History Guild publishes articles that provide interesting insights into history. We cover all aspects of history, from around the world and across time.
How plague helped make Rome a superpower
Reading time: 7 minutes
That Rome prevailed and would go on to conqueror the Mediterranean world was perhaps in no small way due to the tiny bacteria or virus that destroyed Himilco’s army outside Syracuse in the autumn of 212.
Ukraine isn’t invited to its own peace talks. History is full of such examples – and the results are devastating
Reading time: 7 minutes
Ukraine has not been invited to a key meeting between American and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia this week to decide what peace in the country might look like.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine will “never accept” any decisions in talks without its participation to end Russia’s three-year war in the country.
A decision to negotiate the sovereignty of Ukrainians without them – as well as US President Donald Trump’s blatantly extortionate attempt to claim half of Ukraine’s rare mineral wealth as the price for ongoing US support – reveals a lot about how Trump sees Ukraine and Europe.
Free of the Trench: How British & Imperial Forces Overcame the Deadlock of the Western Front
Reading time: 12 minutes
The First World War came to an end just over 100 years ago, a mere moment’s time in human history. But as close as we are to it, a century is more than enough to surround that conflict with myth and misconception.
The image of the war on the Western Front, as brought to us through decades of outdated scholarship and popular fiction, is simple: two vast armies, each equipped with the latest murderous fruits of the industrial age, found they couldn’t decisively defeat one another in the field and so settled into a long, bloody, dirty, and consumptive war in which thousands of lives were thrown away every day, often for minuscule gains which would bring neither side meaningfully closer to victory.
The real story is more complicated. By 1916, it was plain to see that tactics like those championed by Haig, designed to draw out the enemy for a momentous set-piece battle, weren’t working, and even those neck-deep in the fight didn’t need the benefit of hindsight to recognise that.
Scientists at work: Public archaeologists dig before the construction crews do
Reading time: 8 minutes
I’m the director of the Public Archaeology Facility, a research center specializing in cultural resource management. Our mission is to identify, evaluate and preserve significant sites, train students to be professional archaeologists and share our results with the public. We can work on up to 100 projects a year. Since our inception in 1972, the center has discovered more than 3,500 archaeological sites.
South Korea’s March to Democracy: from the Gwangju Uprising to the June Democratic Struggle
Reading time: 7 minutes
When did South Korea become a democracy? A quick Google Search may give you many different answers.
You may be wondering, what’s the real answer? As with most things, the truth is complex. More recent events with the attempted, and failed, political coup attempt from then-sitting President Yoon Suk-yeol in 2024 shows just how ingrained South Korea’s recent history of political turbulence is.
This is the history of South Korea’s democratic struggle.
Glastonbury: archaeology is revealing new truths about the origins of British Christianity
Reading time: 5 minutes
Many Christians believe that Glastonbury is the site of the earliest church in Britain, allegedly founded in the first or second century by Joseph of Arimathea. According to the Gospels, Joseph was the man who donated his own tomb for the body of Christ following the crucifixion. By the 14th century, it was popularly believed that Glastonbury Abbey had been founded by the biblical figure of Joseph. The legend emerged that Joseph had travelled to Britain with the Grail, the vessel used to collect Christ’s blood. For 800 years, Glastonbury has been associated with the romance of King Arthur, the Holy Grail and Joseph of Arimathea. Later stories connected Glastonbury directly to the life of Christ.
“Delusive Quackery”: How a Brazen Medical Scam led to Real Scientific Advancements
Reading time: 6 minutes
As the eighteenth century came to a close, Dr. Elisha Perkins appeared poised for a truly successful career. He had served his young nation as a surgeon in the Revolutionary War, and even established a private hospital in his own home. He was respected by his colleagues, and stood as a member of the Connecticut Medical Society, which his father had founded.
Still more exciting: in the 1790s, Perkins believed himself to have made an astonishing discovery. During tooth extractions, he noted that patients experienced a brief reduction in pain when their inflamed gums were touched with a metal instrument.
Intelligence agency’s 1981 assessment of climate-change threat was remarkably accurate
Reading time: 5 minutes
Australia’s national intelligence agency has released a report that ‘examines the implications of the increasing accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a result of the burning of fossil fuels, with special reference to Australia as a producer and exporter of coal’. It flags that ‘major economic and social adjustments’ are going to be required as a result.
Inventing Special Forces: Operation Jaywick
Reading time: 11 minutes
Modern special forces are capable of astonishing feats of arms, from crippling their opponents’ infrastructure to derailing entire campaigns. While soldiers have been detailed for highly specialised and dangerous tasks since before history began, the first true forbears to today’s special forces were first established in the midst of the Second World War, when the Axis powers seemed poised to seize victory at any moment.
What is Environmental History?
Reading time: 12 minutes Origins Environmental history is a rather new discipline that came into being during the 1960’s and 1970’s. It was a direct consequence of the growing awareness of worldwide environmental problems such as pollution of water and air by...
Of course Australia was invaded – massacres happened here less than 90 years ago
Reading time: 4 minutes Much has been made of the University of New South Wales’ “diversity toolkit” offering teachers guidelines on Indigenous terminology. The most controversial directive was a line about using the term “invasion” to describe Captain Cook’s arrival...
