BBC World Histories Magazine Issue 8

A new year offers a chance to step back and look at things from fresh perspectives. This issue we do just that, focusing our experts’ gaze on two key subjects: time and space. As we speed through the 21st century, it can feel as if modern life is accelerating in a blur of political schisms, technological innovations and social shifts. Of course, each generation experiences the shock of the new – but is this process speeding up? Have modern phenomena, such as the enhanced global interconnectivity and access to information offered by the internet, really pushed us past a kind of historical tipping point, beyond which our lives will be markedly different? Perhaps. But, as our writers argue in this issue, if we are living through a period of rapid…

Lizzie Collingham The flow of foods around the British empire’s complex trading networks changed the way in which the world eats, Collingham argues in our feature starting on page 42. “To trace the history of the ‘national foods’ of Britain’s former colonies is to create a web of connections that the British empire wove around the globe,” she says. Barry Cunliffe How did the Atlantic and Mediterranean shape the civilisations that developed around them? In this issue’s Conversation (page 74), Cunliffe – an archaeologist and author of a new book on that very subject – talks to historian David Abulafia about the appeal and challenge of the oceans throughout centuries of history. Zareer Masani This issue, Masani challenges popular notions of British imperial rule to show that the colonial government…

We seem to live in a very un-Gandhian world. Mohandas K Gandhi, the Indian leader killed on 30 January 1948, has been described as the apostle of non-violence. Violence, though, abounds across the modern world, from gun killings in the United States to a bloody war in Yemen. Gandhi feared the kind of technology that makes communication easier and movement quicker; that technology is vital for our lives today. Gandhi thought that the good life could best flourish in a society of interconnected villages; for the first time, this decade more than half of the world’s population live in cities. The Indian subcontinent, in particular, seems to have forgotten his ideas. Gandhi feared and then mourned the division of British-ruled India into the states of India and Pakistan; today, tensions…

The Taj Mahal has long been India’s architectural pride. It was erected on the orders of Shah Jahan, a 17thcentury Indo-Muslim emperor, to house the body of his wife of nearly two decades, Mumtaz Mahal, who died from complications after the birth of the couple’s 14th child in 1631. Shah Jahan envisioned the monument as “a masterpiece for ages to come, increasing the amazement of all humanity”. Over subsequent centuries, many have marvelled at the beauty of the Taj, lauding its detailed stone inlay work, its elegant domes, and the magical way the building appears to change colours with the rising and setting sun. It remains the most visited and well-known of India’s many tourist attractions today. In recent years, however, the Taj has been a source of growing anxiety…

Donald Trump’s decision to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has caused considerable anger in the Middle East and elsewhere. Why has relocating an embassy from one city that is not a nation’s capital (Tel Aviv) to another that the Israelis proclaim as their capital (Jerusalem) sparked such furore? Jerusalem has an old city split into religious quarters for Muslims, Jews and Christians. This historic enclosure encompasses many religious sites, three of which are highly significant: the remnants of the destroyed Jewish temple; atop that, is the al-Haram al-Sharif, one of the most holy sites for Muslims; and, elsewhere in the city, is the reputed site of Christ’s death and burial. For many years this walled district was Jerusalem, ruled by the Muslim Ottoman empire…

The centenary of the October 1917 revolution was for the most part greeted with an awkward silence in Russia. In the face of popular protests at official corruption and levels of wealth inequality that resemble tsarist society on the eve of the First World War, the government is reluctant to lend any official endorsement to revolution as a positive force in Russian history. Since Putin’s return to the Kremlin in 2012, the government has turned to repression as a surrogate for political debate and reform. Independent media are either taken over or closed down; opposition leaders are repeatedly jailed to hamper their activities and prevent them from standing in elections; activists find themselves dragged off to court for staging unsanctioned demonstrations. In its crackdown on opposition at home, the Kremlin…