Political and Economic History Archives

How the Gunpowder Treason was discovered

by History Guild | Sep 25, 2023 | Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 9 minutes
On the night of 4 November 1605, a man calling himself John Johnson was found in the vaults beneath the House of Lords with 36 barrels of gunpowder. Under questioning, Johnson – whose real name was Guy Fawkes – admitted that he and his co-conspirators planned to use the gunpowder to blow up the House during the State Opening of Parliament on 5 November. If successful, this plot – which became known as the Gunpowder Treason, or Gunpowder Plot – would have killed not only King James I (and VI) but members of his family, his chief ministers, and the Members of Parliament in attendance at the state opening. This was treason on an unprecedented scale – an attempt to destroy both the king and his government.

The End of History: Francis Fukuyama’s controversial idea explained

by History Guild | Sep 20, 2023 | Political and Economic History | 0

Reading time: 8 minutes
In 1989, a policy wonk in the US State Department wrote a paper for the right-leaning international relations magazine The National Interest entitled “The End of History?”. His name was Francis Fukuyama, and the paper stirred such interest – and caused such controversy – that he was soon contracted to expand his 18-page article into a book. He did so in 1992: The End of History and the Last Man. The rest, they say, is (the end of) history.

The story of HMT Empire Windrush (1930–1954)

by History Guild | Sep 18, 2023 | Military History, Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
This june will mark the 75th anniversary of the arrival of HMT Empire Windrush at Tilbury Harbour, carrying on board some 800 passengers who gave their last country of residence as somewhere in the West Indies, and many of whom would migrate as workers and would settle in Britain and help steer its economic recovery after the Second World War. But this was only one journey in the vessel’s history and this article examines its colourful, chequered, and varied life since its maiden voyage was made in 1931 to its sinking in 1954.

The dark history of slavery and racism in Indonesia during the Dutch colonial period

by History Guild | Sep 14, 2023 | Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 7 minutes
The region near Medan is famous for its Deli tobacco, and colonial planters researched how to boost tobacco production. Behind the golden age and success of Dutch research, I found enormous human casualties that built plantations in North Sumatra. Widespread racism and slavery occurred in plantations managed by colonial companies.

A slave state – how blackbirding in colonial Australia created a legacy of racism

by History Guild | Sep 6, 2023 | Advocacy, Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 46 minutes
The French historian Ernest Renan described forgetting as “an essential factor in the creation of a nation”, since patriots do not want to remember the “deeds of violence” at the origin of all political formations. In the Australian context, a strange contradiction contributes to the ongoing amnesia about slavery and its consequences. From the very beginning, enslavement shaped white settlement in Australia – and so, too, did abolitionism. That paradox, a peculiar entwinement of two ostensibly antagonistic impulses, makes for a complicated narrative, one that cannot be grasped simply as a local version of the better-known American story.

Pickett’s Charge: What modern mathematics teaches us about Civil War battle

by History Guild | Aug 31, 2023 | Military History, Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
The Battle of Gettysburg was a turning point in the American Civil War, and Gen. George Pickett’s infantry charge on July 3, 1863, was the battle’s climax. Had the Confederate Army won, it could have continued its invasion of Union territory. Instead, the charge was repelled with heavy losses. This forced the Confederates to retreat south and end their summer campaign.

Slavers in the family: what a castle in Accra reveals about Ghana’s history

by History Guild | Aug 22, 2023 | Historical Sites, Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
The Castle is situated on the West African coast, formerly and notoriously known as the “White Man’s Grave”. The castle’s origins can be traced to a lodge built by Swedes in 1652. Nine years later, the Danish built a fort on the site and called it Fort Christiansborg (“Christian’s Fortress”), named after the King of Denmark, Christian IV.

LUCKY DISCOVERIES OF LOST ANCIENT HISTORY

by History Guild | Aug 7, 2023 | Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 8 minutes
Our knowledge of the ancient world owes a lot to chance discoveries. Here, we share the stories of some of the most important and unlikely finds from ancient Western history.

They range from the keys to forgotten scripts from Ancient Egypt and the time of Troy, to lost poems, philosophies and even a legal text book. We owe their preservation not only to luck, but to the fastidious and obsessive geniuses who uncovered and deciphered them.

A white supremacist coup succeeded in 1898 North Carolina, led by lying politicians and racist newspapers that amplified their lies

by History Guild | Aug 3, 2023 | Advocacy, Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes

Those who study Reconstruction and its aftermath know the U.S. has deep experience with political and electoral violence. Reconstruction was the 12-year period following the Civil War when the South returned to the Union and newly freed Black Americans were incorporated into U.S. democracy.

The news media, it turns out, have often been key actors in U.S. electoral violence. This history is explored in a chapter one of us – Gustafson – wrote for a book the other – Forde – co-edited with Sid Bedingfield, “Journalism & Jim Crow: The Making of White Supremacy in the New South,” which comes out later this year.

Returning looted artefacts will finally restore heritage to the brilliant cultures that made them

by History Guild | Jul 31, 2023 | History News, Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
European museums are under mounting pressure to return the irreplaceable artefacts plundered during colonial times. As an archaeologist who works in Africa, this debate has a very real impact on my research. I benefit from the convenience of access provided by Western museums, while being struck by the ethical quandary of how they were taken there by illegal means, and by guilt that my colleagues throughout Africa may not have the resources to see material from their own country, which is kept thousands of miles away.

Why there is no Kurdish nation

by History Guild | Jul 27, 2023 | Political and Economic History | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
In a series of conferences in a succession of European palaces, Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau of France, Woodrow Wilson and dozens of other leaders conspired, harangued and horse-traded from 1919 to 1921. Under clouds of cigar smoke, between servings of foie gras and champagne, they redrew a large swath of the globe’s map.

Their guiding principle for redrawing the map, at least in most cases, was the reigning concept of race nationalism, what’s often called today ethno-nationalism.

A short history of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy – an indelible reminder of unceded sovereignty

by History Guild | Jul 19, 2023 | Historical Sites, Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
Often people think about the Aboriginal Tent Embassy as something historic, dating back to the 1970s. But it should also be thought of as a site of the longest protest for Indigenous land rights, sovereignty and self-determination in the world.

Category: Political and Economic History