Dutch Doors, English Windows

Is there anything in common between Dutch doors and English windows?

One interesting thing I learnt last week was the way in which taxation has a lasting impact on the way in which societies behave and evolve. 

Apparently in the Netherlands property taxes were linked to the size of the main-doors facing the streets or or waterfronts. So, in order to minimise their tax liability, houses began to be built with narrow doors and large windows. So large pieces of furniture would either be lifted into the house through the windows, or custom-made inside the house!

If the taxman overlooked the windows in the Netherlands, the situation was quite the opposite in England where, at one time, property taxes were levied on the basis of the size and number of windows that a house had. Here too the response of the aggrieved taxpayers was rather predictable - houses began to be built with fewer, smaller windows. It seems this had an unhappy ending for the families living inside because the lack of ventilation and sunlight led to a sharp increase in the medical cases relate to smoke inhalation and deaths due to lung infections. 

It took more than 150 years (1696-1851) for the government to realise that the 'window tax' was not a very bright idea. This of course did not stop the government from trying out to squeeze revenue for the state from a wide range of other option - beards, hearths, wallpaper, or even playing cards!

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Hirsute Pursuit - https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-35997919

* Window Tax - England, Scotland and France - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_tax 

* Window tax in the Hague - https://ikgidsudoordenhaag.nl/en/window-tax-the-hague/

Two Books on Africa

It is a coincidence that two of the books I have 'read' over the past weeks have both been on Africa.

The first was Chinua Achebe's 1958 classic, "Things Fall Apart", and the second one, Dorris Lessing's part fiction, part memoir, "Alfred and Emily". Both the books were connected in strange ways.

The Achebe's book is set in the pre-colonial Nigeria of 1890's. It is about a warrior named Okonkwo whose life and social standing is altered by the arrival of the White Man. The first one who turns up an amiable, gentle priest who wants to introduce Christianity to the remote villages of the Niger delta. He is something of a curiosity, worthy of being engaged and disdained at the same time. By the time it dawns on Okonkwo's community that this is just a soft, probing tentacle of a formidable British colonial administration, it is too late. Guns and machete's have been drawn, blood is spilt, tribes have been set against each other....and Things Fall Apart.

In Lessing's narrative, the view is from the other side of the fence, a few decades later. Countries like Kenya and Rhodesia have emerged out of the the same process that transformed West Africa. An apartheid system is well entrenched. The white farmer now lords over large tracts of land and employs locals as farm laborers, cooks, servants and menials. Tribal hierarchies have been decimated and the most coveted position a local can aspire to is that of the "Boss-Boy", an overseer to other laborers.

For the European settlers, this is a heaven they wouldn't trade for anything that Europe has to offer. Yet, once again, change is just around the corner. African freedom movements sweep aside the white settlers and the rich farmlands return to the bush. Things fall apart once again but for the ordinary Africans who want to pick up the pieces and start over again, there are no social structures to fall back on.

These two books tell stories that have perhaps been repeated a thousand times over in Asia, the Americas and Australia...