Feature

Believing language would unify their struggling nation, Chinese officials began a project to create a national language and define what it meant to speak Chinese. 

How an individual act of resistance in 1850s’ New York led to the desegregation of the city’s transit system.

If we are to better understand the actions of men such as Hernán Cortés, we must place them in the context of a medieval world view that predated the nation state.

The belief that you are what you eat emerged in 19th-century France, where the pleasures of the table were sautéed with philosophy and medicine. 

Muslims from Asia who wished to travel to Mecca on the Hajj were exploited by a trade in human cargo that grew with the opening of the Suez Canal.

Six historians share the books they’ve enjoyed this year.

A selection of our favourite articles from the past year.

The scandalous breakdown of the marriage between Caroline of Brunswick and George IV played out against a background of political agitation and economic distress.

A celebrated novelist and tireless social reformer, Mary Ward has been all but forgotten because of her support for the anti-suffrage movement.

The distinction between centre and periphery was vital to the Roman Empire’s conception of itself. For centuries a rugged frontier, the land north of the Danube would produce one of Rome’s greatest foes.