Indholdsfortegnelse for July 2024 i History Extra

“The transatlantic slave trade is one of the bleakest episodes in history and there's no denying that Britain played a major role in it. But following the British abolition of the trade in 1807, a dramatic volte-face ensued and the Royal Navy was unleashed against those nations who continued to ship enslaved Africans across the ocean. In our cover feature this month, Mary Wills tells the story of the West Africa Squadron's battle against slave traders, exploring how it encompassed “politics, principle, philanthropy and national identity – and a flawed mission affecting human lives”. You'll find it on page 48. It was less than two years ago that Queen Elizabeth II died and Charles III became king, ending the longest reign in Britain's history. It was a significant shift but…

“The moral of this Shakespearean tale? Always trust your primary sources!” EVERY NOW AND AGAIN IN HISTORY, CERTAIN things need restating. It's an obvious point, but like journalists, historians build their picture of the past using sources. They distinguish between primary and second‑ ary sources, sources you can trust, others maybe you cannot. And primary sources – first hand, contemporary, authoritative, corroborated – are the basis of any historical narrative. This is a key principle of historical research. It all comes down to interpretation of the evidence. What does this document tell me? What is the authority of this text? Can I be sure that what it tells me is true? Am I reading it to corroborate a picture I've already decided on? Recently, the Shakespeare authorship controversy – the…

“Though I conquered you in battle while you still lived,” began Queen Tomyris of the Massagetae, a nomadic tribe that ranged the Eurasian steppe, “You have utterly destroyed me.” The man she addressed was Cyrus the Great, founding king of the first Persian ‘Achaemenid’ empire – or at least, he had been. Now, his severed head dangled from the queen's hands in a blood-soaked bag. We can only imagine how deeply this episode haunted Cyrus's daughter Atossa. It is hardly surprising that when her husband, Darius I of Persia, set out to invade the territory of an equally aggressive nomadic tribe 17 years later, in about 513 BC, she did her best to dissuade him. Darius hoped making war on the Scythians would strengthen his empire's eastern border. Would it…

“As ambassadors and peacemakers, elder women like Gulbadan were key to the political affairs of the Mughal empire” It all began in early 1576. Princess Gulbadan Begum sat opposite her nephew, the Mughal emperor Akbar, waiting for her turn to speak. The princess was of medium height, with distinctive straight eyebrows over penetrating eyes. She was dressed in a flowing long top over loose trousers, her chest covered with a stole thrown casually over her shoulders and head. Ruby and pearl necklaces adorned her neck. Gulbadan dressed and carried herself like a woman of great standing. And why shouldn't she? She was, after all, the daughter of Babur, the revered warrior-king who had conquered Delhi in 1526 and in doing so laid the foundations for the Mughal empire. Bearing the…

1 Roman Britain was more than just one province After the Roman invasion of Britain in AD 43, Britain was named a province and given its first governor, Aulus Plautius. However, Septimius Severus, or possibly his son Caracalla, split the province of Britannia into two by AD 213: Britannia Superior and Britannia Inferior. Later, under Diocletian (reigned 284–305) or Constantine (reigned 306–337), Britannia was made a diocese consisting of four provinces: Maxima Caesariensis (south-east England); Flavia Caesariensis (eastern England and the Midlands); Britannia Prima (Wales and south-west England); and Britannia Secunda (northern England). Each time a new province was named, it was given a governor and staff to manage its affairs on behalf of the emperor. 2 It's only thanks to the Romans that we know the names of native…

PODCAST Listen ad-free at historyextra.com/podcast or with ads wherever you get your podcasts GEORGIAN Regency gossip With the latest series of Bridgerton now streaming on Netflix, the show's historical advisor, Hannah Greig, delves into the real-life inspiration behind the scandalous gossip sheets circulated by anonymous author Lady Whistledown. SECOND WORLD WAR D-Day stories The invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944 was a gargantuan undertaking for the Allied forces. Eighty years on from D-Day, Jon Bauckham speaks to three leading military historians to find out how the decisive campaign was coordinated across land, air and sea. TRAVEL Urban exploration Looking for holiday inspiration this summer? In our latest History's Greatest Cities series, journalist Paul Bloomfield teams up with leading historians to explore the origins of global metropolises including Delhi, Venice, Granada and Tokyo.…

