The Well of Ascension (Mistborn #2) by Brandon Sanderson

     I feel like I didn't love this one as much as I've enjoyed other Sanderson books. I sense a pattern. Lots of exposition in the beginning about the world, lots of boring politics in the middle, and then a big battle for a climax that explains some more, while leaving other questions unanswered. I think the Mistborn books just aren't as good as The Stormlight Archives, which I think have better fleshed-out characters. In all of his books, the politics and machinations of the actual plot feel lacking and simplistic a lot of the time. What's really good and makes me keep coming back is the magic and the worldbuilding, but unfortunately it feels like in some books we only get that in the beginning and end. Maybe what this trilogy is lacking that Stormlight has is the interludes in the middle of the book that just spice things up a little.

The Long Game: China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order by Rush Doshi

     The Long Game is a really dense but fantastic book that covers the last thirty years or so in great detail, analyzing China's grand strategy in three phases: blunting, building, and displacing. Doshi writes that after the harsh international condemnation of the repression of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, the American invasion of Iraq in 1990-91, and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, China began to dramatically shif its foreign policy. The Sino-Soviet Split in the 1950s and the rapprochement with the United States of the 1970s brought China closer to the United States. But once Russia faded as an enemy, it was clear to China that it was time to turn to protect itself from the USA now that China had begun to eclipse Russia to take the second position in international hegemony. Doshi describes the three phases by stating that:

"China initially accommodated a powerful but non-threatening United States after normalization; sought to blunt it after the Cold War's conclusion led it to see the United States as more threatening; began to build its own order after the Global Financial Crisis led it to see the United States as weakening; and may pursue regional dominance if the United States acquiesces or is defeated in a regional conflict."

I will say that the book is somewhat difficult and required my concentration to read, but that it was extremely rewarding and elucidating. Doshi is obviously extremely knowledgeable about the subject and extremely convincing about his point of view. I came away feeling like I'd just taken a course on Chinese grand strategy, which is about as good as I could hope for from a book like this.

    In international organizations in the 1990s and early 2000s, China sought to strengthen those that excluded the United States, such as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) while weakening those that included the United States, such as the East Asia Economic Group (EAEG) AKA the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a sort of free trade zone. In this same period, Chinese military forces focused on blunting American military power through sea denial, investing in submarines, missiles, and mines to ensure that the US Navy would not be able to approach China's shoreline. The prevailing philosophy of the time was Tao Guang Yang Hui: "keep a low profile and bide your time."

    A major shift emerged in the latter half of Hu Jintao's time as Premier, after the Global Financial Crisis. From 2008 to 2016, China focused on building regional order through sea control and amphibious capabilities, investing in aircraft carriers, surface warfare ships, a larger marine corps, and ports overseas. In 2007, almost 25 years after China had introduced its first minesweeping vessel, it introduced another, mass producing it for both minesweeping and mine-hunting. For comparison, Russia had gone through ten iterations in that time. Until 2010, the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) had not seriously invested in its amphibious capabilities. In the mid-1990s and early 2000s, China modernized its force, but by 2000 the majority of Chinese vessels still could not navigate open ocean and of its 55 medium to large amphibious vessels, many were over 40 years old and in reserve. But in 2006, China began to invest in more significant sealift capabilities and decided to drastically increase its number of marines around the same time. While China had nearly 100,000 marines in the 1950s, it eliminated the branch in 1957, having abandoned its plans for an invasion of Taiwan. The Chinese marines were eventually reinitiated, but stayed at low numbers, with only about 12,000 for several decades.  China doubled its marines in 2017 and then announced plans to increase the count tenfold the previous level to reach 100,000 again, a huge number considering the PLAN has about 235,000 personnel. For reference, the US Navy has about 340,000 sailors and the Marine Corps has about 180,000 Marines on active duty. 

