Feature

Border Control: How States Get Recognised

What makes a state? Is it its people, its borders, its government, or does it rest on recognition from international powers? Across the 19th and 20th centuries, the process by which states have been created and recognised has taken many forms.

Bringing Down the Curtain on the Touring Theatre

For most of the late 16th and early 17th century, theatre companies touring England were welcomed in provincial towns. But as tastes changed, players found themselves take second billing to moral concerns.

The Mongol Khans of Medieval France

The kings of medieval France were fascinated by the Mongols, who they saw as great empire builders. Eager to learn more, they amassed a huge archive of knowledge about them

Doctor Chamberlen’s Forceps

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.

Written in the Stars: How Old is China?

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?

Zoroastrians in the Great Game

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?

Basque Identity and French Unity

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?