History
Anything to do with History
Kraig
@Kraig -
almost 4 years ago
Is Social Media Good for History?
‘Social media favours the quirky, the visual, the gruesome’ Catherine Fletcher, Professor of History, Manchester Metropolitan University and author of The Beauty and the Terror: An Alternative History of the Italian Renaissance (Bodley Head, 2020) At its best, social medi...continued
8 minutes read
Muriel
@Muriel -
over 4 years ago
Are Empires Always Bad? | History Today
Being part of the Aztec federation was not without its advantages Caroline Dodds Pennock, Senior Lecturer in International History at the University of Sheffield Stereotyping ‘empire’ as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is not only deeply flawed and ahistorical, but also misses the fact t...continued
8 minutes read
Jessika
@Jessika -
over 4 years ago
What are the Enduring Legacies of the American Civil War?
The Civil War left far too much the same Susan-Mary Grant, Professor of American History at Newcastle University In The Gilded Age, the novel that named the postwar era, Mark Twain observed that the Civil War had ‘uprooted institutions that were centuries old, changed the...continued
8 minutes read
Jimmy
@Jimmy -
9 months ago
Armenia’s Eleventh Century | History Today
Ben JonesNow the Seljuk king came with many armed troops and entered our land, spreading fear and terror among those far and near. He trampled on and overturned many lands until he reached the city of Ani. The armed troops made their way over the wall and poured into the ...continued
7 minutes read
Jany
@Jany -
over 3 years ago
Who’s Afraid of the Stasi?
When one thinks about East Germany’s Ministry for State Security, or Stasi, images spring to mind of a ubiquitous, all-pervading secret police whose tentacles extended into every last nook and cranny of public and private life. For many, the word Stasi will doubtless conj...continued
8 minutes read
Cynthia
@Cynthia -
about 4 years ago
Are There Any Meaningful Historical Analogies for Brexit?
Simplistic analogies shed far more heat than light Ali Ansari, Professor of Modern History, University of St Andrews There are lessons to be learnt from our collective historical experience but what we are witnessing at the moment, in our febrile political atmosphere, is ...continued
8 minutes read
Geovany
@Geovany -
about 4 years ago
Is There Still Value in ‘Great Man’ History?
Big Beasts are especially good at changing a general mood in society Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church, Oxford University and author of Thomas Cromwell: a Life (Allen Lane, 2018) Having written a couple of biographies of Tudor chaps, I’m well-dis...continued
8 minutes read
Elody
@Elody -
almost 3 years ago
Books of the Year 2020
‘A bold story of a society dramatically different from our own’ Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir, Author of Valkyrie: Women of the Viking World (Bloomsbury, 2020). Neil Price’s The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings is a wide-ranging and engaging account o...continued
6 minutes read
Gregoria
@Gregoria -
over 1 year ago
Potted Histories | History Today
Monstera deliciosa Liebm, specimen collected by E. Kerber, May 1883. National Museum of Natural History/Smithsonian Collections.House plants are big business. In 2019 US trade was valued at $1.7 billion. The industry originates from a historical convergence of tropical bo...continued
6 minutes read
Izaiah
@Izaiah -
over 1 year ago
Survival of the Least Fit
Poster of the ‘Birth of the Soviets and the Different Organs of Soviet Power’, depicting the hierarchical organisation of Soviet Power, c. 1920. LSE Library.The era of large tomes about Russia has given way to shorter overviews, often with a personal narrative bias. The h...continued
7 minutes read
Myles
@Myles -
about 2 months ago
The Rise and Fall of Mein Kampf
Foyles employees use copies of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf to protect their room from possible German bombs, London, 5 September 1939. Photo by Bettmann Archive/Getty Images.Books hold a special power. We read, we buy or borrow, we support public libraries and campaign to k...continued
7 minutes read
Joe
@Joe -
over 1 year ago
Legalised Lawlessness | History Today
A search for arms on the Jerusalem-Jaffa Road, 1938. Library of Congress.Historians of the British Empire have a fondness for writing very long books. If the global scale of the subject helps to explain this tendency so, perhaps, does the lure of Gibbonian glory. Jan Morr...continued
7 minutes read
Myles
@Myles -
about 4 years ago
What Counts as a Concentration Camp?
