History
Anything to do with History
Marjory
@Marjory -
over 4 years ago
Escape to Mexico | History Today
On 12 November 2019 a Gulfstream G550 belonging to the Mexican air force landed in the Bolivian jungle. On board was Evo Morales, president of Bolivia for 14 years, who three weeks earlier had claimed his fourth election victory. After detours to prevent a diplomatic inci...continued
9 minutes read
Anderson
@Anderson -
about 2 years ago
Demanding Surrender | History Today
Ben JonesAnglo-American extradition is in the news. The administrations of both Donald Trump and Joe Biden have refused to return Anne Sacoolas for prosecution over teenager Harry Dunn’s death in 2019 on the grounds of her diplomatic immunity. Yet both have pressed for th...continued
8 minutes read
Mariano
@Mariano -
over 1 year ago
Off with Their Heads! | History Today
Ben JonesRecent years have seen a slow but steadily rising tide of dissatisfaction with royalty in Britain. Accelerated by the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the coronation of King Charles III and a regular diet of scandal surrounding Prince Andrew, as well as the fracturin...continued
8 minutes read
Felicita
@Felicita -
over 1 year ago
Germany and the Yellow Star
Illustration by Ben JonesDuring the Covid pandemic, as those opposed to lockdowns and vaccinations organised large protests, several German cities reacted with alarm. Some protesters had taken to wearing a yellow star – the symbol first forced upon Jews by the Nazis in Se...continued
8 minutes read
Wilmer
@Wilmer -
about 1 year ago
What Can Historical Clothing Reveal That Other Sources Cannot?
A painting of Elizabeth I by William Segar, known as the Ermine Portrait, in the collection of Hatfield House. Public Domain.‘What survives speaks eloquently of the emotional value placed on items of attire’Maria Hayward, author of Stuart Style: Monarchy, Dress and the Sc...continued
8 minutes read
Webster
@Webster -
about 2 years ago
Sri Lanka’s Deep Wounds | History Today
Ben JonesOn 31 March 2022 a public protest occurred in the vicinity of the home of the Sri Lankan president Gotabhaya Rajapakse. The protest marked frustration at the shortages of essential commodities (gas, medicines, fuel) and the gruelling ten-to-13-hour power cuts imp...continued
8 minutes read
Ezequiel
@Ezequiel -
over 2 years ago
Goodbye to the Vikings | History Today
Ben Jones (detail).There was no such thing as a ‘Viking’ in the medieval period. Use of the term emerged in the 19th century. The word wicing occurred in Old English and víkingr in Old Icelandic, but were used very differently, to mean something like ‘pirate’. Academics n...continued
8 minutes read
Webster
@Webster -
about 2 years ago
How Has the Ancient World Been Appropriated in Modernity?
Parade commemorating the 2500th anniversary of the Persian Empire, held amid the ruins of Persepolis. Iran, October 1971. Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images.‘Cyrus the Great is portrayed as a religious man and a forerunner of monotheism’Ali Ansari, Professor of History a...continued
8 minutes read
Wilmer
@Wilmer -
almost 2 years ago
Ghosts of Java | History Today
Ben JonesOn the YouTube video, you can see a young Chinese-Indonesian man, maybe in his early 20s, wearing a green shirt, moving acrobatically with a long staff inside what looks like a garage. A man reciting the Quran through a PA system can be heard somewhere outside th...continued
8 minutes read
Muriel
@Muriel -
over 1 year ago
Don’t Look Up | History Today
Ben JonesOne of the largest social movements in recent Hawaiian history took place in the summer of 2019 at the foot of Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano located on Hawai‘i island, also known as the Big Island. Thousands of kia‘i, or ‘protectors’, of the mountain braved the co...continued
8 minutes read
Kari
@Kari -
almost 3 years ago
Did Britain Ever Have a Revolutionary Moment?
Mural depicting the Chartist uprising in Newport, 1839. Created by Kenneth Budd in 1978 and destroyed in 2013. Wiki Commons.‘European observers viewed Charles I’s execution as an unprecedented, revolutionary move’Edward Vallance, Professor of History at the University of ...continued
8 minutes read
Rowan
@Rowan -
almost 2 years ago
What is a ‘Just War’?
