Written by Josh Newmark Image: Albggt, Placa de Catalunya, https://www.pinterest.com/pin/574068283732608796/, 04/11/2018 In a country which is often described as suffering from ‘historical amnesia’ towards its Civil War and subsequent dictatorship, Civil War tours of Barcelona bring history to life where it is otherwise inapparent. For those intrigued by the Spanish Civil War, the lack of much museum space…
Written by Scarlett Butler Image: Unknown. Anna Coleman Ladd fitting soldier with restorative face mask. 1918. Photograph. Rare Historical Photos. Accessed October 30, 2018. https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/anna-coleman-ladd-masks-1918/. Suzannah Biernhoff has argued that the facial mutilation caused during the Great War was widely written about but “almost never represented visually” with the exception of medical documentation. Here I will contend…
Written by Scarlett Butler Image: Lubaina Himid, Naming the Money (2004), https://www.historytoday.com/ella-s-mills/lubaina-himid-naming-un-named, accessed 21 October 2018. As Black History Month draws to a close, I am sure that many people are considering that phrase, ‘Black History Month’. Torn between the necessity of raising awareness of histories of the African-diaspora, and the discomfort that all we…
Written by Josh Newmark Image: Marius Jovaiša’s aerial photograph of Morro Castle and Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabaña, (Unseen Cuba / Marius Jovaisa), https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/unseen-cuba-first-aerial-photographs-reveal-islands-spectacular-beauty-1501542, accessed 21 October 2018. Why revolutions happen, and why some succeed when others fail, have been topics of great interest to generations of historians. Cuba has been no exception, and has long…
Written by Carissa Chew Image: Sketch of Jacque Alexander Tardy’s skull, front view Coinciding with ‘International Talk-Like-A-Pirate Day’, on 19 September 2018, Janet Philp delivered a compelling lecture that inquired into the University of Edinburgh Anatomical Museum’s collection of pirate skull casts. Philp set out to answer the two key questions on her audience’s mind:…
Written by Luke Neill Image: Devil’s Island, Encyclopaedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/place/Devils-Island/media/160247/5196, accessed: 21 October 2018. On the 14 April 1895, Alfred Dreyfus arrived on the Devil’s Island, a French penal colony off the coast of French Guiana. He had been sent there for life imprisonment as its sole prisoner. Bound in chains in a small stone hut for…
Written by Daniel Sharp 2 December 1805: a battle takes place that was to enshrine Napoleon Bonaparte’s reputation as a genius military tactician and which would forever change the map and future of Europe. This battle would end the thousand-year-old Holy Roman Empire and would spell the end of the Third Coalition mounted by…
Written by Travis Aaroe True isolation was not possible for any country during the age of imperialism, although few tried harder than Japan under Shogunate rule. Ever since the decisive Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 which heralded the Tokugawa clan’s dominion over the country, Japan had been artificially cut off from the outer world…
Written by Shruti Venkatraman The recent release of Indian politician Shashi Tharoor’s book, Inglorious Empire, advocating for greater awareness of the blood-soaked history of India’s colonial past under British rule, and the release of the film Viceroy’s House, which was heavily criticized for portraying events covering the final months before Indian independence under Lord Mountbatten…
By Carissa Chew This article, which is informed by two public lectures about the Zimbabwean political crisis that were held at the University of Edinburgh in the week beginning 20 November, discusses the role of colonial legacies in recent Zimbabwean political affairs. Firstly, this article provides a summary of the Zimbabwean crisis for the reader…
Written by Grace Young Vikings and zombies generally are not things one would naturally think of in the same sentence. They are certainly not things most people would associate with Scotland, either. However, this is exactly what Dr. Clare Downham of the University of Liverpool gave a seminar on. For clarification, while Downham really was…
Written by Daniel Sharp On Monday 23 October, I attended a meeting presented by the Late Antique and Medieval Postgraduate Society. The society is conducting a series of research seminars this year, in which papers and research is presented and discussed. The meeting I attended was not, unfortunately, a seminar – it was a general…
