Book recs?

[her_fathers_gun]

I'm wondering if anyone has any book recommendations for:

• Comparative demon and/or mystical beast mythology--something that would talk about different traditions, rather than in a single cultural context
• Good histories of the expansion of connections between world regions in the first half of the past millennium--exploration, trade, things like that. I have a vague memory from some of my academic work of the, say, 14th-17th centuries being called the "first wave of globalization," but don't know enough to go find histories of that period (or even what it's properly called)
• Introductory books about computational linguistics (including its history)

I'm fine with reading books pitched either to a scholarly or a general audience, though I don't have any background in these areas. And non-book resources like websites are obviously totally cool too.

Thanks!

The Anti-Slavery British Sugar Boycotts

[melannen]

So, awhile ago, I read a large discussion about writing stories set in Regency England, and the political things that ought to be kept in mind and handled carefully. And one of the things mentioned was the abolitionists' sugar boycott.

As I've suddenly found myself writing a Regency-political AU, this has become relevant to my interests. Thing is, I can't find much in the way of information about it. Googling gets me either people flogging antiques, minor references in the context of more recent boycotts, or what appears to be the same two paragraphs of information copied over and over. (Interestingly, not from Wikipedia this time - Wikipedia has almost nothing on the sugar boycott, which is, frankly, shameful.) I even went to the paper library, and found what appears to be the book all those websites used as their source - as it has exactly the same information and almost nothing additional.

So:
1. Anybody know any good sources, online or books I might be able to get through an American library system, that go into detail on the sugar boycott, especially as it played out in daily life?

2. Was the boycott ongoing during the actual Regency period? From what I can find, it first gained prominence in the early 1790s, the slave trade was abolished in 1807 (before the Prince Regent took over), progressive politics got really quiet during the height of the Napoleonic Wars, and the boycott started up again in the 1820s as the abolition movement gathered more steam. Did the original boycott continue right up to 1807? Was it ever 'officially' ended, or did some people continue to boycott right on through, or did war-related trade disruption make it irrelevant, and how did it end and how did people's sweetener habits continue to be affected?

3. Would someone choosing to take tea unsweetened be assumed automatically to be part of the boycott - could someone just quietly start avoiding sweeteners, or would it immediately be read as a political statement? And was there a difference in meaning between giving up sugar, using East Indian sugar, and using honey/alternate local sweeteners? (*Did* people use local sweeteners? They did during the earlier American sugar boycotts, but the only thing that gets mentioned in accounts of the British one is East Indian sugar.)