Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 13 i BBC World Histories Magazine

In September, the oldest museum in Brazil was reduced to ashes. The Museu Nacional in Rio de Janeiro housed collections of geology, palaeontology, botany, zoology and biological anthropology featuring more than 20 million items acquired over two centuries. In Brazil, the destruction of the National Museum sparked a discussion about the country’s colonial history and its complex relations with populations of indigenous and African descent. More importantly, it fuelled national and international debates on how economic and political challenges impact on the preservation of heritage around the world. The Palace of São Cristóvão, which housed the National Museum, was closely linked to the history of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade. Rio de Janeiro was the largest slave port in the Americas, and this palace was built on land previously…

Overtaking sexism Jock Semple, co-director of the Boston Marathon, tries to grab Kathrine Switzer’s race number–outraged that a woman was running. He was tackled by her boyfriend, Tom Miller, and Switzer finished in four hours 20 minutes–the first woman to run the race as a numbered entrant (she had entered using the name KV Switzer, so her gender wasn’t noticed by race officials). Astonishingly, despite the publicity surrounding Switzer’s run, women were not officially allowed to run the Boston Marathon till 1972, and the first Olympic women’s marathon was competed as recently as 1984. Talking about a revolution A group of Albanian students read a journal bearing an image of Mao Zedong, architect of the violent Cultural Revolution celebrated inside the magazine. Launched the previous August and ending only after…

When the French navigator and geographer Samuel de Champlain first set sail for New France (the area of North America colonised by France, some of which later became part of Canada) on 15 March 1603, it was the start of a love affair with North America that would last until his death. Over the following three decades he navigated and surveyed thousands of miles of North American rivers and coasts, and founded the first enduring French colony in the New World: Québec City. Although permanent colonisation was Champlain’s goal during most of his time in the region, it was not easily achieved. Unlike many of his predecessors, Champlain didn’t underestimate the problems involved in founding a colony. He read and studied all he could about earlier European exploration and attempted…

Ivan’s emblem of victory The Cathedral of the Intercession on the Moat – better known as St Basil’s – was commissioned by Ivan the Terrible, first tsar of Russia, to commemorate his victory over the ‘Tatar infidels’ of Kazan in 1552. It’s believed to have been designed by architect Postnik Yakovlev, who was – according to legend, though probably not fact – blinded on Ivan’s orders so that he could never create another building to rival the beauty of St Basil’s. Completed in 1561 on the site of an earlier Trinity Church, the original edifice comprised eight chapels ranged around a central church of intercession with a tented spire. It creates the form of a fire reaching to the heavens, and was probably white, its red hue being added in…

It’s almost like they’re embarrassed at the achievement coming from America,” said US president Donald Trump in September, commenting on the recent Neil Armstrong biopic First Man. “I think it’s a terrible thing… For that reason, I wouldn’t even want to watch the movie.” The controversy surrounding First Man has drawn attention to the question of historical accuracy in films. To many of its viewers, First Man will seem impressively accurate, with so much care taken over period detail that it’s almost distracting. By the third or fourth loving close-up of precisely historically correct 1960s beer cans, you’ve got the point. But the aspect that upset some commentators, and some Republican politicians, was one shot they felt was missing for political reasons. First Man shows Neil Armstrong landing on the…

The fact that such a view of Africa could be aired was not the fault of politicians but of historians On 27 July 2007, the then French president Nicolas Sarkozy gave a speech to 1,300 guests at Cheikh Anta Diop University in the Senegalese capital, Dakar. In his address, given during a trip to bolster relations between France and the African continent, Sarkozy remarked that: “The tragedy of Africa is that the African has not fully entered into history… They have never really launched themselves into the future.” He continued: “The African peasant, who for thousands of years has lived according to the seasons, whose life ideal was to be in harmony with nature, only knew the eternal renewal of time… In this imaginary world, where everything starts over and…

