Winston Churchill’s 150th birthday [reading list]

Winston Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire on 30^th November 1874. His exploits as Prime Minister during the Second World War left an indelible mark on history. To celebrate 150 years since his birth, we have collated the latest research on Oxford Academic to read more about Churchill’s life.  Whether you’re a history enthusiast or a curious reader, this collection offers a deep dive into the life and times of a figure who shaped the modern world.

1. Blue Jerusalem: British Conservativism, Winston Churchill, and the Second World War by Kit Kowol

This radical re-interpretation of British history and British Conservatism between 1939 and 1945 reveals the bold, at times utopian, plans British Conservatives drew up for Britain and the post-war world. From proposals for world government to a more united Empire via dreams of a new Christian elite and a move back to the land, this book reveals how Conservatives were every bit as imaginative and courageous as Labour and their left-wing opponents. A study of political thinking as well as political manoeuvre, it goes beyond an examination of the usual suspects—Winston Churchill, Neville Chamberlain, etc.—to reveal a hitherto lost world of British Conservatism and a set of forgotten futures that continue to shape our world.

Read Blue Jerusalem: British Conservatism, Winston Churchill, and the Second World War

2. “Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill” in The Titans of the Twentieth Century: How They Made History and the History They Made by Michael Mandelbaum

After a long and prominent career in the British parliament and membership in several British cabinets, Winston Churchill became prime minister in 1940 as World War II was going badly for Britain. He rallied the country with eloquence, expressing a determination not to give in to Nazi Germany but rather to fight to the end. He also set about cultivating a relationship with the American president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, with an eye to securing American assistance and ultimately American participation in the war against Germany.

Read “Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill”

3. “Civil War and Liberation in the Balkans: 1944–1945” in The Big Three Allies and the European Resistance: Intelligence, Politics, and the Origins of the Cold War, 1939-1945 by Tommaso Piffer

In Yugoslavia, where Churchill had apparently imposed a clear-cut choice in December 1943, British policy was the subject of lengthy discussions. The problem here was what to do with Mihailović. The Soviets had scored an important point when Churchill shifted British support from Mihailović to Tito, but there too the game was far from over. Churchill asserted that Mihailović should be dismissed immediately and all British missions to the Chetniks withdrawn. Eden, on the other hand, thought it would have been sensible to achieve an agreement with Tito before throwing Mihailović overboard. Churchill had, in essence, failed to understand who Tito really was and what he wanted.

Read “Civil War and Liberation in the Balkans: 1944-1945”

4. Rum, Sodomy, Prayers, and the Lash Revisited: Winston Churchill and Social Reform in the Royal Navy, 1900-1915 by Matthew S. Seligmann

“Naval tradition? Naval tradition? Monstrous. Nothing but rum, sodomy, prayers and the lash.” When Winston Churchill was in charge of the Royal Navy from October 1911 to May 1915 he sought to make drastic reforms, coming into conflict with the naval officers over the traditions of the Royal Navy. Churchill was not just a major architect of welfare reform as President of the Board of Trade and as Home Secretary, but he also continued to push a radical social agenda while running the Navy.

Read Rum, Sodomy, Prayers, and the Lash Revisited: Winston Churchill and Social Reform in the Royal Navy, 1900-1915

5. The Churchill Myths by Steven Fielding, Bill Schwarz, Richard Toye

This is not yet another biography of Winston Churchill. It is instead an innovative study of how and why we think what we do about the figure we call ‘Winston Churchill’—and how generations of politicians, historians, and dramatists have manipulated this figure for their own ends. It is a book for those interested in ‘Churchill’ and how this figure has been put to use—as well as Britain’s past, present, and future.

Read The Churchill Myths

6. Churchill’s American Arsenal by Larrie D. Ferreiro

The idea of a “special relationship” between Britain and the United States was articulated by Churchill after World War Two had ended, but for most of its history, the relations between the two nations were often as distrustful as they were friendly. This book tells the story of how a British and American scientific and technological partnership, one that started not long after Britain had lost its ally France and stood alone against Nazi Germany, developed these innovations, which could not be imagined before the conflict began, on an industrial scale.

Read Churchill’s American Arsenal

7. “The Military and Diplomatic Strands” in The War Lords and the Gallipoli Disaster: How Globalized Trade Led Britain to Its Worst Defeat of the First World War by Nicholas A Lambert

As First Lord of the Admiralty during the First World War, Churchill oversaw the Gallipoli campaign. As the Western Front developed into a stalemate, Prime Minister Asquith announced a full review of strategic policy to be held during the first week of January 1915. There were major disagreements over strategy (within both army and navy high commands) and much lobbying ensued, with Churchill front and centre of the debates.

Read “The Military and Diplomatic Strands”

8. “Churchill” in Storms over the Balkans by Alfred J Rieber

Churchill pursued two traditional lines of British foreign policy. He sought to maintain British control over the Mediterranean as the vital connection with its imperial holdings in North Africa, the Middle and Far East. Equally, he opposed Hitler’s expansion as a threat to the balance of power on the continent. He negotiated with Stalin to secure British preponderance in Greece and supported Tito’s Partisans as the most effective resistance in Yugoslavia against the Axis.

Read “Churchill”

9. “Lloyd George, Churchill and Venizelos” in Venizelos: The Making of a Greek Statesman by Michael Llewellyn-Smith

Eleftherios Venizelos pursued the question of naval cooperation with Churchill in further talks, during which the British view of Greece’s naval role became clearer—that they should leave the heavy lifting to the British and view themselves as a light-armed gendarme of the Aegean. While the British fleet, with its great capital ships operating out of Argostoli and Malta, would contain the Austrians and Italians in the Adriatic, the Greeks, with small, rapid craft, would police the eastern Mediterranean and the islands. 

Read “Lloyd George, Churchill and Venizelos”

10. Winston Churchill: A Life in the News by Richard Toye

Before Winston Churchill made history, he made news. To a great extent, the news made him too. If it was his own efforts that made him a hero, it was the media that made him a celebrity—and it has been considerably responsible for perpetuating his memory and shaping his reputation in the years since his death.

Buy Winston Churchill: A Life in the News

_{Featured image by Smith (War Office official photographer), Imperial War Museum via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.}

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan: the past’s resemblance to the present

On a cold, sunny afternoon, a host of delegates entered the General Assembly of the United Nations in Manhattan. When everyone had found their seats and settled in, the assembly’s president called the room to order. After holding a minute of silence for prayer and meditation, he quickly ran through a handful of administrative issues before turning to the matter that had brought the assembly together that day.

This was an emergency session. At its heart were questions about state sovereignty, political self-determination, and the nature of international relations. The United States’ representative declared: “Today we are faced with a challenge to the principles of the [UN] Charter as grave as any that necessitated our meeting during previous crises.” Another state representative told the gathered crowd: 

While most of us, for decades, had our very physical, cultural and social existence flouted, some of the founders of the United Nations have never known foreign subjugation, the denial of their very being or the situation of the dominated with no other right than that of submission … The issue before us today, in its brutality, seems to us to be shaking the foundations of our present-day civilization.

In the final vote, the General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a resolution condemning foreign invasion and calling for “the immediate, unconditional and total withdrawal of foreign troops.”

Current observers would be forgiven for thinking this exchange refers to the meeting of the UNGA that took place on 2 March 2022, in which an emergency session debated the Russian invasion of Ukraine and passed a resolution condemning Russian military action. In fact, this exchange took place more than 40 years ago, at the UN’s sixth emergency session, 10-12 January 1980, which focused on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, December 1979

Soviet troops had entered Afghanistan in late December 1979 to shore up the struggling Marxist regime, headed by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan. Soviet troops, the Politburo insisted, were upholding a Soviet-Afghan treaty of friendship in the face of concerted attacks by Afghan resistance fighters and their Pakistani, Chinese, and US allies. However, as critics were quick to point out, the Soviets put in place a new ruler, Babrak Karmal, who had been exiled from the previous government and had been nowhere near Kabul in the run up to the intervention.

Many of the issues discussed in 2022 resembled those in 1980: sovereignty, self-determination, international legal debates about foreign intervention, and the nature of nationhood and the power of nationalism. However, the response to events in Afghanistan was more unified. China and the United States notably were in full agreement in decrying Soviet army movements (and in providing covert aid to the regime’s opponents). States across the Global South likewise were highly critical. For them, the Soviet invasion, coming as it did in the declining years of European decolonization, represented a dangerous precedent. In effect, it appeared as the re-colonization of a non-Western state that had struggled to and succeeded in gaining its independence. Consequently, states of the Global South showed a largely united front in criticizing Soviet activities.

Over the course of the 1980s, the collective anger of the General Assembly resulted in a series of motions demanding a Soviet withdrawal and the return of Afghan sovereignty. It also forced the UN to take a key mediating role. Over the next nine years, UN diplomats worked with their counterparts in Moscow, Washington, Islamabad, and Kabul to negotiate a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. That withdrawal would not be complete until February 1989, and even then, fighting in Afghanistan would not stop for another forty years. Notably the UN-led negotiations did not invite the perspectives of Afghan resistance groups. In turn, talks offered little scope for a concrete political settlement, given that Afghanistan was the site of a civil war between Afghans, not just a foreign intervention.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan: a global conflict

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was part of a fundamentally global conflict. In part, this was due to the Cold War context in which it took place. Soviet decision-making necessitated a response from the United States. So, while the Soviets supported the Afghan Marxists, the Carter and Reagan administrations chose to aid its opponents, the Afghan resistance groups who fought to overthrow the socialist regime. However, Cold War conflict reveals only one aspect of the civil war’s inherent internationalism. The UN’s diplomatic intervention reveals another, in which international organizations played a key role. Examining the motivations and activities of different Afghan interest groups reveals a host of other global connections, both ideological and practical.

The Afghan civil war of the 1980s was the culmination of a much longer conflict over the nature of politics in Afghanistan (and across the decolonizing world more broadly). Afghans sought to fundamentally reshape Afghan political, social, and economic dynamics, not only looking to local circumstances but couching their ideas in far more universalist terms and drawing in ideas circulating across the decolonizing world. Afghan Marxists thus linked their political and economic endeavours to those undertaken in Vietnam and Ethiopia or Cuba. Afghan Islamists, meanwhile, were tied into transnational Islamic networks and created their own offices across Europe and North American to lobby for political and financial support.

By exploring some of the nodes across the world in which decisions made and networks created shaped the subsequent civil war in Afghanistan, what becomes clear is that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan cannot be understood purely through the perspective of state actors, great power decision-making activities, or in the realms of interstate relations. It was a complex war that involved a wide range of interest groups, each of which had different aims: winning the Cold War, returning to earlier status quo in international relations, reshaping the relationship between religion and politics in state and international politics, reconfiguring Afghan nationhood and the broader relationship between nation and state. It was simply impossible for all these different motivations to be reconciled—by the UN’s negotiators or in bi- or multilateral relations.

Select from numbers 1 to 13 on our interactive map to explore these nodes across the world:

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Big, wonderful, difficult questions (and answers) about life in Proust [interactive]

Marcel Proust—perhaps France’s most famous literary writer—died 100 years ago. The politics of his time—the criminalization of homosexuality, the Dreyfus Affair, the lead up to World War I—shaped his life and his work. So, it’s reasonable to ask, what does Proust have to say about our lives in 2022? Proust’s 3,000-page magnum opus In Search of Lost Time continues to speak through time, largely not for the answers it provides but for the questions it asks. Proust’s novel is in part about memory, love, virtue, vice, prejudice, and folly—but the core of the book is a set of big, wonderful, difficult questions about life. 

Thinking about these questions today won’t help us stop climate change or rising authoritarianism—but it will help us lead a richer inner life while we do so. And the experience of reading this amazing novel—the months or years we put into reading 3,000 pages, as difficult as delightful—does important things for us too. It shows us one shape a story of a life can take. It helps us understand ourselves, nudging us to ask ourselves questions we’d never even thought about before. 

Begin that journey today with this exploration of the philosophical questions Proust asks us. 

_{Featured image: photo by Adam Bartoszewicz on Unsplash, public domain}

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

The March on Rome: commemoration or celebration?

