Volume 70 Issue 10 October 2020

Birth of a Freedom Fighter

Nat Turner, leader of one of the most significant rebellions in the antebellum South, was born on 2 October 1800.

The Shanghai Race Club

Though horse racing was a symbol of British colonialism, it became a surprisingly inclusive pastime in China’s major International Settlement. 

Buying Nazism

In the early years of Nazi rule, the vagueness of much Nazi ideology enabled many Germans to see in Nazism what they wanted to see.

Bats: Out of Hell?

It took an Irish Gothic novelist to tie up centuries of demonic mythology surrounding this leathery, nocturnal mammal. 

Before Empire

In its earliest days, the East India Company was seen not as a threat to Asia’s elites, but as a means of strengthening their powers.

Making Massacre

A Dutch conspiracy trial in the Indonesian archipelago gave birth to a sadly enduring English word.