Making Egypt’s Museums

The world’s largest archaeological museum is poised to open on the Giza Plateau, building on two centuries of museum planning and development.
Circa 1565, Native Americans cure meat for the coming winter.

Spanish Colonists were Desperate for European Food

Spanish colonists in the Americas were terrified that their essential humors would change if they ate local food.
Ships and boats in Hong Kong Harbour, c. 1850

How Sailors Brought the World Home

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, sailors gained a knowledge of the world and access to exotic goods unlike anything other non-elites could imagine.
Black and white photograph of a man being arrested by the police.

Policing Radicals: Britain vs. the United States

British policing of Communism before and into the Cold War has often been compared favorably with America’s witch-hunt hysteria. But was it really better?
Bright and colorful land- and seasape of St Kitts and Nevis.

Saint Kitts and Nevis

Sandy beaches and luxury hotels seem to define this Caribbean nation, but it’s the music and architecture that truly speak to its complicated history.
From Codex Manesse

The Complicated History of Pointy Hats

What do sorcerers, bishops, and garden gnomes all have in common? Pointy hats that share a common story deeply enmeshed in European antisemitism.

The Partisans of Modena

The legacy of anti-Mussolini resistance in the northern Italian city endures as fascist impulses once again loom.
Illustration of The Vandals under leadership of Gaiseric (King of the Vandals) attacking Rome in 455 AD

De-Bunking the Barbarians

The idea of barbarian invasions comes from the nineteenth century, when they were constructed as the decisive event that wrenched the West into modernity.
From Puck, 1898

Annexation Nation

Since 1823, when the Monroe Doctrine was first introduced to the world, the US has regarded Cuba as key to its designs for Latin America.
The noble Ikhlas Khan with a petition, c. 1650

The Habshi Dynasty of India

Amongst the hundreds of minorities within the Subcontinent, Black Indians of African origin stand out.