Despite subsequent legend, in military terms the March on Rome was a shambles. In the pouring rain, poorly armed and badly organized, the fascist blackshirts cut a sorry figure as they trooped, unopposed, through the streets of the Italian capital. But politically the March was a bomb-shell, the explosion of which resonated not only in Italy but throughout Europe. Certainly, in other countries armed and violent militias had sprouted in the confusion of post-First World War Europe, but none had succeeded in gaining power so dramatically. When the king—Vittorio Emanuele III—decided not to invoke the intervention of the army, he effectively capitulated to the mob and thereby ensured Mussolini’s success (and, 24 years later, the end of the monarchy in Italy).

Some historians have tended to downplay the importance of the March on Rome—”little more than choreography” according to some, and, of course, the absence of open battles gives weight to this point of view. However, the March should be seen in its full context. It was the crucial ratification of the fact that much of Italy had been out of the control of the authorities of the liberal state for many months. In many provinces of northern and central Italy, the fascists already exercised almost complete de facto control. As Italo Balbo, the leader of the fascists of Ferrara, boasted in early 1922, “The prefect does what I tell him.” In the hours preceding the March this position of strength was made evident with blackshirts occupying prefectures, police stations, post offices, telegraph offices, and railway stations throughout much of Italy. They faced little opposition. What the March really tells us is that the government of the liberal state—that is, the political system that had governed Italy since Unification—had abdicated power to an eversive movement, not because of a military confrontation, but because the enormous stress of the war had severely weakened the capacity of the state to withstand the challenge posed by the fascists. In a society radically changed by the experience of the war, the old politics of pre-1914 found itself lacking.

Not that the nature of the challenge was obvious to many. Fascists waved the national flag, sang patriotic songs, swore loyalty to the crown; many continued to wear their army uniforms. Creating disorder as they killed, maimed, and forced opponents (particularly socialist opponents) into exile, they claimed persistently to be the representatives of order. Inevitably police and regular army officers tended to be complicit with the creeping take-over of power that the fascists had affected from 1921 onwards. Who was going to shoot at ex-combattents with strings of medals pinned to their chests? Only a few, more far-sighted commentators, among them Antonio Gramsci, saw that Mussolini was moving towards dictatorship.

The March on Rome would become one of the great founding “myths” of the fascist movement, with a glorification which went far beyond its rather ramshackle reality. It was presented by fascist propaganda as the moment of the fascist “revolution,” the watershed between the old and the new politics, between the drab past of “little Italy” and the dazzling future of what was going to be a new great power on the European scene. Throughout the twenty years of the regime the March remained central to fascist mythology; it was the event that most expressed the fascist spirit, the event that sustained the legend of the heroic blackshirts saving Italy from the Bolshevik hordes. Its success constituted the legitimation of fascist violence. As a watershed between eras it was also used to distinguish between fascists; there were those who had belonged to the movement before the March, who merited particular respect and enjoyed appreciable privileges, and those who were post-March. Such was the prestige of the pre-Marchers that, by the mid-1930s, there was a lively market in false party cards dated to the months before October 1922.

Throughout Europe reaction to the March was, inevitably, mixed, with some appalled by the violence and the total disregard the fascists showed for parliamentary politics, while others—such as those among British conservative opinion—thought that the fascist government would bring much-needed “order” to what they condescendingly saw as typically Mediterranean chaos. Many right-wing European politicians looked on Mussolini and to his mode of achieving power with admiration. One man in particular was greatly impressed by the March on Rome and even hoped to emulate it. This was Adolf Hitler.

Where are we now—a hundred years on? Certainly the bookshops are full of new books on the fascist seizure of power; interest (at least among publishers) is not lacking. But, at a broader level, within Italy, reactions seem muted. There is little sense that the March represented the begining of the tragedy that cost Italy more than half a million dead. It has become a historical event that remains, somehow, with few reverberations. This lack of reaction mirrors a wider phenomenon, which is the increasingly indulgent attitude evident in Italy towards the fascist regime and, in particular, towards its leader. It is apparent in such phrases as “Mussolini did many good things,” “Mussolini was not like Hitler,” or “Mussolini made one mistake” (referring to the alliance with Hitler). There has been, as one Italian historian has put it, a “defascistization of fascism” in popular memory—a tendency that draws sustenance from the way in which the regime continues to be seen by many through the lens created by the propaganda of the regime itself. Drained marshlands, trains on time, and (heavily organized) mass rallies trump violence, corruption, and war every time. And Mussolini seems to be regaining some of his undoubted charisma. The picture of fascism currently present in many quarters is often comforting, even nostalgic, rather than alarming. It evokes the virtues of the “strong man” and the “firm hand”—the apparent virtues of authoritarian government. Small wonder that, in the confusions and uncertainties of the contemporary world, these “virtues” are increasingly appealing.

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

24 hours in revolutionary Paris: 9 Thermidor [timeline]

The day of 9 Thermidor in the French Republican calendar (27 July 1794) is universally acknowledged as a major turning-point in the history of the French Revolution. At midnight, Maximilien Robespierre, the most prominent member of the Committee of Public Safety, which had for more than a year directed the Reign of Terror, was planning to destroy one of the most dangerous plots that the Revolution had faced.

By midnight at the close of the day, following a day of uncertainty, surprises, upsets, and reverses, Robespierre’s world had been turned upside down. He was an outlaw, on the run, and himself wanted for conspiracy against the Republic. He felt that his whole life and his Revolutionary career were drawing to an end. As indeed they were. He shot himself shortly afterwards. Half-dead, the guillotine finished him off in grisly fashion the next day.

The Fall of Robespierre by Colin Jones provides an hour-by-hour analysis of these 24 hours. Explore each of those hours across the 24 hours of 9 Thermidor by following the white circles, then black circles, and finally the blue circle in the interactive timeline below.

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

The Brexit referendum, five years on: can future generations “rebuild Europe”?

Five years ago today, the British government “triggered” (an apt term in the circumstances) Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon which permitted any member state to secede from the European Union “in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.” Five years of bitter, muddled wrangling later, Britain has finally departed from the Union, the first—and most in Europe hope the only—state to do so. Britain had, of course, never really ever been a part of Europe—not at least of the Europe which ever since 1951 has been edging itself steadily, if often in Jean Monnet’s words “by stealth,” towards a species of con-federal state, a “United States of Europe.” “We are with Europe,” as Winston Churchill said firmly in 1930, “but not of it. We are linked but not compromised. We are interested and associated but not absorbed.”

And so, it has been ever since. The economic impact of Brexit, although severe, has not been so dire as most “remainers” had predicted, and perhaps hoped. Britain seems to be prepared to co-operate with its European neighbours—what choice does it have?—even while it struggles, as the crisis in Ukraine continues to show all too clearly, to re-assert itself as an independent regional power, if no longer a global one. But it has certainly brought no obvious benefits, nor is it likely to, in particular for the younger generations who were given no say in matter.

The future for Europe, by contrast, seems in many respects far brighter than it was in 2016. The impact of Brexit has tamed many of the xenophobic populist parties within Europe. Even the most extreme of the candidates in the upcoming French presidential election, Eric Zemmour, who speaks loudly of closing France’s borders, has not yet raised the spectre of a “Frexit” (although how he could achieve one without the other he cannot explain.) And with the British no longer there to slow it down, the Union is better placed to expand its “soft power.” The so-called “Green Deal” endorsed by the member states in December 2019, which aims to make Europe climate-neutral by 2050, will inevitably have a massive impact even on those “many international partners”—which must now include Britain—who, in the measured words of the Commission, “do not share the same ambition as the EU.” It is taking new initiatives to reform globalization and is playing an ever-increasing role in global governance by building “a European regulatory state” based upon a system of intergovernmental networks—as described by Anu Bradford, in her remarkable book, The Brussels Effect: How the European Union Rules the World. It is steadily, if all too slowly in the face of the growing power of China and Russia and of a barely controlled mass immigration, building a new, more humane, more varied, more flexible, more far-seeing political community.

But if it is finally to become what the American political theorist and diplomat Anne-Marie Slaughter once called “the model for [the] new world order” it still needs to do more. It will need to develop a common policy of social welfare for its citizens and a single unified pension scheme. It will need to create a network of common health policies and common medical institutions, the absence of which has been such an obstacle in battling the current pandemic. It will need, as the French economist Thomas Piketty’s “Manifesto for the Democratization of Europe” insists, to create a common system of taxation and a fiscal control capable of fulfilling the promise of the Treaty of Rome of 1957, to bring about an “equalization in the progress of conditions of life and work.”

Most pressing of all, if Europe is to fulfill the promises implicit in the phrase “ever-greater union,” it will need to develop a far more powerful sense of its own political identity. European citizenship—of which all the peoples of Britain were stripped in January—has none of the emotive and cohesive power that citizenship of any nation-state is intended to offer. It must be made to count. And to do that, it should, as the European Court has so often insisted, in the last instance, trump the demands imposed by the member states. It should, in short, be a true transnational citizenship. It needs, as the ill-fated Constitution of 2004 claimed to offer, a union which “places the individual at the heart of its activities, by establishing the citizenship of the Union and by creating an area of freedom, security and justice.” This might then give some real substance to the slogan: “ever-closer union.”

It can only be hoped that, in this way, wiser, more experienced generations in some not too remote future might be able to “rebuild Europe,” just as their ancestors had hoped to do after 1815, 1918, and 1945. This might well then bring Europe far closer to the vision of “a community of others” or a “persistent plurality of peoples,” closer to being a true European people, varying perhaps as little in their cultural assumptions and political and social aspirations between the citizens of the member states as two centuries ago they did between the villages and parishes within a single nation. And if that happens then perhaps a new more far-sighted, more cosmopolitan Britain might be prepared to re-join the Union and become, at last, not merely with Europe, but also of it.

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Memory, truth, and justice as Argentina honours the victims of state terrorism

24 March is a public holiday in Argentina, officially designated as The Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice. The date commemorates the 1976 coup d’état that unleashed seven years of military dictatorship, a period that most Argentinians refer to today as the time of state terrorism.

The legacy of the coup on Wednesday 24 March 1976, continues to echo in Argentina, especially for the tens of thousands of families who lost loved ones during the military’s euphemistically-styled “national re-organization process.”

It has been nearly 45 years since the end of military rule in 1983 but, still, no one knows precisely how many people were killed or disappeared during el Proceso. Argentinian human rights organizations estimate the number to be 30,000, a figure that has occasionally sparked denialist reactions from apologists for the military regime.

The fact is, the reason no one knows the number is the regime’s deliberate strategy of “disappearing” its opponents (the word became an active verb in Argentina during this time). Disappearance of people with dangerous ideas, or even sometimes those connected to them, was one of the most effective tactics in the toolbox of state terrorism. It not only got rid of “subversives” and their sympathizers, it terrorized and neutralized everyone in their environment, from those who feared they could be next to those who feared that something they said or did could endanger someone close to them who disappeared but might still be alive.

Since the restoration of democracy in 1983, there have been waves of reckoning in Argentina. The liberal, centrist government that replaced the generals prosecuted and convicted nine top military leaders in a Nuremberg-style trial in 1985. But the government gave in to pressure not to pursue lower-level perpetrators who carried out the criminal designs of their leaders. 

In 2005, however, Argentina’s supreme court opened the way for new trials for human rights abuses under the dictatorship, designating them as “crimes against humanity committed in the context of the international crime of genocide.”

Since that time, more than 1,000 perpetrators have been convicted and are serving terms up to life in prison for acts including torture, murder, kidnapping, and “a thousand types of humiliation,” in the words of one of the federal prosecutors who has worked on the cases. Many of the convicted are serving their sentences at home, under loosely-supervised conditions of house arrest.

Last December, president Alberto Fernández announced the creation of a new “memory space” at the former Campo de Mayo military base in Buenos Aires, which served as one of the country’s most notorious clandestine detention centres—as well as the take-off point of regular “death flights” of illegally detained prisoners during the dictatorship. 

There are now several memorial sites, at selected symbolically significant locations around the country. New places where atrocities occurred are still being discovered. A government commission identified 341 clandestine detention centres in 1984; the latest count stands at more than 520.

I visited one of these locations in April 2018, on an “alternative walking tour” of Buenos Aires that included a stop outside the Olimpo clandestine detention centre in the residential district of Floresta. A one-time tramway and bus terminal in a quiet neighbour­hood, protected from outside view by high brick walls and accessible through a steel front gate, the location was taken over by the federal police after the coup. Olimpo reminded me of Buchenwald, not because of any physical resemblance but because of the utter banality of its setting. Like Buchenwald, a mere bus ride away from the centre of Weimar, Olimpo is right there in the middle of Buenos Aires and it is inconceivable that neighbours of the camp had no idea that something terrible was going on there.

