Showing results by narrator "Colin Fluxman" in All Categories

The issue of race in the British Empire is as complex as the history of the British Empire itself. The origins of the British Empire lie in the settlement of North America and the Caribbean, both of which led to complex intersections of imperialism, commerce, and race. The Windrush Scandal: The History of the Modern Controversy and Race Relations in the British Empire examines how racism in the United Kingdom affected the empire at home and abroad.

Shortly after Emperor Hadrian came to power in the early second century CE, he decided to seal off Scotland from Roman Britain with an ambitious wall stretching from sea to sea. The sheer scale of Hadrian’s Wall still impresses people today, but as the Western Roman Empire collapsed in the late fifth century, Hadrian’s Wall was abandoned and Roman control of the area broke down. Little is known of this period of British history, but soon the Anglo-Saxons showed up and began to settle the land, creating a patchwork of little kingdoms and starting a new era of British history.

When people think of ancient Greece, images of philosophers such as Plato or Socrates often come to mind, as do great warriors like Pericles and Alexander the Great, but hundreds of years before Athens became a city, a Greek culture flourished and spread its tentacles throughout the western Mediterranean region via trade and warfare. Scholars have termed this pre-Classical Greek culture the Mycenaean culture, which existed from about 2000-1200 BCE, when Greece, along with much of the eastern Mediterranean, was thrust into a centuries long Dark Ages.

The Byzantine Empire was the heir to two great cultures that cradled and nurtured European civilization: Greece and Rome. Byzantium was a strong, organized, highly effective, and adaptable civilization for most of its long history. It owed its success in no small part to its military, which, in contrast to the feudal armies of Western Europe and the tribally based forces of the Middle East, operated with a high level of discipline, strategic prowess, efficiency, and organization. The most famous of the foreign units was without question the Varangian Guard.

Modern perceptions of ancient Greece are almost always based on Athens and Sparta, which is why other city-states and other military units besides the hoplites have been overlooked for thousands of years. For this reason, Greek cavalry forces - including their composition, purpose, techniques, equipment, and developments - are still not very well understood when compared with their naval or infantry counterparts.

Much of the systematic mechanics and the continual advancement of modern civilization have been shaped by history's most brilliant economists and greatest thinkers. In economics, the most famous figure is undoubtedly Adam Smith, an 18th century philosopher and one of the original champions of the free market, whose ideas were encapsulated in his most famous works, The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments, published in the midst of the Scottish Enlightenment.

The largest island of the Mediterranean has always been a complicated place with a fraught relationship to the Italian mainland. Separated by only the narrow Strait of Messina, Sicily feels like a different country in many ways, and the differences between Sicilians and Italians are much vaster than the tiny geographical separating them might intimate. For example, the linguistic differences between the two are substantial, as Sicilian is practically its own language, rather than just a dialect.

April 7 is World Health Organization Day, in honor of the day that the World Health Organization held the first World Health Assembly in 1948. International health conferences had been held nearly a century before this date, and international health organizations had been established in the half century prior to the creation of the World Health Organization, but 1948 marked the year that a formal institution was created to direct and implement a concerted and truly global effort to investigate, prevent, control, and cure disease.

Various flying saucer sightings got the attention of the governments of the United States and other nations. The world was gripped in a Cold War, and some officials wondered if the UFOs might be experimental craft from some hostile power, most likely the Soviet Union. The American government in particular wanted to investigate the phenomenon to find out if this might be the case, as well as to calm public fears over what was appearing in the skies. Another motivation was to quash all the calls flooding into Air Force bases and police stations.

When people think of ancient Greece, images of philosophers such as Plato or Socrates often come to mind, as do great warriors like Pericles and Alexander the Great. But hundreds of years before Athens became a city, a Greek culture flourished and spread its tentacles throughout the Western Mediterranean region via trade and warfare. Scholars have termed this pre-Classical Greek culture the Mycenaean culture, which existed from about 2000 to 1200 BCE, when Greece, along with much of the Eastern Mediterranean, was thrust into a centuries-long Dark Ages.

Today, "the Anarchy" is used to describe the period in English history from the death of Henry I in 1135 to the Treaty of Winchester signed by King Stephen and his successor Henry II in 1153. Despite the name, it was an episode of civil war rather than of lawlessness and is interesting for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it was the first time in English history that a woman claimed the throne of England in her own right.

Until the 1930s, nationalism had always tended to be a phenomenon of the right-wing or the immigrant anarchists and Bolsheviks. Now, however, the emphasis shifted to the middle ground, and ironically, one of the issues driving Argentine nationalism was the outsized British presence in Argentine affairs, stoked recently by the preferential trade agreement. Perhaps most importantly, the seizure by the British in 1833 of the Islas Malvinas (or as the British termed them, the Falkland Islands) remained a sore point.

By the time Christopher Columbus started setting east from the New World, he had explored San Salvador in the Bahamas (which he thought was Japan), Cuba (which he thought was China), and Hispaniola, the source of gold. As the common story goes, Columbus, en route back to Spain from his first journey, called in at Lisbon as a courtesy to brief the Portuguese King John II of his discovery of the New World.

In the last 50 years, life has been simplified by the awe-inspiring advancements that have been achieved in the world of computer science and technology. In 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak unveiled the Apple I, the first-ever computer that operated on a single-circuit board, just five years after a team of IBM engineers introduced the “floppy disk,” which revolutionized data-sharing.

Although he is unquestionably one of the most studied leaders of the 19th century, Simón Bolívar remains today as enigmatic as he was two centuries ago, when his vision and presence largely inspired the overthrow of the Spanish Empire in the New World.

The Christian influences of the Portuguese in Africa helped lead to conversion movements in the Kingdom of Kongo, most famously that of Kimpa Vita, a young woman whose story included striking parallels with Joan of Arc. As the leader of a Christian movement, Kimpa Vita became involved in internal political disputes within the Kingdom of Kongo, even as she set about spreading Christianity, and her ultimate fate has kept her memory alive as an ideal for later democratic and religious movements across the African continent.

Though history is usually written by the victors, the lack of a particularly strong writing tradition from the Mongols ensured that history was largely written by those who they vanquished. Because of this, their portrayal in the West and the Middle East has been extraordinarily (and in many ways unfairly) negative for centuries, at least until recent revisions to the historical record.

The drumbeat of horses’ hooves and clatter of chariot wheels echo through the rolling green hills of what will be known much later as the Emerald Isle. The driver is a lone woman whose long hair and homespun cloak whip through the wind behind her. Headstrong, confident, and intelligent, she blazes a trail that will change her nation forevermore, yet not in her own name or for her own sake, but for that of the God who sent her. This is a woman who will love the poor, feed the hungry, house the homeless, teach the ignorant, and defy the odds doing it all. This is Brigid of Kildare.

The Magna Carta is celebrated as one of the most important documents in human history. It is the main source of constitutional law around the world, promising people liberties and protection from the arbitrary power of the government. If you want to discover the captivating history of the Magna Carta, buy this book today.

The Crypto-Jews: The History of the Forcibly Converted Jews Who Secretly Practiced Judaism During the Inquisition examines the origins of the group, the laws that discriminated against them, and the efforts to maintain Jewish identity in Spain. You will learn about the crypto-Jews like never before.