The Mexican War of Independence
In this lesson we will be learning about the Mexican war of independence and the effects it had on Mexico and it’s people.
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Carols, ration books and bomb shelters: how Britain celebrated Christmas in 1940
Reading time: 6 minutes
At Christmas 1939, Britons had been able to maintain a semblance of normality. The blackout prevented displays of lighted Christmas trees in front windows, but there was no rationing and Britain’s key ally, France, remained unconquered behind the allegedly impregnable Maginot Line.
Following the fall of France, the evacuation at Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain, Christmas 1940 was much bleaker – the first real wartime Christmas. It took place in the middle of the Blitz. In December, the Luftwaffe attacked Southampton, Bristol, Sheffield and Leicester. Manchester took heavy pounding on the night of December 22/23 and again on Christmas Eve. Rationing was beginning to bite hard as the German occupation of Europe and blockade by U-boats cut off important sources of supply.
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What Vietnam and Iraq should teach Canberra
Reading time: 7 minutes
If we learn more from losses than wins, then the Canberra system has much to gain from examining its lousy performance in the processes that took Australia to war in Vietnam and Iraq. For Australia, both wars were all about the alliance with the United States. Both were wars of choice, although the regional implications Canberra read into Vietnam meant it was closer to a war of necessity than Iraq.
Both wars exemplify the Prime Minister’s most profound prerogative and Parliament’s lack of power. The entry to both showed the Canberra system performing below its best, revealing again the truth that artifice and farce often attend the most serious of moments of government.
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Report from 1945 holds lessons for defence strategic review team
Reading time: 4 minutes
What defence forces should Australia maintain at a time of strategic uncertainty and rapid technological change? This is the fundamental question currently facing Stephen Smith and Angus Houston, the authors of the defence strategic review. Much has been made of the critical nature of this review and the fact it represents a ‘huge moment in Australian defence history’. Recently, however, I was going through a previous review conducted in similarly uncertain times (although for different reasons) and it was difficult not to be struck by the enduring nature of the key issues at stake.
CRUSADERS: THE EPIC HISTORY OF THE WARS FOR THE HOLY LANDS – BOOK REVIEW
Reading time: 2 minutes
A look at Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands, by Dan Jones – A major new history of the Crusades with an unprecedented wide scope, told in a tableau of portraits of people on all sides of the wars, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Templars.
Protecting country: Indigenous Australians in the defence of the north
Reading time: 5 minutes
Notions of ‘protecting country’ have, anecdotally at least, been a key motivation for Indigenous people to participate in Australia’s defence services since World War I. It may well be one reason they have been joining the army reserve’s Regional Force Surveillance Units for the past 30-odd years. The youngest of the three units, 51st Battalion, Far North Queensland Regiment, even has as its motto Ducit amor patriae, ‘The love of country guides me’.
Given that it’s been almost three decades since we last considered the defence of Australia’s north, it’s time to think about whether there are new ways to involve Indigenous people in that endeavour.
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CHICKENHAWK – BOOK REVIEW
Reading time: 1 minute
A look at the novel Chickenhawk, Robert Mason’s bestselling account of his service as a chopper pilot in Vietnam–a no-holds-barred autobiography that reveals the war’s shattering legacy in the heart of a returning vet.
Why the Neanderthals may have been more sophisticated hunters than we thought – new study
Reading time: 6 minutes
When Neanderthals are depicted in artistic reconstructions, they often have a spear in hand. Most archaeologists believe that Neanderthals were adept hunters, and we have found spears at Neanderthal sites. But our knowledge of how they used spears and how that compares with our own species has been inconclusive. Rather than using the spears for hunting, Neanderthals could have used them for self-defence or scavenging.
How was law and order maintained in Britain before modern Policing?
Reading time: 6 minutes
Although the police force may seem an integral part of our world now, the first statutory police force in the world was only created in 1611, in Edinburgh. So how did a sizable country like Britain maintain law and order before this?
Why there is no Kurdish nation
Reading time: 6 minutes
In a series of conferences in a succession of European palaces, Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau of France, Woodrow Wilson and dozens of other leaders conspired, harangued and horse-traded from 1919 to 1921. Under clouds of cigar smoke, between servings of foie gras and champagne, they redrew a large swath of the globe’s map.