Unidentified remains of disappeared victims are still being discovered in unmarked graves in Argentina. Using DNA samples collected from family members, the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF), an NGO established in 1984, has been able to identify 800 people, out of some 1,400 sets of remains that it has recovered.

Children who were appropriated from disappeared parents continue to surface as well. At latest count, around 130 of the 500 appropriated children identified by the human rights organization las Abuelas (grandmothers) de Plaza de Mayo have had their identities restored. In 2021, the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs, along with the Abuelas and Argentina’s National Commission for the Right to Identity (or CONADI) launched an international campaign entitled Argentina te busca (literally “Argentina is looking for you” but officially translated as “Help us find you”), inviting anyone in the world who suspects that they might have been an appropriated child to contact their local embassy or consulate. Alongside this government initiative, the EAAF has begun collecting DNA samples from foreign donors to add to their forensic data base.

For Argentine society at large, the trials of perpetrators and other government efforts constitute a semblance of accountability—but they are little solace for the survivors. Perpetrators almost never reveal anything about the fate of their victims, even when they acknowledge their roles, as they sometimes do, justifying their crimes as having been “necessary” for the preservation of “Western, Christian civilization.”

Outside Argentina, remarkably, little attention is being paid to this ongoing drama. Yet, Argentina is making international jurisprudence regarding accountability for state terrorism. At least there’s that.

_{Feature photo courtesy of the author, Marc Raboy.}

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

The top 10 history blog posts of 2021

Travel back in time to the recent past and explore the OUPblog’s top 10 history blog posts of 2021. From dispelling Euro-centric myths of the Aztec empire to considering humanity’s future through the lens of environmental history, think outside the box with the latest research and expert insights from the Press’s history authors.

1. Native conquistadors: the role of Tlaxcala in the fall of the Aztec empire

The Spanish invasion of Mesoamerica, leading to the collapse of the Aztec empire, would have been impossible were it not for the assistance provided by various groups of Native allies who sensed the opportunity to upend the existing geopolitical order to something they thought would be to their advantage. No group was more critical to these alliances than the Tlaxcaltecs.

In this blog post, David M. Carballo, author of Collision of Worlds: A Deep History of the Fall of Aztec Mexico and the Forging of New Spain, explores the history of the Tlaxcaltecs to dispel long-held Eurocentric narratives of the “conquest of Mexico.”

Read the blog post ->

2. Thirteen new French history books [reading list]

Bastille Day is a French national holiday, marking the storming of the Bastille—a military fortress and prison—on 14 July 1789, in an uprising that helped usher in the French Revolution. In the lead up to the anniversary of Bastille day, we shared some of the latest French history titles for you to explore, share, and enjoy.

Explore the French history reading list ->

3. Seven new books on environmental history [reading list]

The reciprocal relationship between humanity and nature may define the future of our life on this planet, but it is also an inescapable force in our history. To discover how the natural world has impacted the course of history, explore these seven new titles on environmental history.

Browse the environmental history reading list ->

4. The three greatest myths of the Fall of Tenochtitlán

13 August 2021 marks the moment, exactly five hundred years ago, when Spanish conquistadors won the battle for Tenochtitlán, completing their astonishing conquest of the Aztec Empire, initiating the three-century colonial era of New Spain. At least, that is the summary of the event that has since predominated.

In recent decades, scholars have developed increasingly informed and complex understandings of the so-called Conquest, and opinions in Mexico itself have become ever more varied and sophisticated.

Read more from Matthew Restall, author of Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest, as he seeks to dispel the three greatest myths of the Fall of Tenochtitlán.

Read the blog post ->

5. Mapping the great battles [interactive map]

Certain battles acquire iconic status in history. The victors have been celebrated as heroes for centuries, the vanquished serve as a cautionary tale for all, and nations use these triumphs to establish their founding myths.

In this interactive map, you can explore the legacy of 10 key battles dating back to 480 BC through World War II. Each battle is featured in our Great Battles collection, a growing series telling the story of some of the world’s most iconic battles.

Explore the interactive map ->

6. Mexican independence from Spain and the first Mexican emperor

Mexico had been battling its way towards independence from Spain for some years when, in 1820, the Mexican-born officer, Agustín de Iturbide y Arámburu, proclaimed a new rebellion on behalf of what he called the Plan of Iguala. This called for Mexican independence, a constitutional monarchy with the Spanish king or another member of the Bourbon dynasty at its head, the Catholic religion as the only religion of Mexico, and the unity of all inhabitants, no matter what their origin, ethnicity, or social class.

In this blog post, Professor Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, author of Projecting Imperial Power, details the rise and fall of Agustín de Iturbide y Arámburu, the first Mexican emperor, and his part in Mexican independence from Spain.

Read the blog post ->

7. Black History Month: celebrating 10 people who made British history

Observing UK Black History Month in 2021, we curated a collection of Oxford Dictionary of National Biography articles exploring the lives of people of Black/African descent who had an impact on, or a connection to, the UK during their lifetime and the ways in which they made history – from Gustavus Vassa to Beryl Agatha Gilroy to Jimi Hendrix.

Explore the profiles ->

8. The kings of Prussia become German emperors and Berlin becomes an imperial city

On 16 June 1871 the Prussian army, 42,000 strong, entered Berlin in triumph. Wilhelm I, King of Prussia, had been proclaimed German Emperor five months before in Versailles. Painted canvases lined the army’s route, on one of which was depicted the myth of Emperor Barbarossa. He was said to have been asleep for 700 years inside the Kyffhäuser mountain with his red beard growing down through the table he was sitting at, waiting for the time when he could awake. Ravens circling overhead indicated the site of his long slumber. He could now arise, since his empire had been founded anew by Prussia.

Learn more about this moment in Prussian history from Professor Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, author of Projecting Imperial Power.

Read the blog post ->

9. Archaeology, architecture, and “Romanizing” Athens

The question of whether Athens was a Greek or Roman city seems straightforward, but among scholars there is some debate.

Read the blog post by Ian Worthington, author of Athens After Empire, for an analysis of the archaeological evidence that might provide an answer to this enduring scholarly question.

Read the blog post ->

10. Beyond history and identity: what else can we learn from the past?

History is important to collective identity in the same way that memory is important to our sense of ourselves. It is difficult to explain who we are without reference to our past: place and date of birth, class background, education, and so on. A shared history can, by the same token, give us a shared identity—to be a Manchester United fan is to have a particular relationship to the Munich air disaster, the Busby babes, George Best, Eric Cantona, and so on.

Read the blog post from Michael Braddick, author of A Useful History of Britain, to consider the roles shared experience and personal memories play in establishing our cultural identities – and the challenges this can bring.

Read the blog post ->

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

The society of Holocaust victims: what was life inside a Nazi camp like?

What was society like in the Nazi concentration camps and ghettos? Can we even speak of “society” in this context given the suffering of uprooted and imprisoned people, almost all of whom were eventually murdered? There is a widespread notion that the camps destroyed people and atomized society. Hannah Arendt, for example, argued that the totalitarian regime stripped detainees of all their characteristics of humanity until they were no longer moral persons.

By contrast, The Last Ghetto offers a new, systematic exploration of social relations in a Nazi camp. Using the ghetto of Theresienstadt (or Terezín in Czech) as a case study, my investigation shows how people imprisoned in this central European ghetto made sense of a terrifying new place in which they found themselves deciding with whom to share food and accommodation, or whom to join on transport to the East, connecting with friends old and new, and even falling in love. I interpret these moments in the context of everyday life in the camp. 

To mark the 80th anniversary of the first transport to Theresienstadt on 24 November 1941, it is worth having a closer look.

Pavel Fischl was a young Czech poet who arrived to Theresienstadt with the second transport of young men deployed to set up the transit ghetto, known as the “construction detail.” He described how people got used to their frightening new surroundings: 

“Not for nothing is it said that one even gets used to the gallows. We have all gotten used to the noise of steps in the barracks’ hallways. We have already gotten used to those four dark walls surrounding each barracks. We are used to stand in long lines, at 7am, at noon, and again at 7pm, holding a bowl to receive a bit of heated water tasting of salt or coffee, or to get few potatoes. We are wont to sleep without beds, live without radio, record player, cinema, theatre, and the usual worries of average people. [W]e have gotten accustomed to see people die in their own dirt, to see the sick in filth and disgust […] we are habituated to wear one shirt one week long; well, one gets used to everything.”

For Central and Western European Jews sent to Theresienstadt by the SS, their imprisonment was a shock. Most of them had come from the middle and upper-middle class. The crowded accommodation, meagre food, dirt, high mortality that particularly addressed the elderly, and fear of transports to the East had an equally chaotic and terrifying effect. Some of the newcomers met old friends who helped them navigate this seeming netherworld; others were curious and charmed people to get by. Within weeks, the new prisoners started fitting in. The Jewish self-administration assigned them accommodation, food rations, and a job (there was a universal labor duty). Often, the employment was not one that the person desired, yet with their growing knowledge of Theresienstadt, some individuals acquired the connections and persuasive skills they needed to be hired elsewhere. Fear of the Germans was widespread and people heard about executions in the early months. At the same time, they quickly realized that the SS were the controllers, not the managers, of the ghetto. This job the Germans forced on the Jewish functionaries. Weeks would pass without a detainee even seeing a Nazi.

Settling in was particularly hard for older prisoners. They received the worst accommodation and food rations, and this detrimental treatment was reflected in high death rates. They nevertheless fought to stay alive and embraced the ghetto with curiosity rather than horror. Some seniors described their lodgings as “The Lower Depths”, a reference to Gorky’s play of the same name. They shared stories about the places they came from, about their former positions of power, which they sometimes exaggerated, and at other times they laughed. A famous joke went: “A dachshund in Terezín says: back in the day I was a St Bernard in Prague!”

The society of the Theresienstadt ghetto reflected and engendered class differences. Stratification was expressed not only in access to material resources (food, accommodation, and protection from transports to the East), but also in status and prestige. For instance, bakers, butchers, and cooks were considered the best positions, not least because of their access to food (they received extra rations to discourage theft). In addition, among those assigned to these professions were the 1,342 men who had arrived on the two construction detail transports to set up the first barracks for the thousands who arrived after them and were thus considered particularly deserving. The SS promised these men protection from further transports, which was extended to their immediate families. Unsurprisingly, these young men became much sought-after for marriageable women in the camp and their privileges elevated them to the position of a social elite. 

When the young Arnošt Reiser visited his attractive friend Lilly, he found her living in her own room with her boyfriend, a member of the construction detail, who was smoking a cigarette. Smoking was prohibited in Theresienstadt, and the SS imposed draconic punishments if anyone was caught with cigarettes. They were smuggled in by Czech gendarmes and sold for about 8 Reichsmark (RM) apiece. A loaf of bread was sold for about 40 RM on the ghetto black market. A cigarette was an expensive treat.

To our eyes, social differences in Theresienstadt may appear minimal—whether one slept in a crowded room or had a tiny room of their own. But if we want to understand the experience of the ghetto prisoners, we need to discern their choices and take them seriously, whether it was a decision over whom to share dinner with or join on a transport to the East. This was the agency that Holocaust victims had, and it was immensely important to them.

Camp society during the Holocaust was one of the many versions of what human society can be. It was neither just nor equal (despite often being remembered and depicted in historiography as such). Nor should analyzing social difference within the camp gloss over the fact that it was the German state that did the work of organizing and implementing genocide. The Jews in Terezín behaved like people always do: they created distinctions and made friends, fought for resources and shared them with their loved ones. The ways in which they expressed their social ties was sometimes different to our “normal world.” Interrogating the operation of class in the ghetto gives complexity to a place usually narrated in sentimental clichés. Even more importantly, it brings agency and individuality back to the people of whom we otherwise only know that they were slaughtered.

