Tea at Trianon: The Art of the Gulf

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, May 17, 2025

The Art of the Gulf

From Amuse on X:

During his May 2025 trip to the Middle East, Trump weighed a symbolic but potent gesture: announcing that the US would henceforth refer to the Persian Gulf as the Arabian Gulf. This would have aligned with the naming conventions of America’s Gulf Arab allies, such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain, who have for decades referred to the waterway as Al-Khalīj al-ʿArabī. The gesture, while semantically superficial for most Americans, would have carried outsized weight in Arab capitals. It would have signaled alignment with Arab narratives of regional primacy and further isolated Iran at a moment of strategic recalibration.
Iran, however, was quick to object. Tehran considers the term “Persian Gulf” not merely a geographical label but a symbol of national identity and civilizational pride. Iranian officials have gone so far as to call alternative names “illegitimate and void,” and have launched international protests over perceived slights, as in the infamous 2010 cancellation of the Islamic Solidarity Games. By signaling willingness to side with Arab nomenclature, Trump put Iran on the defensive, creating precisely the sort of diplomatic dilemma he could later exploit. (Read more.)