Happy Birthday To Us!

One year ago today, Younghusband and I started this blog with a vague mission to cover the dark underbelly of world affairs. Our inspiration was our mutual love of history and politics, travel and geography, the Great Game and Robert D. Kaplan. Chirol joined us in April, and the three of us have written 995 posts (263,186 words), while you readers have left 4,717 comments (376,748 words). Our posts cover politics and current events, history and social commentary, completely random crap, plus first-hand travelogues and photographs from Lebanon, Japan, Turkey, Canada, China, Syria, Iran, Germany, Cambodia, and the United States.

And our readership has grown by leaps and bounds. Starting with just a few loyalists one year ago, we now see an average of 1,700 unique visitors a day, with about 500 RSS/Atom subscriptions. Here’s a graph of our monthly unique users for the past 12 months.

Of almost a thousand posts, here are self-selected favorites.

Sir Francis Edward YOUNGHUSBAND
Battle of the Books: Reviewing America’s Secret War and the Pentagon’s New Map—reviewed in turn by Dr. Barnett.
Religious Freedom Guaranteed: A report from the ground on religious minorities in Iran.
Anjoman-E Padeshahi Iran: One of the only English sources on the web about London’s Iranian dissident group.
RYP: The Anti-Traveler: A profile of a brother-in-arms.
Parrish and the Canadian Military: The straight dope on the Canadian military.
Cambodia’s Landmine Museum: Seeing some hope in all the anarchy.
Confessions of a Thug: Rollin’ wit my 19th century niggaz!
Chinese Turkestan 2004: Some photography from China’s Muslim regions.
More recognition for JTF2: Canada’s secret commando unit gets some props, but not from the Canadian public.
Hijacking the American Language: Stop playing with my mind! Younghusband’s true colours are shown in the debate on cognitive science.

Sir Ignatius Valentine CHIROL
Breakdown of Isms, Part III: Chirol’s model of regime collapse.
Post-Unification German Foreign Policy: “Germany is one big Sysadmin force waiting to be used.”
Syria Update 3: The legacy of the Israeli-Syrian conflict.
Opening the Floodgates: Does the end of the last Baath Party near?
The Caspian Guard: A 21st century Tournament of Shadows.
The Sick Man IS Europe: The parallels between Christianity and the present day Left. Will Nietzsche be proven right?
A History of Empires: Chirol defends Empire and causes a stir in the blogosphere.
Carnival of Revolutions: ComingAnarchy gives you the latest democracy news from around the globe.
Lebanon Update: What do you get when you mix Italy, America, and Arab terrorism?
Europe’s Sunshine Policy: Germany puts Chamberlain to shame.

Lord George Nathaniel CURZON
Curzon’s New Map: What East Asian geopolitics is really about.
A big “FU” to Greece: The US dishes out appropriate payback to an ally and an opponent.
The State of 21st Century Media: The BBC gives terrorists a free pass while needling US troops at every turn.

Traffic Lights: Thank the UN: Stop global government mission creep! This is what the UN can do.
Bad Democracies, Good Dictatorships: Alas, the world isn’t as simple as good democrats and bad dictators.
The Curzon Line: a little piece of history…
The Argument, Reloaded: Defending Japan against protests and criticism from its neighbors.
Curzon and the TEMPLE OF DOOM: Be warned, this is not for the faint of heart.
Sanctions Suck: A call for engagement or invasion.
Coming Anarchy in Nepal: A fatalistic take on the current situation in the Himalayan kingdom.

Thanks to all who have helped spread the word. We’ve been on C-Span and MSNBC, twice on Slate.com and thrice on 2 Channel, and of course special thanks to all our friends in the blogosphere who have linked to us, in particular our top ten referrers:
1. Marmot’s Hole
2. Simon’s World
3. Instapundit
4. Zenpundit
5. Registan
6. MutantFrog
7. Danwei
8. NichiNichi
9. TDAXP
10. Plunge Pontificates

And thanks especially to YOU the readers, especially those of you who continue the discussion in the comments section. Spread the word, and we’ll keep writing—we ain’t going nowhere.