    Probably the most interesting portion of the book to me was when Doshi discussed the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. After 2008 or so, China moved on from joining and stalling organizations to blunt US power to a strategy of launching or coopting its own international organizations. Doshi analyzes two of these: the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA). The AIIB is the far more important one, and is the economic component of Chinese diplomacy, while CICA is the less important security component of Chinese grand strategy (not that security is less important to Chinese grand strategy, just that CICA is a less powerful/important organization). The decision to form the AIIB came out of the Global Financial Crisis and culminated in its founding in January 2016. The AIIB serves as a tool for China to advance both its policy goals and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Like other Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs), China can use the AIIB to coerce countries into doing its will, secure consent through providing public goods, and legitimize Chinese power. The AIIB started with capital of $100 billion, making it the about 2/3 the size of the Japanese/US-led Asian Development Bank (ADB) and half of the World Bank. These MDBs assign voting power based on how much each member-state donates. Here's some little charts I made comparing the three, which are the most important MDBs in the Asia-Pacific region. The first is funding/voting share, and the second is just some facts. I'm just getting these numbers from Wikipedia and other internet sources so they might be approximate or not up to date.

AIIB	ADB	World Bank
China: 26.5%	USA: 12.75%	USA: 15.85%
India: 8%	Japan: 12.75%	Japan 6.84%
Russia: 6.5%	China: 6.43%	China 4.42%
Germany: 4%	India: 6.32%	Germany: 4%
South Korea: 4%	Australia: 5.77%	UK + France (tie): 3.75%

	AIIB	ADB	World Bank
Established:	2016	1966	1944
Membership:	84	67	189 countries
Almost always run by a citizen of…:	China	Japan	America
Total capital:	Approx. $100 million	Approx. $150 million	Approx. $275 million

    All of these MDBs are essentially used as tools of diplomacy, whether to give out favorable loans to countries so that they vote the "right" way at the UN or to "encourage" countries to adopt the reforms that the leaders of each MDB want. Ultimately, these banks are a way to exert financial power over other countries, especially poor ones, that badly need capital. That's why it makes sense for China to want a bank of its own. In the initial discussions in 2014, China did not invite India, Japan, or the US, although China reversed in July 2014 and included India, and then later included the UK in March 2015. But China seeks to maintain disproportionate power in its own bank. Initially, China proposed $50 billion in funding with the overwhelming majority coming from China itself, which would preserve the majority vote for China. But Asian states took issue with this and didn't look like they would join, so in 2014 China doubled the number to $100 billion, saying it would provide half the funds for half the votes. By 2015, China reached the final situation, with more countries contributing and China getting 26% of the vote, enough to give it a veto over decisions that required a 3/4 majority. This may not sound like much, but it is far greater than the biggest shares countries have in most other MDBs. All of this is to say the AIIB is a very Chinese institution. 

    China has wielded its power in the AIIB more politically than economically. South Korea was initially promised a vice president position in the MDB in exchange for its support, but lost that slot to France when Seoul decided to deploy US missile defense systems. China also offered Australia a senior role at one point but renegued when it felt that Australia hesitated due to pressure from the US and Japan. In the ADB, China has blocked funds going to India because some of the funds would have gone to Arunachal Pradesh, which is partially disputed by China. China invests (using BRI) in many initiatives that are unprofitable economically, but may serve some political or military purpose. China's $8 million investment in a Malaysian port is considered to be completely redundant, but is in the critical Malacca Strait. China's Hambanatota port in Sri Lanka has lost hundreds of millions of dollars and is located right next to a port doing 100 times the traffic of Hambanatota in Columbo, but China is fine with taking on the liabilities in exchange for a 99-year lease. Similarly, China's port in Gwadar, Pakistan is a economic boondoggle, but China is getting a 40-year lease there. China's loans also come with a bitter aftertaste. Sri Lanka now pays China nearly the entirety of its annual government revenue in loan repayments, at an exorbitant 6% interest rate, 12 times higher than Japan's typical rate of .5%. The Maldives spends 20% of its budget paying back Chinese loans.

