide vigorously for the prosecution of the war.”

But in the meantime, between Yorktown and the preliminary peace treaty, there were at least forty-four more documented world-wide battles, sieges, actions, incidents, and skirmishes of the American Revolutionary War.

The last Revolutionary War battle, the Naval Battle of Cuddalore, took place off the coast of India. It occurred after the treaty ending the war had been signed, but before news of it could reach the distant combatants.

The French were occupying the city of Cuddalore and the British were besieging it. English naval forces were bombarding the city in support of the siege, so the French sent a naval squadron to intervene. For a few days light and variable winds kept the two forces apart, but on June 20th the French closed with the English ships for combat. 

The battle that followed was rather desultory, with little damage on either side. The battle lasted 3 hours and the British withdrew. There was still a bit of back and forth with the siege, but that naval battle counts as the last battle fought in the American Revolutionary War.  

 

Winslow Homer

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With our 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence nearly upon us, I thought I would feature an American artist. Winslow Homer (1836-1910) is arguably America's finest painter. Although he spent some time in Paris and England, he was primarily based out of New England. He started as a magazine illustrator but moved on to oils and watercolors. He grew increasingly more reclusive as he aged.

Winslow Homer

Justifications for resentment

An anarchist

All of these people — back to Marx himself — spend far more time naming who deserves to be on the receiving end of theft and violence than working out how their ideal society would actually function, let alone building it.

This is the difference between a genuine grievance and a pathological one. Ressentiment only subtracts. It locates the entire source of its suffering outside itself and proposes to remove that source from the face of the earth. Take off the billionaires’ heads. Liquidate the favored men. Cut down the one who said the wrong pronoun. None of these are doctrines aimed at stability or coherence. They are justifications for resentment.

That is why these movements hate the language of self-improvement — why the manifesto sneers at lifting weights, at becoming confident, at building something. It is why all the blame falls on the health insurance CEO and none on the millions living with lifestyle-induced chronic disease. It is why billionaires’ heads become the cause of all your problems. To improve yourself is to admit you have agency over your own life, and agency is surrendered long before ressentiment swallows the soul. That is what the sane are truly up against. Not a single ideology, but the spirit that spawns them all.

Above is an excerpt from a post at Pergelator's blog. He swiped it entirely from My Daily Kona who swiped it from Liam Out Loud. It is a succinct, and I think very accurate, discussion of one of the currents underlying a lot of today's political violence. It is well worth reading it in full.

 

Red River Valley

Get ready for a terminating weekend with Tony Trischka and Molly Tuttle.

 

Chowing down in Imperial Rome

This video discusses meals in ancient Rome. The food they ate is also explained. Also, most Romans didn't have a means for cooking food at home, so they used street vendors to get their meals. Herculaneum and Pompeii were both buried in volcanic ash, so we have well preserved examples of the infrastructure to support their daily dining.

  

Judge magazine covers

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Judge magazine was an American satirical magazine published from 1881 to 1947. It was founded by people who left Puck. It was aligned with the Republicans and published a lot of overtly political content. Many of its early covers are in the style of that era's political cartoons.

I liked the cover immediately below. My grandparents came over on one of those European Garbage Ships where they got dumped on Ellis Island. Eastern Europeans were the riffraff of the day. Riffraff or not, they were legal and sought to acclimate. However, the last image is rather more immigrant friendly, showing Uncle Sam's face as a melting pot of ethnicities.

Take a Look

Get ready for a catty weekend with Sokun Nisa and Rolin.