Orwell's Ghosts: Wisdom and Warnings for the 21st Century by Laura Beers C Hurst, 224 pages, £20 Years after his death, George Orwell is everywhere. Social media is littered with protests about ‘Orwellian censorship’, Big Brother and the Ministry of Truth. In this context, Laura Beers’ new book, Orwell's Ghosts, is essential reading. Beers’ approach is to situate Orwell in his original context, recover his concerns and, from this vantage point, address contemporary debates. Beer starts with the vexed question of ‘Orwellian cancel culture’. Here, she argues that there is simply no comparison between the fate of celebrities who are ‘cancelled’ on social media, and Winston Smith's torture in the cellars of the Ministry of Love. And, in opposition to claims about the ‘Orwellian censorship’ of ‘alternative facts’, she observes…

1. Back down to Earth I was interested to discover that, in the afterglow of being the second person on the moon, Buzz Aldrin remembered to submit his expense claim for the trip – a mere $33.31 (page 39). 2. A mammoth achievement In her winning article on the history of games, Kelly Clancy highlights that the Egyptian ancestor of backgammon, senet, was created when woolly mammoths still roamed the Earth (page 28) 3. Big in Japan Tokyo feels like such a modern city that you might well be surprised to learn that, back in the mid-18th century, it was likely the largest metropolis in the world (page 86).…

THE CONVERSATION “We mustn't overlook the toll of surfacing traumatic histories” I'VE BEEN RESEARCHING A NEW PROJECT AND have just finished one of the most harrowing books I have ever read: Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. Written in 1997, and drawing on interviews with survivors and newly discovered documents, Chang chronicled the devastating weeks during the Second Sino-Japanese War in December 1937 when the Imperial Japanese army swept into the ancient Chinese city of Nanking (now called Nanjing). What followed was the systematic rape and torture of tens of thousands of Chinese civilians. What is so disturbing about the book is the excruciating detail Chang goes into of the crimes inflicted. I imagine she didn't shirk from including the specificity of what…

c545 BC The city-states of the Greek territory of Ionia submit and pay tribute to Cyrus the Great. 530 BC Cyrus, founder of the ‘Achaemenid’ Persian empire, is killed by the Massagetae tribe. c513 BC Darius I of Persia launches an invasion of Scythian territories on the Eurasian steppe, but secures only an unsatisfying victory. 499 BC Beginning of the Ionian Revolt of city-states against Persian rule. Aristagoras, tyrant of Miletus, travels to Sparta, among other Greek city-states, to build support for the revolution. 493 BC The Persians reconquer Ionia but experience resistance from city-states including Athens. 490 BC The Athenians and Plataeans defeat the Persians at the battle of Marathon. 486 BC Death of Darius I of Persia and the succession of Xerxes. 480 BC Leonidas leads a crack…

Defending the queen Estelle Paranque (left) discusses her new take on Anne in a podcast episode set to air later in June. She's a spirited defender of the queen, and suggests that the misconception of her as a homewrecker obscures a more complex story of a woman determined to stand up for herself against the odds. She argues that it's that fierce, if flawed, character that helps explain her popularity into the 21st century. historyextra.com/ab-paranque-pod Courtly secrets In this conversation from our Six Wives podcast series, Tracy Borman and Owen Emmerson set out to separate fact from the fiction that swirls around Boleyn's life. Does she deserve to be characterised as a backstabber? How was she viewed at the Tudor court? And what was really behind her dramatic fall from…

