Bad History at the BBC
A new radio series about the 1943 Bengal famine favours culture-war polemic over rigorous scholarship.
Hira Jungkow
· 6 min read
History
A collection of 353 posts
Swastikas of Both Sorts: Hindu Nationalism's Fascist Nostalgia
Hindu nationalism is nostalgic for a golden age that never existed, before the invasions of first the Muslims and then the British.
Anwesh Satpathy
· 12 min read
Misadventures of a Stalinist Stooge
Benn Steil’s engrossing new biography of Henry A. Wallace is a timely cautionary tale and a masterpiece of 20th-century American history.
Ronald Radosh
· 23 min read
Erdogan’s Hypocrisy
While routinely declaring that Israel’s behaviour toward Hamas is genocidal, Erdogan has consistently denied the real genocides carried out by Turkey.
Benny Morris
· 9 min read
Johann Blumenbach: The First Race Scientist
The accepted view is that the scientists of the European Enlightenment got the issue of race badly wrong. In fact, some of them got more right than they are usually given credit for.
Coel Hellier
· 12 min read
Why Newly Independent Countries Must Reject Radical Decolonization
The contrasting histories of Singapore, Tanzania, and Sri Lanka demonstrate the dangers of attempting to erase the colonial past.
Jay Sophalkalyan
· 15 min read
Attila Invictus
In the eighth instalment of ‘The So-Called Dark Ages,’ Herbert Bushman describes the Huns’ increasingly violent incursions into the Eastern half of the Roman Empire.
Herbert Bushman
· 19 min read
In Defence of the EU
The European Union has been overwhelmingly successful in achieving its primary mission: guaranteeing peace.
James Graham
· 13 min read
Greeks and Jews: Two Diaspora Peoples
The histories of these two groups reveals the sinister implications of an ideology that holds that some people are more “natural” to a place than others.
Katherine Kelaidis
· 7 min read
The NYT Misrepresents the History of the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict
A welter of factual errors and misleading judgments has produced a distorted description of the 1948 War.
Benny Morris
· 12 min read
Understanding the Jewish Catastrophe
Dan Stone's new book shows how important aspects of the Holocaust have been neglected in popular consciousness.
Ralph Leonard
· 12 min read
Make Way for the Jesuits
In the seventeenth instalment of ‘Nations of Canada,’ Greg Koabel describes how The Society of Jesus became a powerful player in the colonization of North America.
Greg Koabel
· 25 min read
A Gathering of the Huns
In the seventh instalment of ‘The So-Called Dark Ages,’ Herbert Bushman describes how disparate Hunnic tribes coalesced into the unified force that would terrorize Europe.
Herbert Bushman
· 16 min read
Israel’s Occupation of Gaza in 1956–57
Many of the questions that have arisen since October 7 have been raised before.
Benny Morris
· 12 min read
The Laurentian Coalition Takes Root
In the 16th instalment of ‘Nations of Canada,’ historian Greg Koabel describes how Samuel de Champlain overcame a decade of frustration by finally establishing a successful French fur-trading monopoly.
Greg Koabel
· 25 min read