History
Anything to do with History
Joe
@Joe -
almost 5 years ago
Britain’s Forgotten Citizens | History Today
The debates around the Windrush scandal of 2018, which saw people wrongly deported by the UK Home Office, reactivated discussions of Britishness, race and belonging. They also triggered references to history, from the traffic of enslaved Africans to Caribbean plantations,...continued
9 minutes read
Marjory
@Marjory -
about 3 years ago
Policing Abortion | History Today
Ben JonesA new law came into effect in the state of Texas on 1 September 2021, which criminalised abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy. This is an addition to the recent cascade of state legislation – at least 90 laws in the first six months of 2021 – designed to un...continued
8 minutes read
Grayce
@Grayce -
over 1 year ago
The Lost Script of Rapa Nui
‘Strange hieroglyphs’: rongorongo inscription, Easter Island. George Holton/Science Photo LibraryHidden away in a nondescript building on the outskirts of Rome, there is a wooden tablet from Easter Island, more remarkable and mysterious than any of its famous statues. Rep...continued
9 minutes read
Webster
@Webster -
over 2 years ago
Babies of the House | History Today
Ben JonesIn November 2021 the MP for Walthamstow, Stella Creasy, introduced a Westminster Hall debate on the promotion and regulation of financial products on Black Friday. Later that day, however, she discovered she had started a much wider debate. Dr Creasy received an ...continued
9 minutes read
Giles
@Giles -
2 months ago
Aliens and the Enlightenment | History Today
For millennia everybody knew that human beings enjoy a privileged, unique position at the centre of the universe. That self-confidence began to crack after Nicolaus Copernicus suggested that the Earth goes round the Sun and an exciting but frightening possibility emerged:...continued
8 minutes read
Hulda
@Hulda -
over 1 year ago
The Lost City | History Today
Percy Fawcett on an expedition in South America, c.1910. GRANGER - Historical Picture Archive / Alamy Stock Photo.No one knows what became of Lt. Col. Percy Fawcett. He was last seen alive on 29 May 1925, at a place known as ‘Dead Horse Camp’, somewhere in the Mato Grosso...continued
9 minutes read
George
@George -
about 2 years ago
Has a War on Drugs Ever Been Won?
Detail from an oil painting of a man smoking an opium pipe, date unknown. This picture hung in an opium den in London’s Victoria Street, run by Ah Sing (d. 1890). Sing’s opium den was probably the most famous of the dens in Victorian London, and was the model for the one ...continued
8 minutes read
Elaina
@Elaina -
over 1 year ago
Is History Written by the Winners?
The August Coup, an attempted Soviet coup d'état, Moscow, 1991. Wikimedia Commons. ‘The powerful of one era are not the same as those of the preceding one’ Levi Roach, Associate Professor of Medieval History at the University of Exeter and author of Empires of the Normans...continued
8 minutes read
Angus
@Angus -
about 5 years ago
A Second British Revolution | History Today
On 9 September, as Black Rod entered the Commons to deliver the summons to attend the Lords as part of the prorogation ceremony, a number of MPs attempted to keep the Speaker, John Bercow, in his chair. This action, as the Labour MP Clive Lewis acknowledged, was an imitat...continued
8 minutes read
Casper
@Casper -
9 months ago
Measuring the Shape of the Earth
In 1726 Voltaire faced a not very difficult choice: imprisonment without trial in the Bastille, or exile in England. After sailing across the Channel, he landed in another universe. Before leaving France, he declared, he had lived in a world that was full – but as soon as...continued
8 minutes read
Meggie
@Meggie -
over 1 year ago
Nationalism in Nepal: On the Right Side of History
Illustration by Ben Jones.Balen Shah, the 33-year-old rapper and mayor of Kathmandu, is a man on various missions. Since his unlikely victory in 2022, he has waged war on government ministries, landlords, Nepal’s civil aviation authority, roadside hawkers and landless slu...continued
8 minutes read
Zetta
@Zetta -
over 1 year ago
What do historians lose with the decline of local news?
Newspaper seller, London, 1900. George Grantham Bain Collection.‘By the 1990s many titles were “local in name only”’ Rachel Matthews, Associate Director of the Institute for Creative Cultures at Coventry University and author of The History of the Provincial Press in Engl...continued
8 minutes read
Emmie
@Emmie -
over 2 years ago
The 51st State? | History Today
Ben JonesOn 3 June 2022 representatives from the US Democratic Party, Raúl Grijalva, Nydia Velázquez and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, travelled to Puerto Rico, where they joined the island’s resident commissioner Jenniffer González Colón, a Republican, to discuss the Puerto ...continued
8 minutes read
Sandrine
@Sandrine -
about 2 years ago
What Influence has the BBC had on History?
