Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 12 i BBC World Histories Magazine

The idea of European union has a long, complex and contested history, one that’s again come under scrutiny since the Brexit vote in 2016. An idealistic industrial and economic postwar collaboration begun as a reaction to the devastation of the Second World War, the idea of greater and formalised European integration has attracted both supporters and critics throughout its existence. Now encompassing a total population of more than 500 million, the EU is – depending on your view – a supranational project of unparalleled ambition or an increasingly outmoded relic of another time and another political reality. Of course, there are also those who maintain that the concept was wrongheaded from the very start. This issue, we asked our expert writers to consider the forces that have shaped Europe socially…

“I have been in and out of China this year to work with a number of universities on my twin research interests: ancient Greece and ancient global history. Over recent months I have visited Shanghai and Hangzhou in the south, Beijing, and the cities of Changchun and Harbin in the less-visited north-east of China. And one thing that surprised me more than everything else on these visits was a particular fascination in China with the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, particularly with the ancient Greeks. When I landed in Beijing, a curious picture greeted me – one of the airport’s official artworks in arrivals. Under the banner headline ‘Cultural Gateway – Beautiful Beijing’ was an image of Chinese artists feverishly painting ancient Greek sculptures: the winged Nike, several Caryatids and…

“Inever saw a more beautiful or refined woman than ‘Arib,” one authority on music opined, “nor one who sang, played music, wrote poetry or played chess so well.” Part Elizabeth Taylor, part Amy Winehouse, ‘Arib al-Ma’muniyya was the most famous (and infamous) of the qiyan, female slave performers of the urban elite of Iraq. Muslim societies produced many elite women, who sometimes held very public positions, most notably the queens of 17th-century Aceh. Yet none confounded the social and gender categories typically ascribed to Islamic civilisation more than ‘Arib. ‘Arib’s birth date is usually given as 797, during the reign of the great Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid (reigned 786–809). She claimed high birth, but it’s not clear if she was born to a legal union; certainly, she was sold into…

In the early hours of 5 August 1914, the CS [cable ship] Alert arrived at the Varne Bank in the English Channel. Dropping grappling hooks, her British crew dredged up the five underwater telegraph cables umbilically linking Germany with France, Spain, the Azores and, ultimately, the United States. Having hauled up the cables, the men severed them with hatchets, one by one. During the operation the Alert was approached by a flotilla of French destroyers, one of which signalled: “What are you doing?” When the Alert’s captain replied: “Cutting German cables”, the cheers of the French sailors could be heard ringing across the water. This was the first British offensive against Germany and her allies, undertaken just hours after Britain had declared war at 11pm on 4 August. Neither the…

As the 1930s progressed, so did Adolf Hitler’s plans for European domination – but Czechoslovakia stood in the way. It possessed a well-equipped army, it was a French and Soviet ally, and it barred the road to the resources of southeastern Europe. At a November 1937 general-staff meeting, the Nazi leader decided that the barrier of Czechoslovakia must be removed. Significantly, Czechoslovakia was home to a substantial German-speaking minority. Hitler observed that this community, mostly distributed along border areas known as the Sudetenland, could be leveraged to make territorial demands on the country and eventually dismember it. At the beginning of 1938, Hitler made a speech proclaiming himself the protector of all Germans living in two neighbouring states, Austria and Czechoslovakia. In March he invaded and annexed Austria but, even…

Roller-Coaster: Europe, 1950–2017 by Ian Kershaw Allen Lane, 704 pages, £30, out now Master storyteller Ian Kershaw turns his attention to the innovations and insecurities of the post-Second World War era, as politics and technology led to increasing integration but also nationalist sentiment and financial instability. Sequel to his 2015 book To Hell and Back: Europe, 1914-1949, this is a truly epic account. Rome: Eternal City by Ferdinand Addis Head of Zeus, 648 pages, £30, Sept Histories comprising a series of vignettes are in vogue, and here the format is applied to the city of Rome. From its ancient foundation to the Second World War, via Gauls, ghettos and gladiators, its 22 chapters focus on themes of individuals, myths and beliefs. The Kremlin Letters by David Reynolds and Vladimir Pechatnov…