Painting by F.J. Mears, before 1930. Wiki Commons.‘Does it matter all that much how we break things and make our enemy’s mothers weep?’Cathal J. Nolan, Professor of History at Boston University and author of Mercy: Humanity in War (Oxford University Press, 2023)During the...continued
8 minutes read
Abbie
@Abbie -
over 2 years ago
Gifts for the Nation | History Today
Ben JonesFew contemporary philanthropists would consider giving money to ease the national debt. But in 1928, Winston Churchill – then the Chancellor of the Exchequer – announced an anonymous charitable gift of £500,000 to a new fund, set up to pay off the UK’s substantia...continued
8 minutes read
Jaydon
@Jaydon -
over 2 years ago
How did the Victorians Become a Reference Point for Joyless Prudery?
Anonymous group portrait, c.1866. Rijksmuseum.‘Lytton Strachey’s ‘Eminent Victorians’ did much to sow the seeds’Thomas Dixon, Professor of History at Queen Mary University of London and author of Weeping Britannia: Portrait of a Nation in Tears (Oxford University Press, 2...continued
8 minutes read
Marie
@Marie -
about 2 years ago
Chaucer on Trial | History Today
It is not often the case that a medieval English poet makes headlines in the New York Times, or is a trending topic on Twitter. But this is what happened in October 2022 when two new legal documents were unveiled relating to the life of later medieval England’s most famou...continued
8 minutes read
Devin
@Devin -
over 2 years ago
Hong Kong and the Huguenots
Ben JonesAs the long shadow of China’s National Security Law fell over Hong Kong in June 2020 the ‘one country, two systems’ appeared to be dead in the water. First formulated by Deng Xiaoping in his negotiations with Margaret Thatcher’s government in the lead up to the D...continued
8 minutes read
Jeffrey
@Jeffrey -
over 4 years ago
Who is History’s Worst Political Adviser?
‘Many bristled at Nikephoros’ tactless behaviour’ Peter Frankopan, Professor of Global History at the University of Oxford History, as we know, does not repeat itself. It is simply a coincidence that in the Byzantine Empire in the second half of the 11th century an advis...continued
8 minutes read
Torey
@Torey -
over 4 years ago
What is History? | History Today
‘History is the study of people, actions, decisions, interactions and behaviours’ Francesca Morphakis, PhD Candidate in History at the University of Leeds History is narratives. From chaos comes order. We seek to understand the past by determining and ordering ‘facts’; an...continued
8 minutes read
Minnie
@Minnie -
about 5 years ago
Statues, Politics and The Past
What purpose do statues serve? This question came to the fore when former prime minister Theresa May announced plans in June 2019 for a memorial in London’s Waterloo station commemorating the arrival to Britain in 1948 of the first of the Windrush generation. The Windrush...continued
8 minutes read
Minnie
@Minnie -
almost 2 years ago
Decline and Fall | History Today
Ben JonesWhen describing America or ‘the West’ more broadly, ‘decadence’ is often invoked. Certain factions in Western democracies fret that, as economic power shifts towards Asia, their once-powerful societies have been irrevocably diminished and are rife with inertia. M...continued
8 minutes read
Americo
@Americo -
over 5 years ago
Kazakhstan’s Nuclear Nightmare | History Today
Seventy years ago, an explosion in a far-flung corner of Soviet-ruled Kazakhstan set off an arms race that took the world to the brink of nuclear Armageddon. Four years earlier, the US had ended the Second World War by dropping atomic bombs on Japan. Joseph Stalin’s USSR ...continued
8 minutes read
Clarissa
@Clarissa -
over 4 years ago
Does Boom Always Follow Bust?
For this historian, the next boom feels a long way off Catherine Schenk, Professor of Economic and Social History at the University of Oxford The quick answer to this question is ‘no’, of course, since ‘always’ never happens in history. Ignoring that word, we can fall bac...continued
8 minutes read
Casper
@Casper -
almost 2 years ago
What Have Strikes Achieved? | History Today
‘Una huelga de obreros en Vizcaya (A strike of workers in Biscay)’, Vicente Cutanda, 1892. Museo del Prado/Wiki Commons.‘In Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, the women of Greece unite together in a sex-strike’Lynette Mitchell, Professor in Greek History and Politics at the Univer...continued
8 minutes read
Ariel
@Ariel -
over 3 years ago
The Lives of Napoleon | History Today
Two hundred years after his death, what more is there to say about Napoleon Bonaparte? He remains a perennially popular subject for works of history aimed at the general reader, whether conventional biographies or more specialised studies on aspects of his life, regime an...continued
8 minutes read
Josiah
@Josiah -
over 4 years ago
What can History tell us about Epidemics?
‘Strategies to cope with plague have formed the basis for later policies’ John Henderson, Professor of Italian Renaissance History at Birkbeck, University of London and author of Florence Under Siege: Surviving Plague in an Early Modern City (Yale, 2019) News about the sp...continued
8 minutes read