History Guild publishes articles that provide interesting insights into history. We cover all aspects of history, from around the world and across time.
WHO DISCOVERED WHAT WHEN? – BOOK REVIEW
Who Discovered What When? Five hundred years of great scientific discoveries by David Ellyard: an absorbing and easy-to-read book about the growth of scientific ideas and knowledge since 1500.
‘Habits of civilised life’: how one Australian State forced Indigenous people to meet onerous conditions to obtain citizenship
Reading time: 7 minutes
In the breakthrough High Court case Love and Thoms vs Commonwealth in 2020, the court ruled that First Nations people could not be considered aliens in Australia. As Justice James Edelman noted in the decision, whatever the other manners in which they were treated […] Aboriginal people were not ‘considered as foreigners in a kingdom which is their own’.
Smoking Snakes: Brazil’s Forgotten WW2 Fighting Men
Reading time: 12 minutes
One of the most unusual forces ever to join the fighting in Europe: the 25,000 Brazilian soldiers and pilots of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force. An idea born out of political necessity, the “Smoking Snakes” played a brief, important, and fascinating role in the fighting in Europe.
Dockyard incendiarist: The tale of ‘John the Painter’
Reading time: 10 minutes
Opposition to the British Crown during the American War of Independence took many forms, none more notorious than the malicious designs of James Aitken (alias ‘John the Painter’).
OPERATION THUNDERBOLT – BOOK REVIEW
“Operation Thunderbolt: Flight 139 and the Raid on Entebbe Airport, The Most Audacious Hostage Rescue Mission in History” – the definitive account of one of the greatest Special Forces missions ever, the Raid of Entebbe, by acclaimed military historian Saul David.
HMAS Nestor: The remarkable tale of an Australian destroyer
Reading time: 16 minutes
A convoy of 11 merchant ships escorted by 56 warships and submarines was making its way through “bomb alley” to deliver precious supplies to the besieged garrison on Malta. HMAS Nestor was just one of these warships assigned to protect this vital convoy. It was June 15, 1942, and this would be the last sunset the destroyer would ever see.
The Blue Division: Franco’s Soldiers on the Eastern Front
Reading time: 12 minutes
From 1939 to 1945, scarcely one of the 99 countries on Earth went untouched. Just 14 nations remained neutral throughout the Second World War, and even those couldn’t completely escape the gravity well of war.
Nor did they all want to. A prelude to the European war – bloody, massive, and unspeakably destructive – had played out in Spain from 1936 until just a few months before Germany invaded Poland in the fall of 1939.
Traps, rites and kurrajong twine – the incredible ingenuity of Indigenous fishing knowledge
Reading time: 20 minutes
Some forms of Indigenous fishing inevitably became lost as Traditional Owners were dispossessed and disenfranchised of their lands and fisheries following the expansion of the colonial frontier post-1788.
The forgotten female soldiers who fought long ago – and why their stories matter today
Reading time: 13 minutes
Women have survived and even thrived as part of the machine of war – but are rarely part of military history. Why have their stories been forgotten?
“The Best Show That Was Ever Staged”: Charles Ponzi’s Scheme
Reading time: 7 minutes
Having gambled away his life savings on the passage over, Italian immigrant Charles Ponzi arrived in America with next to nothing in his pocket. As he would later recount, “I landed in this country with $2.50 in cash and $1 million in hopes, and those hopes never left me.”
The Treason of Sir Thomas More
Reading time: 9 minutes
Sir Thomas More was among the leading statesmen of the Tudor period and his legacy has long survived his execution for treason in 1535. He has been portrayed on screen, stage and in literature and in his own time was at forefront of the English humanist movement.
ON THIS DAY SHE: PUTTING WOMEN BACK INTO HISTORY, ONE DAY AT A TIME – BOOK REVIEW
Reading time: 2 minutes
From Beyoncé to Doria Shafik, Queen Elizabeth I to Lillian Bilocca, On This Day She sets out to redress this imbalance and give voice to both those already deemed female icons, alongside others whom the history books have failed to include: the good, the bad and everything in between – this is a record of human existence at its most authentic.
The Curious Creation of the Crusader States
Reading time: 7 minutes
A major holy land for three of the world’s largest, most influential religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the area of the levant has long been hotly contested.
