Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

30 Apr 2003, 0:11 a.m.

Important Aspects of History

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2003 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

Macaulay's celebrated quote (and related present-day remarks): "I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia."

Good name for a weblog: "A Single Shelf." Or possibly "The Valuation of the Orientalists."