What the Barista is Brewing Today
Grab some espresso and dive in for some brewmination
Elegy and Effigy: The Struggle for Integration
The similarities between the effigies of James Meredith and the thousands of black bodies hanged and burned by southern lynch mobs over the years were intentional. An effigy dangled outside the second-story window of Vardaman Hall, a men’s dormitory on the University of Mississippi campus. Its head crooked from the rope tied around its neck,[…]
The Remarkable History of the Union League Club
There were moments in our history where both African-American freedom and Mexico’s independence were addressed in a positive way. By Dr. Michael HoganHistorian and Author Today, as we observe the dismay of Princeton students at their university’s legacy of slavery, and the Trump administration’s increasingly hostile attitude toward Mexico, it is important to recognize that[…]
The Kingly Pursuits of Herod during the Augustan Period
Herod built on a Roman scale. King Herod had a substantial architectural heritage to his name in the Levant by the time of his death in 4 BCE. As one of Rome’s most loyal client kings, he incorporated much Roman-style architecture throughout the lands he ruled. He visited Rome in 40 BCE and returned two[…]
Baalbek: Temple of Jupiter in Ancient Rome
Baalbek is a town in the northern Bekaa valley, the site of the largest sanctuary in the Roman world. The greatest temple of Baalbek was dedicated to a god who was, at various periods in history, called Ba’al, Hadad, Helios, Zeus, or Jupiter Optimus Maximus Heliopolitanus. According to Macrobius, the cult statue had been taken from Egypt, was[…]
Winged Victory: The Nike of Samothrace
The statue of the goddess of victory was excavated in 1863 CE on the Greek island of Samothrace. Introduction One of the most celebrated works of Hellenistic art is without doubt the Nike of Samothrace, on display at the Louvre since 1884 CE. The white Parian marble statue represents the personification of winged victory. In a sense, the impact of[…]
The Grand Strategy of Classical Sparta
The Lacedaemonians abandoned the grand strategy they had articulated early on. Introduction In ancient Lacedaemon, as in all enduring political communities, there was a symbiotic relationship between the form of government chosen, the way of life that this form of government fostered, and the grand strategy that the community gradually articulated for the defense of[…]
Meet the Farmers Reclaiming Puerto Rico’s Agricultural History
Residents in a rural Puerto Rican community are reviving a historic botanical garden to serve as an example of local and sustainable farming. In the shadow of Monte Pirucho, once a place of worship for the Taino tribe, Tara Rodríguez Besosa pulls a long, spiny plant from the bed of a small community garden and[…]
Puerto Rico Since the Spanish-American War
Ten moments to help better understand Puerto Rico. Introduction In January 2018, President Donald Trump made a set of disparaging comments about Puerto Rico. They underscored just how little many Americans understand about the value and complexity of the relationship between the 50 states and this island territory. In fact, Puerto Ricans are Americans—making our[…]
The Chicago Physician Who Understood the Paradox of Radiation
Emile Herman Grubbe discovered the x-rays could cure, but he was right for the wrong reasons. Radiation is a paradox. On the one hand, it’s a lifesaving tool. As powerful energy that can pass through solid matter, it’s often used in medicine for everything from diagnostic X-rays to cancer therapy. But radiation also can be[…]
Printing the Body: Anatomical Illustration in the Early Modern Period
For over 500 years, scientific and artistic collaborations have enhanced and promoted medical knowledge. Introduction From the early modern period, as perceptions of the internal and external workings of the body developed, the methods of depicting the body also advanced. But it was not until the 1750s that anatomical art truly began to flourish. The number[…]
“Divide et Impera”: A History of “Divide and Rule”
The use of this technique is meant to empower the sovereign to control subjects who collectively might be able to oppose his rule. Introduction Divide and rule (from Latin divide et impera), or divide and conquer, in politics and sociology is gaining and maintaining power by breaking up larger concentrations of power into pieces that individually have less power than the one implementing the[…]
Caesar as Dictator: His Impact on the City of Rome
By Steven Fife During his reign as dictator from 49-44 BC, Julius Caesar had a number of notable impacts on the city of Rome. One of the initial crises with which Caesar had to deal was widespread debt in Rome, especially after the outbreak of civil war when lenders demanded repayment of loans and real estate values collapsed. The result was a serious shortage[…]
Religious Change and the Ottoman Empire, 1450-1750
How did the Ottomans shape the political and religious history of early modern Europe? Introduction The Ottoman Empire was one of the largest and longest-lasting empires in world history, stretching across the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Northern Africa at its zenith in the sixteenth century. Many European observers of the time experienced and depicted[…]
Religious Wars in Early Modern Europe
The splintering of the medieval church ushered in a volatile new era of increased anxiety, tension, and religious fervor during. Introduction For nearly 150 years, the battle for “true” Christianity tore early modern Europe apart. The spiritual divisions created by the Protestant Reformation led to a series of international and domestic conflicts that caused incalculable destruction and[…]
Magic and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe
Although magic and witchcraft had existed since antiquity, early modern Europe underwent a growth in anxiety about witches and their practices. Introduction Historians have named the era in Europe that lasted from about 1500 to 1650 the age of the “Witch Hunts.” During this period approximately 100,000 people went on trial for the crime of[…]