PE Caquet In our Perspectives article on page 64, historian PE Caquet explores the impasse in Czechoslovakia that led to Neville Chamberlain’s infamous 1938 Munich Agreement with Hitler. “The issues were not merely Sudeten German rights, but the security of Czechoslovakia and, beyond that, the very fate of Europe,” he explains. Seymour Hersh “I always had a streak of not wanting to accept the diktat of editors,” says Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hersh. On page 44 he recalls 50 years of reporting on stories such as the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King, who would “give me a lot of good quotes… I guess you could call it love at first sight.” Heidi Maurer As the UK prepares to leave the EU, on page 16 we ask…

It was, proclaimed Eleanor Roosevelt, “the international Magna Carta of all men everywhere”. The former First Lady of the United States made this claim about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in an address to the United Nations General Assembly after it adopted the UDHR on 10 December 1948. Conceived in reaction to the atrocities of the Second World War, the UDHR is the foundational text of the modern human rights movement. Although not legally binding, it established new international norms for the protection and promotion of individual liberties. Its principles are codified in the constitutions and laws of 90 nations and underpin the mission statements of many campaign groups including Amnesty International. So why, in the year we celebrate the 70th anniversary of the UDHR, are there such widespread…

Denise Dunne “The EU is imperfect – but will go down in history as one of Europe’s most creative experiments in community building” The EU is the culmination of a process of co-operation that began in 1952 with the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), which aimed to make war between its members “not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible”. Though Europe has not been free from war since, there has not been an armed conflict between member states since the foundation of the EU – a remarkable achievement, given the history of savage conflict in the first half of the 20th century. Maintaining peace among members through economic partnership remains the EU’s primary purpose. The fact so many people are either unaware of this, choose to overlook…

1 Mesopotamia and Persia All in for oil After the Ottoman empire entered the war in October 1914, it clashed with the Allies in a lengthy campaign in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq). This spilled into Persia (Iran), which was nominally independent, though the Russians were entrenched in Persian Azerbaijan, while the British were dominant in the south. Having established a bridgehead at Basra, the British, determined to protect oil sources, pushed northwest along the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. British imperial troops suffered a major defeat at Kut, surrendering on 29 April 1916 after a 21-week siege. Regrouping, the British captured Baghdad in March 1917, pushing on to Kirkuk and, in November 1918, Mosul. 2 Gallipoli Deadlock in the Dardanelles In 1915 the British government sanctioned an attempt to split the Ottoman…

The world exploded in 1968. Early in the year, the Tet Offensive launched by the Viet Cong shook the South Vietnamese government and its American allies. In China, the Cultural Revolution was hurtling ahead – though those in the west who labelled themselves Maoists rarely understood the violence and repression of the regime for which they professed admiration. All of this tied in with protest movements in Europe and North America. Sometimes these were fuelled by opposition to the Vietnam War – though, paradoxically, protesters often attacked governments (notably that of General de Gaulle in France) that were themselves opposed to US policy in Vietnam. Meanwhile, the civil rights movement in the American south, and a renewed awareness in West Germany of the older generation’s implication in the Nazi past,…

Edward Lear (1812–88) was born in Holloway, London. His father was a stockbroker but in 1816 defaulted on the London Stock Exchange. The family was forced to leave home, and Edward was largely brought up by his much older sister Ann. Chronically short-sighted and suffering from bronchitis, asthma and epilepsy, he went to school for only a few miserable months. He did, though, learn artistic skills from his sisters. In 1830 Lear drew parrots in the recently opened London Zoo. His brilliant pictures, published in Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots (1832), won immediate acclaim. At the age of just 18 he was elected to the Linnean Society, and illustrated the works of naturalists including renowned ornithologist John Gould. Over the next few years he drew the menagerie…