 _{Feature image is Norbert Troller sketching of Terezin Yard 82.295, Courtesy of the Leo Bacek Institute}

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Native conquistadors: the role of Tlaxcala in the fall of the Aztec empire

The Spanish invasion of Mesoamerica, leading to the collapse of the Aztec empire, would have been impossible were it not for the assistance provided by various groups of Native allies who sensed the opportunity to upend the existing geopolitical order to something they thought would be to their advantage. No group was more critical to these alliances than the Tlaxcaltecs. From their city-state of Tlaxcallan, roughly corresponding to the contemporary Mexican state of Tlaxcala (figure 1), the Tlaxcaltecs had successfully resisted incorporation into the empire for decades prior to the Spanish arrival. They made the fateful decision to join the bearded foreigners and offer tens of thousands of seasoned warriors, tactical knowledge of the local landscape and military practices, and food and safe harbor during the Aztec-Spanish War. Following it, the Tlaxcaltecs advocated for their semi-autonomy from Spain as a recognized “Indian Republic” during the remainder of the sixteenth century, while also continuing to assist in wars of conquest from Central America to the Southwestern United States. Who were these key actors and how does their initial encounter with the expedition, led by Hernando Cortés, dispel common myths in what has traditionally become known as the “conquest of Mexico”?

I have been fascinated by researching Tlaxcala over the last twenty years, and doing so inspired me to write a book on the violent encounter between Spaniards and Mesoamericans that took place five hundred years ago, titled Collision of Worlds. As an archaeologist, my lens on these events emphasizes elements of the physical world, such as material culture and landscape, and a temporal depth that considers the millennia of societal development on both sides of the Atlantic prior to the typical focal period of 1519–1521. The relevant texts from the period have been reinterpreted by historians since the sixteenth century and remain critical to any retelling of these events. Yet through archaeology we also gain the tangible authenticity of a historical understanding that includes the houses people lived in, the things they used in their daily lives, and the terrain they navigated (figure 2). Together with colleagues such as Keitlyn Alcantara and Aurelio López Corral, I have considered the archaeology of this encounter and its legacies today in how people commemorate and identify with it.

Among the prevalent myths that historian Matthew Restall calls out in his book Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest is that Cortés and a mere 500 Spaniards toppled the Aztec empire, due to some combination of superior military technology, tactical skill, and courage. This blatant falsehood ignores the contributions of tens of thousands of Mesoamericans in driving historical change, whether as skilled guides, fierce warriors, or savvy translators. The myth of the small but heroic group of Spaniards emerged from historical narratives penned by Europeans and Euro-Americans. Within Mexico and other parts of Mesoamerica, the contributions of Native peoples have been appreciated for centuries but, in pushing back against the narrative, have generated a corollary myth: that Native allies, especially the Tlaxcaltecs, were “traitors” to their people. The initial encounters between the people of Tlaxcala and the Spaniards provide an excellent example of how a more critical reading of history that includes archaeology can help us to dispel these sorts of myths.

Eyewitness accounts by Cortés and other conquistadors report that they entered Tlaxcallan in early September of 1519, having begun this part of the expedition from the town of Ixtacamaxtitlan—still occupied today in the north of Puebla. They arrived through a forested pass called Iliyoacan (“place of abundant alder trees”) where they encountered a few Otomis, who inhabited Tlaxcala’s northern frontier and whose descendants in the area today call themselves Hñähñu or Yühmu. This initial encounter was followed by battles with the Otomi and the larger forces of the Nahuatl-speaking Tlaxcaltecs at Tecoac and Tzompantepec, the latter still a town in central Tlaxcala. Our archaeological excavations have focused primarily on earlier time periods, but populations in central Mexico were the highest during the Postclassic (“Aztec”) period and, as a result, we have also recovered pottery and other materials from sites just outside of Tecoac and Tzompantepec (figure 3). The analysis of the first by Laura Heath-Stout shows that the northern Otomis had slightly different trade contacts from the Tlaxcaltec but were very much tied into the commercial and stylistic networks of the day; they were far from peripheral ruffians. The prehispanic alliance between these two groups also attests to the sorts of indirect control that Native politics observed—where one city-state, even Tenochtitlan as an imperial capital, might build its power through alliances or conquests but didn’t seek to directly control the politics, religions, or economies of others, just to establish their own dominance and tax their subjects. This was a very different model from the direct control empire that Spain was beginning to impose in the Americas, and the difference in understanding of how politics worked explains why Native allies to the Spaniards expected different outcomes from assisting the foreigners.

To counter the Eurocentric narratives of these events we can look to pictorial manuscripts illustrated by Otomi and Tlaxcaltec scribes, often with accompanying hieroglyphic and alphabetic texts. The most textually detailed of these is the Historia de Tlaxcala, compiled by the mestizo (mixed ancestry) historian Diego Muñoz Camargo, who sailed from Mexico to Spain in order to present a history of his people to the King Phillip II. This was part of a larger effort on the part of the Tlaxcaltecs to portray themselves as having been steadfastly loyal to Spain, as a means of negotiating some autonomies within the exploitative system of colonial New Spain. The text is accompanied by illustrations such as the entry through Iliyoacan (figure 4), depicting an alder tree as a place-name, Cortés on horseback, the Native translator Malintzin as interlocutor, and local inhabitants (Otomis or Tlaxcaltecs) gifting provisions, rather than the armed conflict we know occurred from other sources.

We are presented with a very different image of this initial armed encounter at Tecoac and Tzompantepec in the Otomi-authored Huamantla Map, a large (23 x 6 ft) rendition of the history and sacred landscapes of the people of this region, dating from the later sixteenth century but illustrated on bark paper in a very prehispanic style. David Wright-Carr discusses how the large size of the map would have lent itself to oral accounts of Otomi history and its embodiment through performance with the map as a backdrop. By scrolling through the digitized document, one can appreciate a narrative that includes the origins of the Otomi as a people in a sacred cave located somewhere to the northwest (page 6); their migration eastward passing the ruined pyramids of the pre-Aztec city of Teotihuacan, where the Fifth Sun of creation was set into motion (page 1); various episodes of Otomi political history (pages 2-4); and the arrival of the Spaniards (page 5). The painted scene on the upper right corner of this page presents a very different history from the Tlaxcaltec depicted in illustrations of the Historia de Tlaxcala and related Lienzo de Tlaxcala. Native peoples also engaged in the diplomacy of gifting and supplying the Spaniards but are also shown being decapitated by bearded conquistadors on horseback, in what is a much bloodier rendition of the initial encounter, one indicating armed conflict and resistance prior to the alliance and eventual invasion of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan.

The combination of archaeology and Native texts from Tlaxcala thereby provide a counternarrative to Eurocentric history and simplistic myths of courageous conquistadors or treasonous Tlaxcaltecs—one in which Indigenous and colonizing understanding of alliance were misaligned and where strategic actors marshalled history in navigating this violent encounter and its colonial aftermath.

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

100 years after the Tulsa Race Massacre

The below is an edited version of the new foreword to the upcoming edition of Reconstructing the Dreamland: The Tulsa Riot of 1921: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation written by Alfred Brophy.

On 1 June 1921, mobs comprised of ordinary white Oklahomans destroyed Greenwood, a black neighborhood in Tulsa sometimes referred to as “Little Africa.” They were alarmed by rumors that a black man had raped a white woman and that a “negro uprising” was afoot. They were disturbed by assertiveness displayed by black veterans of World War I. They were resentful of the evident ambitiousness and affluence of Greenwood’s upper class and viewed its success as an affront to white supremacy. Separated from white Tulsa by railroad tracks, Greenwood was subject to the common deprivations imposed upon black communities in Jim Crow America. Yet, its residents had succeeded in endowing it with an attractive collective buoyancy reflected in an entrepreneurial verve that led some to call its main thoroughfare “the Black Wall Street.” Animated by a conviction that Negroes must be made to stay in their “place” at the bottom of the social pyramid and habituated to the use of vigilante violence against blacks, the rioters proceeded to subject their African American neighbors to injury, murder, looting, pillaging, and arson. At least a hundred residents of Greenwood were killed while thirty-five city blocks were torched, destroying churches, businesses, and all sorts of other dwellings. The riot rendered more than a thousand families homeless.

As is typical in eruptions of mass, white-on-black, racially-motivated violence, the riot in Tulsa involved a failure of governments—municipal, state, and federal—to cloak African Americans with the equal protection of law. Police authorities not only failed but, to a significant extent, did not even try to protect Greenwood from the vengeful mobs. Worse still is that many of the whites who engaged in “Negro hunting” had been negligently deputized by state and local police authorities. In Tulsa, putative guardians of law and order frequently allied themselves with racially-motivated criminals.

In Reconstructing the Dreamland, initially published in 2002, Professor Alfred L. Brophy excavates this baleful episode. He uncovers the riot’s antecedents, its unfolding, and its aftermath. He details the initial acknowledgment by some prominent whites that Tulsa as a polity had committed a terrible crime against Greenwood that warranted restitution, the superseding campaign (largely successful) to blame the riot on the victimized black community, and the layers of deceit and indifference that have, until recently, enshrouded this tragic episode.

Rightly dissatisfied with the distorted version of events bequeathed to the public by an all-white grand jury that blamed blacks predominantly for the riot, Brophy carefully utilizes sources that have often been slighted: findings by black journalists, reminiscences of African American witnesses, briefs by black attorneys. Attentive to the full spectrum of observers, Brophy is insistent that the Greenwood perspective be fully considered. By doing so, he unveils corrective facts and forgotten interpretations. He also uncovers a spectrum of views that contended for primacy within Greenwood. He introduces readers to African Americans who thought it best to resort to arms to thwart lynching and to black litigants and attorneys who displayed more faith in the administration of law than state and federal tribunals deserved. Brophy’s exploration of litigation arising from the Tulsa riot is especially noteworthy. He describes in detail the legal doctrines that were invoked to thwart efforts to obtain redress for police malfeasance and to recover under insurance contracts.

For most of Reconstructing the Dreamland, Brophy narrates what happened in Tulsa, analyzing evidence and assessing competing interpretations. In the concluding chapter he speaks prescriptively, maintaining that Tulsa and Oklahoma ought to do something to acknowledge concretely the governmental derelictions bound up with the riot. More specifically, he argues that survivors are owed an apology and reparations. Addressing concerns that the rectification he urges would open the way to a flood of claims generated by countless injustices, Brophy stipulates four criteria by which demands for reparations could sensibly be limited. Using those criteria, he compares the case for reparation in Tulsa to those in which reparations have been granted to others and concludes that surviving victims of the tragedy in Greenwood have an even stronger claim than victims who have attained relief in analogous circumstances.

Reconstructing the Dreamland emphasizes the centrality of racially motivated violence in American history. Nowadays when reference is made to the term “race riot,” many immediately conjure up images of the disturbances in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd or the disturbances in 1992 after the infamous acquittals of the police officers who assaulted Rodney King or the disturbances in 1968 after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. In those riots, people of color comprised the bulk of the looters and arsonists. Reconstructing the Dreamland recalls an earlier tradition of race rioting in which whites targeted blacks and their property for destruction. Indicative of the significance of that tradition is that revulsion against it was the immediate spur for the creation of the most important racial self-defense organization in American history—the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The NAACP was created in direct response to the Springfield, Illinois riot of 1908—an anti-black pogrom eerily similar to that which engulfed Greenwood. For the first several decades of the NAACP’s existence, its primary activity consisted of publicizing the truth about racially motivated lynchings and riots, including the frequent complicity of police. Failures of police to extend to blacks the equal protection of the law (including protection against police brutality) have nourished cynicism toward police authority that is conspicuously evident within many African American communities. For those who want to know more about the etiology of this cynicism—or, perhaps, it is better termed realism—Reconstructing the Dreamland offers sobering detail.

During the twenty years that have elapsed since the initial publication of Reconstructing the Dreamland, there has emerged a new appreciation for the depth, prevalence, and intensity of anti-black racism. It is evident in studies undertaken by governments—such as the 2001 Tulsa Race Riot Commission Report for which Brophy served as a consultant. It is embodied in the planning for Greenwood Rising, a museum sponsored by the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission. It is reflected and reinforced in the Oklahoma public school curriculum that directs that attention be paid to the Tulsa atrocity. It has seeped into popular culture as in the terrifying opening scene of the HBO television series “The Watchmen,” a scene that recreates the chaotic violence that overcame Greenwood. It has prompted scholars in many disciplines—history, sociology, political science, literary studies, law— to write scores of articles and books examining racially motivated violence. Brophy has contributed splendidly to this flowering of research and analysis. His book not only recounts history; it also makes history in an important sense by keeping alive through meticulous scholarship the memory of an important event. Revisiting meaningful scholarship is always timely. But for alarming reasons this is a particularly apt moment to re-read Reconstructing the Dreamland. Surges in racial violence, ongoing scandals of racist policing, and determined efforts to falsify history make clear that the story of the Tulsa riot and the deplorably inadequate responses to it remains hauntingly pertinent today.