    CICA is a sort of weird case. It was this do-nothing organization of Asian states that Kazakhstan tried to the start in the 1990s but hadn't gone anywhere. China got the rotating presidency of the organization from 2014 to 2018, and set about legitimizing it to try to create a pan-Asian counterbalance to the United States. China advocates for creating a "community of common destiny" (a phrase that comes up a lot) with members benefitting from Chinese development, avoiding alliances, not involving outside states in disputes ("let's keep this between us"), and prioritizing the benefits of development due to association with China over external security guarantees. Basically, China sees this organization as a potential bulwark against the US making treaties with Asian countries. By buying them all off first, the US will find it harder to get in and use Asia's other countries to balance against China.

    In the final section of the book, Doshi analyzes the Chinese moves since 2016 or so that actually challenge US power. Around that time, Chinese leadership reached the decision that the US was in retreat globally but simultaneously waking up to the threat of China, making it prime time for China to act. Abandoning the policy of keeping a low profile and biding their time, Chinese leaders often repeated Xi Jinping, who heralded "great changes unseen in a century," essentially acknowledging that the time had come for China to overcome America.

    This would be a very bad thing for the world. For whatever criticisms other countries may have of the US-led international order, the Chinese-led world will be worse. Even now, China asserts illiberal goals to coerce its neighbors. In 2020, China sent a list of fourteen grievances to Australia that supposedly justified economic retaliations against the country, demanding that Australia reduce foreign investment screening, roll back legislation designed to counter foreign intelligence, cease human rights criticism of China, and change its position on the South China Sea, among others. China has also boycotted the NBA for perceived slights involving standing with Hong Kong, as well as other American companies, most of which cave to Communist demands. China uses a sort of perverse system of predatory lending to ensnare poorer countries in its orbit. By making bad loans to poor countries, China seizes forward military bases and ports as collateral, gaining locations in Djibouti, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and Cambodia recently. Meanwhile, the system of US-led order has given us the presumption that states should be democratic, a reduction in genocide, nuclear proliferation, conquest, and biological weapons, and at least a patina of liberalism in world governments. If that world ceases to exist, it would be nothing short of a disaster.

    To combat China, Doshi gives many techniques the US should pursue with one major theme that I thought was important: our strategy cannot be symmetric. Unlike our battles with the USSR and Germany before that, we cannot beat China "dollar-for-dollar, ship-for-ship, or loan-for-loan." China is too big. We have never faced an adversary with over 60% of our GDP, yet China surpassed our GDP in terms of purchasing power parity in 2014 and is expected to surpass us nominally by 2028. Doshi suggests that to counter China, we should think of our tactics in terms of blunting and building, much like China used to narrow the gap against us.

    To blunt Chinese military strength, Doshi advocates for investing in asymetric denial weapons (which would turn the South China Sea into no man's land), help allies to develop denial capabilities, and undermine Chinese efforts to build overseas bases by making statements that those countries risk our wrath in war and that we could offer them our own investments in times of peace. To blunt the Chinese economy, Doshi writes that we should try to multilateralize BRI to limit Chinese power over its own projects, train and assist our partners in assessing Chinese financing, use the information space to counter Chinese political corruption abroad to stop them from just bribing the leaders of illiberal countries, provide alternative financing to partners, and fight Chinese theft of our technologies. To engage in political blunting, we should join Chinese-led multilateral processes to shape or stall their development, elevate alternatives to Chinese-led organizations, contest Chinese leadership of international bodies, and promote legal standards that undermine Chinese information influence efforts.

    To engage in building American order militarily, Doshi thinks we should build resilience to Chinese anti-access/area-denial efforts by digging in on Pacific islands and planning to withstand intense attacks, building a diverse US posture in the Indo-Pacific (AKA not consolidating), and building resilient information infrastructure. Economically, Doshi advocates for maintaining dollar dominance, pushing existing institutions to create a rival program to BRI (or build new ones), creating an entity to audit the US supply chain, allowing more H-1B visas to bring talented individuals to the US, reinvesting in basic research (R&D is at all-time lows), reforming financial markets and tax policy to incentivize more long-term planning, building a competitive industrial policy, building an allied ecosystem of research and development among Western nations, and increasing state regulatory capacity. For political building, Doshi thinks we should build democratic alliances for governance issues. This would look something like a deeper version of the "D10," which includes the G7 plus India, South Korea, and Australia. I'm kind of surprised Doshi never outright says we need a Pacific NATO, but it seems like that's what he's hinting at more broadly. 

