History
Anything to do with History
Alvah
@Alvah -
about 18 hours ago
Death of an Occultist | History Today
The problem with theosophy, W.B. Yeats said, was that its followers wanted to turn a good philosophy into a bad religion. Its founder, Madame Blavatsky, seems to have agreed. ‘There are about half a dozen real theosophists in the world’, she told the great Irish poet. ‘An...continued
2 minutes read
Patrick
@Patrick -
about 18 hours ago
A Tyrant goes on Trial
The idea that leaders and their functionaries might be held to account did not begin with the Nuremberg Trials that followed the Second World War. Precedents cited in the trials themselves included the Imperial Diet at Regensburg, which followed Frederick II’s invasion of...continued
2 minutes read
Sandrine
@Sandrine -
about 18 hours ago
Is Caribbean History the Key to Understanding the Modern World?
‘The Caribbean became a focal point of rivalries among Europeans, a location where imperial contests were fought’Carla Gardina Pestana, Author of The English Conquest of Jamaica: Oliver Cromwell’s Bid for Empire (Belknap Harvard, 2017).The Caribbean ushered in the modern ...continued
8 minutes read
Moises
@Moises -
1 day ago
The Spy, The Enigma | History Today
George Blake, who died last year aged 98, is less well known than his fellow spies educated at Cambridge. He was not recruited by his peer group, he operated alone, he was not part of the Establishment and perhaps, as a result, he was treated more harshly than his fellow ...continued
5 minutes read
Minnie
@Minnie -
3 days ago
Polling in a Pandemic | History Today
This May, English, Scottish and Welsh voters go to the polls in the first UK elections held during a pandemic since 1918. That year, amid an influenza epidemic which claimed the lives of tens of millions globally, David Lloyd George led his coalition government to a crush...continued
6 minutes read
Monserrat
@Monserrat -
4 days ago
Breaking Time’s Arrow | History Today
‘Historians were key architects of empire’, writes Priya Satia, in her meditative, intensive and sweeping critique of the discipline of history. Questions of agency and intention have long been at the heart of historical explanation and critique, but Satia wishes to expos...continued
3 minutes read
Ariel
@Ariel -
4 days 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
Maida
@Maida -
8 days ago
Out of Time, But Not Out of Tune
A few months before the first lockdown I was browsing through a book I’ve often read before. It’s a collection of poems by the 15th-century friar James Ryman, who wrote a large number of English carols and hymn translations. It includes poems for all seasons of the year, ...continued
4 minutes read
Alvah
@Alvah -
10 days ago
400 Years of Melancholising | History Today
Melancholia. Engraving by Sebald Beham, 1539 © Bridgeman Images.The Oxford scholar Robert Burton completed his first and only book on 5 December 1620. Even as he did so, he was on the defensive, anticipating criticism: ‘I like it, so doth he, thou doest not, is it therefo...continued
1 minute read
Americo
@Americo -
10 days ago
Alternative Histories: Jerusalem, A.D. 30
[unable to retrieve full-text content]Alternative Histories: Jerusalem, A.D. 30Katie HolyoakWed, 04/28/2021 - 15:35Source: History Today Feed
1 minute read
Colin
@Colin -
11 days ago
Britannia’s ‘Huns’ | History Today
To continue reading this article you will need to purchase access to the online archive.Buy Online Access Buy Print & Archive SubscriptionIf you have already purchased access, or are a print & archive subscriber, please ensure you are logged in.Please email digit...continued
1 minute read
Garnet
@Garnet -
12 days ago
Raise Your Words | History Today
It is now 20 years since the publication of Jonathan Rose’s majestic and moving study, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes. Having sifted through more than 2,000 memoirs, Rose painted a vivid, sometimes barely believeable, portrait of men and women over t...continued
2 minutes read
Hannah
@Hannah -
12 days ago
The Man who Haunts America
David Blight, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, once wrote that as ‘long as we have a politics of race in America, we will have a politics of Civil War memory’. He could just as easily have written that, as long as the United States has a politics of race, its politic...continued