Featured image by Sam Coin via Unsplash

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Ten refreshing books to read for National Beer Day [reading list]

Beer is one of the world’s oldest produced alcoholic beverages and since its invention some 13,000 years ago, people across the globe have been brewing, consuming, and even worshiping this amber nectar. Whether you prefer a pale ale, wheat beer, stout, or lager, from the cask or a humble bottle, beer enthusiasts can agree that the topic of beer is as complex as its taste.

In celebration of National Beer Day, discover a refreshing selection of titles that explore the social and historical influence of ale, from ancient brewing to the modern craft beer industry.

Beer: A Global Journey through the Past and Present by John W. Arthur

In Beer, archaeologist John W. Arthur takes readers on an exciting global journey to explore the origins, development, and recipes of ancient beer. This unique book focuses on past and present non-industrial beers, highlighting their significance in peoples’ lives. As this book amply illustrates, beer has shaped our world in remarkable ways for the past 13,000 years.

In Praise of Beer by Charles W. Bamforth 

In Praise of Beer is a helpful guide for beer lovers looking to learn more about what they should look for with each sip of beer. In his latest book, Charles Bamforth brings new light to the topic of beer in ways perfect for any beer fan, lover, or connoisseur. In Praise of Beer is a helpful guide for consumers who want to better understand the beer they drink.

Smashing the Liquor Machine: A Global History of Prohibition by Mark Lawrence Schrad

This is the history of temperance and prohibition as you’ve never read it before: redefining temperance as a progressive, global, pro-justice movement that affected virtually every significant world leader from the eighteenth through early twentieth centuries. Unlike many traditional “dry” histories, Smashing the Liquor Machine gives voice to minority and subaltern figures who resisted the global liquor industry, and further highlights that the impulses that led to the temperance movement were far more progressive and variegated than American readers have been led to believe.

The Oxford Companion to Beer Edited by Garrett Oliver and Foreword by Tom Colicchio

The first major reference work to investigate the history and vast scope of beer, featuring more than 1,100 A-Z entries written by 166 of the world’s most prominent beer experts. Edited by Garrett Oliver, the James Beard Winner for Outstanding Wine, Beer, or Spirits Professional, this is an indispensable volume for everyone who loves beer as well as all beverage professionals, including home brewers, restaurateurs, journalists, cooking school instructors, beer importers, distributors, and retailers.

Beeronomics: How Beer Explains the World by Johan Swinnen and Devin Briski

From prompting a transition from hunter-gatherer, to an agrarian lifestyle in ancient Mesopotamia, to bankrolling Britain’s imperialist conquests, strategic taxation and the regulation of beer has played a pivotal role throughout history. Beeronomics: How Beer Explains the World tells these stories, and many others, whilst also exploring the key innovations that propelled the industrialization and consolidation of the beer market.

The Economics of Beer Edited by Johan F.M. Swinnen 

This book provides a comprehensive and unique set of economic research and analysis on the economics of beer and brewing, exploring the economic history of beer, from monasteries in the early Middle Ages to the recent “microbrewery movement.” It considers important questions, such as whether people drink more beer during recessions, the effect of television on local breweries, and what makes a country a “beer drinking” nation.

Voices of Guinness: An Oral History of the Park Royal Brewery by Tim Strangleman

In this book, Tim Strangleman tells the story of the Guinness brewery at Park Royal, showing how the history of one of the world’s most famous breweries tells us a much wider story about changing attitudes and understandings about work and the organization in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Drawing on extensive oral history interviews with staff and management as well as a wealth of archival and photographic sources, the book shows how progressive ideas of workplace citizenship came into conflict with the pressure to adapt to new expectations about work and its organization.

Becoming the World’s Biggest Brewer: Artois, Piedboeuf, and Interbrew (1880-2000) by Kenneth Bertrams, Julien Del Marmol, Sander Geerts, and Eline Poelmans

Throughout their histories Artois, Piedboeuf, and their successor companies have kept a controlling family ownership. This book provides a unique insight into the complex history of these three family breweries and their path to becoming a prominent global company, and the growth and consolidation of the beer market through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

New Developments in the Brewing Industry: The Role of Institutions and Ownership Edited by Erik Strøjer Madsen, Jens Gammelgaard, and Bersant Hobdari

Institutions and ownership play a central role in the transformation and development of the beer market and brewing industry. This book explores the implications of this dynamic for the breweries, discussing how changes in institutions have contributed to the restructuring of the industry and the ways in which breweries have responded, including a craft beer revolution with a surge in demand of special flowered hops, a globalization strategy from the macro breweries, outsourcing by contract brewing, and knowledge exchange for small-sized breweries.

The Rise of Yeast: How the Sugar Fungus Shaped Civilization by Nicholas P. Money 

Yeast is responsible for fermenting our alcohol and providing us with bread—the very staples of life. In The Rise of Yeast, Nicholas P. Money argues that we cannot ascribe too much importance to yeast, and that its discovery and controlled use profoundly altered human history. A compelling blend of science, history, and sociology The Rise of Yeast explores the rich, strange, and utterly symbiotic relationship between people and yeast, a stunning and immensely readable account that takes us back to the roots of human history.

Featured image by Lance Anderson

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Ten things you didn’t know about Darwin

Charles Darwin’s birthday on the 12th February is widely celebrated in the scientific community and has come to be known as “Darwin day.” In recognition of Darwin’s 212^th birthday this year, we have put together a list of ten little-known facts about the father of evolution.

1. Darwin didn’t actually invent the phrase “survival of the fittest.”

It was invented by Herbert Spencer after reading On the Origin of Species in 1864 and adopted by Darwin in his fifth edition of the book.

2. Darwin has over 250 species named after him.

Among these are Ingerana charlesdarwini, a species of frog endemic to India, and Darwinopterus, a flying reptile distantly related to dinosaurs.

He was particularly interested in whether worms could hear, and after they failed to react to “shrill notes from a metal whistle” and “the deepest and loudest tones of a bassoon,” he concluded they could not. Although the thought of the distinguished scientist serenading worms is an amusing one, it was part of Darwin’s project to prove that some degree of intelligence existed even in the lowliest creatures.

4. Darwin was only 22 years old when he was chosen to be HMS Beagle’s naturalist, having just finished his theology degree at Cambridge University.

He was recommended for the position by his friend and mentor Professor John Henslow, who wrote that he considered Darwin “to be the best qualified person I know of who is likely to undertake such a situation—I state this not on the supposition of yr. being a finished Naturalist, but as amply qualified for collecting, observing, & noting any thing worthy to be noted in Natural History.” John Henslow was proven right by history.

5. Anything you know about the Galápagos islands likely doesn’t come from Darwin.

Instead, your knowledge is likely to stem from the 1905-6 expedition that followed Darwin’s journey there, rather than Darwin’s work itself. While Darwin spent only five weeks on the islands, the subsequent expedition was there for a year and a day, making theirs the longest scientific expedition to the Galápagos in its history.

6. Darwin was almost beaten to the theory of natural selection by Alfred Russel Wallace.

Having waited for 20 years to publish his theory, Darwin was on the verge of finishing his book on natural selection when he read an essay by a fellow naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace. The essay outlined Wallace’s own theory of natural selection, which he had developed independently.

Darwin was crushed, writing to a friend that “all my originality, whatever it may amount to, will be smashed.” Darwin offered to make a joint presentation of their findings, but when Darwin and Wallace made the presentation in 1858, there was little reaction from the science community. Darwin went on to publish his solo work On the Origin of Species in 1859, which caused a much bigger splash, and cemented his reputation as the father of natural selection.

7. Darwin married his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood, and together they had ten children.

Ever the scientist, Darwin’s response to the birth of his first child was to record the baby’s sneezing, hiccupping, yawning, stretching, suckling, screaming, and reaction to tickling. He published his observations in the journal Mind in 1877.

In February 2018, the Bank of England announced that with just a week until the Darwin notes would stop being legal tender, there were still 211 million in circulation. “Put end to end, that’s enough notes to retrace almost half of Darwin’s journey on HMS Beagle. Or, these would weigh the same as nearly two thousand giant Galápagos tortoises that Darwin saw on his travels.”

9. Darwin was the half-cousin of Francis Galton, a famous polymath.

Among Galton’s achievements were coining the phrase “nature versus nurture” and inventing the statistical concept of correlation, known to all schoolchildren today. Less admirably, he used his discoveries to pioneer eugenics, and in fact invented the word itself.

10. 2021 is the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s The Descent of Man, which was first released in 1871.

One of Darwin’s primary aims in writing the book was to consider “whether man, like every other species, is descended from some pre-existing form.” The backlash when he concluded that we are has made history.

Featured image by Piotr Grycuk

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

The persistence of white supremacy 50 years after the Jackson State tragedy

In the early morning hours of 15 May 1970, the Mississippi Highway and Safety Patrol and the Jackson city police marched deep into the campus of the historically black Jackson State College in Jackson, Mississippi, leveled their weapons at students gathered outside a women’s dormitory, and let loose a 28-second barrage of bullets and buckshot killing two young people—Phillip Gibbs and James Earl Green—and injuring 12 others.

On 23 February 2020, a white former policeman and his son accosted and shot dead a young African American man, Ahmaud Arbery, in the suburban neighborhood of Brunswick, Georgia. Though fifty years separate these two events, the parallels between them are chilling.

In both cases African Americans were simply living their lives, not threatening anyone before they were shot and killed.  Arbery, who loved to run, was jogging when Gregory McMichaels and his son, Travis, attacked him. At Jackson State College law enforcement had been called to handle a minor disturbance on the edge of the school, but with the situation under control marched to the center of campus to confront students, uninvolved in the earlier unrest, hanging out enjoying a warm Mississippi night before graduation.

In both cases the white assailants imagined their black victims as criminals, imposing their own racist stereotypes of African Americans as inherently dangerous onto young people who were nothing of the sort. The two men who shot Arbery believed he matched the description of the suspect in recent break-ins in the neighborhood. At Jackson State, law enforcement believed when a group of young people lit a dump truck on fire on the edge of campus that students might “start burning building[s]” next, and imagined a riot where none existed.

As a result of their perceptions, warped by white supremacy, the attackers in both cases brought an inappropriate level of firepower to their encounters with the victims. The two men charged in the death of Arbery grabbed both a .357 magnum and a shotgun. At Jackson State College, law enforcement armed themselves with shotguns loaded with heavy buckshot, two sub-machine guns, two rifles with armor-piercing bullets, and an armored tank owned by the city.

The results of these combustible mixtures were, in both instances, the deaths of young black men beloved by their friends and families.  Arbery, 25, was known for his easy smile and his generous and loving personality. He had been a talented high school athlete. In 2020, he was living with his mother and working a couple of jobs, with dreams of becoming an electrician. Phillip Gibbs, 20, was a junior at Jackson State where he was studying political science and contemplated becoming a lawyer. His wife and their child, Phillip Jr., were living in their hometown of Ripley, Mississippi, to save expenses. He was outside the women’s dorm visiting with his sister and her roommate through the window. James Earl Green, 17, is still remembered by his family for his caring personality and his sense of humor. He had just gotten off a shift at the Wag-a-Bag grocery store, where he had worked since he was eleven to help out the family. His route home took him through the campus.

And in the aftermath of both attacks, the white shooters flipped the story to portray themselves as the victims. The McMichaels pursued Arbery in their truck, confronted him with a loaded shotgun, but claimed self-defense, a story the elder McMichael’s former colleagues in the police department accepted. At Jackson State, law enforcement purported they “would have been killed by the mob had they not fired,” and soon concocted a story about a sniper.  Both of those claims were disproven by the evidence and entirely false.

The shooters in the death of Ahmaud Arbery have finally been arrested, but this action has come more than two months since his death and only after significant mistakes and missteps by the state. The complete failure of the justice system in the aftermath of the Jackson State shootings suggests just how important it is that we continue to closely observe the proceedings in the Arbery case.

