Tag: British

How the Gunpowder Treason was discovered

How the Gunpowder Treason was discovered

by | Sep 25, 2023 | , | 0

Reading time: 9 minutes
On the night of 4 November 1605, a man calling himself John Johnson was found in the vaults beneath the House of Lords with 36 barrels of gunpowder. Under questioning, Johnson – whose real name was Guy Fawkes – admitted that he and his co-conspirators planned to use the gunpowder to blow up the House during the State Opening of Parliament on 5 November. If successful, this plot – which became known as the Gunpowder Treason, or Gunpowder Plot – would have killed not only King James I (and VI) but members of his family, his chief ministers, and the Members of Parliament in attendance at the state opening. This was treason on an unprecedented scale – an attempt to destroy both the king and his government.

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Maths swayed the Battle of Jutland – and helped Britain keep control of the seas

Maths swayed the Battle of Jutland – and helped Britain keep control of the seas

by | Sep 21, 2023 | | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
If you’re about to fight a battle, would you rather have a larger fleet, or a smaller but more advanced one? One hundred years ago, on May 31 1916, the British Royal Navy was about to find out if its choice of a larger fleet was the correct one. At the Battle of Jutland – as the major naval battle of World War I is known in English – these choices were unusually influenced by mathematics.

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The story of HMT Empire Windrush (1930–1954)

The story of HMT Empire Windrush (1930–1954)

by | Sep 18, 2023 | , , | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
This june will mark the 75th anniversary of the arrival of HMT Empire Windrush at Tilbury Harbour, carrying on board some 800 passengers who gave their last country of residence as somewhere in the West Indies, and many of whom would migrate as workers and would settle in Britain and help steer its economic recovery after the Second World War. But this was only one journey in the vessel’s history and this article examines its colourful, chequered, and varied life since its maiden voyage was made in 1931 to its sinking in 1954.

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A slave state – how blackbirding in colonial Australia created a legacy of racism

A slave state – how blackbirding in colonial Australia created a legacy of racism

by | Sep 6, 2023 | , , | 0

Reading time: 46 minutes
The French historian Ernest Renan described forgetting as “an essential factor in the creation of a nation”, since patriots do not want to remember the “deeds of violence” at the origin of all political formations. In the Australian context, a strange contradiction contributes to the ongoing amnesia about slavery and its consequences. From the very beginning, enslavement shaped white settlement in Australia – and so, too, did abolitionism. That paradox, a peculiar entwinement of two ostensibly antagonistic impulses, makes for a complicated narrative, one that cannot be grasped simply as a local version of the better-known American story.

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Black troops were welcome in Britain, but Jim Crow wasn’t: the race riot of one night in June 1943

Black troops were welcome in Britain, but Jim Crow wasn’t: the race riot of one night in June 1943

by | Aug 28, 2023 | , | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
More a mutiny than a battle, it led to the death of Private William Crossland in nearby Mounsey Road, and four other injuries to black American soldiers in a five-hour confrontation which spread from the thatched Olde Hob Inn at one end of the town to the Adams Hall army camp, where from early 1943 the US Eighth Army Quartermaster Truck Company, a black company apart from a few white officers, had been based. The event was officially downplayed, in order not to undermine morale on the home front, but the events of that night led to the conviction of 27 black American soldiers.

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A brief history of lion taming

A brief history of lion taming

by | Aug 21, 2023 | | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
Britain’s last lion tamer, Thomas Chipperfield, was recently refused a licence to continue performing with his two lions and one tiger. The decision – which Chipperfield intends to appeal – marks the end of a long tradition of lion taming in Britain. It reflects a gradual shift in public attitudes towards circuses and a growing sense that making wild animals perform unnatural tricks is both dangerous and cruel.

While it has taken nearly 200 years for such views to result in a formal ban, these sentiments have been around for a long time. From its origin in the early 19th century, lion taming has elicited both awe and horror. It has also attracted a socially diverse range of tamers, whose performances have been both praised and condemned.

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Returning looted artefacts will finally restore heritage to the brilliant cultures that made them

Returning looted artefacts will finally restore heritage to the brilliant cultures that made them

by | Jul 31, 2023 | , , | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
European museums are under mounting pressure to return the irreplaceable artefacts plundered during colonial times. As an archaeologist who works in Africa, this debate has a very real impact on my research. I benefit from the convenience of access provided by Western museums, while being struck by the ethical quandary of how they were taken there by illegal means, and by guilt that my colleagues throughout Africa may not have the resources to see material from their own country, which is kept thousands of miles away.

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The Christmas truce, 1914

The Christmas truce, 1914

by | Jul 14, 2023 | , | 0

Reading time: 7 minutes
The Christmas truce of 1914 will generally conjure up images of opposing British and German soldiers walking calmly across No Man’s Land, exchanging gifts and playing football. These images have become reinforced via personal memoirs, dramatisations and films. This blog post in memory of the unofficial ceasefires which occurred during the Christmas period of December 1914 will use unit war diaries, from WO 95, to reflect upon the events that occurred on Christmas Day 1914, some of which were very contrasting.

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How whiteness was invented and fashioned in Britain’s colonial age of expansion

How whiteness was invented and fashioned in Britain’s colonial age of expansion

by | Jul 14, 2023 | | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
Fashion is political — today as in the past. As Britain’s Empire dramatically expanded, people of all ranks lived with clothing and everyday objects in startlingly different ways than generations before.

The years between 1660 and 1820 saw the expansion of the British empire and commercial capitalism. The social politics of Britain’s cotton trade mirrored profound global transformations bound up with technological and industrial revolutions, social modernization, colonialism and slavery.

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Rediscovering a ‘lost’ Roman frontier from the air

Rediscovering a ‘lost’ Roman frontier from the air

by | Jun 26, 2023 | , | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
Frontiers like Hadrian’s Wall are central to the study of the Roman Empire. By now we might expect to have discovered most such major landmarks. However, by scrutinising archives of aerial photography, we have been able to identify as Roman two more walls that will transform our understanding of the frontier of the Roman Empire in Eastern Europe.

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The Roman ‘Brexit’: how life in Britain changed after 409AD

The Roman ‘Brexit’: how life in Britain changed after 409AD

by | Jun 14, 2023 | , | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
Leaving a major political body is nothing new for mainland Britain. In 409AD, more than 350 years after the Roman conquest of 43AD, the island slipped from the control of the Roman Empire. Much like the present Brexit, the process of this secession and its practical impacts on Britain’s population in the early years of the 5th century remain ill-defined.

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