“We've come to see George Orwell as this prophet of dystopia, but that's only one side” They're both fascinating writers but why focus on George Orwell and Franz Kafka in particular? This year marks 75 years since the publication of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the centenary of Kafka's death. The thing that connects them, of course, is the fact that both of them gave us adjectives. That's our way in: what does it mean to describe something as Orwellian or Kafkaesque? We start with Ian Hislop talking to Alan Bates about whether his ordeal over the Horizon computer system failure [at the Post Office] was Orwellian or Kafkaesque. The case went through the courts in this labyrinthine, Kafkaesque way, but it was also Orwellian as some of the postmasters and…

Kelly Clancy “We can learn a lot about people by studying what fascinates them, and games have enthralled people for millennia. In my feature, I explore what five such games tell us about the people who played them.” Kelly reveals how games have helped humans make sense of the world on page 27 Max Hastings “I've been writing about small episodes that seem to illustrate important realities about bigger things – and which are also jolly good stories in their own right.” Max chronicles one of the greatest airborne raids of the Second World War on page 68 Ruby Lal “I was the first scholar to work with Princess Gulbadan's memoir, the only book in prose by a Mughal woman. It's a treasure – an astute account of the daily…

OBITUARY Few school history teachers make a national impact on the shape of the subject, but Nicolas Kinloch, head of history for many years at Netherhall School, Cambridge, was a major influence on the development of government policy on history teaching, as well as a traveller, textbook writer and a regular contributor to, and columnist for, BBC History Magazine. As his former pupils have been lining up online to say, Kinloch was an inspirational classroom teacher. His lessons were lively and memorable, and he was introducing pupils to non-European history long before it became widespread practice. One commented: “He did so much to combat racism in the early 1980s. He challenged every incident and taught all students about African history.” He was himself black, though he studiously avoided identity politics.…

I'm pleased that Helen Cowie covered the work of the RSPCA across 200 years (April). She explained that “pets had initially been excluded from the RSPCA's operations'’. But MP Joseph Pease secured the protection of dogs and “other domestic animals” in 1835, and by 1849 the Cruelty to Animals Prevention Act included cats as well as dogs. While the state provided these basic legal protections to domestic animals, we know from contemporary sources that it wasn't only constables who acted to uphold the new laws. Cases of domestic animal cruelty found their way into the courts at the urging of local people, with convictions subsequently secured on their evidence. One cat skinner, for instance, was found guilty on the testimony of the main witness, a woman who saw the disposal…

Fuel fraud In early 1940, a conman persuaded General Franco (below right), the Spanish dictator, that he could produce petrol by mixing water with a variety of plant extracts. Working in tandem with the general's chauffeur, who told his employer that his official car was already running on this extraordinary fuel, Albert von Filek fooled Spain's ruler into granting him land by a particular river on which to build a factory. When the scam was revealed, von Filek and his associate were both jailed. English earthquake More than a thousand buildings in Colchester and surrounding villages were destroyed in an earthquake on the morning of 22 April 1884. Estimated to have measured 4.6 on the Richter Scale, the quake lasted only a matter of seconds but damaged houses, shops and…

The seizure of a slaving vessel was a cause for celebration for the West Africa Squadron. But what fate awaited the enslaved Africans crammed aboard these ships? The British crown colony of Sierra Leone was often the first destination for those released from the hellish grip of the slavers. British abolitionists had founded the colony in the 1780s as part of their ‘civilising’ mission – and its capital, Freetown, was the administrative centre of anti-slave trade operations. It was here that captured vessels were often adjudicated by British maritime courts. Once in British hands, the enslaved people were condemned as part of the ship's property, registered and declared legally ‘free’. They were now referred to as ‘liberated Africans’. However, this was a version of liberty that many people would struggle…

RISING ARCHITECT OF THE ACCESSION Sir Robert Cecil Cecil was the younger son of Elizabeth I's leading minister, William, Lord Burghley, and became his father's political heir in the 1590s. In 1601, he began to correspond secretly with James VI of Scotland and pledged to manage his accession to the English throne on Elizabeth's death. He kept his word and was repaid in 1603 with the retention of all his offices and entry into the nobility. THE HANDSOME YOUTH William Herbert The 3rd Earl of Pembroke (pictured) was exiled from the court in 1601 after abandoning his pregnant mistress. On Elizabeth's death he hurried north to offer James homage and the “handsome youth” quickly became an intimate of the king. At the coronation, reported the Venetian ambassador, Pembroke “actually kissed…