Though the Justice Department initiated a special federal grand jury, it was presided over by District Judge William Harold Cox, a segregationist who had thrown out the felony charges for “conspiracy to deprive the victims of their civil rights” against seventeen suspects in the murder of three civil rights workers abducted and slain in the early days of Freedom Summer. Cox brought his white supremacy with him to the Jackson State case and told jurors that his district would “not provide safe sanctuary for militants or for anarchists or for revolutionaries of any race. The processes of this court,” he declared, “shall not be used to appease and placate such lawless pressure groups.”  The federal grand jury produced neither indictments nor a written record of its findings.

Concurrent with the federal grand jury, Hinds County, Mississippi convened its own grand jury.  Things went little better there.  Judge Russel D. Moore III branded the Jackson State students as “anarchists,” and raised the specter of “government . . . by mob violence rather than by law.” Reiterating Judge Cox’s words, he told the jurors, “No person participating in a riot or civil disorder or open combat with civil authorities, or failing to immediately disassociate himself from such a group or gathering, has any civil right to expect to avoid serious injury or even death when the disorder becomes such as to require extreme measures and harsh treatment.” The grand jury returned only one indictment, scapegoating a local black man and charging him with “inciting to riot.”

Civil court remained the only legal recourse for those victimized by the shootings, and in 1972 three of the wounded joined the families of Gibbs and Green in a lawsuit. Defense lawyers employed the same white supremacist stereotypes that had produced the shootings, falsely portraying the police as defenders of law and order who had acted in self-defense, the plaintiffs not as responsible students but as senseless and even criminal troublemakers, and the circumstances that led to the shootings as a riot in which law enforcement had faced down a deadly mob. These depictions bore no relationship to the actual events that took place in the early hours of 15 May 1970. That did not matter to the all-white jury, which found for the defendants. The plaintiffs successfully appealed to a higher court, but a ruling of sovereign immunity protected the guilty.  In 1974, the US Supreme Court refused to hear the case, ending the Jackson State victims’ chance quest for justice in the legal system.

Half a century has passed, but the white supremacist stereotypes that framed the students at Jackson State College as dangerous criminals continue to lead to devastating murders, such as that of Ahmaud Arbery. Fifty years after the shootings at Jackson State, no police officer or highway patrolman has been charged in the deaths of Phillip Gibbs or James Earl Green. Neither the city of Jackson nor the state of Mississippi has offered an apology to the victims. It is not yet too late for justice in the case of Ahmaud Arbery.  We must ask for accountability not only from those who commit such acts of white supremacist violence, but also from our justice system.

Featured Image Credit: “Black Lives Matter window banner, Greenwich Village, New York” by Billie Grace Ward. CC BY SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Eight things you didn’t know about George Eliot

Throughout her life, George Eliot was known by many names – from Mary Anne Evans at birth, to Marian Evans Lewes in her middle age, to George Eliot in her fiction – with the latter name prevailing in the years since her death through the continued popularity of her novels. Eliot has long been recognised as one of the greatest Victorian writers, in life and in death, having published seven acclaimed novels and a number of poems, in addition to her work as a translator and a journalist.

Today marks George Eliot’s 200^th birthday. To celebrate this esteemed writer, discover eight facts you may not know about George Eliot.

1. Before writing fiction, George Eliot was the editor of a radical left-wing journal.
   At the age of 30, Eliot moved to London, where she launched her career in journalism through John Chapman, who specialized in publishing works of a left-wing or sceptical tendency. The same year Eliot moved to London, Chapman bought the great radical periodical, the Westminster Review, first set up in the 1820s to further the cause of political and social reform in the long run-up to the Reform Act of 1832. Chapman was the nominal editor, while Eliot – from a mixture of diffidence, modesty, and fear of playing a public role – was happy to remain behind the scenes, doing the work and letting Chapman put his name to it. Eliot did however sign her name – Marian Evans – to the articles she wrote for the periodical, and became one of its best and most widely admired reviewers.
2. George Eliot was highly critical of other female novelists.
   The popular view of George Eliot is that she was a serious woman who wrote highly serious novels. She was at the other end of the spectrum from writers whose works she criticised heavily in an essay published in the Westminster Review in 1856, titled “Silly novels by lady novelists.” Following this scathing attack on frivolous novels, Eliot set out to demonstrate how women should write novels.
3. Queen Victoria and George Eliot were born in the same year.
   George Eliot was one of several major influential Victorian figures born in 1819, along with Queen Victoria herself. Victoria and Eliot never met, but the two were connected. In 1859 – the year they both turned 40 – Eliot published her first novel, Adam Bede. Victoria enjoyed the book so much that she read it multiple times, including to her husband Prince Albert, and even commissioned watercolour paintings of two scenes from the book.
   

   

4. George Eliot’s love affairs led to public scandal.
   Eliot did not follow Victorian social conventions in her romantic relationships, which led to scandal. Her first relationship was with George Lewes, a regular contributor to the Westminster Review, who had entered into an open marriage with Agnes Jervis twelve years earlier. Although he left Jervis in 1852, Lewes could not sue for divorce; under the terms of the law, he had condoned his wife’s adultery by registering the births of her children by another man in his own name. As a result, Eliot and Lewes lived together as unwed partners for the remainder of Lewes’ life.
5. Marian Evans adopted a pseudonym to separate her novels from her scandalous life.
   Some may assume Eliot chose to use a pseudonym due to the misogyny of Victorian society, but this would be reductive. Marian Evans was known as the freethinking radical of the Westminster Review, and the woman who was living with a married man; she needed the protection of a pseudonym. But why “George Eliot”? She picked the name – as she later told her husband, John Cross – because George was her long-term partner Lewes’ first name and Eliot was “a good mouth-filling, easily pronounced word.”
6. Charles Dickens suspected that George Eliot was a woman working under a male pseudonym.
   Dickens wrote two notable letters to Eliot: one before and another after he discovered the author was in fact a woman. The first, addressed “My Dear Sir,” expressed his suspicions about her gender, as the collection of short stories in Scenes of a Clerical Life (1857) bore “such womanly touches, in those moving fictions, that the assurance on the title-page is insufficient to satisfy me, even now.” Due in part to the sexism faced by women writers in the 19th century, Evans reluctantly maintained the male mask even after she read his letter. In Dickens’s second letter, written the following year once he discovered her gender, he makes it clear that being female brought no discredit to her, expressing his delight with Adam Bede (1859) and respectfully addressing her as “My Dear Madam.”
7. A great deal of Eliot’s works focus on social history and the use of accents to pre-determine social status. 
   Some critics of Eliot have addressed her preoccupation with social history. One critic, Lynda Mugglestone, argues that Eliot’s novels, from the early Scenes of Clerical Life to the late Daniel Deronda, “contain recurrent descriptions of accent, of attitudes to accent, and of attitudes to linguistic correctness,” examining Eliot’s use of language to expose the different worth inherent in sympathy, and the snobbery that comes from idea of linguistic correctness that pre-determine social status.
8. George Eliot was ahead of the game in calling out anti-Semitism.
   The opening scene of George Eliot’s last novel, Daniel Deronda, was inspired by a trip to the spa town of Bad Homburg where she witnessed a game of roulette at Europe’s oldest casino. Bad Homburg lies only a few kilometres north of Frankfurt, which at the time was a centre for Jewish culture. Her experiences here, along with her lifelong interest in Judaism, influenced Eliot to incorporate a positive representation of Judaism throughout the novel. According to Eliot, the English were bigoted and narrow-minded, and with her latest novel she hoped to “rouse the imagination of” her readers “to a vision of human claims in those races of their fellow-men who most differ from them in customs and beliefs.”

Though today we recognise just how remarkable George Eliot was, this wasn’t always the case. Following a series of dry biographies written shortly after her death, Eliot’s reputation as a great writer in life temporarily declined. But, on the centenary of her birth, Virginia Woolf began the true rehabilitation of George Eliot’s reputation with an essay in the Times Literary Supplement, in which she famously remarked that Middlemarch was “one of the few English books written for grown-up people,” causing the appreciation of George Eliot’s greatness, and interest in all aspects of her life and work, to be restored for at least another 100 years.

Featured image: Bookshelf Old Library by Free-Photos, public domain via Pixabay.

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Queen Victoria’s 200th birthday

Few lives have been as heavily documented as Queen Victoria’s, who kept a careful record of her own life in journals from a young age. In her day, she was also one of the most heavily depicted people in existence across a variety of mediums including paintings, sculptures, sketches, and the newly emerging photographs. It is no wonder, then, that Victoria frequently adorns our screens even 200 years after her birth, such as through the recent popular TV series Victoria (2016–present), or the film Victoria & Abdul (2017).

In celebration of Victoria’s 200^th birthday today, discover six facts you may not have known about one of the longest-reigning British monarchs.

1. There were concerns over Victoria’s sanity during her reign
   Following her husband Albert’s death, there were concerns that Victoria would suffer from madness as King George III – who was considered insane – was her grandfather. These concerns were likely based not just on medical history but also sexism. Suggestions of insanity were used to contain the perceived dangers of a young woman on the throne who was without a husband, and these claims tailed off once the queen passed menopause.
2. Victoria helped to extend the right to vote – but not to women
   While we may not think that the Royal Family nowadays has much say in domestic policy, there continues to be much debate about Queen Victoria’s influence, particularly during the Third Reform Act of 1884. Scholars now suggest that the royal services in securing the passage of the bill were more important than previously thought – so important, in fact, that the royal mediation may well have been decisive in the passing of the Bill. Though it did not allow all residents to vote (most notably women), it helped to increase the size of the electorate considerably.
3. Victoria was not amused by the rising tide of feminism
   

   

   Despite her gender and the sexism Victoria herself faced, she condemned the women’s suffrage movement, believing it to be a “wicked folly” and a violation of God’s laws. She never gave up this belief, even as the fledging feminist movement of mid-century matured and grew to the size of a mass movement by the end of the century, referring to her gender as the “poor feeble sex” with little thought given to the irony of her statement.
4. The queen was a mother of 9 and grandmother of 34, but she wasn’t impressed by babies
   Victoria was a grandmother at the age of 39, and a great-grandmother at 60, but she really didn’t like babies: the queen stated “when they come at the rate of three a year it becomes a cause of mere anxiety for my own children and of no great interest” following the birth of one granddaughter. Sons were even worse; in Victoria’s eyes, a son was a “misfortune” that got in everyone’s way. Victoria was dismayed to find herself pregnant within just weeks of her marriage; she was treated as an invalid throughout each of her pregnancies and suffered from postnatal depression. Despite this disdain for babies, Victoria did love her descendants, but became more interested in them as they grew into adulthood.
   

   

5. The “Greatest Showman” visited Victoria on three occasions
   The queen appreciated shows for entertainment. She often attended the theatre and the opera, which she had loved from a young age, and she enjoyed visiting Astley’s circus. In 1844, Victoria invited the American showman P. T. Barnum to Buckingham Palace on three occasions along with General Tom Thumb, a boy with dwarfism who was just six years old at the time. Apparently, the queen was quite charmed by the young performer, taking him by the hand on a tour of her picture gallery.
6. Both Victoria and Albert loved Scotland
   Despite having access to three royal residences – Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, and  Brighton Pavilion – this wasn’t enough for the infatuated couple, who wanted somewhere they could escape the public. Even after building Osbourne House on the Isle of Wight, they decided this didn’t provide them sufficient privacy as it was too close to London, and so turned to escape in Scotland through Balmoral. Victoria enjoyed the company of the local highlanders, who she saw as “noble peasants.” The queen also enjoyed sketching and painting while exploring Balmoral with her husband, a skill she learned from her favourite artist, Edward Landseer.

Queen Victoria influenced the monarchy and also wider society, and her legacy extends far beyond her lifetime. Throughout Britain – and to a lesser extent across the former British Empire – few towns are without a statue of Victoria, or a park, building, or street named after her. Between this and the tradition of wearing a white wedding dress that she established, Victoria’s legacy looks set to last another 200 years at least.

Featured image: “Queen Victoria monument” by rolf_aderhold. Public domain via Pixabay.

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

150 Years of the Periodic Table

2019 marks the 150th anniversary of the creation of the periodic table, and it has been declared the International Year of the Periodic Table by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Here, we take a look at the fascinating history of the people behind the table, starting in 450 BCE and going through the present day, and the way the table and understanding of elements has evolved over time. Even today, many aspects of the periodic table remain unresolved—including a consensus on just how many elements remain undiscovered, leaving much room for discovery and further development in the future.

Featured age credit: “Beaker glass ware” by uncredited. Public Domain via Pxhere.

