Young people remain ill-equipped to participate in Australian democracy
Reading time: 5 minutes Despite many young Australians having a deep interest in political issues,...
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Category: Social and Cultural History
Cubism and Colonialism: How African Art Shaped Picasso’s Vision
Reading time: 6 minutes
In the early decades of the 20th century, modernism forever changed artistic representation. Artists like Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, whose experiments formed the foundations of Cubism, were just some of the many innovators responding to changes in technology and urbanization.
Picasso is possibly one of the most well-known artists today, and much is known about his life and inspirations. However, one influence behind his innovative style is less explored in popular culture—the impact of colonialism. The cubist movement arguably would not be what it became without the legacies of colonialism and imperial conquest.
Vickers’ First Aeroplane and the Mawson Expedition
Reading time: 31 minutes Believed to be the first Vickers-Pelterie REP-type tractor monoplane...
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What stone tools found in southern tip of Africa tell us about the human story
Reading time: 6 minutes
Stone tools. Our ancestors made them, some people still make them, and many species of extinct humans made them too. For more than three million years, fractured pieces of hard rock provided past people with a means to extract their livelihood from the environment. Because stone is plentiful and cheap to acquire, stone tools were made in large numbers. And because it is so durable, it usually outlasts other traces of human activity. With the passing of time, everything from our thoughts and languages to clothes, food waste and even our own bones are inevitably erased. But stone tools have remained.
How historically accurate is the film High Ground? The violence it depicts is uncomfortably close to the truth
Reading time: 8 minutes The Australian film High Ground, set mostly at a mission in Arnhem Land in...
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Here are the five ancient Britons who make up the myth of King Arthur
Reading time: 6 minutes
King Arthur is probably the best known of all British mythological figures. He is a character from deep time celebrated across the world in literature, art and film as a doomed hero, energetically fighting the forces of evil. Most historians believe that the prototype for Arthur was a warlord living in the ruins of post-Roman Britain, but few can today agree on precisely who that was.
Will tourism transform the way Australians remember the Vietnam War?
Reading time: 4 minutes
More than 300,000 Australians visit Vietnam annually. With the ongoing growth of tourism, it is likely that tourists’ experiences at Cu Chi and other war-related sites in Vietnam will increasingly influence how we commemorate this conflict, and encourage Australians to see it from both sides of the frontline.
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Why we are still living with the legacy of Waterloo – that ‘most bloody battle’
Reading time: 6 minutes
Our views of war are sanitised today. In an age of professional armies trained for increasingly technical tasks, few of us have witnessed combat, much less taken part in it. In that vein, commemorations of the 200th anniversary of Waterloo will focus on the battle’s strategic significance. There are, though, individual accounts that give us a glimpse into what sword fights and cavalry charges must have been like – and the deadly consequences of defeat.
The forgotten Anzacs: ‘honoured guests’ of the Sultan
Reading time: 7 minutes
As we undertake our annual remembrance of Australians at war, some attention should be paid to those personnel who were taken captive by the enemy and then faced long years in brutal conditions. Enduring starvation, beatings, disease, death marches and forced labour in extreme climatic conditions, many of them died from casual neglect, deliberate abuse and untreated medical conditions. And I’m not talking about prisoners of the Japanese in World War Two, but Australians taken captive by Ottoman forces during The Great War.
Gallipoli’s rich history of conflict started well before 1915
Reading time: 5 minutes
There are few geographical areas that have seen as much military action as the Gallipoli region, the site of the Anzac landings in 1915. The conflicts in the region include some of the most renowned wars from Greek antiquity.
What exactly is the Holy Grail – and why has its meaning eluded us for centuries?
Reading time: 6 minutes
Type “Holy Grail” into Google and … well, you probably don’t need me to finish that sentence. The sheer multiplicity of what any search engine throws up demonstrates that there is no clear consensus as to what the Grail is or was. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of people out there claiming to know its history, true meaning and even where to find it.
The Catalpa Rescue: the Daring Escape of Irish Rebels from Australia
Reading time: 12 minutes
When a plan to overthrow English rule in Ireland was foiled in the 1860s, hundreds of Fenian rebels were arrested and convicted. A handful of those were condemned to transportation to Australia with no hope of pardon or of ever seeing their families again.
