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Recent Articles

Africa’s World War: The Congo War

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes 5.4 million people died in the deadliest war in modern African history. Yet, the event ...
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The First Australians grew to a population of millions, much more than previous estimates

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes We know it is more than 60,000 years since the first people entered the continent ...
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Brilliant and Flawed: The Enduring Legacy of Napoleon Bonaparte

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes The 200th anniversary of his death (1821-2021) renews discussion on how the former Emperor should ...
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Hudson Bombers, 1SQN RAAF

Australia’s first action in the Pacific in World War II a valiant catastrophe

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Just before midnight on 7 December 1941, Flying Officer Peter Gibbes stepped off the train ...
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Leaving Afghanistan and why America doesn’t win wars

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Since World War II, the United States has lost just about every war that it ...
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‘I want to scream and scream’: Australian nurses on the Western Front were also victims of war

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes The revival of interest in Anzac since the 1980s has depended in part on the ...
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Who were we fighting at Gallipoli?

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes In the annual discussion of the Gallipoli campaign Australians are subjected to a variety of ...
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Peter Weir’s Gallipoli 40 years on: deftly directed and still devastating

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes With the release of the first-world-war film Gallipoli in 1981, director Peter Weir could finally ...
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Five Great Historically Accurate Films: Part Two

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes By Michael Vecchio READ PART ONE of FIVE GREAT HISTORICAL FILMS Gandhi (1982) Dir. Richard ...
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How The Napoleonic Wars Entrenched British Rule In 19th Century South Africa

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes The battles between Britain and France following the French Revolution and into the Napoleonic Wars ...
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In their own words: letters from ANZACs during the Gallipoli evacuation

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Just five days before Christmas, in the early hours of Monday December 20, 1915, the ...
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Who will have us? Jewish Refugees before WW2

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes The plight of Jewish refugees after the outbreak of World War II in 1939 is ...
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Hero and Villain: Robert Clive of the East India Company

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes Robert Clive, a general of the East India Company, was despised by his contemporaries – ...
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People gave up on flu pandemic measures a century ago when they tired of them – and paid a price

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes Picture the United States struggling to deal with a deadly pandemic. State and local officials ...
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Nikola Tesla – His Vision is our Reality

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes The legacy of one of the greatest inventors in history is some of our most ...
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Northern Ireland, born of strife 100 years ago, again erupts in political violence

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes Sectarian rioting has returned to the streets of Northern Ireland, just weeks shy of its ...
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The Deadliest Infectious Diseases in History and Their Prevalence Today

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes The advances in medicine and technology have helped curb the spread of one of the ...
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Picturing the unimaginable: a new look at the wreck of the Batavia

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes Before dawn on the morning of June 4 1629, the Batavia, a ship of the ...
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How the shadow of slavery still hangs over global finance

When the infamous Zong trial began in 1783, it laid bare the toxic relationship between finance and slavery. It was an unusual ...
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Taking back the Homeland – Ethiopian Guerrillas in World War II

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes By Ellen Rubin. Guerrilla warfare played a huge role in World War II. Partisans in ...
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How will our bodies be put back together? What about those eaten by cannibals? A brief history of Christian resurrection beliefs

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Easter celebrates the Christian belief that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. In so doing, ...
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Highland Clearances: Changing a Culture

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Cultures, customs and traditions change as time passes on, but sometimes this change is brought ...
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Hubris and Miscalculation: The failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes By Michael Vecchio The threat of Nazi villainy had been defeated, however another authoritarian threat ...
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Could the Charge of the Light Brigade have worked?

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes By Michael J. Armstrong. Middle East tensions. Russian soldiers in Crimea. Western nations’ warships in ...
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Ancient undersea middens offer clues about life before rising seas engulfed the coast. Now we have a better way to study them

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes The world’s oceans hold their secrets close, including clues about how people lived tens of ...
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Archaeologists have a lot of dates wrong for North American indigenous history – but we’re using new techniques to get it right

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes By Sturt Manning, Cornell University. Columbus famously reached the Americas in 1492. Other Europeans had ...
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Mistaken Maps and the Myths They Perpetuated

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes Mapmakers in history occasionally got it wrong. Sometimes, very wrong. By Madison Moulton Maps are ...
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Remembering Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes By Rachel Horne. 35 kilometres north of Berlin, you will find the Nazi concentration camp ...
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What is the Austronesian Expansion?