    In sum, great and thought-provoking book. I'll finish by pointing out one quore that stood out to me as identifying the biggest challenge we face in the United States right now. "The Soviets can do something after just one Politburo meeting. Can the Americans do that?" -Deng Xiaoping

Some other thoughts:

• India is in a very difficult situation. Not only is India facing Pakistan and Bangladesh to the West and East, it has China to the North, but also in the South due to serious Chinese influence over Sri Lanka and the Maldives.
• The SWIFT messaging system is really coming under intense pressure from Russian and Chinese attempts to displace it. After 2013 sanctions on Iran and 2014 sanctions on Russia, China and Russia have both sought to find alternatives to SWIFT, and the pace can only be increasing after the 2022 sanctions on Russia that confirmed their fears. I don't really see much of a problem with US policy, but soon we will have to deal with the costs of a more fractured/decoupled financial system.
• Doshi mentions something really interesting about the dollar. He says we suffer from a variant of Dutch Disease in which we export the dollar like some sort of rentier state exporting a commodity. He literally calls us the Saudi Arabia of money. I never thought about it in those terms, but it is true that "exporting dollars" (AKA having a strong dollar) has hurt our manufacturing.
• This book, like Shutdown by Adam Tooze, was written in 2021. And both feature significant Chinese pandemic triumphalism. I want to read more recent pieces on this, because that narrative seems completely debunked now that zero-Covid has shut China down for months while their vaccination rates are not very high and their vaccines don't even work that well.

The Final Empire (Mistborn #1) by Brandon Sanderson

     Not a long post here. Just gonna say that this was a great book that I felt had a slow start. Initially, I was worried that this was going to be kind of cliche, but Sanderson is just so good at creating his world, and I got really invested and totally hooked. I can't wait to read the next one. Coming off of Stormlight Archives, I couldn't help but think that Vin and Shallan were really similar characters, especially as Vin was dealing with questions of identity in the middle of the book.

The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857 by William Dalrymple

    The Last Mughal is a really great history book that reads like a novel. Again and again, I was struck by how fascinating the characters were and how well Dalrymple told this story. A great example of his writing is about the morning after the first day of the Indian Rebellion of 1857:

The morning of 12 May saw Delhi almost completely emptied of the British, who had dominated it since the British defeated the Marathas in 1803.

As Theo woke in ill-fitting Hindustani clothes, hidden in a back room in the house of a stranger; as the Tytlers in Karnal and the Wagentriebers in Panipat wolfed down their breakfasts; as James Morley, swaying on his bullock cart, pondered life without his wife and family; as Edward Vibart and his party hid in a bunch of tall grass in the fields towards Meerut, avoiding the sepoy search parties out looking for British refugees; as Ghalib peered disapprovingly through his lattices at the sepoys swaggering through his muhalh of Ballimaran; as Maulvi Muhammad Baqar began writing up for the Dihli Urdu Akbhar all the strange sights and portents that he had seen the day before; as the young Muhammad Husain Azad composed his poem on the Uprising; as Zahir Dehlavi and Hakim Ahsanullah Khan began trying to remove the sepoys from the most crucial ceremonial parts of the Palace; as all this was happening, Zafar too was anxiously trying to envisage his future.

In another passage, Dalrymple introduces the reader to the merciless Irish officer John Nicholson:

A taciturn and self-contained Ulster Protestant, it was said that while he was District Commissioner in Rawalpindi, Nicholson had personally decapitated a local robber chieftain, then kept the man's head on his desk as a memento. He was, moreover, a man of few words; one typical note in the archives is a letter to Lawrence which reads, in full: 'Sir, I have the honour to inform you that I have just shot a man who came to kill me. Your Obedient Servant, John Nicholson.' For reasons that remain unclear, Nicholson inspired an entire religious sect, the Nikal Seyn,' who apparently regarded him as an incarnation of Vishnu. Nicholson tolerated his devotees as long as they kept quiet; but if 'they prostrated themselves or began chanting they were taken away and whipped'. The punishment never varied: 'three dozen lashes with the cat-o'-nine-tails'.

