By the early 20th century the indigenous San peoples of South Africa were deemed to be almost extinct. The arguments for their protection drew on colonial methods of wildlife preservation and reduced them to the status of an endangered species.
British military engagement in northwest Europe did not pause after Waterloo and resume in 1914. The intervening century saw fluctuations in French power – and the creation of a strategic system to control it.
The ancient world found him to have achieved greatness and thrust it upon his name, but was the destruction of Babylon Cyrus’ divinely ordained destiny?
More than 5,000 people were interviewed during the Great Inquisition of medieval Toulouse. What did this mean for those ordinary people called to give evidence?
In 1903 a group of politicians tried to sell tariffs as a panacea to all of Britain’s problems. Would the public buy it?
Italy’s entry into the Great War in 1915 prompted 300,000 men to return to their homeland to join the fight. Were they Italian enough for Italy?
How did Western Europe learn of the fall of Constantinople, the loss of Negroponte, and the Ottoman defeat at Lepanto? In the early modern era all news was slow news.
By the 14th century Christianity had swept many of Europe’s indigenous religions aside, but not all. At the continent’s peripheries paganism survived and, in some cases, thrived.
A huge bestseller and undisputed guide to the Nazi worldview, did Germans actually read Mein Kampf?
In 1825 Java’s old order rose up against encroaching European colonialism. What – and who – were the Javanese rebels fighting for?