6 minutes read
Devin
@Devin -
15 days ago
Napoleon: Two Centuries of Life after Death
Napoleon on his Deathbed on St Helena, by Denzil O. Ibbetson, 1821.The French press announced the following on 7 July 1821:We received the English papers of the 4th of this month by special dispatch … This is how the Courrier gives the news: ‘Buonaparte is no more: he die...continued
1 minute read
Myles
@Myles -
15 days ago
Book of Remembrance | History Today
The legacy of Indigenous Australian service in the First World War has long been overlooked, in part due to wartime policies that initially restricted service to those of ‘substantially European’ descent. Australia had been settled on the legal fiction of terra nullius, w...continued
6 minutes read
Josiah
@Josiah -
17 days ago
Popes: Power to the People
Delivery of Keys to St Peter, by Vincenzo Catena, c.1520 © akg-images.A group of princes gathered in Schmalkalden, a small town in central Germany, in February 1537. These men of the Schmalkaldic League were eminent followers of Martin Luther, the Augustinian friar who ha...continued
1 minute read
Grayce
@Grayce -
17 days ago
Death of a Medieval Lover
From the beginning, their affair was hardly private. He joked about it in his lectures and wrote love songs that were sung far and wide. But they were both, in their own way, already famous.By the 1110s, Peter Abelard was in his thirties, with a fast-growing reputation as...continued
2 minutes read
Bart
@Bart -
18 days ago
America’s Western Problem | History Today
A Navajo woman and two young men at Ford Defiance, in what was then New Mexico, 1873. Photo by Timothy H O’Sullivan © Getty Images.The end of the American Civil War brought freedom to enslaved labourers in the South, but not to those in the West. Neither of the measures t...continued
1 minute read
Alexander
@Alexander -
19 days ago
Fiume for Fiumians | History Today
Before the Habsburg monarchy’s collapse, the port city of Fiume (now Rijeka in Croatia) was a corpus separatum, or semi-autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Hungary. It had its own council under a governor appointed by Budapest, rather than being subordinate to Hung...continued
5 minutes read
Pablo
@Pablo -
22 days ago
Turn on, Tune in, Fight Back
Southern Africa was among the last battlefields of the Cold War, a region where colonialism dug in its heels, eager to outlive its day. Whether it was the Zimbabwe African National Union’s armed struggle in Rhodesia, the Nelson Mandela-led ANC’s fight against Apartheid in...continued
3 minutes read
Delia
@Delia -
24 days ago
Is There Too Much Military History?
‘With all that has been written, there are still many questions worth addressing’Beatrice Heuser, Professor of International Relations, University of GlasgowAny visitor to a British airport bookshop will come away with the impression that business management and military ...continued
8 minutes read
George
@George -
25 days ago
Sheppard’s Warning | History Today
On 16 November 1724 Jack Sheppard was hanged at Tyburn. Where Marble Arch now stands, thousands witnessed the 22-year-old Londoner’s agonising end as plans to save him dissolved in chaos. While Sheppard’s brief career in burglary had not been especially notable, by the ti...continued
6 minutes read
Zackery
@Zackery -
26 days ago
Long Division | History Today
The British Empire is often presented as an endeavour that conquered territory, carried out atrocities and looted resources. Max Siollun’s What Britain Did to Nigeria provides some evidence to support that case. But Siollun also provides much-needed nuance: British coloni...continued
3 minutes read
Emmie
@Emmie -
29 days ago
The Poet as Daemon | History Today
Joseph Mede, one of John Milton’s tutors at Christ’s College, Cambridge, thought that Calvinists who believed in the doctrine of absolute reprobation were themselves fixed in strong opinions and so ‘according to their own Tempers made a judgement of God and his Decrees’. ...continued
7 minutes read
Giles
@Giles -
30 days ago
In Plain Sight | History Today
Tolerated for centuries of European history, only in the last few decades has sex between adults and children become an absolute taboo. In Unspeakable, Rachel Hope Cleves uses the life of one self-identified ‘pederast’, the writer Norman Douglas, to explain the conditions...continued
3 minutes read