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Refugees or Immigrants? The Migration Crisis in Europe in Historical Perspective

… threaten the cultural makeup of Europe due to the alleged incompatibility of the Islamic faith of the majority of new … linguistic, and religious differences? No conclusive studies compare Eastern and Western European attitudes toward … that when the world does not act, enormous human tragedies can occur. Arrival of Czech refugees in Prague, October …
“Aux amateurs de physique.” Likewise portraying the Tuileries flight, this cartoon mocks the unwashed masses who wished to see the spectacle without a ticket, but the scaling of the garden walls also illustrates how the balloon as a “people-machine” ignited the determination of the poorer, disempowered social strata to overcome restraints imposed on them by the authoritarian regime.

Public Perceptions: Ballooning and Political Culture

Review of The Imagined Empire: Balloon Enlightenments in Revolutionary Europe, by Mi Gyung Kim (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016)
… below portrays the craft as a “king-machine” that embodies the monarchy’s obligation to watch over its subjects … of the poorer, disempowered social strata to overcome restraints imposed on them by the authoritarian regime. …
The floor seal of the Central Intelligence Agency

Getting Others to Fight Our Wars

… United States. Sometimes, in fact, we try to hide our hand completely. For example, the administration frankly says it … U.S. money, supplies and advisers plus South Vietnamese soldiers was not a winning combination. Then Washington sent … Nixon promise. Two years later, with North Vietnamese soldiers overrunning South Vietnam and storming the U.S. …
U.S. Army Officers wearing their “Pinks-and-Greens,” 1943. (Library of Congress)

Throwback Army: World War II-Style Uniforms for Today’s Soldiers

… in meeting recruiting goals. Old and New Uniforms in Comparison: Modern-day reenactors (left and center) wearing … roots, but the uniform soon became unpopular among many soldiers. The Army leadership was forced to find a replacement … just three years after it was finally distributed to all soldiers in 2015. U.S. Army Soldiers wearing the Blue Army …
migrants walking down a road

Defining Refugees: 1921 and 1951

… work begun some 30 years earlier by the office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (HCR) of the League of Nations . Created on June 27, 1921, the position of High Commissioner was subsequently offered to the Norwegian … to the Status of Refugees did non-European refugees come to be defined in the same way. In both cases, the …

American Presidential Scandals

… A tweet from the Richard Nixon Presidential Library after comparisons were made between Nixon and President Trump when the latter fired the Director of the FBI, James Comey. The High Bar The ubiquitous, unfathomable ur-scandal … so narrowly as to separate intent or conspiracy to commit treasonous acts from the actual commission of such …
Cygnet, Ohio, in Wood County was a booming oil town with 13 saloons and many workers when this photo was taken in 1885.

An Energy Plan for You!

… Dwight D. Eisenhower and Republican legislators took unbecomingly large financial contributions from the appreciative … seen whether George W. will allow his administration to be completely captured by his fossil fuel buddies. Eisenhower, in fact, ended up vetoing the deregulation …

Population Bomb? The Debate over Indian Population

… unrest that followed. To explain this food crisis to an audience in St. Louis in May 2008, then-President George W. … top of that came the failure of the rains and the peasants died en masse , so that entire villages were left … the early nineteenth century, when the British East India Company controlled an increasing swath of territory across …
Downstream view of Marco Polo Bridge by Thomas Child, 1877. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

The Marco Polo Bridge Incident (1937)

… post-1868 empire, including Korea and Taiwan . The Chinese Communist Party would be reborn and re-legitimized through … year, the ROC capital of Nanjing fell in what one military commentator called “the worst holocaust of brutality since … to British Malaya, Singapore , and Burma; the Dutch East Indies; and Australia-administered New Guinea. They even …

Policing the Police: A Civil Rights Story

… hallways. Teachers gave lessons to help young students comprehend an American past with racial segregation, and how … movement —how it extends beyond the brief period she studied in elementary school, into both the past and the … our government. The permissible limits of law enforcement bodies have always been set by state and local governments, …

Time It Was: 1968 Around the World

… I’ve read about it, 1968 was quite a year. Writers have compared it to the most dramatic moments in modern history— … against the Vietnam War in Washington, D.C. ( left ). A soldier standing guard in Washington, D.C. after riots … growth and development in a matter of a decade—had made it easy for citizens to gloss over their memories of the Nazi …
Cover of The Young Turks' Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire by Taner Akçam

The Crime That Dare Not Speak Its Name

Review of The Young Turks' Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire, by Taner Akçam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012)
… to produce genocide. These include the Young Turks' intense commitment to the homogenization of Anatolia (a development … suffered defeats on the Russian front, the Armenians became easy scapegoats onto whom to channel national frustration. … Some of the Armenians were relocated successfully, but many died in the process mostly from thirst, exhaustion, hunger, …
Admiral William D. Leahy in 1944.

