S.J. Garland's Blog

Check out my interview with the amazing Klimavicz at Indie Books Unleashed: http://us15.campaign-archive1.com/?u=...

Hello Everyone,

Its been a while since my last post, but I have been busily finishing up the last book in my Hawk Series, The Hunt for Hawk.

I'm looking for reviewers! If you are interested in reading and writing a review for the Hunt for Hawk please pm with your details so I can send you a free Kindle copy!

Thank you so much for all of your support and i look forward to hearing from you soon.

Garland

My Markinch series, SCOTCH RISING and PRETENDER AT THE GATE set in Jacobite Scotland have been bundled and will be available for FREE on kindle this weekend. Enjoy an afternoon of reading on me!

A reminder to all those reading Hawk's Ascension. Post a review on amazon.com, send me a link at [email protected] to receive a FREE ebook copy of the last book in the series THE HUNT FOR HAWK when it comes out in DECEMBER 2016. Happy Reading!

Hawk’s Ascension is situated in the space between Eastern and Western civilisations. The British used the East in order to amass great piles of wealth that fuel their dominance in Europe and the New World. Today, the relationship between East and West has hardly progressed. In the last hundred years it has reached a towering pinnacle of mutual distrust that has erupted in violence and hatred. Is it possible to bridge the gap between East and West?

Is the United States the new British East India Company?

Certainly one might make the comparison through their equal use of force and charm to monopolise the worlds trading channels. However, there is something much more fundamental in the comparison. The United States and the East India Company work through a behemoth of bureaucratic red tape, where clerks and men who are appointed through good standing with other government officials effectively control the direction of trade as well as private and public policy for all.

Let’s make Great Britain great again.

Let’s make the United States great again.

Some might argue these countries are already pretty great as they are. Let’s face it, one is the hegemonic power in the world and the other is no slouch when it comes to power and influence.

As a historical fiction author, I have to analyse these statements carefully because they are using rhetoric and jingoism to create nostalgia for the past. When frankly, both the United States and Great Britain are much better places than they were two hundred, one hundred, even a decade ago.

Which brings me to my point. How can we vote to go back to the past, when all the generations before us were looking to the future? I will be the first one to say it is imperative to take stock of the past in order not to repeat our past mistakes. However creating a future we can all be proud of requires us to reform our understanding of what is in order to create what can be.

Singapore and India are now a part of the British Commonwealth. The Commonwealth is comprised of several ex British colonies and other countries seeking to gain access to trade from the United Kingdom. The British Commonwealth is supposed to be a platform for economic enterprise between member countries, although these days it is used much more for political and social posturing than any economic benefits, especially for poorer nations seeking to trade with more influential countries. The Commonwealth games aside, the British Commonwealth has far less influence on the United Kingdom than the European Economic Community. Once the colony countries were no longer profitable, Great Britain was happy to treat countries on which they made millions of pounds like the Gyote song; just somebody I used to know. Now it appears with the vote to leave the European Economic Community, they are breaking up with Europe. Does that mean more trade for Commonwealth Countries? And if it does, should they be willing to take Great Britain back? Or as the song goes tell them I wouldn’t want you to get hung up and somebody that you used to know.

Singapore was another colonial outpost created for the express purpose of trade by the British East India Company. Its founding by Sir Stamford Raffles has become the stuff of legend in romantic accounts of European travels to the east. Founded on the banks of the Singapore River in place of a fishing village in what was basically a swamp, Singapore became a heavy weight in international trade within a matter of years. The success of the new East India Company port was largely due to Sir Stamford Raffles declaring Singapore a free port. This meant vessels could use the port without paying taxes, making it a popular stop in the Malacca Straits. Unfortunately the free port status also came with a major problem for the administration of the colony. No taxes collected resulted in shortfalls in public funds for basic maintenance. Major General Farquhar solved this problem by making gambling, opium and prostitution legal in Singapore and taxing it heavily. This meant the port became a seething hotbed of iniquity and vice, while generating huge income for the British East India Company.

The Brexit is not the first time the United Kingdom has bailed on trading countries they once endorsed. Control over colonies such as India, China and Singapore rapidly declined under the pressure from local groups demanding rights under the United Kingdom’s sovereignty. In some cases, the dizzying wealth made by the East India Company allowed for a variety of concessions to be made, in other instances, countries were abandoned and forced to deal with their post colonial reality alone to their future detriment. With Britain’s vote to the leave the European Economic block, we once again see a Britain who is willing to break ties with their former trading partners rather than see to the good of all.