Topic Assistance is Requested

In my current reading I am craving obscurity. While I can enjoy another book on Stonewall Jackson just as much as any Civil War buff or loath another tome on the Wars of the Roses and the rise of the Tudors just as much as any Ricardian ennui does set in after a spell.

One day I purchased A very civil war: the Swiss Sonderbund War of 1847 because of an unfamiliar feeling. I had no knowledge of the opponents, the commanders, the battles or who even won. My ignorance was truly bliss! The book was quickly read and enjoyed.

But more was needed. I look further afield than my usual haunts of Europe and North America. In South America I found The Chaco War: Bolivia and Paraguay, 1932-1935. Again momentary enjoyment led to more hunting for (relatively) obscure subjects.

In a moment of weakness I doubled back to mid-nineteenth century Europe hoping Bismarck's First War: The Campaign of Schleswig and Jutland 1864 would suffice but alas I knew in the back of my mind Bismarck always won as indeed he did.

Can my fellow LTers help this searcher for the unusual?

While a somewhat off-putting and jingoistic title, I recently came across "Lost White Tribes; the End of Privilege and the Last Colonials In Sri Lanka, Jamaica, Brazil, Haiti, Namibia and Guadeloupe" by Riccardo Orizio. A fun foray into some truly obscure backwaters of history. For example, while I knew that Gen. Lee had been asked by a number of southerner's to lead a colony that was fleeing the U.S. for South America after the Civil War, I had never bothered to find out what happened to them after he refused...

I read Lost White Tribes and thoroughly enjoyed it. It also shows the complexities of what happens to impoverished whites when they are part of the colonial elites because of the color of their skin--which might also mean that they cannot work at the same sorts of jobs as working class people do--yet their socioeconomic status relegates them to the margins of society. There is a book titled "Mandarings, Jews and Missionaries" that deals with the lost tribes of Jews in China. In other words, Chinese Jews lost to history in the recesses of the Chinese empire. Also, "Authority and Influence in the Kano Harem" a great little book on the centuries-old royal harem in Nigeria and the interesting power struggles within it, etc.

Thank you! "Lost White Tribes" sounds interesting. I had heard of Confederates going (far) south after the Civil War but knew nothing more. The book on the Jews in China also sounds good.

Surly, did you get a chance to read either Lost White Tribes or Mandarins, Jews, and Missionaries yet? What did you think?

Just got Andean Tragedy: Fighting the War of the Pacific, 1879-1884. Other than reading a book by the same author on the Chilean side of this war (Chile and the War of the Pacific), I know nothing. Just what the doctor ordered.

I'd recommend Mark Kurlansky's A Basque History of the World. I don't know if that counts as obscure for you, but it certainly did for me at the time I read it. This was a great book that really opened my eyes to the cultural contributions and history of a group I knew nothing about before reading it.