“Museums often still portray a pretty simplistic picture of who Holocaust perpetrators were”MARY FULBROOK Richard J Evans: What inspired you to write and research this new book? Mary Fulbrook: It interested me initially from two quite different perspectives. One was an awareness that the legacies of the Holocaust persist across generations, and I wanted to explore that in more detail. The other was an enduring sense of injustice. It seemed to me from my previous work that many of those who were deeply involved in making the Holocaust possible, but who weren’t themselves ‘frontline’ killers, somehow got away with it. I wanted to explore in more detail and on a broader canvas what happened to people on both sides of the divide – both those who persecuted and those who…

View-points Expert opinions on historical issues that touch today’s world Growing up as a mixed-race girl in Britain, I never read names that resembled mine in blue plaques marking sites of heritage or historical interest. I didn’t see statues of people who looked like me, nor streets named after people who had African roots, like I did. I was not particularly perplexed by this fact. It was obvious that such people had not existed in Britain’s past–or if they had, they had made no contribution worth remembering. Black people were, after all, ahistorical, colonial subjects or slaves. The glorious statues I did see in our great towns and cities commemorated men–they are almost all men–who had nothing to do with any of that part of my heritage. I believed this…

1 Timbuktu, Mali Architecture illustrates well how African societies both adopted and adapted ideas from outside the region. Many different African societies converted to Islam, and the mosques they built shared features standard across the Islamic world, being rectangular in plan and incorporating a mihrab (prayer niche) in the wall oriented toward Mecca. But despite these similarities, such structures also made use of the expertise in vernacular material of local builders. A good example is the banco (raw earth) Djinguereber mosque at Timbuktu (pictured), which, though much restored, was first built in the 14th century. Nora, Ethiopia This c14th-century Islamic complex was discovered in 2007 about 120 miles north-east of Addis Ababa. It features a mosque made of volcanic stone, several other smaller mosques, dwellings and a Muslim cemetery. The existence of this site…

Multiple histories flow through ‘Ol’ Man River’. A foundation song of the ‘great American musical’ that was also performed on the front line of the Spanish Civil War and at the height of the Black Power movement, there have been more versions of the song than the Mississippi river has miles. It has been performed by talents as diverse as Bing Crosby and Rod Stewart, Judy Garland and Aretha Franklin. Yet above all it belongs to singer, actor and activist Paul Robeson. His life was inextricably linked to a song he at first resented and rejected but which he later embraced, repeatedly adapting it to reflect the political passions and turbulence of his times. ‘Ol’ Man River’ is a faux spiritual written in 1927 by a pair of New Yorkers…

DRESSED TO KILL This Native American ‘war shirt’, made in Montana in the latter decades of the 19th century from leather, ermine, feathers and human hair, and decorated with pigment and glass beads, served as both a memorial of a battle and evidence of the wearer’s bravery. It’s among a set of striking artefacts displayed in a new exhibition at the Met Museum, celebrating the art and artistry of North America’s native peoples. From combs and bags to daggers and clubs, they offer vivid insights into cultures in disparate regions including Alaska, California and New Mexico. A lavish book co-written by one of the curators has been produced to accompany the exhibition. Art of Native America, until 6 October 2019 at The Met Fifth Avenue, New York City metmuseum.org/exhibitions PARALLAX…

Rome was around 700 years old when people first began calling it the ‘eternal city’. That was during the reign of the emperor Augustus, more than 2,000 years ago, and it has weathered the storms of Europe’s history ever since: sacks by Visigoths and Vandals; raids by Saracens and Normans; the competing ambitions of popes and kings. The result is a city still haunted by its turbulent past. From cheerful cafés by the Campo de’ Fiori you can step down into cellars that once belonged to the Theatre of Pompey, the monumental complex in which Julius Caesar was murdered. Near Trajan’s Forum, with its famous spiral column, a fortified tower looms – a reminder of the medieval clans who turned the city into a battleground. The layers of past epochs…