After several centuries of ownership and Christian domination under the Roman Empire and later the Byzantine Empire, the holy land of Jerusalem and the surrounding area fell into the hands of the Muslims in 969 AD under the Fatimids, and later the Seljuq Turks.
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.
NIGHT OF THE BAYONETS: THE TEXEL UPRISING AND HITLER’S REVENGE, APRIL-MAY 1945 by Eric Lee– BOOK REVIEW
Reading time: 2 minutes
Eric Lee explores the fascinating but little known last battle of the Second World War: its origins, the incredible details of the battle and its ongoing legacy.
Schindler’s List at 30: a look back at Steven Spielberg’s shattering masterpiece
Reading time: 5 minutes
Schindler’s List, released 30 years ago, remains Steven Spielberg’s most highly acclaimed and emotionally sapping film. Winning seven Academy Awards, including best picture and best director, it was widely praised for its portrayal of the horrors of the Holocaust.
A Brief History of West Papua: Indonesia’s Unwilling Territory
Reading time: 7 minutes
Currently a province of Indonesia, West Papua is a region rich in cultural diversity and natural resources, and like many of its neighbours has a history deeply intertwined with colonialism and indigenous struggles.
In The Australian Wars, Rachel Perkins dispenses with the myth Aboriginal people didn’t fight back
Reading time: 5 minutes
The Australian Wars is a new three-part TV series directed and produced by Arrernte and Kalkadoon nations filmmaker Rachel Perkins. Perkins travels across vast territory to capture key aspects of a war that lasted more than 100 years, from the landing of the First Fleet in 1788 until the 1920s.
The series traces some of the key phases, sites and underlying features of frontier wars here on home soil.
LAND: HOW THE HUNGER FOR OWNERSHIP SHAPED THE MODERN WORLD – BOOK REVIEW
Reading time: 2 minutes
Land—whether meadow or mountainside, desert or peat bog, parkland or pasture, suburb or city—is central to our existence. It quite literally underlies and underpins everything. Employing the keen intellect, insatiable curiosity, and narrative verve that are the foundations of his previous bestselling works, Simon Winchester examines what we human beings are doing—and have done—with the billions of acres that together make up the solid surface of our planet.
Australia is still reckoning with a shameful legacy: the resettlement of suspected war criminals after WWII
Reading time: 6 minutes
Around one million Central and Eastern European “displaced persons” were resettled by the United Nations after the second world war in countries such as Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. This group included soldiers who had fought in German military units, as well as civilian collaborators. The Nazi-led Holocaust had relied on their firepower and administrative skills.
THE FORGOTTEN WAR CRIMES OF FASCIST ITALY
Reading time: 14 minutes
In just five short years, the combined forces of the Axis powers managed to commit atrocities and war crimes on a scale never equalled before or after. But while Axis war crimes came into sudden shocking clarity with the Allied victory in 1945, one Axis power is still overlooked to this day: Italy.
Earning the Enemy’s Respect: Victoria Cross Recommendations from the Other Side
Reading time: 7 minutes
Many readers will be familiar with the 1964 epic movie Zulu, which depicts the 1879 landmark Battle of Rorke’s Drift in the Anglo-Zulu War. In the film, perhaps the most iconic scene takes place at the end of the movie, whereby the Zulu warriors chant in respectful salutation towards the British soldiers before withdrawing after the battle. Moving, cinematic, and honourable, it’s clear why the scene lives so memorably in the hearts of fans today.
Why Aboriginal Australian ‘Ununiformed Warriors’ Qualify for the Australian War Memorial
Reading time: 5 minutes
Last year, chair of the Australian War Memorial Kim Beazley called for First Nations “guerilla campaigns” of the Frontier Wars to be included in the Australian War Memorial. His bid was criticised by the RSL Australia’s president Major General Greg Melick.
Melick argued Indigenous casualties of the Frontier Wars could not be honoured at the War Memorial because they did not fight “in uniform”. But the Australian War Memorial already honours “ununiformed” First Nations soldiers – namely Dayak people who assisted in Borneo during World War 2.
Annexation or Liberation? India, Portgual, and Goa: 1961
Reading time: 10 minutes
On 18th July 1947, British rule in India came to an end, closing a 300-year old chapter in the history of the subcontinent. But another empire had been in India for over a century more, and it would be over a decade later that this longer story was finished.