Despite - or maybe partly because of - this inexplicable adoration, Nicholson loathed India with a passion ('I dislike India and its inhabitants more every day') and regarded only the Afghans as worse ('the most vicious and blood thirsty race in existence'). These views he had already formed before he was captured and imprisoned during the disaster of the 1842 Afghan War. By the time he was released, only to discover his younger brother's dead body, with his genitalia cut off and stuffed in his mouth, his feelings about Afghans - and indeed Indians and Muslims of any nationality - were confirmed: he felt, he said, merely 'an intense feeling of hatred'. Only his wish to spread the Christian Empire of the British in this heathen wilderness kept him in the East. Indeed his survival amidst the carnage of the Afghan War left him with a near-messianic sense of destiny: if the God of Hosts had saved him when so many other Christians Soldiers had been killed, it must be for some higher purpose of Providence.

Background

     In The Last Mughal, William Dalrymple tells the story of the 1857 Sepoy Rebellion through the lens of Emperor Bahadur Shah II, also known as Bahadur Shah Zafar, or Zafar for short. Zafar was the elderly Mughal emperor who ruled over a realm no further than Delhi's city limits. In 1739, the Mughals had fallen to the Persian invader, Nadir Shah, and in 1788, when Zafar was thirteen, the marauder Ghulam Qadir took the city, personally blinding Zafar's grandfather Shah Alam II, and forcing Zafar's grandfather Akbar Shah II to dance for his pleasure. Zafar inherited a small empire, shrinking with every year, and functionally a vassal of the British. 

    While the British nominally paid homage to the Mughal emperor, by the 1850s that was no more than an illusion. For example, no nobleman from outside Delhi could enter the Red Fort (Zafar's citadel and palace) without the permission of the British Resident, a sort of diplomat/governor who indirectly worked towards the interests of the Crown in India. Furthermore, Zafar could not enforce his right to rent from his own lands without applying to the British, he could not present gems from crown jewels to his own family members without informing the Resident, and if he gave an unauthorized gift he could be made to request its return. The British only nominally recognized Zafar's sovereignty, with coins being struck with his image, and the East India Company officially calling itself the Shah's "devoted dependent." But in the 1830s and 40s, the British officials began to remove the Shah's image from rupees, and reduced their ceremonial duties to the Mughal Emperor, essentially seeking to officially demote Zafar to a subject nobleman.

    Perhaps because of his intense official restrictions and inability to properly govern his so-called "empire," Zafar focused on developing a world-renowned court in Old Delhi. He was an accomplished poet, and many of his poems deal with his submission to British authority. In one he writes, "I want to shatter the bars of my cage, With the fluttering of my wings. But like a caged bird in a painting, There is no possibility of being free." He continues and explicitly writes that "Whoever enters this gloomy palace, Remains a prisoner for life in European captivity."

    Outside of Zafar's palace, his lifetime had seen the British become the masters of India. From before he was born, the British had defeated Siraj ud-Daula of Bengal in 1757 and the French in 1761. The British went on to topple Tipu Sultan in 1799 in Mysore, and then defeated the Marathas twice, in 18013 and again in 1819. In 1849, the British subdued the Sikhs as well. With military triumph came arrogance and the end of more cordial relations. In the 18th century and early 19th century, there had been a class of Europeans who had adopted Islam or other Indian customs, known as White Mughals. But by the middle of the century they were disappearing. By the late 1830s, the wills of East India Company officials show a decline in the number of Indian wives and girlfriends, who had turned up in one in three wills in the 1780s. This was solidified later on with a change in Company recruitment. Whereas the Company used to contract young men before their sixteenth birthday, in 1856 a change in policy required men to come out in their mid-twenties, after completing university. Of course, this does not explain the changes that occurred earlier. It seems to me that a culture's appeal only goes as far as its perceived success. People are willing to believe in a culture's superiority when that culture wins wars, makes money, and gains the respect of others. As soon as that stops happening, the number of people willing to call that culture "superior" will decline. Maybe there is some truth to it, and some cultural values are in the right place and right time to achieve "success," whatever that means. But I think it's more likely that it's all reasoning backwards. A certain threshold of people see a culture as successful and try to determine what made it that way and copy it. So is a culture successful just based on its reproduction in others?

