Althea Gibson of the United States plays during Wimbledon in 1956

Serving Goodwill: US Women’s Tennis and Cold War Diplomacy

By dispatching women tennis players on world tours, the US Department of State hoped to garner approval for the American way of life.
Finland's President Sauli Niinisto (L) greets Sweden's Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson as they are welcomed to the White House by U.S. President Joe Biden on May 19, 2022 in Washington, DC.

Neutrality: Not All It’s Cracked Up To Be

While Sweden has claimed a position of neutrality for more than two centuries, its policy of non-alignment was somewhat ambiguous during the Cold War.
The slave ship Diligente was engaged in the illegal slave trade when it was seized in 1838. A lieutenant in the British Royal Navy painted this scene from the ship.

The Unbearable Middle Passage

In the eighteenth century, doctors recognized melancholy as a disease endemic to groups forcibly displaced from their homes, particularly enslaved Africans.
ADN-ZB / H‰fller 30.7.73 Together with Italian festival delegates, members of the National People's Army sing at Alexanderplatz, July 1973

The Red Woodstock: Not Quite According to Plan

The 1973 World Festival of Youth and Students highlighted the paradoxes inherent in the East German socialist project.
A colored etching of hands showing the sign language alphabet

Deaf Colonists in Victorian-Era Canada

In 1884, educator Jane Groom defied naysayers to found a community for working-class Deaf people on prairies of Manitoba.
An Chang Ho, Kap Suk Cho and other workers at Riverside orange orchard

The First Koreatown

Pachappa Camp, the first Korean-organized immigrant settlement in the United States, was established through the efforts of Ahn Chang Ho.
Two men of the French Foreign Legion, 1955

OK Recruiter: The Legion is Coming

Anxieties over the abduction of young men into the French Foreign Legion after WWII reflected West Germany’s concerns about the state of their nation.
Boy Scouts Pick Fruit For Jam at a Fruit-picking Camp Near Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, 1944

Skipping School for Harvest Camp

As more young adults joined the military or worked in wartime industries, England turned to children to fill the growing gap in agricultural labor.
The gravestone of Ginger Goodwin

Was There a Conspiracy to Kill a Canadian Labor Activist?

While conspiracy theories about Ginger Goodwin’s death may interest some, these complicated explanations deflect our attention from real issues.
A Spanish Nobleman, 17th century

Nostalgia for Manly Men in Seventeenth-Century Spain

Moralists found it easy to criticize Spanish men, particularly the high-born among them, for all sorts of supposed failures of masculinity.