When US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez prompted a public debate in June by using the words ‘concentration camps’ to describe detention centres at the southern US border, historians were quick to jump into the fray. Whether or not they agreed with Ocasio-Cortez hin...continued
7 minutes read
Garnet
@Garnet -
over 3 years ago
The State of Myanmar | History Today
In late 2019 Myanmar was summoned to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. A delegation led by Nobel peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi attended the hearing in order to defend the state against charges of genocide against the country’s Rohingya minority....continued
7 minutes read
Rex
@Rex -
almost 4 years ago
Cambodia's Crimes Unpunished | History Today
To be Cambodian is to have one’s life touched by the Khmer Rouge. The regime was in power for just three years, eight months and 20 days, but was responsible for an estimated 1.7 million deaths, about a quarter of the population. Forty years after its fall in January 1979...continued
7 minutes read
Cyril
@Cyril -
2 months ago
Sun Tzu and the Art of Becoming Famous
Chinese warlord Cao Cao – who wrote one of the earliest military commentaries to Sun Tzu’s Art of War – meeting with politician Hua Xin, Chinese, late 19th-early 20th century. Album/Alamy Stock Photo.Sunzi’s (Sun Tzu) Art of War is rightly seen in China and the West as on...continued
6 minutes read
Jarod
@Jarod -
over 3 years ago
Rediscovering Trans History | History Today
Charles Hamilton, a travelling medicine-seller in 18th-century Somerset, was a dapper, charming suitor, wooing a landlady’s niece and settling into the role of husband until, in 1746, the newlywed bride denounced their marriage as fraudulent. After a Glastonbury jury rule...continued
6 minutes read
Casper
@Casper -
5 months ago
Gossip Pages | History Today
Olga in an Armchair, by Pablo Picasso, 1918. Wikimedia CommonsFlorian Illies’ new book is full of gossip. Did you know that Simone de Beauvoir stood Jean-Paul Sartre up on their first date, instructing her sister to go to the café and deliver her apologies to someone who ...continued
7 minutes read
Kari
@Kari -
almost 4 years ago
Politics and Poetry | History Today
Today, we largely think of Persian as the national language of Iran. But this region is merely the core remnant of a once enormous swathe of the Eurasian landmass in which Persian was the lingua franca for nearly 1,000 years. Stretching from the Bosphorus to the Brahmaput...continued
7 minutes read
Giovanni
@Giovanni -
5 months ago
From the Protector’s Mouth | History Today
Cromwell in the Battle of Naseby in 1645, by Charles Landseer, 1851. Wikimedia CommonsAmong the most extraordinary figures from English history, Oliver Cromwell stands out for a number of reasons: at the age of 40 in 1640 he was merely a backbench MP and minor gentleman, ...continued
7 minutes read
Hannah
@Hannah -
over 1 year ago
Pirate Voyage | History Today
The Emanuele Accame, 20th century. Alfio Bernabei Personal Collection.Two months before the March on Rome of October 1922, Benito Mussolini was faced with the first antifascist protest outside of Italy, which threatened to derail efforts to present his party as an accepta...continued
6 minutes read
Devin
@Devin -
10 months ago
Kalifornia Dreaming | History Today
Swami Vivekananda, photographed in Chicago, September 1893. On the left (cropped) Vivekananda wrote in his own handwriting: ‘One infinite pure and holy – beyond thought beyond qualities I bow down to thee.’ Wiki Commons.Gwyneth Paltrow would have us believe she discovered...continued
6 minutes read
Mariano
@Mariano -
almost 4 years ago
Pause and Effect | History Today
We send each other millions of faces each day, hoping to press complex emotional tones into waywardly arranged punctuation marks: a colon, a dash, half a bracket, closed if happy, open if sad. This seems like a radical reinvention of these marks, yet the real leap of thou...continued
6 minutes read
Hulda
@Hulda -
about 1 year ago
Minor Monarchs | History Today
The coronation of Henry VI in Paris, from the Anciennes chroniques d’Angleterre, 15th century. Alamy.Boy kings have often been viewed as paradoxical to medieval ideals of royal rulership. This is thanks, in part, to the longstanding myth that strong, adult kingship equall...continued
6 minutes read
Bart
@Bart -
over 4 years ago
Paris' Problem with the Dead
There’s a scene in the US political thriller House of Cards in which Claire Underwood, played by Robin Wright, goes for a run in a cemetery and, to her shock, is berated for doing so by an elderly woman who is there to mourn. Aside from underlining the moral complexity o...continued
6 minutes read