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…
Written by Travis Aaroe The Austrian Empire was a multi-ethnic domain ruled over by the Habsburg dynasty. After the Congress of Vienna, which ended the Napoleonic Wars, the Empire stretched from Lombardy, Venetia and modern-day Austria in the west to Hungary in the east and, from Croatia in the south to Bohemia and Galicia in…
Written by Lewis Twiby On Tuesday 31 October, Meg Foster, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of New South Wales, gave a research seminar on the infamous bushranger Black Douglas. This was in an effort to highlight her research in this overlooked aspect of Australian national history. During Australia’s gold rush of the 1850s, a…
Written by Bella Howard-Vyse To say that the Classical influences on the Modern World are both underestimated and underappreciated would be an understatement. Despite the fact that 60 per cent of words in the English language derive from Latin, there are other less obvious connections between the two vastly different worlds: the Ancient and the Modern.…
By RETROSPECT JOURNAL Written by Emma Marriott In the summer of 1997, a ceremony was held in Hong Kong, marking the official transfer of sovereignty to the People’s Republic of China, ending 157 years of British rule. Chris Patten, Hong Kong’s last colonial governor, departed from the Government House in Hong Kong on the 1st…
Written by Kevin Kempton. On 21 July 1861, Union Brigadier General Irvin McDowell fought against Confederate Brigadier General Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard at First Bull Run (or First Manassas). As the Confederate lines began to crumble under McDowell’s heavy Union assault, a brigade arrived, providing significant reinforcements on Henry House Hill. Confederate Brigadier General Barnard Elliott…
Written by Pablo Perez Ruiz. “Toussaint’s failure was the failure of enlightenment, not of darkness.” – C.L.R James, Black Jacobins. “This is where the African intellectual lives in paradoxical terms: powerful yet powerless.” – Toyin Falola, Nationalism and African Intellectuals. Pan-Africanism, when taken as a broad ‘group of movements’ with ‘no single nucleus’ and stemming from the experiences of the…
Written by Anahit Behrooz. The recent scholarly resurgence of fairy tales and folklore, and the litany of rewrites, spin offs and adaptations, prompts a reexamination of many of the genre’s characteristics and tropes. The character of the wicked stepmother has gained notoriety as one of the most evil villains to be found in fairy tales, frequently…
Written by Jenisha Sabaratnam. As Pharaoh of Lower and Upper Egypt, King Akhenaten undoubtedly had immense power over his land and subjects throughout his seventeen year rule of the 18th dynasty of Ancient Egypt. Though it was common for Pharaohs to justify their rule through religion, Akhenaten took it one step further. He changed the…
