Torture Is Torture – Regardless of Who Does It

On Tuesday, December 9, 2014, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released the executive summary and portions of an as yet unpublished report into the torture undertaken by the CIA. In the following days, much was revealed about American programmes of ‘enhanced interrogation’. We had all heard of ‘waterboarding’, of course, but this was different. In scale, intensity and variety, the programmes of torture as described in the report eclipse the expectations of all but the most seasoned and pessimistic of observers.

An Exploration of Femininity in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Euripides’ Medea

In Medea and Macbeth, both Euripides and William Shakespeare present central female characters in ways that defied the social conventions of their respective eras, influencing different audiences – ancient, Jacobean and modern alike – to consider universal themes such as the feminine within the context of more traditional, patriarchal societies, and indeed our own.

The Iraq War: Not Illegal, Not Immoral, and Not Over

Today sees the publication of an entirely excellent article in The Times by Nigel Biggar, Regius Professor of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford. In it, the good professor takes apart a number of myths which have been allowed to coagulate about the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein, one of the most evil men in recent history whose autocratic (and kleptocratic) rule led to the foundation not just of ISIS – as if it was not enough – but the creation of much of Iraq’s current sectarian turmoil.

When Historians Write About the Past, Are They Nearly Always Writing About the Present?

On one level, one must agree with the statement entirely: every historian, in the act of writing, is implicitly chronicling his or her own times. In a basic sense, this can be seen in the language or dialect they use, even in the vernacular of their work. Each is connected with history, but each is still of the present, directed by the exigencies of the present day. The words themselves might also have political connotations from which they cannot be entirely dissociated. E. H. Carr, in his seminal work of historiography What is History?, provides a pertinent example:

The names by which successive French historians have described the Parisian crowds which played so prominent a role in the French Revolution ­­– le sans-cullottes, le peuple, la canaille, le bras-nus – are all, for those that know the rules of the game, manifestos of a political affiliation and of a particular interpretation.[1]

Why Defend the Enlightenment?

The Enlightenment is under attack. The very essence of modernity – and the very engine which drove much of what we take for granted from the present – is under threat. And not just from theocrats and fascists and the usual assortment of nihilistic individuals with a death wish, one of whom was narrowly prevented last week from massacring innocents on a train travelling from Amsterdam to Paris. Opposition to Enlightenment values is widespread, diverse – and it is growing.

How Great an Effect Did Malcolm X Have on the Struggle for Civil Rights?

Between 1960 and 1965, Malcolm X emerged as a leading voice in the burgeoning civil rights movement. Originally a minister in the Nation of Islam (NOI), Malcolm[1] later set up his own mosque, while developing his own ideas regarding religion and race.  At a time of great social change for black Americans, he arguably proved to be tremendously significant in many respects, not least as an orator, an organiser, a religious reformer and an inspirational figure for so many. Malcolm was assassinated on February 21, 1965, but had played an essential part in advancing civil rights both before and after that date.

Jeremy Corbyn and Britain’s Apologists for Terror

Many hundreds of British citizens – most of them young men, but a significant number among them women, young children and even the elderly – have left these islands with the intention of joining the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The motivations and stories of these individuals and their tragic desire to reject civilisation are all well known, but there are other British apologists for tyranny and terror – and they are afforded a great deal more in respect and status than those who travel halfway across the world to fight for and serve in the fascistic theocracy establishing itself in the Levant.

When Did the Roman Republic Become an Empire?

Abstract

This essay aims to explore one of the most attractive and oft-examined events in the history of Western Europe, namely the transition between the late Roman Republic and the early Empire, but from a wider perspective than that by which it is most frequently investigated. Rather than attempting to look at this period through the prism of military and political history exclusively, this essay will attempt to do so with reference to wider cultural indicators in addition to that previously mentioned. This piece concludes that this question is rather more complicated than conventional wisdom, and much earlier study, dictates, and that further and wider research is necessary in order for historians truly to appreciate the complexity of the issue at hand.

The Historian as a Public Intellectual

Recently I had the great pleasure of reading Niall Ferguson’s The Pity of War. My review of that book – which takes a rather holistic approach – can be read on this blog. It has given me cause to think about the nature both of historical writing and how historians are perceived in the public sphere: whether, in other words, they can be ‘public intellectuals’ – that much overused phrase which somewhat lazy journalists use to denote academics who, in this view of the world, have apparently descended from the ivory tower to commune to the masses.

Review – The Uses and Abuses of History (2008) by Margaret MacMillan

History is more than a collection of dates and facts, kings and queens, battles and wars. It is also a guide for how we see the world, a shaping influence in the construction of our own worldview. Added to that, and increasingly seen in places like Russia, where media and writing of all kinds – everything that constitutes the nation’s intellectual life – can be conscripted into the creation of sinister political machinery, it can be a powerful tool. Even a weapon.