    As the British became less interested in imitating Indian culture, perhaps now seeing it as defeated before their own, Indians were also less interested in imitating British Culture. Rigidly orthodox views or religion gathered strength in Delhi in the 19th century, and the tolerant Sufi practices of Zafar were no longer in accord with the rest of the population. The British became more evangelical and the Muslim and Hindu populations were less willing to be evangelized.

    Back in the Red Fort, there was serious plotting over the succession. By 1853, Zafar was 78 years old, and his oldest surviving son, Mirza Fakhru, wanted to make sure he would inherit. However, Zafar's newest wife, Zinat, was intent on her own son, Jawad Bakht, inheriting the throne. These machinations led to three British agents negotiating a secret deal with Fakhru that would have seriously reduced the Mughals' power in exchange for the British backing his claim. But all three British agents were poisoned in 1853, and Fakhru was dead of cholera in 1856. That left Jawad Bakht in a stronger position, but as the youngest son, it would be difficult to inherit even though his father Zafar favored him. So by the mid to late 1850s, the Mughals had an unclear succession path for an elderly ruler.

    By 1857, Indians across the subcontinent were becoming extremely worried about the increase in British power and its extent across the region. In February 1856, the British unilaterally annexed the powerful and prosperous kingdom of Awadh (Oudh as the British called it), which especially upset the sepoys (privates in the British Indian army, derived from the Persian "sipahi"), who were mainly drawn from Awadh. Additionally, the British were introducing new Enfield guns at that time, which were a new innovation with rifled barrels, rather than smoothbore. However, the grooves in the barrel made it more difficult to push the ball down the barrel, so each cartridge required grease, and the riflemen would need to bite off the top of the cartridge before stuffing the ball in. Critically, the ingredients for the grease were initially derived from animal fats, which was highly offensive to the Indian soldiers, as beef fat would cause ritual impurity for the Hindus and pig fat would do the same for the Muslims. The British quickly changed the ingredients, and allowed sepoys to use beeswax and ghee, clarified butter, however, rumors had spread that this was part of a plan to turn all the Indians Christian in a mass conversion plot.

    The rumors found fertile ground in the already-unhappy sepoys. By the 1850s, many sons of established sepoy families were unable to find jobs as sepoys because the recent British victories led to an influx of Gurkhas (Nepalis) and Sikhs into their ranks. Even if a sepoy could get hired, getting promotion was difficult, and after years of service, there was a ceiling above which only the British could rise. And the British officers had become dismissive.  Whereas in earlier decades, British officers had delighted in Indian culture and intermingled with the Indians, now they stayed away. The benefits of being a sepoy declined, as the bhatta, a bonus in wartime pay, was whittled down, as was the free postage that was once offered. And then the General Service Enlistment Act came into effect, requiring all sepoys be available to serve abroad. But crossing the sea was forbidden to orthodox high-caste Hindus, so this compounded the fears that there was an attempted mass-conversion of Indians coming.

The Revolt

    Towards the end of April 1857, the 3rd Light Infantry stationed in Meerut, about 38 miles from Delhi, refused to fire the new cartridges. When they were found guilty at a court-martial on May 9, placards went up at the Meerut bazaar calling on all Muslims to rise up and kill the Christians. The uprising corresponded with Ramadan, which began that year on May 11, initiating a month of Muslim fasting and penance. The uprising was religious in nature, as British men and women who had converted to Islam were spared while Indians who had converted to Christianity were hunted down. From the morning of May 11, the most enthusiastic insurgents were the working class of Delhi, especially Muslim weavers and textile merchants who had long supported the mujahedin, and they were quickly supported by the poorer residents who set off a wave of looting.

