Henry Kamen— Among the most serious environmental issues in preindustrial Europe was that of the disappearance of forests, which had at one time covered the greater part of the land surface. Already in medieval times there were protests against the destruction of forest land in order to create more arable
Mark Leopold— The question of exactly when Idi Amin joined the British Army, like the date of his birth, has been the subject of some disagreement and dispute. Even the British government later had problems ascertaining when he joined up, and whether he had fought in the Second World War.
Michael P. Winship— In late 1535, 300-year-old Cleeve Abbey’s seventeen Cistercian monks received an emissary of King Henry VIII, the lawyer John Tregonwell. Like the rest of the monks, John Hooper, an Oxford University graduate in his late thirties, must have wondered why Tregonwell was really there. Was it because
Nicholas Orme— This is a scene from a fifteenth-century stained-glass window at Doddiscombsleigh: a country church in Devon, in the south-west of England. It shows what would have been a familiar event. A baby is brought to church to be baptized. The ceremony takes place at a font: a stone
Jan Lucassen— One of the anomalies of our times is the urgent demand for laboring bodies, alongside the denial of their humanity. Think of severe immigration restrictions in Japan, Europe, the USA, and Australia and inequalities in the Gulf States. In the light of a quickly ageing population and rising
Susan Tomes— A history of the piano in only 100 pieces—how can that be? Doesn’t the piano have one of the most extensive literatures of music written for any instrument? In reality, one would need thousands of choices to do justice to the piano music of the last 250 years.
Joel E. Dimsdale— When I tell people I am interested in brainwashing, I get mixed responses. “Isn’t that kind of a stale, musty topic—Communists, bad science, and all that stuff?” That’s fair: brainwashing has some of those characteristics. It is an old phenomenon, linked to religious conversion and torture. It
Kevin Madigan— Around 1870, evangelical Christians, as their Catholic adversaries would put it, “invaded” Italy in large numbers. Before unification and the inception of a new liberal order, the extension of rights of toleration to Jews and non-Catholic Christians, and the dispossession of the papal states, Protestant missionaries, by and
Considered a modern classic, this New York Times bestseller by the award-winning journalist Ahmed Rashid provides an early glimpse into the history of the Taliban. Ahmed Rashid— The links between the Taliban and some of the extreme Pakistani Deobandi groups are solid because of the common ground they share. Several
Nemata Amelia Ibitayo Blyden— In January 1830, a year after David Walker published his Appeal, fifty-one-year-old George M. Erskine of Tennessee set sail for the newly settled colony of Liberia. With him aboard the brig Liberia were his wife Hagar, fifty; seven of their eight children—Jane, thirty; Wallace, twenty-one; Mary, seventeen; Weir,