Tag: French

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.

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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.

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“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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Ireland and the Battle of The Somme

Reading time: 8 minutes
The Somme was the first great action by a British Army on a continental scale. It was the longest, bloodiest battle of World War One, a campaign lasting four and a half months, and fought over a twenty-mile front near the Somme. In February 1916 Allied commanders had decided to launch an infantry offensive there,

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