Hiroshima: Military Voices of Dissent

… the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught … and children."  President Dwight Eisenhower, the Allied commander in Europe during World War II, recalled in 1963, … about a White House decision to the question of what soldiers in the Pacific believed, when the relevant historical …

The Hajj and Europe

… safety, and how much states should subsidize the ritual—is complicated. In many countries, demand for hajj visas … Muslim immigration to Western Europe and the fall of communism in the east have caused Europe’s Muslim … Ukraine , Russia offered Crimean Tatars generous hajj subsidies ($1000 per person, about a third of the cost of an …
The Fire of Rome, 18 July 64 AD, Oil on Canvas, Robert Hubert, 1785. In the Musee des Beaux-Arts Andre Malraux; Le Havre, France.

The Great Fire of Rome

… fire have long been questioned and debated, the academic community generally blames poor circumstances for Rome’s … morbid irony, “the same layout and materials that made it easy for the fire to spread made it difficult for [Rome’s] … from his imagination.  Tacitus, ever the skeptic in comparison, posited a different conclusion. In the absence …
President Gerald Ford in 1975.

The Forgotten Virtues of Gerald Ford

… he appeared before a joint session of Congress and pledged “communication, conciliation, compromise, and cooperation” with legislators, adding, “I do … we can appreciate Ford’s refusal to let the presidency become an instrument of partisan knife-sharpening. He welcomed …
A Biafran child suffering the effects of starvation due to the federal blockade during the Nigerian Civil War

“No Victor and No Vanquished” - Fifty Years after the Biafran War

… and cultural challenges. The crisis that would become the Nigerian Civil War began on January 15, 1966 when a … in July 1966. This countercoup turned out to be bloodier, and this time, Igbos were the victims. Many … which varied in accordance with political and economic expedience. On the eve of the First World War in 1914, the …
Cover of A Tale of Two Monasteries: Westminster and Saint-Denis in the Thirteenth Century by William Chester Jordan.

To Serve God and the King?

Review of A Tale of Two Monasteries: Westminster and Saint-Denis in the Thirteenth Century, by William Chester Jordan (Princeton University Press, 2009)
… and Saint-Denis were among the most organizationally complex and bureaucratically advanced entities operating below the level of the state in medieval Europe. As a consequence they have left historians … subjects could Jordan make the construction of such an easy-to-read narrative seem so effortless. Newcomers to …
Florida Supreme Court during the 2000 presidential election recount.

Disputed Elections: An American Tradition

… to contested elections. When elections were questioned, common sense, rather than adherence to technicality, … and wrong initials of first names and last names were commonplace. Rather than throw out the ballots, as electoral … to electoral law. Thousands of other ballots with incomplete punches have not been counted because the …
This painting, which dates from 1859, reimagines the toppling of the equestrian statue of George III in New York City. Erected in 1770, the statue featured the regent garbed in Roman military regalia on horseback, in the fashion of Marcus Aurelius. It is doubtful that Native Americans, women and children were in attendance at this episode of iconoclasm by the Sons of Liberty.

Ten Memorable Monument Takedowns in History

… that of Nero’s by Vitellius. Damnatio memoriae was most common after regime change. Note however, that the names of … Iconoclasm was outlawed. The restoration of icons is commemorated today as the “Feast of Orthodoxy.” 3. A Papal … troops overtook the rebellious city of Bologna, il papa commissioned Michelangelo to carve his likeness. The bronze …
President George W. Bush with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley in 2006.

Is Iraq Vietnam?

… South Vietnam’s governments also had serious problems. The Diem regime (1954-63) wanted to defeat or at least contain the Viet Cong but could not rally non-Communist South Vietnamese behind it, prompting the United … to happen. (Similarly, some Americans in 1963 thought that Diem could continue in office if he fired his brother Nhu – …
Portrait of Jane Addams

Million Moms March in Noble Company

… children. What is different today is the often fatal outcomes of children's brutality towards one another, owing to … when one looks at gun deaths in the United States compared with other industrialized nations, that has … limitations of that perspective, too. Though the march's website invites "mothers, grandmothers, stepmothers, …
The Beatles, upon their arrival at Kennedy International Airport in New York City on February 7,1964.

“I Want to Hold Your Hand”

… crowd relentlessly screamed at the sight of them.  Still to come were the increasingly more abstract and innovative compositions, the abrupt withdrawal from touring, the … smaller labels with lesser promotional capacity claimed the commercial rights to their earlier recordings. Then, in the …
President Lyndon B. Johnson giving a speech about the Voting Rights Act with a statute of President Abraham Lincoln in the background.

The Republican Party and African-Americans: The Real History

… and presidential candidate George W. Bush won kudos for his gutsy appeals to black voters. Alluding to a proud past, he … to give black men full citizenship. For that much, Bush and company can claim a worthy lineage. But as early as 1876 — … a vigorous civil rights bill, but the legislation almost died because of a Senate filibuster by Southern Democrats. …