Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 6 i BBC World Histories Magazine

The world’s nuclear arsenal is today estimated to number between 10,000 and 15,000 weapons – a huge figure, but far lower than the 60,000 stockpiled during the 1980s. Yet the threat of nuclear war has returned to the forefront of global politics in recent months, most notably since North Korea claimed to have finally achieved its ambition of producing a weapon that would fit on an intercontinental missile – accompanied by an escalation in the nation’s bellicose rhetoric. This was matched by the pronouncements of US president Donald Trump. (“My first order as president was to renovate and modernise our nuclear arsenal,” he tweeted in August. “It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before.”) Despite these and other tensions, no major international conflict has been fought since…

Writing in the late 20th century, the renowned Kuwaiti scholar Hassan Ali Al-Ebraheem counselled his fellow citizens of the Arabian Gulf to remember that they live in a dangerous neighbourhood. This summer’s beleaguerment of the Gulf kingdom of Qatar by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain – states which, backed up by Egypt and a group of smaller Arab and Muslim states, accused Qatar of supporting terrorism – is a stark reminder of how dangerous the region can be. Much of the commentary on this stand-off has focused on the rise of a new generation of leaders in Saudi Arabia and the UAE who view Qatar’s independent foreign policy as an obstacle to their own domestic and regional ambitions. Although recent events illuminate very different visions for…

VICTORIA & ABDUL: IN CONTEXT As Queen Victoria celebrated her golden jubilee in 1887, the British empire was approaching its zenith, encompassing a fifth of the globe. Keen to flaunt its imperial splendour, the royal household transported subjects from across the globe to take part in the celebrations. One of those brought to England was 24-year-old Indian jail clerk Abdul Karim, who was chosen to wait on Victoria and present her with a ceremonial Mughal coin. Did Victoria and Abdul strike up a rapport straight away? Yes – the queen noticed Abdul immediately. She even recorded their very first meeting in her journal, describing him as “much fairer [than his fellow attendant Mohammed Buksh] with a fine countenance”. Very quickly, she arranged for Abdul to have extra English lessons so…

Hanoi’s strategy to topple South Vietnam and reunify the country under communist rule was strikingly similar to Westmoreland’s, being based on attrition. Both sides aimed to wear down the other by inflicting vast numbers of casualties to find a breaking point. The NLF’s southern insurgency was a crucial part of this strategy, but regular NVA troops also took part in the struggle, filtering south along the famed Ho Chi Minh Trail. The war of attrition worked better for NLF/NVA forces than it did for the United States, though they took a heavy toll: communist losses piled up at a rate roughly ten times those inflicted on the US and South Vietnam. By late 1967, communist leaders in Hanoi felt a mixture of optimism – their strategy was clearly wearing down…

On 27 August 1928, the world, it could be argued, changed. On that day, international dignitaries gathered in Paris to sign the Peace Pact – officially, the General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy, often called the Kellogg-Briand Pact after its main backers, American secretary of state Frank Kellogg and French foreign minister Aristide Briand. The pact was short, containing only two operative clauses. In the first, signatories condemned war and renounced it as an instrument of policy; in the second, they pledged that their countries would settle disputes peacefully. Of course, just over a decade later almost all of those nations were at war. Since then, when the pact is remembered at all it is usually dismissed as the climax of interwar idealism; indeed,…

Early English contact with North America has certainly not wanted for attention from historians. Even so, this new book by Rebecca Fraser provides a new perspective on events that are generally well known. Fraser tells the story of the Plymouth Colony and wider New England through the lives of the Winslow family. Hailing from Worcestershire, Edward Winslow was among the first settlers who arrived in the New World aboard the Mayflower in 1620, having previously spent time in the fledgling Dutch Republic together with other radical English Puritans who fled their homeland to pursue their own religious path. In the Americas, Winslow went on to become three-time governor of the infant Plymouth Colony. Fraser explores Edward’s career and his family’s progress in New England, ending her account with the death…

Ausonius (c310–c394) was born in Burdigala (Bordeaux), an important port in the Roman province of Aquitaine Gaul. He had a good education, studying Greek and Latin in Bordeaux and Toulouse. In 334, Ausonius became a teacher in Bordeaux. He wrote poetry – a normal activity for someone with his education – and married a noble woman, Attusia. Though it was an advantageous marriage for him, it was also a love match: Ausonius wrote impassioned love poetry for Attusia, and recorded his devastation when she died after nine years of marriage, leaving him a widower with three children. He never remarried. Ausonius spent some time working as a lawyer, but around 345 he became professor of rhetoric at Bordeaux. In 364 he was summoned to tutor Gratian, son of the Roman…

Anne Applebaum The journalist and historian discusses why the devastating famine in Ukraine in 1932–33 has had a lasting impact on relations in the region. “The famine continues to shape the thinking of Ukrainians and Russians, both about themselves and about one another, in ways both obvious and subtle,” she says on page 8. Shrabani Basu Queen Victoria’s friendship with Abdul Karim, her young Indian attendant, is a little-known episode. On page 28 Shrabani Basu reveals how their relationship influenced the empress. “At the heart of this story is a young Muslim man holding a key position at the height of [the British] empire – and that’s fascinating,” she says. Davide Bonazzi Born in Bologna, Bonazzi illustrated this issue’s cover (and accompanying feature on page 38). “The most stimulating part…

