Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 21 i BBC World Histories Magazine

Will Brexit mark a new dawn for the UK? Or will it fuel the kind of rift that has torn other states apart? As the United Kingdom sets out into its brave new post-EU world, questions persist about the form it will take in the years and decades to come. In January, prime minister Boris Johnson rejected calls for a second Scottish independence referendum, but there are those who argue that Brexit marks a major shift in circumstances for Scotland since it last voted on its future in 2014. This issue, we explore the history of the ‘nation state’, and examine the forces that have threatened the survival of such states around the world, from eastern Europe to the Middle East. What are the roots of these crises? And why…

Expert opinions on historical issues that touch today’s world We are told that this will be the Asian century, during which China in particular will attain global economic and political supremacy – and perhaps cultural dominance, too. But many also believe that if there is to be a Third World War, it could begin in east Asia. Perhaps it might be sparked by some convulsion within North Korea, or a confrontation in the Taiwan Strait – which has long held the unenviable title of the world’s number-one military flashpoint. Or it might erupt on Dokdo (Takeshima in Japanese), islets off the east coast of South Korea claimed by Japan as well as both Koreas. Though Japan and South Korea would appear to have many mutual economic, military, diplomatic and cultural…

In 1579, a son was born to a well-to-do indigenous family living in the town of Amaquemecan, New Spain (encompassing today’s Mexico). His parents gave him the Christian name Domingo, but he was also sometimes called Chimalpahin, meaning ‘He Ran with a Shield’ in their language, Nahuatl. It had been his great-great-grandfather’s name. The boy had a happy childhood, growing up in a four-sided complex of adobe rooms surrounding a bright, flower-filled patio where much of the women’s daily work of spinning, weaving and tortilla-making was done. Outside the home lay fields of corn and beans in which the men laboured. Chimalpahin’s family was a proud one: they were related to the nobility of the kingdom of Chalco, of which Amaquemecan had been a part. Chalco, though at one time…

There are 195 recognised independent states in the world. All but two are member states of the United Nations (UN). Some states, such as Taiwan, remain in limbo due to ongoing political disputes over their sovereignty. The vast majority of the global population, including indigenous peoples, are subject in some way to the laws of a nation state. And yet the nation is notoriously difficult to define. In the Oxford English Dictionary, a nation is listed as a “large aggregate of communities and individuals united by factors such as common descent, language, culture, history, or occupation of the same territory, so as to form a distinct people”. The nation has become the accepted political method of organising our modern public and private lives. We are all bound by national laws,…

The Kurds are said to be the largest people never to have achieved statehood. However, the idea that the speakers of the many different Kurdish dialects – scattered across mountainous areas of eastern Anatolia, northern Iraq and western Iran, with smaller pockets in northern Syria, Armenia and north-eastern Iran – form a coherent ‘people’ is a relatively new one. Kurdish is a language of the north-western Iranian group, and descent from people identified in the Bible as Medes, from what’s now Iran, has been claimed. Early Mesopotamian records mention tribes with names that could be linked to ‘Kurd’, but modern Kurds may not have a single ancient ethnic heritage; certainly, the tribe has long been the primary level of identity and organisation. The name ‘Kurd’ can definitively be traced to…

Richard Overy is professor of history at the University of Exeter, and editor of The Times Complete History of the World (William Collins, 2015)…

“Really? No Alexander, Scipio Africanus, Hannibal or Caesar? Not even Augustus? Justinian? Sid Ghosh, via Facebook “On the list I see Amilcar Cabral, who liberated African lands from Portuguese colonial rule, but not Gandhi, who liberated India from British colonial rule, nor Martin Luther King Jr, who led the civil rights movement in the US. Ritish Patel, by email “Abraham Lincoln’s reputation as the ‘Great Emancipator’ rests not only on the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment, with its unprecedented enforcement clause and unneeded presidential signature, but also on his request of Frederick Douglass to devise a plan to get as many slaves as possible out of the South while his re-election, the issue of the Proclamation’s constitutionality and the outcome of the war seemed in doubt. Lincoln also approved…

The Aztecs had a history of their own The indigenous historical annals reveal that prior to conquest, the Aztecs had a well-documented and detailed history, complete with wars, rising and falling kings, political marriages, palace plots and executions. Men always ruled, but women were important, for in a world where each prince had many wives, the question of the succession was extremely complex. Which of the wives’ family backgrounds was powerful enough to ensure that one of her sons would inherit? The political intrigues never seemed to end. Henry VIII probably would have found it all very familiar! Without these sources, we tend to imagine that the Aztecs’ history is lost in the mists of time, or that they lived in an unchanging world. With these sources, for at least two generations…

Experts explore the historical and contemporary challenges facing four parts of the world that have aimed for statehood The Spanish political crisis provoked by Catalonia’s ongoing push for independence has yet to be resolved – and has already had a massive impact on the country. It has led to the jailing of a number of pro-independence Catalan politicians, following the constitutionally illegal referendum on Catalan independence held in 2017. It has provoked a counter-mobilisation of Spanish nationalists, and is a key factor in the rise of the far-right-wing party Vox. And it is a major element in the instability of the Spanish political system. Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, recently formed a minority coalition government, but will need the major Catalan nationalist party, the Republican Left of Catalonia, to…

The United Kingdom has never been a single nation: no one ever speaks of being a ‘Ukanian’. The UK is a messy conglomerate formed out of the expansionary appetite of successive English monarchs and the resistance put up by their neighbours. Although Wales had succumbed by the 1530s, formal union was the result of a situation in which England could not suppress Scotland or Ireland, yet they in turn could not keep it at bay. The catalyst in both cases was England’s perennial warfare with France. After the end of Roman rule in the fifth century, the island of Britain fragmented into a number of feuding realms. Traditionally, the Scots and the Picts are said to have been fused into the kingdom of Scotland in 843, under pressure from Viking…

