modern-history

Rob Jetten acknowledges grief and pain of Moluccan families as crowdfunded monument unveiled in Rotterdam The Dutch prime minister, Rob Jetten, has formally apologised for the “heartless” mistreatment of thousands of Moluccan soldiers who fought for the Dutch colonial army during Indonesia’s struggle for independence. About 12,500 men from a group of Indonesian islands who served in the Royal Dut…

Villains, tyrants and heroes alike are immortalized in the scientific literature as researchers don each new species a unique scientific name -- and rename geographic sites with a settlers' mindset. If you pick through the literature, it is a w...

This is the second half of the second part (I, IIa, IIb) of our honestly-who-knows-how-many part series laying out some general guidelines for how pre-modern armies are recruited, raised, equipped and paid. While I hope this will be of great interest to the history nerds out there, I’ve opted to structure this specifically as a … Continue reading Collections: Pre-Modern Armies for Worldbuilders, …

For European and American slave traders, iron shackles were considered tools that helped run the slave trade. Shackles were made for wrists, ankles, waist and the neck.

‘We have come too far to turn around now,’ the monument on Alabama’s Montgomery Square reads At the recently opened Montgomery Square in Alabama , bronze hands rise from the pavement, holding a placard against the sky. It reads 7053, the booking number displayed in Rosa Parks’s 1956 mugshot after she and other leaders of the Montgomery bus boycott were arrested. Often with booking numbers and mug…

While some enslaved people did not know about Lincoln's order, many learned of it while the fighting was still ongoing through informal networks, rumors and sometimes from slaveholders themselves.

Colloquy Podcast: Was the American Revolution a War Against or for Empire? In his forthcoming book, Aim at Empire, University of California, Berkeley historian Brian DeLay, PhD ’04, argues that the great paradox of the Revolution was that the Patriots were fighting not only for their independence, but also for an empire of their own — and that their surprising ability to access guns and ammunitio…

Studies made by historians, scholars, and researchers of the Spanish Pacific and the Galleon system, particularly from the 1400s to the 1800s, conclude that “the center of the world is not the Atlantic but Asia, particularly China.” This was revealed at the international conference, The Spanish Philippines: First International Conference of the Society for Early […] The post Spanish Pacific Studi…

Archaeologists have discovered a second cannonball from the 1836 Battle of the Alamo, and now they have one from each side.

This introduction situates the Allied occupation of Italy as a distinctive yet comparatively underexplored case within the broader history of mid-twentieth-century military occupations. It traces the origins, peculiarities, and contradictions of Allied rule, foregrounding the tension between liberation and occupation that shaped both contemporary experiences and subsequent historiography. After o…

Newly revealed documents show that, while breaking Nazi codes, Turing was also building a device that almost changed military communication forever.

_Https://Doi.Org/10.5281/Zenodo.20727100_. 2026This illustrated philosophical report presents a speculative continuity history of Homo sapiens across a constructed 500,000-year execution envelope: approximately 300,000 years of known human history followed by a 200,000-year future-planning horizon. The present is positioned at the 60% coordinate within this working model. This coordinate is not p…

Jesse Wegman's book tells the story of James Wilson, a largely forgotten founding father who lived a colorful life and died as a Supreme Court justice on the run from the law and creditors.

The remains of a Japanese "hellship" that was torpedoed in 1944 and sank with more than 1,000 POWs on board has been found off the coast of the Philippines island of Luzon.

He built modern Greece from the ground up, but Ioannis Kapodistrias remains a controversial figure. A new biopic throws light on this overlooked titan of European history On a hilltop in central Corfu, a marble bust carved in the classical style gazes skyward, lean, fine-featured and composed to the point of austerity. There is no uniform, no decorations, nor symbols of office, just a name cut in…

This article discusses the development of socialist ideas in the early Philippine labor movement through the work of Hermenegildo Cruz, a labor leader who propagated socialist ideas through the Balangay ng mga Tipografo, its newspaper Balagtas, and the workers’ school he cofounded with Lope K. Santos. I conclude that the development of Cruz’s socialism reflected the organized Filipino workers’ bu…

This article examines the politics of labor and space at the Port of Manila during early American colonial rule. During this period, Manila Bay and the riverfront wharves along the Pasig River bustled with commercial activity. The colonial archive reveals how the new regime sought to ensure the smooth flow of cargo by managing waterfront space and labor. Yet, the article simultaneously reads a dr…

Why did Appolonia trade so few enslaved people? Short answer: unique economy and sacred beliefs.

In America, U.S.A., Princeton historian Eddie Glaude Jr. looks at the country through the lens of its previous anniversaries and centennials. "The divided soul of the nation is in full view," he says.

Please let me know if there are other SEs more appropriate for this question. At more or less the halfway point of de la Boétie's short essay 'Discourse on Voluntary Servitude' he mentions the ...