What is Environmental History?
Reading time: 12 minutes Origins Environmental history is a rather new discipline that came into...
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Category: Political and Economic History
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.
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 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.
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.
The Worst Predictions Throughout History
Reading time: 9 minutes
It’s often said that predicting the future is like betting against God.
Despite this, humans have always loved to try and predict the future -whether it’s dismissing new technology or predicting the end of the world, throughout history there have been some interesting predictions made.
Some have been correct. Most have not.
And then there are those predictions that are so spectacularly wrong they make you laugh. Collating some of the worst predictions throughout history, here’s the most interesting, the most incorrect, and the most ironic.
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The enduring lessons of the Iraq War
Reading time: 7 minutes
The US-led overthrow of the government of Saddam Hussein in Iraq marked the beginning of a series of events that reshaped the strategic environment of the Middle East. It also had enduring consequences for Iraqi society, and for Arab societies and Arab governments beyond its borders. There was no reason to doubt that the military defeat of Iraq could be achieved. But there were larger questions involved—including what a successor regime should look like; whether such a regime, initially established and maintained under US protection, would prove sustainable; and if not, what the consequences would be.
Neutral and Nervous – A History of Sweden’s Now Broken 200-Year Streak of Neutrality
Reading time: 6 minutes
For over 200 years, Sweden has been one of the few neutral states in Europe. From the Napoleonic Wars and Sweden’s declaration of neutrality in 1812 to today, many conflicts have arisen right on its borders.
Despite this, Sweden (until its joining with NATO in 2024) has successfully navigated neutrality, avoiding two world wars and many other conflicts throughout the 20th Century.
But how did Sweden manage to stay neutral throughout the 1900s with two world wars on its doorstep, and why did it become neutral in the first place?
Farmers or foragers? Pre-colonial Aboriginal food production was hardly that simple
Reading time: 6 minutes
Farmers versus foragers is a huge oversimplification of what was a mosaic of food production. After all, Australian landscapes differ markedly, from tropical rainforest to snowy mountains to arid spinifex country. For many Aboriginal people, the terms “farming” and “hunter-gatherer” do not capture the realities of 60 millennia of food production.
THE 25,000-LI JOURNEY: INSIDE THE LONG MARCH, MODERN CHINA’S FOUNDING MYTH
Reading time: 12 minutes
On 21th September 1949, Mao Zedong took to the podium in Huairen Hall, Zhongnanhai, a former royal residence in Beijing, to announce that “the Chinese people, comprising one quarter of humanity, have now stood up.”
These striking words were all too appropriate for the moment: for Mao it represented the end of a quarter-century journey to the pinnacle of his own party and finally his country – a journey which began with the Long March.
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The Birth of Modern Iraq: A Historical Odyssey
Reading time: 6 minutes
Mesopotamia, now located in the country of Iraq, has been home to some of Earth’s earliest civilizations and urban settlements, from the Sumerians to the Akkadians, as well as the centre of the Islamic world with the city of Baghdad under the Umayyad and Abbasid empires.
Yet the modern nation of Iraq is only just over 100 years old – a relatively new nation compared to many in the world.
How did Iraq, a home to ancient Empires turned battleground between bitter great powers, become the nation it is today?
Who Would Be the Roman Emperor Today?
Reading time: 10 minutes
The Roman Empire continues to fascinate the world and dominate many cultural aspects of modern Western life. From language to law, the Romans left quite the legacy.
But one thing they didn’t leave was a clear successor to the Roman Empire.
If the Roman Empire still existed today, how could we determine who its ruler should be?
