History Guild publishes articles that provide interesting insights into history. We cover all aspects of history, from around the world and across time.
“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.
The enduring lessons of the Iraq War
Reading time: 7 minutes
The US-led overthrow of the government of Saddam Hussein in Iraq marked the beginning of a series of events that reshaped the strategic environment of the Middle East. It also had enduring consequences for Iraqi society, and for Arab societies and Arab governments beyond its borders. There was no reason to doubt that the military defeat of Iraq could be achieved. But there were larger questions involved—including what a successor regime should look like; whether such a regime, initially established and maintained under US protection, would prove sustainable; and if not, what the consequences would be.
Neutral and Nervous – A History of Sweden’s Now Broken 200-Year Streak of Neutrality
Reading time: 6 minutes
For over 200 years, Sweden has been one of the few neutral states in Europe. From the Napoleonic Wars and Sweden’s declaration of neutrality in 1812 to today, many conflicts have arisen right on its borders.
Despite this, Sweden (until its joining with NATO in 2024) has successfully navigated neutrality, avoiding two world wars and many other conflicts throughout the 20th Century.
But how did Sweden manage to stay neutral throughout the 1900s with two world wars on its doorstep, and why did it become neutral in the first place?
Farmers or foragers? Pre-colonial Aboriginal food production was hardly that simple
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.
They Shall Not Grow Old poignantly illuminates the human face of the Great War.
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.
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.
The Hiberno-Scottish Missions and the Roots of the Early Christian Church
Reading time: 6 minutes
A series of missions that spanned the 6th to 8th centuries would emerge as one of the most crucial periods for early Christianity in establishing its footing in the British Isles.
THE 25,000-LI JOURNEY: INSIDE THE LONG MARCH, MODERN CHINA’S FOUNDING MYTH
Reading time: 12 minutes
On 21th September 1949, Mao Zedong took to the podium in Huairen Hall, Zhongnanhai, a former royal residence in Beijing, to announce that “the Chinese people, comprising one quarter of humanity, have now stood up.”
These striking words were all too appropriate for the moment: for Mao it represented the end of a quarter-century journey to the pinnacle of his own party and finally his country – a journey which began with the Long March.
History and myth: why the Treaty of Waitangi remains such a ‘bloody difficult subject’
Reading time: 10 minutes
The Treaty of Waitangi, the influential historian Ruth Ross (1920-1982) remarked in 1972, is “a bloody difficult subject”. She should have known – she devoted most of her working life to trying to make sense of it, especially the text in te reo Māori. That difficulty persists to this day.
The Birth of Modern Iraq: A Historical Odyssey
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?
What is the History of Diwali?
Reading time: 4 minutes
Diwali is a festival of lights and celebrates the triumph of light over darkness – but where does this stem from? Suzanne Newcombe looks at the religious festival’s origins in this article.
OPERATION PEDESTAL: THE FLEET THAT BATTLED TO MALTA, 1942 – BOOK REVIEW
Renowned historian Max Hastings recreates one of the most thrilling events of World War II in “Operation Pedestal: The Fleet That Battled to Malta, 1942” – an action-packed tale of courage, fortitude, loss, and triumph against all odds.
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?
Australian pilots in the fight for control over the Mediterranean
Reading time: 11 minutes
The Siege of Malta, a two-year ordeal of bombs, heat and dust, was one of the most important battles of the Mediterranean theatre in World War Two. Few of the victories in North Africa and Italy would have been possible had the island fallen to the Axis. In this article, we let Australian pilots who defended Malta tell their stories.
Birth of a nation: how Australia empowering women taught the world a lesson
Reading time: 20 minutes
Perhaps, with the global challenges of the 21st century, Australia can reassert its erstwhile youthful exuberance and once again be proud to call itself a trailblazing leader – a nation where justice serves as the foundation of its moral constitution.
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.
In The Fight: Australians and the War in Burma 1942-1945 – One day Conference
The conference tells of the involvement of Australians in what became one of the great sagas of the war against the Japanese in South East Asia, encompassing India, Ceylon, Burma, China, Thailand, Indo-China, Malaya, Singapore and Sumatra.
The legacy of Empire: The Bengal Famine
Reading time: 4 minutes
One of the motivations of The Things We Forgot To Remember is as an answer to the question “Why study history?” There are a lot of answers to this, but one important reason is that people are already talking about history, and sometimes, they have got it seriously wrong. One example of this is the widespread ignorance of the Bengal famine. For me, the ‘killer facts’ about the Bengal famine are straightforward. In 1941, when the Battle of the Atlantic was at its height, Winston Churchill and the War Cabinet considered the question of relative priority to give to imports of food, raw materials, and munitions.
The Origins of the Commons in Britain
Reading time: 8 minutes
Walking around any British town or village today, it’s difficult to imagine that land might not once have been private. But this was not always the case – for centuries, landless people could access common lands and forests. There they could gather firewood, graze livestock, or grow small crops.
Cracking the Code: The Quest to Decipher the Indus Valley Script
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.
David Grann’s The Wager: a drama of murder, insurrection, escape and an empire at sea
Reading time: 7 minutes
In 1740, a modest squadron of ships from Britain’s Royal Navy departed Portsmouth in pursuit of an immoderate treasure. Commodore George Anson, who led the flotilla, was tasked with sailing south and west across the Atlantic Ocean, rounding Cape Horn, and interfering in imperial Spain’s lucrative trans-Pacific trade. But even before the mission got underway, its prospects of success appeared dubious. A sizeable proportion of the roughly 2,000 sailors and non-seamen under Anson’s command lacked suitable experience. Worse still was the fact that so many of them took up their posts already in a parlous state of health. It is little surprise, therefore, that Anson’s “famous” voyage around the world proved to be, for most of the men who undertook it, a journey of no return.
How the Sino-Soviet split created strange bedfellows
Reading time: 6 minutes
The Cold War had a lot of strange alliances, with many unlikely partners like Australian intelligence helping overthrow Chile’s elected government or the United States selling weapons to Iran. Weirder still, a natural alliance, one between the communist behemoths of the Soviet Union and China, never really worked out. What was behind the Sino-Soviet split, and how did it lead to China and the United States working together against the Soviet Union?
Dive! Australian Submariners at War by Mike Carlton – Book Review
Reading time: 4 minutes
Dive! opens with the best description of the development and implementation of submarine technology and doctrine I have ever read. This could easily be part of a broader history of submarines, Carlton has clearly done broad and extensive research and his writing effortlessly demonstrates his command of the topic.
How Australia became a nation, and women won the vote
Reading time: 6 minutes
In April 1897, ten elected delegates from each of Australia’s colonies (except Queensland, which did not attend) gathered at Parliament House in Adelaide to map the route to nationhood, a Commonwealth of Australia.