Rob Attar: Many of your previous books have focused on the big campaigns and the most famous events of the Second World War. So what drew you to the relatively unknown Operation Biting? Max Hastings: Because I'm getting a bit older and a bit slower, I want to focus on miniatures rather than the big stuff. So I've been picking small episodes that seem to illustrate important realities about bigger things – and which are also jolly good stories in their own right. The Bruneval Raid [Operation Biting] in February 1942 was a British success story at a time when not much else was going well. And it involved all sorts of fascinating personalities – starting, of course, with Churchill. At that stage of the war, when so many battles…

The Aztec Myths: A Guide to the Ancient Stories and Legends by Camilla Townsend Thames & Hudson, 208 pages, £14.99 The history of the Aztecs (or, as they would have called themselves, the Mexica) is riddled with colonial prejudice and contemporary misconception. But, as Camilla Townsend contends in this fine new book, the Aztecs’ own dramatic tales of their ferocity also contributed to these bloodthirsty stereotypes as they sought to frighten their enemies and mitigate their defeats with exaggerated claims of sacrificial and military violence. Townsend's Aztecs were expert storytellers, who deployed their histories strategically to teach the past and influence the present. In the case of sacrifice, argues Townsend, “their approach backfired”, and these stories have loomed over their history ever since. But, as the author ably shows, sacrifice…

The first instalment in your new Nero trilogy follows the experiences of his mother, Agrippina (pictured). Why did you decide to focus on her story? Agrippina is the ultimate survivor. How could she be anything but ruthless, given her family and upbringing? She survived murders, plots, exile and terrible violence to keep her son alive. When Caligula sent his sister into exile, it was without fortune or favour. Her little boy was taken from her and sent to live with impoverished relatives. It was the end of everything… and yet she lived to return. She is one of the great characters of history – and so is the son she raised, for all his flaws. What impression of the pair's relationship did you want to convey? When Agrippina's son became…

As the weather heats up, it's time to cool down with an ice cream. Our favourite summer treat originated from the sweet cool drinks known as ‘sherbets’ made since medieval times in the Middle East, which Italians froze into a dessert in the 17th century, the name Italianised to ‘sorbetti’. Before the advent of artificial refrigeration, ice or snow kept drinks cold, but these were costly and perishable materials. By the mid-16th century European scientists had worked out that adding saltpetre to the ice or snow lowered the temperature to below freezing, and a vessel of liquid could be frozen if placed in it. Antonio Latini, a steward who worked in some of the most elite Italian kitchens of the day, included recipes for strawberry, chocolate, aubergine and pine nut-flavoured…

Crusader criminals Steve Tibble describes how the medieval holy wars spawned an enormous crimewave August issue on sale 4 July 2024 Roman roads Catherine Fletcher takes a trip along the highways that once connected the mighty ancient empire Stuart spies Nadine Akkerman and Pete Langman reveal the ingenious methods employed in early modern espionage WWII defiance Clare Mulley profiles a remarkable woman who repeatedly resisted the Nazis in occupied Poland Legend of the Bruce Fiona Watson seeks out the true character of the iconic Scottish king The first Paris Olympics David Goldblatt charts the extraordinary story of the 1900 games…

IN PROFILE William Lenthall served as speaker of the House of Commons for nearly 20 years, both before and after the execution of Charles I. The lawyer-turned-politician is best known for the defiance he showed on 4 January 1642, when the king tried to seize five MPs whom he accused of treason. Lenthall's refusal to reveal their whereabouts was an assertion of the rights of the Commons in the face of royal tyranny. He died in Burford, Oxfordshire. “The respect that sovereign and speaker now show each other is down to William Lenthall's stand all those years ago” When did you first hear about William Lenthall? At school, though it's only since becoming speaker – just like William Lenthall – that I've fully come to appreciate his significance as a…