Venu Chitale, photographed in the 1940s. She began her career as secretary to George Orwell, and later became a prominent broadcaster. Wiki Commons.‘The BBC has always done far more than reflect the contemporary’David Hendy, Author of The BBC: A People’s History (Profile,...continued
8 minutes read
George
@George -
over 2 years ago
Was the Cold War the Biggest Change in Russia’s Relationship with the West?
Richard Nixon (right) meets Leonid Brezhnev (left) on 19 June 1973 during the Soviet Leader’s visit to the US. The interpreter is Viktor Sukhodrev. Image: The National Archives and Records Administration.‘The Cold War fits the pattern of typical conflicts between Russia a...continued
8 minutes read
Cyril
@Cyril -
about 1 year ago
Why Is the United States Hostile to Socialism?
Communist Party of the United States of America election poster, c. 1975-6. Library of Congress. Public Domain.‘The view among European socialists was that the US was an outlier, and in a bad way’Adam Smith is Edward Orsborn Professor of US Politics & Political Histor...continued
8 minutes read
Marlon
@Marlon -
about 2 years ago
Sign of the Times | History Today
Ben JonesOn 18 March this year thousands of people from the British Deaf community gathered at Trafalgar Square to support the British Sign Language (BSL) Bill on its third reading in the House of Commons. The BSL Act, which came into law in June, promised momentous chang...continued
8 minutes read
Geovany
@Geovany -
over 2 years ago
Turkey’s Historical Relationship with Europe
Map showing the Sykes–Picot Agreement, a 1916 secret treaty between the United Kingdom and France. British Library/Wiki Commons.‘Six decades of integration cannot be undone, even by a strongman like Erdoğan’Dimitar Bechev, Author of Turkey Under Erdoğan: How a Country Tu...continued
7 minutes read
Alexander
@Alexander -
over 2 years ago
Turkey and Europe’s Difficult History
Map showing the Sykes–Picot Agreement, a 1916 secret treaty between the United Kingdom and France. British Library/Wiki Commons.‘Six decades of integration cannot be undone, even by a strongman like Erdoğan’Dimitar Bechev, Author of Turkey Under Erdoğan: How a Country Tu...continued
7 minutes read
Ryleigh
@Ryleigh -
about 1 year ago
Will Putin Get His ‘Nuremberg Moment’?
© Ben Jones/Heart Agency.Interviewed in the Guardian in March 2022, the international lawyer Philippe Sands said that: ‘The world changed in 1945. It was a revolutionary moment. For the first time, states agreed that they were not absolutely sovereign, that they could not...continued
8 minutes read
Jany
@Jany -
over 1 year ago
What We Talk About When We Talk About Tunguska
Ben Jones.Just over a decade after the imperial outpost of Tsaritsyn had become the Soviet city of Stalingrad in 1925, a young writer named Manuil Semenov published a short story, ‘Prisoners of the Earth’, in Young Leninist, the local newspaper of the Communist Youth Leag...continued
8 minutes read
Alexie
@Alexie -
over 1 year ago
Does the Concept of the Third World have any Historical Value?
Pocket globe, c. 1775. Cambridge University Library/Google Arts and Culture.‘The so-called Third World rarely acted collectively’Hazem Kandil, Professor of Historical and Political Sociology at the University of CambridgeCatch-all terms are inherently inaccurate, though t...continued
8 minutes read
Izaiah
@Izaiah -
about 5 years ago
Leaving Hong Kong | History Today
Hong Kong’s summer has been marked by widespread political unrest. The trigger was a proposed bill that would allow the territory’s government to extradite Hong Kong residents to countries with which Hong Kong did not have an extradition treaty. Prominently, these include...continued
8 minutes read
Dayton
@Dayton -
over 1 year ago
A Secret History of Mongolian Wolves
Ben JonesIn Mongolia, where the dominant lifestyle is nomadic pastoralism, threat comes from the land. Wolves (chono) are found throughout the nation’s various ecosystems: steppe, semi-desert, mountains. Their existence has been lamented and romanticised for centuries.Mon...continued
8 minutes read
Hank
@Hank -
about 1 year ago
Four Historians Tell Us a Ghost Story
Amateurs playing ghost scene by photographer W. S. Hobson, c. 1887. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Public Domain.‘What the servant saw made him drop the tray with an almighty crash’Francis Young, author of English Catholics and the Supernatural (Ashgate, 2013) Lat...continued
8 minutes read