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes The mass migration of Austronesian-speaking peoples thousands of years ago still has an impact on ...
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Saint Patrick: A Story of Faith and Mythology

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes By Michael Vecchio Every year on March 17th, much of the western world celebrates “being ...
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Deceptive Ineptitude: German Spies in WW2 Britain

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes Operation Lena, the German espionage operation in Britain, turned out to be one of the ...
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Hidden women of history: the priestess Pythia at the Delphic Oracle, who spoke truth to power

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes By Julia Kindt, University of Sydney. In a time and place that offered few career ...
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Wise women: 6 ancient female philosophers you should know about

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes By Dawn LaValle Norman, Australian Catholic University. When we conjure up ancient philosophers the image ...
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The Somme: The German perspective

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes By Dr Robert T. Foley. How do Germans view the Battle of The Somme? This ...
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Archaeologists determined the step-by-step path taken by the first people to settle the Caribbean islands

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes For the millions of people around the world who live on islands today, a plane ...
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First World War, tableau, men, uniform, woods, fun Fortepan 25063.jpg

The Long Tail of the First World War

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes Fallen Empires and Civil War  By Caitlan Hester The popular view of the First World ...
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Jutland: Why World War I’s only sea battle was so crucial to Britain’s victory

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes By Andrew Lambert, King's College London. Modern understanding of World War I is dominated by ...
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Blood and Pepper: The Aceh Wars

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes The history of the Dutch East Indies is a blood-soaked tale of war and subjugation ...
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Cultural diversity – the making of Rome

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes By Richard Shrubb. The Roman Empire was arguably the most successful empire in history, eclipsing ...
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How the National Guard became the go-to military force for riots and civil disturbances

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes By Shannon M. Smith. The Pentagon has approved leaving 5,000 troops deployed indefinitely to protect the U.S ...
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This 17,500-year-old kangaroo in the Kimberley is Australia’s oldest Aboriginal rock painting

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes In Western Australia’s northeast Kimberley region, on Balanggarra Country, a two-metre-long painting of a kangaroo ...
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The West and the Rest: Deconstructing the Great Divergence Debate

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes By Madison Moulton. The causes of global inequalities between the West and the East is ...
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It’s time for a new museum dedicated to the fighters of the frontier wars

Estimated reading time: 19 minutes By Henry Reynolds, University of Tasmania. Historical research of the last 20 years has confirmed ...
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Rising Sun, Complacent Bear: The Russo-Japanese War

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes The Russo-Japanese War resulted in one of Russia’s greatest military upsets, and one of Japan’s ...
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A short, sharp history of the bayonet

Estimated reading time: 14 minutes By Peter Monteath, Flinders University. Even the sound of a bayonet could be frightening. The ...
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Mapping the World: A Short History of Cartography

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes From the cave paintings of Montignac to the Mercator Projection and beyond, maps explain how ...
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The Cold War, Churchill’s Iron Curtain, and the Power of Imagery

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes By Michael Vecchio Many years of fighting and an estimated 85 million people dead; the ...
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Battle of 42nd Street – Anzacs Proving Germany Could be Beaten

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes By Richard Shrubb. Morale can make all the difference on the battlefield. On the 27th ...
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After Caribbean Slavery – Indentured Labour

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes By Richard Shrubb. The abolition of slavery by the British Empire would cause an economic ...
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Why the Legions Beat the Phalanx

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes The societies of ancient Greece and Rome valued brawn as well as brains. Philosophers fulfilled ...
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A Brief History of Saint Valentine’s Day

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes By Michael Vecchio When one hears the word “Valentine”, many things may spring to mind, ...
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Long before GameStop, bucket shops challenged the legitimacy of Wall Street

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes By Robbie Moore, University of Tasmania. The gleeful manipulation of GameStop’s share price is not the first ...
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Australian government must negotiate a treaty with First Nations people

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes By Lidia Thorpe With 26 January looming, many Australians will be ashamed of the fact ...
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Quantity Becomes a Quality All of Its Own

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes In the history of warfare, there have been mismatched conflicts where skilled forces have been ...
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The Rise of Black Wall Street and the Race Massacre That Burned It Down

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes The Greenwood neighbourhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma was a hub for black business and wealth from ...
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The Battle of Kadesh and the World’s First Peace Treaty

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes For a shining example of ancient warfare and the cause of the world's first recorded ...
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The Battle for Hong Kong – London’s Lost Cause?

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes By Richard Shrubb. Within 12 hours of Pearl Harbour being bombed by the Japanese at ...
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Fake News, Misinformation and Propaganda Throughout History

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes By Madison Moulton Fake news has become a popular buzzword. However, the phenomenon is not ...
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Neutrality At All Costs: The Netherlands in WW1

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes By Fergus O'Sullivan World War 1 was a conflict that engulfed entire continents and swallowed ...
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What We Now Know About the Lost Colony of Roanoke

Explore the story of the Roanoke disappearance. And the latest findings and theories that have brought us a bit closer ...
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Explainer: what is radiocarbon dating and how does it work?