The Dissolution of the Monasteries and the Democratization of Magic in Post-Reformation England
How monks, friars and monastic sites became associated with magic in popular tradition, resulting in a lasting stereotype of medieval monks and friars as the masters of occult knowledge. Abstract The dissolution of the monasteries in England (1536–1540) forced hundreds of former inmates of religious houses to seek livelihoods outside the cloister to supplement meagre[…]
“Such Fictitious Evil Spirits”: Adriaan Koerbagh’s Rejection of Biblical Demons and Demonic Possession, 1668
The devil, once a part of the sacred truth, could now be seen as a fragment of a human cultural heritage. Introduction This paper traces Adriaan Koerbagh’s interpretation of biblical devils and scriptural instances of demonic possession in his 1668 Een Ligt Schijnende in Duystere Plaatsen (A light shining in dark places). Koerbagh’s book is a radical[…]
These Early Modern Gravity-Defying Sculptures Provoked Accusations of Demonic Possession
Demons and artists, it seems, pull from the same bag of tricks. They take ordinary matter and transform it into something more wondrous, more terrifying. Around 1737, the Italian sculptor Francesco Bertos was hauled before the Inquisition. The charge: He had colluded with the Devil to produce his latest set of gravity-defying marble statues. According to[…]
What Big History Says about Royal Women Who Exercise Power
An analysis forces us to ask what we mean by political agency. By Laura Spinney Eleanor of Aquitaine is often portrayed as one of the most powerful queens in history. Wife, mother and counsellor of kings, crusader, landowner, patron of the arts, her power eventually grew so great – at least in the eyes of[…]
Berenice II Euergetis: Ancient Alexandrian Queen from Libya
Although Ptolemy III and Berenice II were cousins, they proclaimed themselves siblings as children of Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II. Introduction Berenice (c. 267-221 BCE), the daughter of the Macedonian dynast Magas and his Seleucid wife Apame, was born in Cyrene, a Greek city in Libya. Ptolemy I had installed Magas, a son of his fourth wife Berenice I by a previous marriage,[…]
Tasty Ancient Recipes from Mesopotamia
The origins of Iraqi cuisine and continued popularity. Mesopotamia (from the Greek, meaning “between two rivers”) was an ancient region in the Near East, which corresponds roughly to present-day Iraq. Widely regarded as the “cradle of civilization,” Mesopotamia should be more properly understood as a region that produced multiple empires and civilizations rather than any[…]
Bureaucracy in the Achaemenid Empire: Learning from the Past
The conquered areas of Elam, Media, Lydia, Babylonia, Egypt, and several eastern Iranian tribes were more or less in a form of a loose federation of autonomous entities under Cyrus. Introduction In the early days of the Achaemenid empire, the kings came to realise that, if they were to be able to administer the vast[…]
The Hurrians of Bronze Age Mesopotamia
By the late Bronze Age, the Hurrians had been assimilated into surrounding cultures in the Near East. By Mark CartwrightHistorian Introduction The Hurrians (aka Hurri or Khurri) were a Bronze Age people who flourished across the Near East from the 4th millennium BCE to the 1st millennium BCE. Hurrian is also the name of the[…]
Ancient Mesopotamia: Inventing and Reinventing Our World
Discussing the importance of these civilizations, and of how we can better assess and understand their legacy in modern times. In this interview, James Blake Wiener of the Ancient History Encyclopedia speaks to Dr. Clemens Reichel, Associate Curator at the ROM, about the importance of these civilizations, and of how we can better assess and[…]
How ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ Seized on an Urbanizing America’s Nostalgia for the Small Town
As mid-century Americans moved to cities, Cara’s film helped to idealize isolated white communities. It’s a Wonderful Life can be read through multiple prisms—as a Christmas movie, a family movie, a love story, an existential journey, and a celebration of the everyman. But Frank Capra’s movie invites audiences to consider it, first and foremost, as a[…]
Frank Capra’s Formula for Taming American Capitalism
It’s a Wonderful Life prescribed community and empathy as the remedy to a callous economic system. From the Gilded Age and until well into the Great Depression, Americans engaged in one of the most consequential debates in the country’s history: how best to address the economic inequities and societal problems stemming from industrialization, and relatedly,[…]
The Jungle and the Community: Workers and Reformers in Turn-of-the-Century Chicago
How does Upton Sinclair’s representation of this community in The Jungle compare to the accounts of sociologists and reformers? Introduction In November and December of 1904, the New York writer Upton Sinclair spent seven weeks in Chicago’s meatpacking district—the Union Stock Yard and the surrounding neighborhood, known as Packingtown or Back of the Yards. Sinclair[…]
Chicago Workers during the Long Gilded Age
What were working conditions like in Chicago during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? What efforts did workers make to change these conditions? Introduction The United States experienced extraordinary social and economic change between the end of Reconstruction and the beginning of World War I. In 1870, only one-quarter of Americans lived in cities.[…]
Extreme Dining in the Gilded Age
If you were lucky enough to exist in the wealthiest sets of society… The “Gilded Age,” a term coined by American author and satirist Mark Twain, was in many ways an era of stark extremes in our nation’s history. Ninety percent of the nation’s families earned less than $1,200 per year by the height of[…]
Colonial American Fast Food
Let’s adventure back to Colonial America—a time of exploration, revolution, taverns and….fast food? Yes, that’s right, fast food! We may think of the desire for fast food as being a 20th century phenomenon, but our colonial ancestors had the same desire for quick, convenient, and affordable fare that we do today. During the 18th century, colonial cooks,[…]
