Napoleon’s bicentenary: why celebrating the French emperor has become so controversial
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.
The Incredible Career of Mercenary Bob Denard, Viceroy of the Comoros
Bob Denard had not quite reached his 32nd birthday when a newspaper article caught his eye. It was a profile on the foreign mercenaries fighting for Moïse Tshombe’s breakaway state, Katanga, in southern Congo, and it contained a photograph of the only Frenchman in Tshombe’s service. “His name was Antoine de Saint-Paul,” Denard recalled, “and […]
Wars of the Roses: how the French meddled in this very English conflict
Reading time: 6 minutes
The Wars of the Roses are normally portrayed as a series of battles between two warring houses, York and Lancaster, over who was rightly king of England. However, they were about much more than that. In many ways, the wars were really about standards of government.
The story of Nancy Wake
Reading time: 7 minutes
Nancy Wake (1912–2011) was an agent for the Special Operations Executive and the most wanted woman in France during the Second World War. Dubbed the ‘White Mouse’ by the Nazis, she was the one who always got away.
A Belgian farmer moved a rock and accidentally annexed France: the weird and wonderful history of man-made borders
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?
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.
What was the Sykes-Picot agreement, and why does it still affect the Middle East today?
Reading time: 7 minutes
While this may be true, Sykes-Picot is still emblematic of how consequential European colonial ambition was in the Middle East. And while the borders outlined in the agreement did not eventuate, Britain and France still managed to get most of the territory they wanted, with little consideration of local populations. The Sykes-Picot agreement is therefore one of many colonial projects that we are still feeling the ripples of today.
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.
Flies, filth and bully beef: life at Gallipoli in 1915
Reading time: 6 minutes
Many factors contributed to making the Gallipoli battlefield an almost unendurable place for all soldiers. The constant noise, cramped unsanitary conditions, disease, stenches, daily death of comrades, terrible food, lack of rest and thirst all contributed to the most gruelling conditions.
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 Strangest Battle of World War II? Uncovering the Battle of Castle Itter
Reading time: 6 minutes
In the waning hours of the war, exactly five days after Hitler shot himself in his bunker, a bizarre battle would commence in a small Austrian town, just south of the German border.
Seven hundred years after its construction in the 1200s, Castle Itter would host a battle between the Waffen-SS (the Nazi party’s specialist paramilitary) and a combined force of defecting German Wehrmacht troops, American soldiers, Austrian resistance fighters, and various French political prisoners.
April Fools! The History Behind the World’s Greatest Day of Pranks
Reading time: 7 minutes
The world loves a good April Fools’ Day prank – from telling your schoolmates it’s non-uniform to assuring a coworker the boss has definitely given everyone the day off, April 1st is a day of big and small pranks all around the world.
While mostly celebrated in Western countries such as Northern Europe, America, and other English-speaking countries like the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, much of the world knows of and sometimes takes part in the light-hearted tradition of April Fools.
But where does it come from?
The 7 Largest Empires in History
Reading time: 8 minutes
While very few exist today, the world’s history books are filled with hundreds of thousands of empires, ranging from a handful of islands to near-global domination.
A select few stand as the most infamous, such as the Roman Empire or the British Empire, yet many of history’s largest empires are less well-known. So, what were the world’s largest empires across history?
Free of the Trench: How British & Imperial Forces Overcame the Deadlock of the Western Front
Reading time: 12 minutes
The First World War came to an end just over 100 years ago, a mere moment’s time in human history. But as close as we are to it, a century is more than enough to surround that conflict with myth and misconception.
The image of the war on the Western Front, as brought to us through decades of outdated scholarship and popular fiction, is simple: two vast armies, each equipped with the latest murderous fruits of the industrial age, found they couldn’t decisively defeat one another in the field and so settled into a long, bloody, dirty, and consumptive war in which thousands of lives were thrown away every day, often for minuscule gains which would bring neither side meaningfully closer to victory.
The real story is more complicated. By 1916, it was plain to see that tactics like those championed by Haig, designed to draw out the enemy for a momentous set-piece battle, weren’t working, and even those neck-deep in the fight didn’t need the benefit of hindsight to recognise that.
Free France was African: the Story of France’s African Soldiers in WW2
Reading time: 15 minutes
From a humble, precarious exile in London, Free France patched together from soldiers and sailors of the scattered French military under the leadership of General Charles de Gaulle. One of the most storied resistance movements in World War II, far-flung Frenchmen swelled in number until hundreds of thousands could return to liberate France in 1944.
The First World War continues: Medina, Arabia, January 1919
Reading time: 6 minutes
or many in the West, the First World War in the Middle East was a sideshow to the Western Front. The story of the wartime siege of Medina is even less well-known. But in the region it is still debated and contested, for example in December 2017 when the Foreign Minister of the United Arab Emirates accused Fakhri Pasha of stealing items from Medina, which earned a strong rebuke from the President of Turkey. The First World War in the Middle East had a profound effect on the region, with consequences to this day.
“Its Name Synonymous with Barbarism”: The Colonial Narratives that Destroyed Dahomey’s ‘Amazons’
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.
Why we don’t hear about the 10,000 French deaths at Gallipoli
Reading time: 6 minutes
With almost the same number of soldiers as the Anzacs – 79,000 – and similar death rates – close on 10,000 – French participation in the Gallipoli campaign could not occupy a more different place in national memory. What became a foundation myth in Australia as it also did in the Turkish Republic after 1923 was eventually forgotten in France.
Who Would Be the Roman Emperor Today?
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?
Where are All the Medals? Racial Bias in Military Bravery Awards
Reading time: 7 minutes
For service or for gallantry, almost all modern militaries – especially Western militaries, have issued war medals for a very long time.
But who decides who gets these medals and awards, and how?
Recent examination has brought to light a distinct lack of minority soldiers within Western militaries winning bravery awards, across many different countries, all throughout the 20th century and beyond.
How the British defeated Napoleon with citrus fruit
Reading time: 5 minutes
Everyone knows that Britain’s conclusive victory over Napoleon was at Waterloo. The story of that day – the squares of infantry repulsing cavalry charges, the Imperial Guard retreating under murderous musket fire delivered by a red line of soliders, the just-in-time arrival of Field Marshal Blücher’s Prussian army – is one of excitement, horror and heroism. However, Britain’s biggest contribution to Napoleon’s defeat was much less romantic. It involved the first randomised controlled trial.
Virginia Hall, SOE Agent to CIA Pioneer
Reading time: 10 minutes
Virginia Hall (1906–1982) was an American woman who served with the British Special Operations Executive in France in 1941–1942. She then joined its US equivalent, the Office of Strategic Services, and became a founding member of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Swedish Viking hoard: how the discovery of single Norman coin expands our knowledge of French history
Reading time: 5 minutes
In the autumn of 2020, I was contacted by the field archaeology unit of the Swedish National Historical Museums, who are also known as the Archaeologists. They were excavating at a Viking-age settlement at Viggbyholm just north of Stockholm. During routine metal detecting of the site, they had located a very exciting find: eight silver necklaces and other silver jewellery along with 12 coins, everything delicately wrapped up in a cloth and deposited in a pot. In other words, a genuine Viking silver hoard.
Australia’s long dread of France in the South Pacific
Reading time: 13 minutes
A striking duality drove Australia’s thinking about France in the 20th century. Expressed as a chant it went: In Europe, Good! In the Pacific, Bad!