The Java War, Mein Kampf and the German people, the survival of Europe’s pagans, the speed of early modern news, Italian emigrants in the First World War, and more.
Plus: reviews, opinion, crossword and much more!
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In 1825 Java’s old order rose up against encroaching European colonialism. What – and who – were the Javanese rebels fighting for?
A huge bestseller and undisputed guide to the Nazi worldview, did Germans actually read Mein Kampf?
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.
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.
‘Mary, Bessie, James you ken, then Charlie, Charlie, James again...’ Does the litany of kings and queens help or hinder an accurate understanding of Britain’s past?
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?
The Writer’s Lot: Culture and Revolution in Eighteenth-Century France by Robert Darnton discovers a literary flowering in the shadow of the guillotine.
Poets across the ages have sought help with their writing – but AI bears no comparison with the divine.
In the early 20th century the prison population in England and Wales was in sharp decline, despite a rise in crime.
Long overshadowed by Lindbergh, The Big Hop: The First Non-Stop Flight Across the Atlantic and Into the Future by David Rooney returns Alcock and Brown to aviation's top flight.
How to reform an ancient Greek tyrant? Plato’s final advice to Dionysius the Younger was not well received.
On 5 July 1852 the curtain was raised on Barney Barnato, one of the richest men in South Africa.
How did Swahili become an East African lingua franca? It was not by accident.
In Language and Social Relations in Early Modern England Hillary Taylor listens in the archives for the voices of ordinary people.
Britain’s first book-of-the-month club – the Book Society – brought reading to a vast new audience. But not without some controversy.
How did a Gulf backwater become a global powerbroker? Saudi Arabia: A Modern History by David Commins explores the uneasy alliance between oil, autocracy, and Wahhabism.
How should we see the natural world? For Descartes it was a mechanism, but a wondrous one.