    May 11 was chaos, and by lunchtime, virtually all the British within the city who had not reached the bridgehead at the Kashmiri gate had been killed. As the looting went on, the mutineers of Meerut reached the Red Fort and entered it, being the first time large numbers of soldiers had entered the palace since Ghulam Qadir had seized the Red Fort and blinded Zafar's grandfather in 1783. The mutineers expected the Emperor to shower them in gold, and they had declared that it was he who should rule over them, not the British. But Zafar saw them as invaders. He was openly hostile at first, and demanded that they put a stop to the chaos they had caused. But after long conversation, and seeing that he was completely powerless to stop them, he accepted that he had little choice but to give them his blessing.

    The initial reaction from official British forces was inept. It was no reaction at all. The Commander-in-Chief of British forces, General George Anson, who had not seen active military service since the battle of Waterloo over forty years earlier, dithered. Anson moved slowly, and took four days to travel the 150km (90 miles) from Simla, his summer residence in the Himalayan foothills, to Ambala, the major British base. When he arrived, he discovered logistical issues. As a cost-cutting exercise, the army's baggage camels had been sold, and they could not advance to Delhi. To make matters worse, none of the regiments had any ammunition beyond the twenty rounds they kept in their pouches, and the baggage train of at least one regiment was lost on the way to Ambala. And then as the cherry on top, Anson had refused to disarm disaffected sepoy units, who promptly mutinied and proceeded on to Delhi taking with them their British guns and ammunition. Anson did not set out until May 24 from Ambala to make the 250km (150 miles) journey to Delhi, and then he died of cholera three days later on May 27. Holy shit what a mess. By that time, mutinies were breaking out all around in concentric circles radiating out of Delhi. Not all of these mutinous troops rose up violently. In some garrisons, the mutinying troops event saluted their officers as they left. 

    In the capital, Zafar had resumed daily audiences, or durbars, for the first time since the Persian sack of the city in 1739, and he was hailed again throughout Hindustan as the Mightiest King of Kings, Emperor son of Emperor, Sultan son of Sultan. Five of Zafar's more senior sons and grandsons became leaders of the military forces (against Zafar's wishes, but with his reluctant consent), and his fifth son, Mirza Mughal, became Commander-in-Chief of the rebel forces. Meanwhile, Zafar's favored wife, Zinat, kept her son, Jawan Bakht, away from the rebels, taking the opposite course to better position him in the succession if the rebellion failed, in which case the British would certainly punish the rebels.

    Things soon went bad for the rebels. Mirza Abu Bakr, one of Zafar's son's, led a force towards Meerut, where he met the British. However, his forces were routed when the prince first experienced a shell exploding nearby and fled, prompting a chaotic retreat for his army. The only positive for the rebel forces was that the clash slowed the British advance towards Delhi. On June 10, the British arrived and set up camp on a ridge outside Delhi, and began shelling the city from that spot. Despite that, rebel forces in the city kept growing, as the British didn't have the capacity to stop reinforcements from arriving across the river to the East. These reinforcements, of course, were more sepoys trained by the British themselves. Of the 139,000 sepoys in the Bengal army, only 7,796 had not risen against the East India Company. But most of those who rebelled never made it to Delhi. But with more reinforcements there was more disunity. The jihadis in the city alienated the Hindus, and the revolt took on a much more Islamic flavor. Each side had its own advantages. The British had a better food supply than the rebels in the city, full of mouths of soldiers but not shipments from farmers. But the British were worse off in regards to shelter, with only their tents to protect them, and many died from sunstroke, and their water sources were impure. 

    Over and over again, rebel forces sallied out of the city to attack the British on the ridge, with over twenty attacks by mid-July. But the frontal, disorganized attacks were unable to take the hill, although they seriously damaged British morale and weakened them severely. The author is careful to note though, that while we say "British" soldiers on the ridge, over half of the soldiers and almost all of the support staff were Indian. The reinforcements that the British brought from the West were overwhelmingly Muslim if not Sikh, so it was somewhat ironic that they fought against a Muslim emperor with a largely Hindu army. Those religious differences came to the forefront with the feast of Bakr 'Id, when jihadis in the city announced that they would eat beef, something extremely offensive to Hindus. But somehow Zafar managed to broker a deal and back the jihadis down from the bovine sacrifice.

