Category: Social and Cultural History

Lessons from the UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda, three decades after the genocide it failed to stop

Lessons from the UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda, three decades after the genocide it failed to stop

by | Sep 25, 2025 | , , | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
Dispatched with a fatally timid mission, many ordinary U.N. soldiers in Rwanda took extraordinary actions, using diplomacy, cultural awareness and community engagement. Their actions saved close to 30,000 lives, according to Romeo Dallaire, who led the U.N.’s deployment in Rwanda. Learning from what actually worked on this famously failed mission can save lives in the future.

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Napoleon’s bicentenary: why celebrating the French emperor has become so controversial

Napoleon’s bicentenary: why celebrating the French emperor has become so controversial

by | Sep 23, 2025 | , , | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
Napoleon Bonaparte may have died 200 years ago, but the vast ramifications of his rule can still be felt – and not only in France. This year marks the last in a series of bicentenaries since 1969, the 200th anniversary of his birth, but the chance to give the most famous emperor in French history another send-off is proving distinctly tricky – and not only because of COVID-19 restrictions.

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How the Great War shaped the foundations of Australia’s future

How the Great War shaped the foundations of Australia’s future

by | Sep 10, 2025 | , , | 0

Reading time: 9 minutes
It is striking that 2015 is the 110th anniversary of the Gallipoli offensive, the 80th anniversary of end of the Second World War in the Pacific, and the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. This is a good time to reflect not only on the actions of those wars, but on their consequences and their enduring legacies.

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Why history instruction is critical for combating online misinformation

Why history instruction is critical for combating online misinformation

by | Sep 3, 2025 | , , | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
Can you tell fact from fiction online? In a digital world, few questions are more important or more challenging. For years, some commentators have called for K-12 teachers to take on fake news, media literacy, or online misinformation by doubling down on critical thinking. This push for schools to do a better job preparing young people to differentiate between low- and high-quality information often focuses on social studies classes.

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Changing the Eurocentric narrative about the history of science – why multiculturalism matters

Changing the Eurocentric narrative about the history of science – why multiculturalism matters

by | Aug 20, 2025 | | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes

There is nothing more intimately personal than the thoughts in your head, and yet you did not conceive them. They are a continuation of knowledge and ideas that for thousands of years have travelled the globe, shaped by countless minds from all civilizations. In a time of seemingly growing division, that is a thought that ought to bring us all together.

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The world’s first museum was curated by a princess. A tour reveals the origins of the zodiac, calculus and writing

The world’s first museum was curated by a princess. A tour reveals the origins of the zodiac, calculus and writing

by | Aug 18, 2025 | | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes

Around 2,500 years ago, a princess living in what is now modern-day Iraq collected a number of artefacts, including a statue, a boundary stone and a mace head. The items, which show signs of preservation, date from around 2100 BCE to 600 BCE. This collection, it is generally thought, was the world’s first known “museum”.

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A Belgian farmer moved a rock and accidentally annexed France: the weird and wonderful history of man-made borders

A Belgian farmer moved a rock and accidentally annexed France: the weird and wonderful history of man-made borders

by | Jul 23, 2025 | , | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
Nations establish their borders through treaties. Rivers are sometimes relied on to set boundaries, but even here tensions rise when there are disputes about interpretation. Is the boundary on the river banks, the deepest part of the river, or the very centre of the flow?

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Talking heads: what toilets and sewers tell us about ancient Roman sanitation

Talking heads: what toilets and sewers tell us about ancient Roman sanitation

by | Jul 21, 2025 | | 0

Reading time: 9 minutes
Focusing on life in ancient Rome, Pompeii, Herculaneum and Ostia, I’m deeply impressed by the brilliant engineers who designed these underground marvels and the magnificent architecture that masks their functional purpose. Sewer galleries didn’t run under every street, nor service every area. But in some cities, including Rome itself, the length and breadth of the main sewer, the Cloaca Maxima, rivals the extent of the main sewer lines in many of today’s cities. We shouldn’t assume, though, that Roman toilets, sewers and water systems were constructed with our same modern sanitary goals in mind.

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