History Guild publishes articles that provide interesting insights into history. We cover all aspects of history, from around the world and across time.
A Brief History of West Papua: Indonesia’s Unwilling Territory
Reading time: 7 minutes
Currently a province of Indonesia, West Papua is a region rich in cultural diversity and natural resources, and like many of its neighbours has a history deeply intertwined with colonialism and indigenous struggles.
In The Australian Wars, Rachel Perkins dispenses with the myth Aboriginal people didn’t fight back
Reading time: 5 minutes
The Australian Wars is a new three-part TV series directed and produced by Arrernte and Kalkadoon nations filmmaker Rachel Perkins. Perkins travels across vast territory to capture key aspects of a war that lasted more than 100 years, from the landing of the First Fleet in 1788 until the 1920s.
The series traces some of the key phases, sites and underlying features of frontier wars here on home soil.
LAND: HOW THE HUNGER FOR OWNERSHIP SHAPED THE MODERN WORLD – BOOK REVIEW
Reading time: 2 minutes
Land—whether meadow or mountainside, desert or peat bog, parkland or pasture, suburb or city—is central to our existence. It quite literally underlies and underpins everything. Employing the keen intellect, insatiable curiosity, and narrative verve that are the foundations of his previous bestselling works, Simon Winchester examines what we human beings are doing—and have done—with the billions of acres that together make up the solid surface of our planet.
Australia is still reckoning with a shameful legacy: the resettlement of suspected war criminals after WWII
Reading time: 6 minutes
Around one million Central and Eastern European “displaced persons” were resettled by the United Nations after the second world war in countries such as Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. This group included soldiers who had fought in German military units, as well as civilian collaborators. The Nazi-led Holocaust had relied on their firepower and administrative skills.
THE FORGOTTEN WAR CRIMES OF FASCIST ITALY
Reading time: 14 minutes
In just five short years, the combined forces of the Axis powers managed to commit atrocities and war crimes on a scale never equalled before or after. But while Axis war crimes came into sudden shocking clarity with the Allied victory in 1945, one Axis power is still overlooked to this day: Italy.
Earning the Enemy’s Respect: Victoria Cross Recommendations from the Other Side
Reading time: 7 minutes
Many readers will be familiar with the 1964 epic movie Zulu, which depicts the 1879 landmark Battle of Rorke’s Drift in the Anglo-Zulu War. In the film, perhaps the most iconic scene takes place at the end of the movie, whereby the Zulu warriors chant in respectful salutation towards the British soldiers before withdrawing after the battle. Moving, cinematic, and honourable, it’s clear why the scene lives so memorably in the hearts of fans today.
Why Aboriginal Australian ‘Ununiformed Warriors’ Qualify for the Australian War Memorial
Reading time: 5 minutes
Last year, chair of the Australian War Memorial Kim Beazley called for First Nations “guerilla campaigns” of the Frontier Wars to be included in the Australian War Memorial. His bid was criticised by the RSL Australia’s president Major General Greg Melick.
Melick argued Indigenous casualties of the Frontier Wars could not be honoured at the War Memorial because they did not fight “in uniform”. But the Australian War Memorial already honours “ununiformed” First Nations soldiers – namely Dayak people who assisted in Borneo during World War 2.
Annexation or Liberation? India, Portgual, and Goa: 1961
Reading time: 10 minutes
On 18th July 1947, British rule in India came to an end, closing a 300-year old chapter in the history of the subcontinent. But another empire had been in India for over a century more, and it would be over a decade later that this longer story was finished.
How King Arthur became one of the most pervasive legends of all time
Reading time: 5 minutes
King Arthur is one of, if not the, most legendary icons of medieval Britain. His popularity has lasted centuries, mostly thanks to the numerous incarnations of his story that pop up time and time again.
Shipwrecks of the Manila Galleons
Reading time: 8 minutes
Huge ships filled with canons, gold, porcelain, silk, and other riches from Asia, the Manila Galleons were the key vessels in transporting rare goods from Asia across the Pacific Ocean to Spanish holdings in Mexico. From there, the cargo could easily be sailed across the Atlantic to Spain and Europe.
History’s Greatest Nicknames
Reading time: 7 minutes
A browse through any military history book will no doubt bring up titles of famous officers, often bearing unusual, surprising, or sometimes downright hilarious nicknames. In many cases, it’s clear where the sobriquet originated, while other examples hold a less-obvious significance.
COURAGE AND COMPASSION: A STRETCHER-BEARER’S JOURNEY FROM NO-MAN’S LAND AND BEYOND – BOOK REVIEW
Reading time: 1 minute
His is the true story of a young Australian soldier whose life of opportunity was challenged by trauma and salvaged by strength.
