Political and Economic History Archives

60 years old, the Yirrkala Bark Petitions are one of our founding documents – so why don’t we know more about them?

by History Guild | Dec 23, 2024 | Advocacy, Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

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

by History Guild | Nov 27, 2024 | Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

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.

The enduring lessons of the Iraq War

by History Guild | Nov 18, 2024 | Military History, Political and Economic History | 0

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

by History Guild | Nov 13, 2024 | Military History, Political and Economic History | 0

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

by History Guild | Nov 11, 2024 | History News, Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

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

by History Guild | Oct 31, 2024 | Military History, Political and Economic History | 0

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.

The Birth of Modern Iraq: A Historical Odyssey

by History Guild | Oct 24, 2024 | Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

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?

by History Guild | Oct 10, 2024 | Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

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?

Birth of a nation: how Australia empowering women taught the world a lesson

by History Guild | Sep 30, 2024 | Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 20 minutes
Perhaps, with the global challenges of the 21st century, Australia can reassert its erstwhile youthful exuberance and once again be proud to call itself a trailblazing leader – a nation where justice serves as the foundation of its moral constitution.

The legacy of Empire: The Bengal Famine

by History Guild | Sep 23, 2024 | Military History, Political and Economic History | 0

Reading time: 4 minutes
One of the motivations of The Things We Forgot To Remember is as an answer to the question “Why study history?” There are a lot of answers to this, but one important reason is that people are already talking about history, and sometimes, they have got it seriously wrong. One example of this is the widespread ignorance of the Bengal famine. For me, the ‘killer facts’ about the Bengal famine are straightforward. In 1941, when the Battle of the Atlantic was at its height, Winston Churchill and the War Cabinet considered the question of relative priority to give to imports of food, raw materials, and munitions.

The Origins of the Commons in Britain

by History Guild | Sep 19, 2024 | Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 8 minutes
Walking around any British town or village today, it’s difficult to imagine that land might not once have been private. But this was not always the case – for centuries, landless people could access common lands and forests. There they could gather firewood, graze livestock, or grow small crops.

Cracking the Code: The Quest to Decipher the Indus Valley Script

by History Guild | Sep 17, 2024 | Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
The Rosetta Stone laid the groundwork for our understanding of Ancient Egyptian language and culture when French scholar Jean-François Champollion cracked its code in September 1822. But the Rosetta Stone isn’t the only unsolved puzzle out there. Since the discovery of the Indus Valley Civilisation in the 1920s, the Indus Valley Script has remained an enigma, resisting all attempts at decipherment. From the origins of the civilisation to the reasons why the script remains undecoded, and what the future may hold, unlocking the Indus Valley Script could reveal important insights into one of history’s great ancient cultures.

Category: Political and Economic History