From: "Phil Payne" 

"Robert Comer"  wrote in message
news:4494507e{at}w3.nls.net...
> Whatever Geo, your ideal China isn't the China of today and that's the
last
> I'll say on the subject.

Only in the last few days I've seen some newly published scholarship.

There are, especially in the east of England, many free-standing churches.
Miles from anywhere and surrounded by mounds that represent ancient and
abandoned villages.  The best known to me is Wadenhoe in Northamptonshire.

Traditionally these are known as "plague villages" - villages
where the Black Death reduced the population below viability.

But recent research shows that the decline of these villages and outbreaks
of Bubonic Plague are not contemporaneous.

These villages were, apparently, killed by sheep.  Of note (but it's bad
p/r) is that the ancestors of Diana, Princess of Wales dispossessed around
14,000 farm labourers and left them to starve - sheep were far more
profitable.

I suspect the Chinese are thinking much along the same lines.  Thousands
(and more) starved during the Highland clearances, a century or two after
just as many starved for the same reasons further south.

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