Free France was African: the Story of France’s African Soldiers in WW2
Reading time: 15 minutes
From a humble, precarious exile in London, Free France patched together from soldiers and sailors of the scattered French military under the leadership of General Charles de Gaulle. One of the most storied resistance movements in World War II, far-flung Frenchmen swelled in number until hundreds of thousands could return to liberate France in 1944.
Our savage history of fighting bushfires
Reading time: 6 minutes
Bushfires are tragically fought by families, neighbours, volunteers, and professional firefighters, all risking their lives. Facing a wall of roaring flames is a terrifying prospect, too often with the direst consequences. The deaths of these individuals must be honoured as continual reminders of the fragility of the human condition against nature, but also of the heroism that is often remembered posthumously.
History’s Greatest Misconceptions Debunked
Reading time: 7 minutes
From Napoleon being short to slaves building the pyramids, there are hundreds of common historical misconceptions floating around.
Sometimes deliberate propaganda attempts created by political enemies, and occasionally simple misunderstandings of the truth, people love to recite interesting facts and titbits about history, but not all of them are completely true.
Here are some of the most famous misconceptions about history you may have heard of, along with some surprising accurate revelations.
MUSEUM REVIEW – RAAF Amberley Aviation Heritage Centre
Reading time: 12 minutes With the unfortunate cancellation of the 2022 Air Tattoo at RAAF Base Amberley, Qld, Team Aviation Report nonetheless made the pilgrimage from Melbourne to assess the works completed at the Aviation Heritage Centre since our last...
From fascism to parking tickets – some odd Magna Carta moments
Reading time: 5 minutes
Eight hundred years after King John made history when he fixed his seal to the Magna Carta, the public is being re-introduced to one of the most famous documents in political history.
The First World War continues: Medina, Arabia, January 1919
Reading time: 6 minutes
or many in the West, the First World War in the Middle East was a sideshow to the Western Front. The story of the wartime siege of Medina is even less well-known. But in the region it is still debated and contested, for example in December 2017 when the Foreign Minister of the United Arab Emirates accused Fakhri Pasha of stealing items from Medina, which earned a strong rebuke from the President of Turkey. The First World War in the Middle East had a profound effect on the region, with consequences to this day.
The Akikaze Massacre: the Japanese Navy’s Mass Murder in the Solomon Sea
Reading time: 12 minutes
When the Pacific War began in 1941, Japanese military planners had long recognised that they could not hope to win a protracted war against the United States, its likeliest and likely deadliest opponent in the Pacific. Instead, they pinned their hopes on a swift, devastating series of campaigns to seize strategic points.
The Myth of the Fall of the Roman Republic: A Misconception You (Probably) Share with Ridley Scott
Reading time: 10 minutes
The Roman Republic had an empire long before it had an emperor, and even after it gained an emperor, it did not cease to be a republic. The changes that occurred in the Roman state and the roles of its institutions over the centuries were not the result of sudden political upheaval. Instead, they reflected a gradual process of adjustment and evolution – sometimes influenced by the needs of the elites, sometimes by the demands of the people, and often by external factors.
Where did the new year’s resolution come from? Well, we’ve been making them for 4,000 years
Reading time: 5 minutes
As we welcome in the new year, a common activity across many cultures is the setting of new year resolutions. New year represents a significant temporal milestone in the calendar when many people set new goals for the year ahead. Here in Australia, over 70% of men and women (over 14 million Australians) are reported to have set at least one new year resolution in 2022.
60 years old, the Yirrkala Bark Petitions are one of our founding documents – so why don’t we know more about them?
Reading time: 17 minutes
Each of these declamatory objects speaks back to power, a creative act of resistance to a perceived political injustice. Like the stories of the creation, presentation and reception of the Eureka Flag and the women’s suffrage petition, the story of the Bark Petitions takes us to a time when democratic inclusion, when basic entitlements of citizenship, could not be taken for granted by certain sections of the body politic.
Four Video Games That Actually Teach History
Reading time: 13 minutes
There are plenty of video games that use historical backdrops for their narrative, or even entice you to recreate history in some way. As we discuss with historian Pieter van den Heede in our article on whether games can teach history, the question remains of how much you actually learn while playing these games. Thankfully, some do a much better job than others, and in this article, I will go over four of them.
Revisiting the “Knickerbocker” Origin Story of Santa Claus
Reading time: 6 minutes
In December 1953, Dr. Charles W. Jones, a University of California professor hailed as one of the world’s foremost scholars on St. Nicholas of Myra, gave a speech to the New-York Historical Society that was published the following year in the society’s quarterly under the title “Knickerbocker Santa Claus.” The premise of Jones’ speech was that author Washington Irving invented Santa Claus in an 1809 satire, A History of New York, that was purportedly written by a completely fictional Dutch historian, Diedrich Knickerbocker. “Without Irving there would be no Santa Claus,” Jones wrote. “Santa Claus was a parasitic germ until the Knickerbocker History in 1809; after 1809 Santa Claus spread like a plague which has yet to reach its peak.”
A History of Drinking with the World’s Oldest Pubs
Reading time: 7 minutes
Alcohol is one of humanity’s oldest inventions.
Our earliest evidence of humans brewing and drinking alcohol comes from 8th Century BCE China – over 9,000 years ago.
Across the world, from China and India to Mesopotamia and Europe, we’ve brewed many different types of alcoholic drinks, and almost as old as the drinks are the places we drink in.
While most of the world has a long history of drinking establishments, Europe is the home of the pub, which comes from the Roman tradition of establishing tabernaes or wine shops everywhere they went.