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Forty years of democratic Spain

Spaniards are celebrating with some fanfare the 40th anniversary of their democratic constitution that was approved overwhelmingly in a referendum on 6 December 1978, sealing the end of the 36-year dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, the victor of the country’s civil war.

Whichever way one looks at it, Spain has been transformed profoundly since then. Be it economically with, for example, the creation of significant number of multinationals (more than Italy) or the world’s second-largest tourism industry in terms of visitors (81.8 million in 2017), politically with a vibrant democracy that ranks high in international classifications, socially with the greatly improved status of women (11 of the 17 ministers in the government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez are female, the highest proportion in the world) or in foreign policy–where Spain has reclaimed its place on the international stage–the recent past seems like an unrecognisable foreign country.

Per capita income at purchasing power parity has increased fivefold to $38,285 and average life expectancy at birth by almost 10 years, to 83 years, one of the highest in the world (above that of the United States and the United Kingdom). Change has been deep too in the private sphere. The Franco regime lumped “pimps, villains and homosexuals” into one criminal group. This year’s LGBT Pride parade in Madrid was led by Fernando Grande-Marlaska, the gay Interior Minister.

The face of Spain has changed enormously in the last 40 years and is no longer ethnically homogeneous. When Franco died in 1975 there were only 165,000 foreigners officially registered in the country. That number rose to 800,000 in 1990 (2.1% of the population) and peaked at 5.7 million in 2012 (12.1%). To Spain’s great credit, the huge influx of immigrants has not produced any significant xenophobic, far-right movements or parties, making the country in this respect an exception to the norm in many other EU countries, such as the UK, France and Germany. Spain’s far-right Vox won a mere 0.2% of the vote in the June 2016 general election, but it obtained 12 seats (11% of the vote) in the regional election in Andalucía this month. There are no French-style banlieues or US-style ghettos in Spain.

Few countries have telescoped so much change into such a short period. Alfonso Guerra, the Deputy Prime Minister (1982-91) put it colourfully when he said: “We’re going to change Spain so much that not even the mother who gave her birth will recognise her.” So much for Franco believing he had left his regime and its institutions, as he famously put it, “tied up, and well tied up.”

The transition to democracy, guided by King Juan Carlos I, Franco’s heir as head of state after he restored the Bourbon monarchy (the king’s grandfather went into exile in 1931), was achieved in the face of considerable adversity. It was not guaranteed from the outset to be successful: the Basque terrorist group ETA killed an average of 50 people a year in the first decade of democracy (and mounted assassination attempts in 1995 on both the king and Prime Minister José María Aznar), and Francoist officers staged a coup in 1981.

Today’s problems, such as the very high jobless rate (15%), particularly among young adults, acute income inequality, increased social exclusion, the push for independence in Catalonia and corruption in the political class do not detract from the fact that Spain has enjoyed an unprecedented period of prosperity and stability over the past 40 years. The constitution has given Spain institutional stability. There have been seven prime ministers since 1978 (Italy has had 25, one of whom served three times); during Spain’s Second Republic, between the spring of 1931 and the summer of 1936, before the civil war, the country had seven Prime Ministers and three Presidents of the Republic.

Spaniards can be proud of what has been achieved, but the next 40 years will be very different. The challenges ahead will test the largely cohesive society that has been created over the last four decades. The most visible one is the rapid ageing of the population and the pressure this is already exerting on the sustainability of the healthcare system and the viability of the state pension system. In 2050 35% of the population is forecast to be over the age of 67 compared with 16.5% today. Within a decade, unless there is a significant demographic change, only around 400,000 people will be entering the labour market every year whereas up to 800,000 will be retiring annually. Such a change will put a heavy burden on public finances and weaken Spain’s economic growth.

Featured image credit: Toleda Spain Landscape by Steven Yu. Public Domain via Pixabay.

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Remembering the final moments of The Great War [excerpt]

11 November 2018 marks 100 years since the end of The Great War. Victory came at a great cost, seeing millions of fatalities in one of the deadliest wars in history.

In the below excerpt from The Last Battle, World War I historian Peter Hart shares testimonies about the war’s end from the men who fought until the eleventh hour.

That morning, the 2/15th London Regiment was released from the haunting prospect of an assault over the River Scheldt at Avelghem.

When this bloody war is over / Oh, how happy I shall be / When I get my civvie clothes on / No more soldiering for me.

We never sang the above ditty joyously, because so far as we could see the war was never going to end. It was sung only on those occasions when, as a small carrying party for example, we waited at some dreary ration dump to collect rations and take them up the line, or, after having drunk more than enough vin blanc, we sat in some estaminet feeling doleful. And now, to our great surprise and joy, it was ‘Après la Guerre’. —Corporal Charles Hennessey, 2/15th (Civil Service Rifl es), London Regiment, 90th Brigade, 36th Division

The army was not a uniform body of automatons. Hidden behind the khaki was a wide variety of personalities – all responding to peace in dissimilar ways – much as men had responded differently to the challenges of war. In a few moments, everything had changed.

It was a strange feeling to ride back to the battery in the quiet that followed 11 o’clock. One had got used to the background noise of shellfire. Near the front it seemed a continuous orchestration of deep and echoing sound, punctuated by the sharper rat-tattat of rifle or machine-gun fire. The landscape was different: no observation balloons to be seen, no plumes of smoke from the shell bursts or burning buildings, no aeroplanes glinting in the sky. Peace seemed a very strange and new experience. —Major Richard Foot, ‘D’ Battery, 310th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, 62nd Division

They had become accustomed to the roar of the guns, the rumble of transport wheels, the bellowed orders and the crunch of marching feet.

That quiet – that quietness – we couldn’t get used to it. We’d been deafened by gunfire for years! We were never without the sound of gunfire; either in your sector, the next sector, or somewhere within ear range! Suddenly all was quiet! We wanted to talk in whispers as if we were in church or something. —Private Donald Hodge, 7th Royal West Kent Regiment, 55th Brigade, 18th Division

Many could hardly believe it. Their lives had been shaped by the war. Every day, every action, every thought was dominated by the requirement to somehow survive while carrying out their duties beneath the looming spectre of death. Then suddenly that shadow was lifted.

Nobody would believe it. The war couldn’t be over. It had been on for years. It was so unreal, we had got into the habit of feeling, ‘Oh well, I suppose sometime this show will end!’ But we still didn’t see the end in sight at all. We thought, ‘Well, my godfather! The war’s over!’ Eventually of course it sunk in. Then naturally we thought, ‘Oh, where do we go from here?’ Just that sort of feeling that we’d been sacked, we’d been kicked out of a job. A terribly empty feeling. —Captain George Jameson, C Battery, 72nd Brigade, Royal Field Artillery

Many accounts refer to a strange emptiness caused by the removal of war from their mental landscape. In consequence, with some units there was no discernible excitement when the news came through. This phlegmatic approach was partially a public demonstration of the legendary British ‘stiff-upper lip’, but it was also deep-rooted in the stultifying effect of entrenched war-weariness. Many men required to control their innermost feelings in battle had become emotionally desensitised. The Armistice was too big an event, just too important for them to properly process what was happening to them. They no longer had the emotional vocabulary to respond appropriately.

We were too far gone, too exhausted really, to enjoy it. All we could do was just go back to our billets; there was no cheering, no singing, we had no alcohol at all. We simply celebrated the Armistice in silence and thankfulness that it was all over. It was such a sense of anti-climax. We were drained of all emotion. —Corporal Clifford Lane, 2nd Bedfordshire Regiment, 54th Brigade, 18th Division

Yet, for all that, many units responded with a riotous sense of release, once, that is, they had escaped the vigilant gaze of their offi cers. Private Norman Cliff soon found that even the Guards could be tempted to displays of excitement.

I rushed back to the billet and amid a din of riotous cheering seized my rifl e, equipment and all my belongings and flung the whole lot in the air. Others followed suit. A kind of frenzied madness seized us and we were no longer responsible for our antics and foolery. All the frustration, resentment, exasperation, sorrow, hope and despair had been bottled up for long harrowing years. Sudden relief was bound to cause an explosion. As suddenly, quietness returned. Feelings welled up that were too deep for expression. A dumbness fell upon us, and a solemn thoughtful mood took over; but not for long. Our excitement could not be contained. I had renounced everything to become Guardsman Cliff ‘for the duration of the war’. The war was over. I was ‘Civilian Cliff’ again. —Private Norman Cliff, 1st Grenadier Guards, 3rd Brigade, Guards Division.

Featured image credit: “The announcing of the armistice on November 11, 1918, was the occasion for a monster celebration in Philadelphia… – NARA – 533478” provided by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Nine “striking” facts about the history of the typewriter

The first machine known as the typewriter was patented on 23rd June 1868, by printer and journalist Christopher Latham Sholes of Wisconsin. Though it was not the first personal printing machine attempted—a patent was granted to Englishman Henry Mill in 1714, yet no machine appears to have been built—Sholes’ invention was the first to be practical enough for mass production and use by the general public. With the help of machinist Samuel W. Soulé and fellow inventor Carlos Glidden, Sholes had spent the summer of 1867 developing his machine, and by September of that year was able to type his name in all capital letters.

That was just the beginning, as the typewriter’s societal and cultural impacts are still felt today. We’ve gathered these fascinating facts about this remarkable device, from its effect on women in the workforce to its direct influence on computers over a century later.

1. Christopher Latham Sholes (1819-1890) had produced 50 machines by 1873, but was unable to sell them; that year, he sold the production rights to gun manufacturer Philo Remington (1816-1889). By 1874, the first Remington-made typewriter was sold by E. Remington & Sons. In 1878, the first typewriter to offer upper and lowercase letters, the Remington No. 2, debuted.

2. In the 1890s, Remington competitor John Thomas Underwood (1857-1937) bought the rights to a more practical “front-stroke” machine from inventor Franz Xavier Wagner. The US Navy ordered 250 Underwood typewriters in 1897, solidifying his place in the market, and by 1915, the company employed 7,500 workers and produced 500 typewriters daily.

3. Even though he had been unsuccessful in the marketing of his invention, Sholes was aware that the typewriter would be vital in helping women achieve entrepreneurial freedom, saying it was a means for women to “more easily earn a living.” Typewriting led to a separation of the authorship and the writing up of documents, which provided a new social avenue for women, especially in business and politics.

4. Mark Twain was the first author to submit a book manuscript in typed copy, having bought a typewriter in 1874. The typewriter became a symbol of a certain type of writer, and many are still preserved in the estates or museums of well-known authors such as Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling, George Bernard Shaw, and Ian Fleming.

5. In 1909, G. C. Mares described a hypothetical situation that would allow “a man sitting at his Zerograph [another early typewriter] in London…to hold written converse with his correspondents in the furthermost parts of the globe, without the intervention of any physical connection”—a process that sounds very similar to email.

6. The original typewriter’s most ubiquitous impact on modern society, seen all around the world on computer keyboards and mobile phones, is its key layout known as QWERTY. Christopher Latham Sholes originally tried an alphabetical layout in his prototypes, but the keys would jam; his solution shifted three of the most commonly used letters (E, T, and A) to the left hand, resulting in a design that slowed typists down and avoided jamming on the earliest machines.

7. In 1932, William Dealey and August Dvorak introduced the Dvorak keyboard, which was designed to make typing faster and less fatiguing; studies showed it increased accuracy and speed by about 70%. However, it never caught on because QWERTY had become too entrenched in society. It had been the sole layout when Remington cornered the market at the beginning, and by the 1930s, manufacturers, typists, and typing schools had too much invested in the status quo to change, even to a more efficient format.

8. Famed polymath and horologist Rupert T. Gould (1890-1948) was fascinated with typewriters his entire life; by the 1940s, he had one of the largest collections in existence—at least 71—and wrote the first independent history of the machine, called The Story of the Typewriter in 1949.

9. It has been argued that the typewritten page was an influence in the move in book designs from justified lines to even-spacing between words and the uneven right-hand margins this causes. Artists in the 1950s also used the typewriter to experiment with the placement of text to create “concrete poetry.” Poet Aram Saroyan wrote:

I write on a typewriter, almost never in hand … and my machine—an obsolete red-top Royal Portable—is the biggest influence on my work. This red hood hold [sic] the mood, keeps my eye happy. The type-face is a standard pica; if it were another style I’d write (subtly) different poems. And when a ribbon gets dull my poems I’m sure change.

