In the comfort of the library, he had read accounts of past violent acts, murder and slaughter. He had read descriptions of streets slippery with blood, soldiers soaked in red from head to foot, women and children eviscerated despite their piteous pleas. But somehow Chris had always assumed these stories were exaggerated, overstated. Within the university, it was the fashion to interpret documents ironically, to talk about the naïveté of narrative, the context of the text, the privileging of power…. Such theoretical posturing turned history into a clever intellectual game. Chris was good at the game, but playing it, he had somehow lost track of a more straightforward reality – that the old text recounted horrific stories and violent episodes that were all too often true. He had lost track of the fact that he was reading history.
In the comfort of the library, he had read accounts of past violent acts, murder and slaughter. He had read descriptions of streets slippery with blood, soldiers soaked in red from head to foot, women and children eviscerated despite their piteous pleas. But somehow Chris had always assumed these stories were exaggerated, overstated. Within the university, it was the fashion to interpret documents ironically, to talk about the naïveté of narrative, the context of the text, the privileging of power…. Such theoretical posturing turned history into a clever intellectual game. Chris was good at the game, but playing it, he had somehow lost track of a more straightforward reality – that the old text recounted horrific stories and violent episodes that were all too often true. He had lost track of the fact that he was reading history.
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Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte
Sri Lanka 1520s
Campaign of Danture 1594
Campaign of Danture 8th Oct 1594
Dutch Landing, Galle - 08th October 1640
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