Category: Social and Cultural History

“Its Name Synonymous with Barbarism”: The Colonial Narratives that Destroyed Dahomey’s ‘Amazons’

“Its Name Synonymous with Barbarism”: The Colonial Narratives that Destroyed Dahomey’s ‘Amazons’

by | Nov 20, 2024 | , | 0

Reading time: 7 minutes
Tales of Dahomey’s fearsome female fighting force are writ large across the world, rippling from the far-fetched, bewildered accounts of colonizing Frenchmen to modern-day popular culture, in films like Black Panther and The Woman King. Though they were known in their homeland as the Agojie, their combat prowess and defiance of strict 19th-century European gender norms earned them worldwide fame–and infamy–as the Amazons of Dahomey.

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Farmers or foragers? Pre-colonial Aboriginal food production was hardly that simple

Farmers or foragers? Pre-colonial Aboriginal food production was hardly that simple

by | Nov 11, 2024 | , , | 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.

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They Shall Not Grow Old poignantly illuminates the human face of the Great War.

They Shall Not Grow Old poignantly illuminates the human face of the Great War.

by | Nov 7, 2024 | , | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
Although these feelings of remembrance are now used to commemorate the fallen of all global conflict, it was the First World War (1914-1918), or “The War to End all Wars” , that inspired these heartbreakingly eloquent words and forever enshrined the memory of a lost generation for all time; with this spirit of remembrance and in further recognition of the 1918 Armistice comes director Peter Jackson’s, They Shall Not Grow Old, a striking, immersive and emotionally powerful documentary feature unlike anything ever seen before.

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The Birth of Modern Iraq: A Historical Odyssey

The Birth of Modern Iraq: A Historical Odyssey

by | Oct 24, 2024 | , | 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?

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Who Would Be the Roman Emperor Today?

Who Would Be the Roman Emperor Today?

by | Oct 10, 2024 | , | 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?

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

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

by | Sep 17, 2024 | , | 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.

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“They Used Us When It Suited Them”: LGBT Servicemen in World War II Britain

“They Used Us When It Suited Them”: LGBT Servicemen in World War II Britain

by | Sep 5, 2024 | , | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
When Britain entered the Second World War in 1939, all citizens were heartily encouraged to ‘do their bit’ for the war effort–even those who were otherwise considered ‘undesirable.’ Indeed, despite the then-ban on LGBT people in military service, many queer people were hand-waved through the recruitment process to bolster numbers.

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