Pedantic note: XXCIII is 83 and unless that thesis didn't have that many pages, it's a valid Roman number (20 subtracted from 100 add 3). What was meant was probably XLIII. I happen to have read the Wikipedia page on Roman numerals recently and there it states that there wasn't a single convention for writing Roman numbers. There are more common ways, for sure, but not a single, standardised way (that's why you'll find e.g. IIII on watch faces and not IV).
Now that I've looked at the newspaper article in question, I have two comments to make, in defence of those bad old colonialists, re the 'no human foot' quote. Firstly, this article is a written version of a speech at a banquet. In 1884/5 they did not have recording devices to ensure accuracy. Errors may have been introduced by a reporter. Perhaps Lord Salisbury did say 'no white man's foot' and the reporter misquoted him. Secondly, at the top of the next column we read: '...the partition and distribution of territories which do not exactly belong to us, which indeed belong to other people...'. In fairness to Lord Salisbury, anyone really interested in this should read the whole article. And marvel at the attention span of Victorian newspaper readers.
Very interesting, Johan. My sympathy is with the CUP editor ('How it slipped through the CUP editor’s eyes I don’t know'). Editing is like housework: people only notice what you DIDN'T do. Many years ago, after I'd corrected gazillions of errors in his document, a client came back to me with just this comment: 'You missed the hyphen in Coca-Cola.'
Interesting read!
Pedantic note: XXCIII is 83 and unless that thesis didn't have that many pages, it's a valid Roman number (20 subtracted from 100 add 3). What was meant was probably XLIII. I happen to have read the Wikipedia page on Roman numerals recently and there it states that there wasn't a single convention for writing Roman numbers. There are more common ways, for sure, but not a single, standardised way (that's why you'll find e.g. IIII on watch faces and not IV).
Now that I've looked at the newspaper article in question, I have two comments to make, in defence of those bad old colonialists, re the 'no human foot' quote. Firstly, this article is a written version of a speech at a banquet. In 1884/5 they did not have recording devices to ensure accuracy. Errors may have been introduced by a reporter. Perhaps Lord Salisbury did say 'no white man's foot' and the reporter misquoted him. Secondly, at the top of the next column we read: '...the partition and distribution of territories which do not exactly belong to us, which indeed belong to other people...'. In fairness to Lord Salisbury, anyone really interested in this should read the whole article. And marvel at the attention span of Victorian newspaper readers.
Very interesting, Johan. My sympathy is with the CUP editor ('How it slipped through the CUP editor’s eyes I don’t know'). Editing is like housework: people only notice what you DIDN'T do. Many years ago, after I'd corrected gazillions of errors in his document, a client came back to me with just this comment: 'You missed the hyphen in Coca-Cola.'