Nelson Ferguson, from Ballarat, was a stretcher-bearer on the Western Front in France in World War I. He survived the dangers of stretcher-bearing in some of Australia’s most horrific battles: the Somme, Bullecourt, Ypres and Villers-Bretonneux. In April 1918, at Villers-Bretonneux, he was severely gassed. His eyes were traumatised, his lungs damaged. Upon his return home, he met and married Madeline, the love of his life, started a family, and resumed his career teaching art. But eventually the effects of the mustard gas claimed his eyesight, ending his career. Courageously enduring this consequence of war, he continued contributing to society by assisting his son and son-in-law in their stained-glass window business. Advances in medicine finally restored his sight in 1968, allowing him to yet again appreciate the beauty around him, before his death in 1976.
“Homosexuals Are Not Cowards”: The Legacy of Willem Arondeus
Reading time: 6 minutes
Dutch artist and author Willem Arondeus’ life had always been fraught with insecurity. Despite the modest success of his artwork, he lived in poverty, and friend Frieda Belinfante remembered him first for his timidity. ‘He was very shy,’ she said, ‘and kind of an inferiority complex. He didn’t think he was good enough for this or that.’
Why Did Britain Change its Stance on Slavery?
Reading time: 7 minutes
By the 1730s, Britain was the largest slave-trading Empire in the world. It is estimated that between 1640 and 1800, private British citizens across the Empire transported 3.1 million Africans as slaves.
Yet less than seven years later, the British parliament officially abolished slavery. And they didn’t stop there. The British government then proceeded to pressure allies and other European nations such as Portugal, Spain and France to also abolish slavery, and devoted significant Royal Navy resources to intercept and arrest slaving ships off the coast of Africa.
500 years after Ferdinand Magellan landed in Patagonia, there’s nothing to celebrate for its indigenous peoples
Reading time: 5 minutes
Five hundred years ago, on March 31 1520, the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan began a sojourn in a part of South America that has been known as Patagonia ever since. Magellan’s five-month long overwinter in a natural harbour that has become known as Puerto San Julián was part of the first circumnavigation of the globe.
How was law and order maintained in Britain before modern Policing?
Reading time: 6 minutes
Although the police force may seem an integral part of our world now, the first statutory police force in the world was only created in 1611, in Edinburgh. So how did a sizable country like Britain maintain law and order before this?
Australian Ace Bobby Gibbes’ Desert War – Video
Bobby Gibbes commanded No. 3 Squadron RAAF during the crucial desert battles of 1942-43, including the battles of El Alamein.
Swedish Viking hoard: how the discovery of single Norman coin expands our knowledge of French history
Reading time: 5 minutes
In the autumn of 2020, I was contacted by the field archaeology unit of the Swedish National Historical Museums, who are also known as the Archaeologists. They were excavating at a Viking-age settlement at Viggbyholm just north of Stockholm. During routine metal detecting of the site, they had located a very exciting find: eight silver necklaces and other silver jewellery along with 12 coins, everything delicately wrapped up in a cloth and deposited in a pot. In other words, a genuine Viking silver hoard.
How They Fought: Indigenous Tactics and Weaponry of Australia’s Frontier Wars – Book Review
Reading time: 3 minutes
This is an excellent and much needed book. It examines the military aspects of the Australian Frontier Wars from an Aboriginal perspective, detailing the tactics, strategy, logistics and weapons Aboriginal people employed to resist European encroachment on their land. Covering several campaigns across different areas and time periods, it details both successes and failures of the Aboriginal military forces. Some of its most interesting conclusions reflect the extent to which Aboriginal resistance slowed and impeded the encroachment of European settlement across Australia.
From Chaucer to chocolates: how Valentine’s Day gifts have changed over the centuries
Reading time: 5 minutes
We should first turn to Geoffrey Chaucer, the 14th-century poet, civil servant and keen European traveller. Chaucer’s poem from the 1380s, The Parliament of Fowls, is held to be the first reference to February 14 as a day about love.
This day was already a feast day of several mysterious early Roman martyred Saint Valentines, but Chaucer described it as a day for people to choose their lovers. He knew that was easier said than done.
Lieutenant Martin Monti, the Only American Defector to the Waffen-SS
Reading time: 10 minutes
On May 8, 1945, a battered, broken Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allied armies which had crashed across its borders, fighting town by town to topple Hitler’s regime. Two days later, one of Germany’s strangest supporters surrendered, too.
In a first discovery of its kind, researchers have uncovered an ancient Aboriginal archaeological site preserved on the seabed
Reading time: 6 minutes
For most of the human history of Australia, sea levels were much lower than they are today, and there was extra dry land where people lived. When people first arrived in Australia as early as 65,000 years ago, sea levels were around 80m lower than today.
Why Oliver Cromwell may have been Britain’s greatest ever general – new analysis of battle reports
Reading time: 6 minutes
At the age of 43 Cromwell had strapped on his sword for the first time – as a captain of a troop of horses in parliament’s army at the beginning of the English Civil War.
Richard O’Connor and Operation Compass: Britain’s Comeback in the Desert
Reading time: 8 minutes
Early in the Second World War, when Britain’s empire stood alone, one man was responsible for the early successes which broke the myth of Axis invincibility. His name was Richard O’Connor.