    Despite Zafar's success in avoiding that calamity, the rebels were totally unable to establish a well-governed area within the city or in its surroundings. They failed to organize logistics or food supplies, which would cost them dearly. On September 12, the British launched a massive artillery attack at all hours of the day and overnight before storming the city walls. After easily closing the distance to the walls, the British were stopped once on top of the walls and in the city, as Mirza Mughal had built a system of barricades that funneled the British into killzones and the British lost their organizational advantages. The British assaulted the city with over 3,000 men and had lost 1,100 by sunset. At this critical moment, it may have been possible to defeat the British and force them back out of the city, and Zafar pledged to lead his troops from the front on September 16. The rebels had a massive numerical advantage, with supposedly 70,000 men. But later in the day, Zafar renegued on his promise. The rebels, despite their momentum and major advantages suffered an absence of leadership. They had put their hopes in an octogenarian king who was fundamentally indecisive and didn't have much interest in fighting the British. And then there was a solar eclipse on September 18. While this was unnerving for all involved, many sepoys took it as an ill omen, and they began leaving the city en masse. On the 19th, the British recaptured their momentum and on the 20th they were assaulting Zafar's palace.

    The British embarked on a massive slaughter of basically everyone they found, from refugees fleeing the city to those who had remained in their homes. Survivors described heaps of dead bodies and indiscriminate killing. British agents executed the sons of Zafar who had been leaders in the rebellion, Mirza Mughal, Khizr Sultan, and Abu Bakr. But Zafar was promised his life in exchange for his surrender, which was later condemned by British authorities. Afterwards, the British searched for deserters, offering two rupees for every deserter found and allowing those who made accusations to keep all the money and gold found on the person of captured mutineers. Of course, this encouraged accusations to get completely out of control, being used as a way to settle scores and kill one's personal enemies. There were also massive numbers of rapes as the British took the city. Additionally, the British revoked earlier promises of amnesty, which meant executing many of those who had helped them take the city in exchange for amnesty. Eventually, Queen Victoria announced an amnesty in November 1858, after a full year of slaughter. At the same time, the British Crown assumed all governmental responsibilities from the East India Company, and incorporated its 24,000-man army.

Miscellaneous Facts:

• Because the Mughal emperors had so many wives and concubines in their harems, they produced huge numbers of children, known as sahtin. These princes and princesses, when they had no use, were thrown into a quarter of a palace reserved for them, where over two thousand of them lived in poverty.

• There was a popular outcry against the British destruction of the architecture of Delhi, mostly the beautiful Mughal mosques and the Red Fort. 80% of the Red Fort was demolished, and a portion turned into a barracks.

Head Ball Coach: My Life in Football, Doing It Differently- and Winning by Steve Spurrier

     Head Ball Coach is a cool autobiography of Steve Spurrier. It's very easy to read since it's organized in not-too-long chapters that are themselves divided almost into little essays. So it is a very easy book to just pick up and read a little without feeling like you need to sit down and get a lot done. It's a really good perspective on the changing world of college football from the 1960s to the modern era through the HBC's eyes, and obviously lots of great stories about Florida, South Carolina, and the NFL. I think Spurrier comes off as a great guy, especially at the end of the book, where he dedicates a chapter thanking his wife of over 50 years and just says some really nice words about how she's supported him and been so good to him. I thought that was really classy and showed real humility.

Miscellaneous Facts:

• Spurrier was born April 20, 1945, the same day Hitler killed himself.
• Only three Heisman winners have been born in the state of Florida. They are Steve Spurrier (Miami Beach), Danny Wuerffel (Fort Walton Beach) and Derrick Henry (Yulee). Tim Tebow was born in the Philippines.
• Apparently if Peyton Manning hadn't gone to Tennessee, UF was his next choice.