Political and Economic History Archives

Pope Gregory XIII gave us the leap year – but his legacy goes much further

by History Guild | Jul 2, 2024 | Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 7 minutes
On this day, February 29, conversations the world over may conjure the name of Pope Gregory XIII – widely known for his reform of the calendar that bears his name.

The need for calendar reform was driven by the inaccuracy of the Julian calendar. Introduced in 46 BC, the Julian calendar fell short of the solar year – the time it takes Earth to orbit the Sun – by about 12 minutes each year.

IN SEARCH OF A KINGDOM: FRANCIS DRAKE, ELIZABETH I, AND THE PERILOUS BIRTH OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE – BOOK REVIEW

by History Guild | Jun 27, 2024 | Political and Economic History | 0

A review of the “grand and thrilling” book “In Search of a Kingdom: Francis Drake, Elizabeth I, and the Perilous Birth of the British Empire” by Laurence Bergreen.

From micro to macro, Andrew Leigh’s accessible history covers the economic essentials

by History Guild | Jun 24, 2024 | Political and Economic History | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
Andrew Leigh’s The Shortest History of Economics is the latest in a series of such histories, mostly focused on particular countries.
It begins with a striking mini-history of household lighting, focusing on the amount of labour required to produce the light now given off by a standard lightbulb: 58 hours for a wood fire, five hours for a candle based on animal fat, a few minutes for an early electric lightbulb, and less than one second for a modern light-emitting diode.

The Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS)

by History Guild | Jun 11, 2024 | Advocacy, Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
The first Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea was prompted by the sinking of RMS Titanic. An attempt to establish basic rules became the most important international treaty about the safety of merchant ships and sea travel.

The Beginning of Rebellion: The Hidden History of the 1521 Santo Domingo Slave Revolt

by History Guild | Jun 3, 2024 | Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
As the Age of Discovery slowly transitioned into the Age of Colonialism, the Spanish Empire, or more accurately its citizens, began importing African slaves into its new colonial holdings in North America and the Caribbean.
Only 30 years after Columbus had discovered the Americas, on the island of Hispaniola (now modern-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), the very first colonial slave revolt occurred.

What Australia’s convict past reveals about women, men, marriage and work

by History Guild | May 6, 2024 | Advocacy, Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
It is not the presence of convicts that matters, but the drastic distortion in the ratio of men to women that came with it. Convict men outnumbered convict women by roughly six to one. These numbers were even more skewed at the start of settlement. Convicts were joined by free migrants, especially in the second half of the 19th century, whose numbers also skewed heavily male. The ratio of men to women was consistently skewed in favour of males in Australia until the start of the first world war.

The Treaty of Versailles: Brutally Unfair or Righteous Retribution?

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

Reading time: 7 minutes
Marking the end of World War One, the Treaty of Versailles was signed by Germany on June the 28th 1919. Often cited as one of the leading reasons for Germany’s descent into fascism and the start of World War Two, the Treaty of Versailles along with the other treaties signed at the Paris Peace Conference vastly reshaped the borders and the economies of the European continent.

Treason against the state: The execution of Charles I

by History Guild | Apr 22, 2024 | Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 7 minutes
Levying war against the Crown was one of the key treasonable offences defined by the 1352 Treason Act. Yet, during the civil wars of the 1640s and again in the American Revolutionary War of the 1770s and 80s, those that levied war against the monarch not only avoided punishments for treason, but rejected royal authority and accused their kings of levying war – of committing treason – against the state.

‘Habits of civilised life’: how one Australian State forced Indigenous people to meet onerous conditions to obtain citizenship

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

Reading time: 7 minutes
In the breakthrough High Court case Love and Thoms vs Commonwealth in 2020, the court ruled that First Nations people could not be considered aliens in Australia. As Justice James Edelman noted in the decision, whatever the other manners in which they were treated […] Aboriginal people were not ‘considered as foreigners in a kingdom which is their own’.

Dockyard incendiarist: The tale of ‘John the Painter’

by History Guild | Apr 15, 2024 | Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 10 minutes
Opposition to the British Crown during the American War of Independence took many forms, none more notorious than the malicious designs of James Aitken (alias ‘John the Painter’).

Traps, rites and kurrajong twine – the incredible ingenuity of Indigenous fishing knowledge

by History Guild | Apr 8, 2024 | Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 20 minutes
Some forms of Indigenous fishing inevitably became lost as Traditional Owners were dispossessed and disenfranchised of their lands and fisheries following the expansion of the colonial frontier post-1788.

“The Best Show That Was Ever Staged”: Charles Ponzi’s Scheme

by History Guild | Apr 2, 2024 | Political and Economic History | 0

Reading time: 7 minutes
Having gambled away his life savings on the passage over, Italian immigrant Charles Ponzi arrived in America with next to nothing in his pocket. As he would later recount, “I landed in this country with $2.50 in cash and $1 million in hopes, and those hopes never left me.”

Category: Political and Economic History