BBC World Histories Magazine Issue 11

ISSUE 11 Any attempt to explore the breadth of global history – its cultures, its stories, its people – in 100 pages will inevitably lead to unlikely juxtapositions and fusions. So it is this issue that one of history’s most intractable conflicts, between Israelis and Palestinians, rubs shoulders with a look at how global Islam has adapted to the 21st century, along with the heartrending story of a mother’s grief for her murdered son and that incident’s impact on civil rights movements worldwide. These are complex, weighty issues, so we have dedicated large sections of this issue to exploring them in depth. From page 44, Matthew Hughes focuses on eight key periods and turning points in the conflict in the Middle East, a struggle that has scarred life for many…

Gus Casely-Hayford The broadcaster, author and director of Washington DC’s Smithsonian National Museum of African Art introduces a powerful symbol of Swahili independence on page 98 – a 17th-century ngoma kuu (big drum). “These drums embody Swahili concepts of statehood and sovereignty,” he explains. Peter FitzSimons The historian and writer traces the 19th-century trans-Australia expedition of Robert O’Hara Burke and William Wills on page 84. “Their wagons were laden with 600lb of salt pork, 400lb of bacon, 60lb of potted mutton, 150lb of sperm-whale-wax candles, a dining-room table, oak chairs and a Chinese gong,” he reveals. Ed Husain “What does being modern and Muslim mean today?” That key question is addressed by the author of The House of Islam in our interview on page 72. “Within Muslim tradition is a…

Recent incidents in the US – including the murderous rampage of white supremacist Dylann Roof in a church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015, and the fatal violence at the ‘Unite the Right’ march in Charlottesville, Virginia last year – point to a disturbing political reality. Indeed, the 2017 report by the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism noted a startling increase in domestic extremist murders in the US committed by white supremacists. As a result, the violent and masculine nature of white supremacist politics has come to dominate the public narrative. It is easy to draw parallels between, on the one hand, southern lynch mobs and the incendiary speeches of cigar-smoking segregationists and, on the other, the white nationalist violence and rhetoric of the alt-right today. This focus, however, obfuscates…

This is undeniably an awkward period for Anglo-American relations. Whether one looks at discussions between the leaders, probable future trade negotiations, Nato, White House tweets or British public opinion, the relationship has not been this cool for some years. President Donald Trump appears to prefer authoritarian leaders – men who appear strong, who can walk confidently and authoritatively across their own countries and into others – to ‘weak’ liberal democracies. In his mind the Germans and most other European states don’t fulfil financial obligations to Nato, Canada’s leader Justin Trudeau is “dishonest and weak”, the Mexicans are sending rapists across the border, the British are at the mercy of terrorists – the list could go on. But this matters most to the UK, which for a century has seen itself…

It’s easy to see why the summit in Singapore this June between US president Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, state leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (more widely known as North Korea), received massive global media coverage. The two chief protagonists made for mesmerising clickbait. Just days before the summit, Trump dismissed and insulted democratic allies, going so far as to call Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau “dishonest”. In contrast, Trump subsequently argued that he has “developed a very special bond” with Kim Jong-un, the dynastic head of a brutal, anachronistic political system, who in 2013 authorised the execution of his uncle and former mentor Jang Song-thaek, and who reputedly oversaw the 2017 murder of his half-brother Kim Jong-nam in Kuala Lumpur airport. Yet it would be a…

This May, it became a civil offence in China to insult, defame or otherwise infringe “on the names, likenesses, reputations, or honour of heroes and martyrs”. This was part of a package of measures in a wide-ranging Law on Protection of Heroes and Martyrs that also instructed government departments, among other directives, to mark an annual Martyrs’ Remembrance Day with appropriate ceremonial, to protect and enhance sites associated with martyrs, assist their families, and ‘guide’ public remembrance of their ‘spirit’. “Society shall honour, study and champion the heroes and martyrs,” it demanded, their “deeds and spirit… an important manifestation of the common historical memory and core socialist values of the Chinese ethnicity” (an English translation of the law is available to read at chinalawtranslate.com). The catch is that at no…