The whole point of a pedestal is to elevate whatever’s on it. That’s the thing about statues: they demand not just attention but reverence. And because they’re sited in prominent public places, the intention is always to make a statement. That statement is not always the same to all viewers, of course. Most people probably don’t give them a second thought. But sometimes they do – and then there’s a fight. From the ancient Romans on, for as long as people have set up effigies to themselves, the fall of regimes has always been symbolically marked by the fall of statues. It happened in New York in 1776. Having heard a reading of the Declaration of Independence, a mob in Bowling Green toppled a statue of the British king. Years…

ACCOMPANIES THE BBC FOUR TV SERIES THE VIETNAM WAR Under cover of darkness, early in the morning of 31 January 1968, National Liberation Front (NLF) fighters blew a hole in the wall of the compound surrounding the US embassy in Saigon. Within minutes, they were engaged in a firefight with American soldiers inside the grounds. The Tet Offensive had begun. Tet shook the long-standing American defence of South Vietnam to its very foundations, forcing the United States to reconsider its open-ended commitment to ensuring the survival of an independent South Vietnam. Vietnam had long been riven by conflict. Occupied by France since the mid- 19th century, then by Japan during the Second World War, an eight-year communist- led national liberation campaign finally expelled the French in 1954. However, the United…

When Muriel Matters arrived in London in October 1905, she had little money but a handful of letters of introduction and dreams of becoming a West End star. At 28 years old, Muriel had achieved modest success as a comedic actor, and recognition as an orator – a propopent of the art of elocution – having trained alongside Lionel Logue, who later helped George VI overcome his stutter (as dramatised in The King’s Speech). Indeed, she went on to become one of the most famous women in England – though not as an actor but as a pioneering thinker, social reformer and activist. Muriel had been inspired as a teenager by the fight for women’s suffrage in South Australia, which in 1894 had given women the rights of voting and…

What inspired you to write this book? We began with a question: why do states generally comply with international law? Much to our surprise, we discovered that, for most of human history, the answer was simple: war. If one state wronged another by failing to follow the law, the victim could wage war to right the wrong. Because this seems barbaric to us now, we wanted to figure out when and why it changed. The answer was that, in 1928, nearly every country in the world signed a treaty outlawing war. How important was that treaty in the development of attitudes to warfare? The 1928 pact would never have been signed had international attitudes not already shifted against war. We tell the story of the powerful peace movements that pressured…

Sprawled across a mountainflanked valley in southwest Mexico, the beautifully preserved city of Oaxaca (pronounced ‘wahaca’) reflects the dramatic collision of indigenous and colonial cultures in the 16th century. The Spanish founded their city, then called Antequera (renamed Oaxaca after Mexican independence in 1821), in a grid plan on a site occupied by native Zapotecs. Sensibly, the colonisers constructed low-rise, thick-walled buildings to withstand the frequent earthquakes that shake the region. The following century, visitor Thomas Gage was bowled over by the “fair and beautiful city… of so temperate an air”. Today Oaxaca is a heady mix of street markets and fiestas, museums packed with pre-Hispanic treasures and over-the-top baroque architecture. Settle into a cafe under the portales (arcades) of the traffic-free 1 Plaza de la Constitución (Constitution Square) at…

“The abolition of roaming charges will make us more global – it will allow us to engage more deeply with the wider EU” So we have finally arrived. Since June, UK travellers can use their mobile phones in all EU countries without incurring roaming charges. The scourge of the massive (often unintended) holiday mobile-phone bill – in those nations, at least – should be at an end. It’s often said that we would not know what to do without our phones. So how will our global experience change now that we can talk, text, email and browse more easily and cheaply than before? The demise of roaming charges has to be a good thing for connectivity. This announcement feels like a victory for all – a real step forward in…

Charles Townshend “Revolutions have far-reaching, complex and maybe contradictory e?ects that work out over very long periods of time” Revolution has meant many things – except perhaps its literal meaning: a full-circle return to a previous state. In the modern world it has meant change, usually dramatic and rapid, often accelerated by violence. It has been applied to sudden seizures of power, but also to vast processes such as industrialisation and technological development. (The United States even called its development of so-called ‘smart weapons’ the Revolution in Military Affairs.) Variations in meaning bear directly on the issue of success or failure. In ‘palace revolutions’ (sometimes mistakenly labelled coups d’état), in which one general might seize power from another, the issue has been resolved after a short military clash. But such…

President Johnson understood the paradox facing him in the jungles and rice paddies of Indochina. He realised that America’s strengths as a nuclear superpower – economic wealth accompanied by cutting-edge military technology – were actually weaknesses when engaging in the kind of fighting the United States faced in Vietnam. Conversely, North Vietnam’s weaknesses were actually advantages in the context of this conflict. Because the country had no industrial base, it provided no suitable targets for US bombers, and the type of war fought by the communist forces (northern troops and NLF in the south) required only basic small arms. A US invasion of North Vietnam was deemed too risky, so the war lacked a conventional front line. Capturing territory in South Vietnam was pointless against enemies who happily ceded ground,…

The title of this book seems designed to provoke intrigue: what do such apparently disparate topics have in common? The answer is chronology – simply, they all converged in the 1920s. This absorbing book begins with an admission: in the first instance, the author took a trip to the archives almost on a whim, simply because he fancied a look at recently declassified MI5 files – and found them so exciting that he decided to write a book. The result is an engaging account of military intelligence activity in the 1920s, told in a series of interesting episodes. Though much of the bigger-picture content will be familiar to the average reader, The Secret Twenties offers a more nuanced view, focusing on individuals. Phillips was clearly engrossed in the files he…

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