Janina Ramirez: I wanted to ask you about three specific artworks that pop up in the series, and why we should be looking at them afresh. I know you’ve been looking at the first, the Aphrodite of Knidos (see page 75), for a long time, and that she’s close to your heart. Has the way you’ve thought about her changed? Mary Beard: Yeah, I think it has. When I was a young classicist, I thought that the line-up of nudes going back to the Aphrodite of Knidos was actually pretty dull. Let’s face it, you go into museums in which there are lots of statues lined up against the wall and see, quite understandably, people walking right past them. It took about 20 years for me to see that the statue was…

On 17 July 1888, the young Norwegian scientist Fridtjof Nansen disembarked with five other men from the Jason, a seal-hunting ship, 10 miles from Greenland’s south-eastern coast. Boarding two small boats, the men began rowing through ice-choked waters toward land. Their goal, when they reached the shore, was to cross the ice sheet that cloaks much of Greenland. This remnant of ancient ice ages covers an expanse of 660,000 square miles and rises, in its centre, to an altitude of nearly two miles. If Nansen’s expedition succeeded, he and his compatriots would become the first to cross the Greenland Ice Sheet. Since the early 18th century, explorers had made modest forays onto the ‘inland ice’ by foot, but all had turned back before completing the crossing, having encountered punishing cold…

It may seem surprising that a condition that will affect half of the human population during part of their lives remained unnamed for so long. Yet the word ‘menopause’ was invented as recently as 1821, by French doctor Charles-Pierre-Louis de Gardanne. True, the concept was not original to him; by the time his book De la ménopause, ou de l’ âge critique des femmes (Menopause, or the critical age of women) appeared in print, the idea he described was about 100 years old, though it had lacked a name. Around 1700, doctors began to write about a condition they called “the end of menstruation as the time for the beginning of various diseases”, “the cessation of menstruation, and the problems that it may cause”, and the “cessation of the periodical…

Modern nation states have grown out of the simple but revolutionary idea that they represent ‘the people’ better than the states from which they emerged – usually empires. However, once established, nation states also have to fend off challengers. They are stable only as long as they suppress rivals within their borders who claim to represent the people better than they do. The new nation states created a century ago in eastern Europe are prime examples of these patterns. Yugoslavia is particularly instructive. It came together rapidly after the First World War as a constitutional Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. It quickly faced challenges because the peoples on this new state’s territory had lived under different imperial regimes: Bosnians and most Serbs under the Ottomans, some Serbs and almost…

ACCOMPANIES THE BBC RADIO 4 PROGRAMME THE SCIENCE OF EVIL “Incorrect. 150 volts.” If you were instructed to inflict pain on another person in the cause of an academic experiment, how far would you go? If that person was in agony, pleading with you to stop, would you persist nonetheless? That’s the question that Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram wanted to test. The year is 1961. Milgram has lured subjects to his laboratory with the promise of $4 for an hour’s work. An advertisement claims that participants will assist in a study on memory. When a volunteer turns up, they’re joined by a second ‘volunteer’ and the two people draw lots to choose who’s to be the ‘learner’ and who the ‘teacher’. Unbeknown to the genuine volunteer, it’s all a setup.…

SHORE THING This striking 19th-century bala (Mandinka xylophone) is among the highlights of a new exhibition exploring the visual arts of the Sahel, a semiarid region stretching across Africa south of the Sahara, perhaps named by Arab travellers crossing the vast sand sea to its southern shore (Sahel may be derived from the Arabic for ‘shore’). Over many centuries from AD 300, the western Sahel became an important trade nexus, witnessing the rise of great empires and kingdoms based around the Senegal and Niger rivers. Displays at New York’s Met Museum trace the evolution of various art forms across these polities and eras, from simple stone monuments and gold body ornaments to refined sculptures, elaborate textiles and musical instruments, reflecting step changes in those societies including the arrival of Islam. Sahel: Art and…

Window seat of power The intricately carved wooden frames of the 55 Window Palace gaze out over Bhaktapur’s Durbar (Palace) Square to the elegant 17th-century Siddhi Laxmi Temple (centre), recently restored after its destruction by the devastating 2015 earthquake. The city was founded in the 12th or 13th century (some say earlier) by King Ananda Malla, launching a dynasty that dominated the Kathmandu valley for five and a half centuries. King Yaksha Malla built many of the city’s best-known structures in the 15th century, but Bhaktapur reached its architectural apogee under Bhupatindra Malla (r1696–1722), with the construction of such edifices as the 55 Window Palace. Grappling guardians The steps up to the 30-metre-high fiveroofed Nyatapola Temple are guarded by twin phalanxes of animals and deities, fronted by the legendary Rajput…

Adherents in fearsome masks throng the streets of Xingang, Taiwan, during the annual pilgrimage honouring the sea goddess Mazu. Her birthday is celebrated on the 23rd day of the third month of the Chinese lunar calendar (usually in April) with processions and festivities in various territories. Among the most popular and colourful is the multi-day Dajia Mazu Pilgrimage through central west Taiwan, carrying a sacred statue of the deity to Fengtian Temple in Xingang. According to legend, Mazu (known in Cantonese as Tin Hau, ’Empress of Heaven’) was born Lin Moniang on Meizhou Island in China’s Fújiàn province in AD 960. Various myths attribute life-saving miracles to the young girl, who became popular as a protective deity of sailors and fishermen in the centuries after her death. Migration from Fújiàn…