Rachel Wood, Australian National University Radiocarbon dating has transformed our understanding of the past 50,000 years. Professor Willard Libby produced ...
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Magic, culture and stalactites: how Aboriginal perspectives are transforming archaeological histories

New collaborative work at an Aboriginal cave in eastern Victoria, published today, shows the stark difference between contemporary archaeological research ...
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french fur trade

The Changing Relationship Between the US Government and Native Americans

The Civilisation Program, the Indian Removal Act and the Cherokee Trail of Tears, 1776 - 1860. By Caitlan Hester The ...
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Decking the halls of history: the origins of Christmas decorations

By Anne Lawrence-Mathers, University of Reading The idea of hanging up decorations in the middle of winter is older than ...
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Stop telling students to study STEM instead of humanities for the post-coronavirus world

Alan Sears, University of New Brunswick and Penney Clark, University of British Columbia Finally, someone has figured out how to ...
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Best Historical Films 2010-2020

There may be many historically based films, but only a few can be rightfully called striking, emotional, and informative. As ...
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Sir Paul Edmund Strzelecki, Explorer and Scientist

The Incredible Life of Paul Strzelecki

Explorer, Scientist, and Humanitarian Hero By Caitlan Hester. Sir Paul Strzelecki (1797-1873) spent over four years exploring 7,000 miles of ...
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Hidden women of history: Wauba Debar, an Indigenous swimmer from Tasmania who saved her captors

Though her brave acts were acknowledged after her death, Wauba Debar’s grave was later robbed in the name of “science” ...
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A Period of Change: Global Events in the Lead Up to WWI

By Madison Moulton. The history of the lead up to WWI is undoubtedly dominated by Europe. European powers understandably take ...
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Got your bag? The critical place of mobile containers in human evolution

By Thomas Suddendorf, The University of Queensland and Michelle Langley, Griffith University Today, bags are everywhere — from cheap canvas ...
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Hawa Mahal Amer Fort

Decolonialising India’s Persianate Age

By Richard Shrubb. For the last 1,000 years and until very recently, scholars have held that the Indian sub-continent was ...
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Secondary school textbooks teach our kids the myth that Aboriginal Australians were nomadic hunter-gatherers

Robyn Moore, University of Tasmania In his book Dark Emu, Bruce Pascoe writes that settler Australians wilfully misunderstood, hid and ...
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The History of Games: Rome 2

By Fergus O'Sullivan. Here at the History Guild we like video games, especially ones with a historical setting. Of course, ...
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Doggerland: The Lost World Beneath the North Sea

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes By Madison Moulton Looking out at the North Sea – the body of water dividing ...
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Hidden women of history: Millicent Bryant, the first Australian woman to get a pilot’s licence

By James Vicars, University of New England. Before the glamorous flyers of the 1930s like Amelia Earhart, “Chubby” Miller and ...
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Five Great Historically Accurate Films

By Michael Vecchio. Most history enthusiasts will eye the release of a new film on a historical topic somewhat sceptically, ...
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What Hamilton Got Wrong

By Carolyn Comeau. It’s important to take historically-based art, whether a painting that condenses a battle or the acclaimed Broadway ...
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Oradour-sur-Glane, a town whose people were massacred by the SS Panzer Division Das Reich

By Rachel Horne. Oradour Sur Glane was once a thriving village community in West-Central France. Vibrant coffee shops and restaurants ...
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Five of the Most Historically Accurate PC Games

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Plenty of video games are marketed as being historically accurate, but few truly are. In ...
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Why Do We Have an 8-Hour Working Day?

By Anna McEvinney. The working day as we now know it was the result of international, cross-industry labour efforts from ...
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How Romania’s WW1 Gamble Paid Off Spectacularly

By Dan Teodorescu. The Great War was a major turning point for virtually all European countries, but not too many ...
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Interesting Stories of the Mound-Building Native American Civilizations of the Midwest

By Caitlan Hester. Native American Mound-Building Civilizations For over 5,000 years the Eastern, Southeastern, and the Midwestern U.S. were populated ...
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Slavery Compensation: Who Got Paid?

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes By Richard Shrubb. With the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1834 the ...
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‘Australia’s smallest peacekeeping force’ in the unknown prelude to the Korean War

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes By Paul Wallis. In the years leading up to the Korean War, the two future ...
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The Bantu Expansion: How Bantu People Changed Sub-Saharan Africa

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes By Madison Moulton. About 3500 years ago, an event began that changed the demographic, linguistic, ...
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True Grit – Unarmed Airborne Artillery Spotters over Normandy, 1944

True grit has never been so evident as it was for the daring, young pilots who flew slow, unarmed Auster ...
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Battle of One Tree Hill, Australian Frontier Wars

The Battle of One Tree Hill in 1843 was one of the largest battles in the Australian frontier wars, taking ...
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Cook – Man or Myth

2020 marks the 250th anniversary of Captain James Cook and the HMB Endeavour charted the East Coast of Australia. The ...
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Military Marine Mammals

It has recently emerged that the Russian Navy used specially trained marine mammals, probably seals, for harbour defence in Syria ...
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Nike Missile Site, San Francisco

The Nike missile was one of the first successful anti-aircraft missiles, developed by Bell Labs and put into service by ...
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Defences of Australia – 19th Century

Modern Australia is relatively unique in it's position occupying an entire continent, having no land borders with another country. While ...
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World War 1 on the Front Lines

The front line experiences of the average soldier on the western front in World War 1 are outside the realms ...
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The Australian Government doesn’t want humanities graduates

The Australian government has announced that the fees for humanities degrees will more than double. This can only make our ...
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Putin’s New History of World War 2

Russia's President has decided to revise the role of the USSR in and immediately before the second world war. While ...
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