Feature

Saint Augustine was educated for a Roman world, but it was his time in North Africa that shaped his identity, his faith, and Christianity itself.

Childbirth in the early modern period was a battleground between midwives and surgeons. The Chamberlen family of surgeons sought to reform the system with a revolutionary new tool: the forceps.

Chinese astronomers and the European Jesuits who worked alongside them found evidence of China’s antiquity in the heavens. Others were sceptical: how old was China really?

The slave trade was an international criminal enterprise. In 1811 an uprising on the slaving ship Amelia off the coast of West Africa revealed a complex network spanning four continents.

In the early 1900s the small but influential Zoroastrian community in India contemplated establishing a colony in Iran. Could the Parsis rely on British support?

Fearing the loss of regional identity, at the end of the 19th century, the French Basques invented a cultural tradition – but did that make them a threat to national unity?

Following Japan’s unconditional surrender in September 1945, the US aimed to rebuild the nation in its own image – for better or worse.

Who was Martin Marprelate, seditious pamphleteer and enemy of the Elizabethan Church and state? And, more importantly, how could he be stopped?

For the ancient Greeks, the Peloponnesian War was a conflict involving the entire world. For Thucydides, it was a lesson in the realities of human nature