Word: conquests
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...sacred well, once regarded by the Maya as the abode of their gods, had been a place for pilgrimage from 800 to 1500 A.D. Following the Spanish conquest, the gold-greedy conquistadores heard gaudy reports that the Indians had thrown gold, jewels and young virgins into the cenote to propitiate their deities. Nothing was ever found until 1904. Then American Archaeologist Edward H. Thompson, working with a steel bucket appended to a simple boom and derrick, and later with primitive deep-sea diving equipment, spent more than five years exploring the sinkhole. Thompson gradually brought up gold bells...
...Douglas Porch's The Conquest of the Sahara, it's not so easy. While the story is told from the perspective of the colonial-French, their swath of death and mutilation across "the world's greatest desert" hardly makes them lovable. On the other hand, their opponents, the Tuareg desert tribesmen and their sometime allies the Chaamba Arabs, are at least as treacherous as the French. No one likes a story without sympathetic characters, and the only ones in Conquest of the Sahara are the nameless Arab and Black peasants and slaves who are robbed, raped, and murdered by both...
LIKE THE ACTUAL conquest of the Sahara, The Conquest of the Sahara is a series of anecdotes tied around the theme of France and the desert. After reading about three or four expeditions, though, it gradually appears that they are all the same one. To wit: incompetent French officer A is appointed via government connections to lead expedition across the Sahara to Point B. He is given C Francs and D assistants, collects E colonial troops in French Algeria, and, most importantly, F camels. Along the journey treacherous native guides mislead the party, and contacts with the mysterious Tuareg people...
Today's Fresh troops are again in Chad a baked-dry place they might never have had to visit if not for some officer's dream of that now empty would "glory" in a distant land. The Conquest of the Sahura, besides just recounting adventures that really happened and the exotic world where they took place, offers insights into the spirit that inspired colonialism and hint of how these long-ago events influenced the intervening years...
General Giap, 72, one of the most successful military tacticians of the past 40 years, orchestrated the victory over the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, Tet in 1968 and the conquest of the South. But he was replaced as Defense Minister in 1980 and dropped from the Politburo in 1982, possibly because he was too outspokenly pro-Soviet. That was heresy to Hanoi's xenophobic leaders, despite their alliance with Moscow. Giap remains on the party's Central Committee, however, and last May met with reporters at the 30th anniversary of Dien Bien...