Their guiding principle for redrawing the map, at least in most cases, was the reigning concept of race nationalism, what’s often called today ethno-nationalism.
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Australians in the Mediterranean, WW2
Thousands of Australian soldiers saw combat in a series of battles in the Mediterranean and North...
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THE LIGHT OF DAYS – BOOK REVIEW
Reading time: 3 minutes
The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghetto, by Judy Batalion – an unforgettable true tale of war, the fight for freedom, exceptional bravery, female friendship, and survival in the face of staggering odds.
Historians are Being Asked to Spin Simple Stories of Nationalism; The Past Won’t Cooperate
Reading time: 7 minutes
North Macedonia, an EU candidate since 2005, and Bulgaria, an EU member since 2007, are neighbors that have several commonalities in terms of history and culture. Despite the commonalities, in recent years commemorations and public memory have increasingly led to bitterness between the two nations, including political threats and even physical altercations at various sites of memory. Bulgarian perspectives over North Macedonia’s history and culture present a major roadblock for the latter’s EU membership, as well as general stability in the Balkan region, which was once considered to be a European powder keg. This is all because of attempts to simplify and revise a very complex history that requires patience, open-ended questions, deconstruction of well-established national myths, and careful conclusions.
A program for peace: The founding of the United Nations
Reading time: 6 minutes Achieving the elusive dream of “world peace”, has long been an idealist...
Read MoreGerman Unification
In this lesson we will be learning about the German unification, the rise of power of Otto von Bismarck and the German Empire.
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The “Madman Theory” Was Quintessential Nixon
Reading time: 6 minutes
When H. R. “Bob” Haldeman first described Richard Nixon’s “madman theory” in his 1978 memoir, The Ends of Power, few scholars paid serious attention. For those who did notice, the one-paragraph description of Nixon’s risk-laden strategy sounded like Haldeman was taking a cheap shot, calling his old boss crazy. After all, Nixon had seen his chief of staff resign and serve time for the Watergate cover-up. The “madman theory,” Haldeman wrote, was a “phrase…which I’m sure will bring smiles of delight to Nixon-haters everywhere.” Nearly half a century later, scholars have established that the rash ruse was central to Nixon’s strategy to fight the Cold War. The madman theory can also tell us a good deal about the famously elusive ex-president himself: how Nixon saw his career as he saw the superpower struggle, how life, for Nixon, proved to be laden with exhilarating risk, peril and a series of tests of will against determined foes.
How the Thirty Years’ War Weakened Spain
Reading time: 5 minutes
The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) wasn’t a conflict as much as a vortex that sucked every major European power into it only to spit them out battered and bruised a few years later. We have talked about how it started in Prague and how Sweden got involved; in this article, it’s Spain’s turn.
What we’re finding as we excavate Halmyris, a frontier fort of the Roman Empire
Reading time: 5 minutes
Nationalism is resurging across Europe, and with it has come increasing attention on the vulnerable outer edges of nations: borders, frontiers, and other marginal zones. Today, some of the frontiers of the Roman Empire are now national boundaries, but in antiquity these spaces functioned very differently from how we understand borders today.
Why Did Britain Change its Stance on Slavery?
Reading time: 7 minutes
By the 1730s, Britain was the largest slave-trading Empire in the world. It is estimated that between 1640 and 1800, private British citizens across the Empire transported 3.1 million Africans as slaves.
Yet less than seven years later, the British parliament officially abolished slavery. And they didn’t stop there. The British government then proceeded to pressure allies and other European nations such as Portugal, Spain and France to also abolish slavery, and devoted significant Royal Navy resources to intercept and arrest slaving ships off the coast of Africa.
The role of Australian industrial power in the defeat of Japan in World War II
Reading time: 7 minutes
Questions remain about what stopped the Japanese from invading Australia, and how it was that many of our personnel came home alive and unwounded despite the dreadful conditions they faced.
The answers largely define an achievement of Australia’s World War II generation.
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