Featured image credit: Ernest Hemingway’s typewriter in his studio, Ernest Hemingway House, Key West, Florida, USA. Acroterion, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

The life and works of Elizabeth Gaskell

On 29 September 2017, we celebrate the 207^th birthday of Elizabeth Gaskell, a nineteenth century English novelist whose works reflect the harsh conditions of England’s industrial North. Unlike some of her contemporaries, whose works are told from the perspectives of middle class characters, Gaskell did not restrict herself, and her novels Mary Barton and Ruth feature working class heroines.

In the early twentieth century, Gaskell was considered a minor novelist and was overshadowed by contemporaries such as Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and the Brontë sisters. She was perhaps best known for writing Charlotte Brontë’s 1857 biography, which infamously censored aspects of Brontë’s life that were considered too controversial for Victorian audiences. Today, she is remembered as a major English novelist, and her works are celebrated as both social novels and early feminist works.

Discover more about Gaskell’s life as both a writer and social reformer with this interactive timeline.

Featured image credit: Dartmoor by dennisredfield. CC-BY-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons. 

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

April 1917: the end of American neutrality in WWI

Despite President Woodrow Wilson’s efforts to remain neutral, the United States declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917. Initially, the American public largely supported neutrality. But by 1917, many Americans strongly supported the war, believing that it was the responsibility of the United States to protect the right to freedom and democracy around the world.

In this excerpt from The Path to War: How the First World War Created Modern America, historian Michael S. Neiberg captures the American public’s opinion on WWI through the lens of writer Mary Roberts Rinehart. Often referred to as the “American Agatha Christie,” Rinehart was well-known for her mystery novels and regular contributions to The Saturday Evening Post. Using the magazine as a platform, Rinehart shared why she—as a mother and an American—supported America’s entry into WWI.

Mary Roberts Rinehart’s journey since 1914 perhaps best represents the mood and the moment of April 1917. She had been one of the first Americans to urge a more assertive posture toward the war. Two years earlier, Rinehart had written that although she supported the United States taking a more active pro-Allied stance in the wake of the Lusitania tragedy, she was glad that her sons were then too young to fight if it came to war. She had hoped then that the war would end before she had to face the prospect of a son going off to fight the war that she had advocated.

Now, in 1917, her older son was old enough to fight, and Rinehart took to the pages of the Saturday Evening Post to explain not just her support for a war that nevertheless terrified her, but why she would not want her son to try to evade the military service that might kill him. “If in this war we allow the few to fight for us, then as a nation we have died and our ideals have died with us,” she wrote. “Though we win, if we all have not borne this burden alike, then do we all lose.”

Although her article was ostensibly about the roles of citizens and motherhood in time of war, it highlighted many of the themes that had been running through American thoughts on the war since 1914. Writing in late March 1917 she told her readers, “We are virtually at war. By the time this is published perhaps the declaration will have been made.” America, she believed, was “the last stand of the humanities on earth, the realization of a dream and the fulfillment of an ideal.”

Britain and France both shared parts of that ideal and had had a foundational role in creating it. Since 1914, they had been fighting for “the ideal on which my country was founded.” Under the domination of the Prussians, imperial Germany now threatened those values, not only in Europe but in America itself, for it “had broken loose something terrible, something that must be killed or the world dies.”

America should have awakened to these realities in 1915, but it did not. Now it had to face them under far more adverse conditions, having lost two precious years to get ready. Since the sinking of the Lusitania, the American people, she noted, had gone to church on Sundays and given thanks to God that “we were out of it” when they should have been listening to the warnings of those saying that the United States had to get ready for the looming crisis on the horizon. Instead, Congress had “refused to listen to talk of preparation” and the American people had refused to force them to do so. As a result, millions of young men, including her own son, would now go into history’s most devastating war without the training and equipment that they needed.

Rinehart concluded with two more observations based in America’s experiences since 1914. In the first she reiterated her belief from her tour of the Western Front that the United States must make war on the German government, not the German people. “There is no great hatred of the enemy, however much we abominate the things the German government has driven an acquiescent people into doing.” The United States should therefore not fight to destroy Germany, but to liberate it from the brutality of a regime that threatened to destroy civilization itself. Second, she wrote that she had no worries at all about the loyalties of the Germans living inside the United States. German-Americans “are not Huns or Vandals. The German we know has come here to escape the very thing that has wrecked the Old World…In coming to this Land of the Free he has followed an ideal as steadily as back in the Fatherland his kindred are following the false gods of Hate and War.” The war itself, however, would put such views to the test.

No one put the American experience of 1914–17 into sharper focus than Rinehart had, perhaps not even President Wilson in his eloquent declaration of war speech on April 2. As millions of Rinehart’s fellow Americans understood, the United States had drifted to “the verge of war, in an uncertain attitude” that was neither enthusiasm nor resignation. It was rather the acknowledgment that they no longer had a better choice and that by failing for so long to confront reality they had put themselves in an even more dangerous position. Noble impulses like charity, neutrality, and mediation had all run their course and war stood as the only option remaining. What Samuel Price called “the beastly passions for blood” would now put an end to the indescribable interval of uncertainty. The nation, and the world, would never be the same.

Featured image credit:”The American Army in France during the First World War” released by the Imperial War Museum. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Orlando: An audio guide

In honor of Virginia Woolf’s death (March 28, 1941), listen to Dr Michael Whitworth, editor of the Oxford edition of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, introduce the novel, and discuss Woolf’s life and times in this Oxford World’s Classics audio guide.

“I feel the need of an escapade after these serious poetic experimental books…I want to kick up my heels and be off.”

Orlando tells the tale of an extraordinary individual who lives through history first as a man, then as a woman. At its heart is the figure of Woolf’s friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West, and Knole, the historic home of the Sackvilles. Orlando mocks the conventions of biography and history and wryly examines sexual double standards.

Listen to this audio guide to learn more about Virginia Woolf’s private life; her relationship with Vita Sackville-West, and mental health, her place in the modernist movement, and why writing Orlando was so important to this pioneering author.

Featured image credit: Featured image credit: “Istanbu, church…” by waldomiguez. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Reimagining equity in public schools

Fifteen years ago bipartisan support for No Child Left Behind (NCLB) served as a watershed moment in federal support for public education in the United States. The law emphasized standardized testing and consequences for states and schools that performed poorly. The law was particularly important because NCLB’s focus on accountability also meant that states and local school districts were required to report on the achievement of different groups of students by race, socio-economic background, and disability. Assessments also focused on the achievement of English Language Learners. Many would argue that the law is credited with helping to expose achievement gaps between different groups of students, and it has been more difficult to ignore the education of underserved students across the nation. Thus, it has been argued that all students should have the resources necessary for a high-quality education. But the truth remains that some students need more in order to flourish, and race should not determine school funding. As Alan Singer (2016) recently observed in a blog post, “Kids and schools that need more would get more.”

The assumptions underlying NCLB and now the Every Child Succeeds Act (ESSA) remain open as does the question of whether equal educational opportunity (as opposed to equal educational outcomes based on test scores) remains the civil rights issue of our time. One cannot ignore that president-elect Trump has called school choice the civil rights issue of our time and has chosen a school-choice advocate as his Secretary of Education whose approach to education threatens to erode funding for public schools. Similarly, it is hard to overlook an Appellate Court ruling in Michigan stating that the law does not require an equitable distribution of resources to public schools. This ruling echoes San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, which in 1973 found that there is no constitutional requirement to ensure schoolchildren actually learn fundamental skills of literacy. As in the case in Michigan, the court ruled in 1973 that the state is only obligated to establish and finance a public education system, regardless of quality.

It is more urgent than ever before to revisit the nature of school reform and equity in poor communities where multiple social and economic factors have a detrimental effect on student life and performance. Fortunately, the Connecticut Supreme Court in Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding v. Rell has challenged the formula for funding public schools, but the State is challenging a ruling that has the potential to bring about equitable funding in schools. There have been dozens of school funding lawsuits across the country that represent an ongoing debate about who is responsible for funding public education, whether it should be equitable, and the legal mandate to ensure that all kids have access to the kind of literacy instruction that would enable them to be active participants in a democracy.

The 8 January, 2017 is the fifteenth anniversary of NCLB, so it is worth revisiting NCLB’s promise to address the needs of historically underserved students.  Schools are resegregating, (e.g. Kozol, 2005), students living in poverty are socially isolated in schools located in the nation’s poorest neighborhoods, and funding is inadequate. The reality is that many students are left behind and do not have access to the kinds of opportunities to participate in a democracy as citizens who might be better positioned to navigate the very policies and laws that have historically marginalized students of color.

Ladson-Billings (2006) has usefully reframed the perceived gaps in educational achievement for black, Latinx and other underserved students as an education debt. Such a view calls attention to the historical circumstances that left many young people without the resources they needed to flourish as educated citizens in an era of Jim Crow and that still has a considerable impact on underserved students in segregated, underfunded schools. This debt also manifests itself in the lack of power and voice in families’ ability to participate in the governance of schools that determine policies, curriculum, class assignment, and discipline. Unfortunately, NCLB placed responsibility for achievement in under-resourced schools and, in doing so, shifted attention away from social, political, and economic problems surrounding, outlining, and running through such schools. The same holds true for those who embrace school choice, which fails to address the devastating effects of neo-liberal policies on inner cities throughout the United States.  It is not trivial to observe that race matters in discussing policies that affect children’s life chances.  And this means confronting what the authors of the Schott Foundation for Public Education report (2015) describe as an “insurmountable chasm of denied educational opportunities” for youth of color who find themselves mired in a school-to-prison pipeline.

Altogether, disproportionality in suspensions and drop-out rates are at odds with the accountability principle in NCLB based on the concept of ensuring the adequacy, progress, and educational outcomes for all students. Indeed, the promise of NCLB in 2002 was to ensure that all racial and ethnic groups achieve 100% proficiency in reading and math. But researchers have found that there has been little oversight to ensure that all racial and ethnic groups have reached the benchmarks set out by NCLB, and these benchmarks vary from state to state. Such a finding again brings to light the question of whether or not education is a civil right and if ESSA—linked philosophically to NCLB as it is—can adequately address the unequal distribution of resources (e.g., highly-qualified teachers, curriculum) that mark the educational experiences of different students.

To reinvigorate the notion of equity and re-imagine schools, it is important to underscore (a) the equitable distribution of material, emotional, and economic resources to ensure that children have the capacity to direct the course of their own lives in healthy, safe environments in and out of school; (b) the value of inclusion in making critical decisions about the processes underlying the distribution of these resources; (c) the importance of developing measures of assessment that account for what it means to teach for social justice and challenges the limits of assessment rooted in the nation’s economic well being; and (d) the need to leverage the law to center justice as a value in education.

In the end, education as a civil right acknowledges the power inherent in education, promotes inclusion, and values an asset-based approach to education that acknowledge the worth of all children.

Featured image credit: Atlantic Express school bus in New York City, 2009. Photo by flickr user mickamroch, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

The end of the Cold War and the End of History?

Twenty-five years ago today, the Soviet Union of Socialist Republics collapsed, effectively ending the Cold War that had defined the latter half of the twentieth century and had spanned the globe. The previous day, 25 December 1991, General Secretary of the Communist Party Mikhail Gorbachev had resigned, transferring the Soviet nuclear codes to Russian president Boris Yeltsin. The communist flag over the Kremlin was replaced by the Russian flag at 7:32 pm, and the communist hegemon officially split into 15 independent republics.

This event was the culmination of the democratic changes that swept Eastern Europe in the late 1980s. Gorbachev had loosened the Soviet Union’s grip on the Iron Curtain through his policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring), but these political and economic reforms ultimately backfired. Ordinary people with the desire for freedom rose up throughout Europe after years of oppression, and the Soviet Union was unable to hold back the floodgates: the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and two years later, with the Soviet Union’s dissolution, “a new world order” had begun.

Was the end of the Cold War the End of History? Twenty-five years ago, many people across the globe thought so. The United States was the lone superpower, and lasting peace seemed to finally be at hand.

The last two and a half decades have shaken this theory. Now, twenty-five years later, the reemergence of Russia on the world stage through its role in the Syrian Civil War and a renewal of its rivalry with the United States have brought the fears of the Cold War back to the forefront of many people’s minds. Has history resumed?

Featured image credit: US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet in Red Square at the 1988 Moscow Summit. US National Archives and Records Administration. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.