How IBM Took Europe
After World War II, IBM worked to influence the new balance of power by locating facilities for the production of its electric typewriter across Europe.
Legionnaires’ Disease, an Illness of Affluence
Legionnaires’ is the first communicable disease of modern wealth, thriving in the interstitial spaces of our built environment.
Luddites on Trial
In 1812, a burst of anti-Luddite panic law-making in Great Britain added to an already confusing series of statutes that addressed property crime.
A Postcolonial Preah Vihear
The debate over who “owns” Preah Vihear dates to the early twentieth century, when the French government drew the border between Cambodia and Siam (Thailand).
Chimney Sweeps and the Turn Against Child Labor
The slowly expanding protections of “climbing boys” reveal the changing attitudes to child labor in Ireland during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Boven Digoel, the Prison Camp in the “Siberia of Indonesia”
The number of ethnic Chinese incarcerated in Boven Digoel in the 1920s was low, but the New Guinea colonial prison nonetheless shaped Sino-Malay literature.
Inventing Silk Roads
The idea of a Silk Road, though it conjures up visions of exotic goods passing between Asia and Europe via ancient trade routes, is a thoroughly modern one.
The Mayaguez Incident: The Last Chapter of the Vietnam War
Reeling from defeat in Vietnam, the US invaded a Cambodian island to rescue a US freighter—just before its crew members, who were elsewhere, were released.
The Genocide Before the Shoah
For a century, Jews in Turkey have maintained a strategic silence when it comes to recognizing the Armenian genocide. Could that be changing?
Archimedes Rediscovered: Technology and Ancient History
Advanced imaging technologies help scholars reveal and share lost texts from the ancient world.