No. 27 - Kakegawa: Akibayama Fork, from the series The Tôkaidô Road - The Fifty-three Stations, also known as the Reisho Tôkaidô, between 1847 and 1852

How a Rice Economy Toppled the Shogun

The co-existence of economies—one based on rice, the other on money—pushed the Tokugawa government toward financial misery and failure.
The partially destroyed National and University Library of Bosnia, 1992

Whence Warchitecture

The targeted destruction of the built environment during the Bosnian War led to the emergence of a new term in the discourse of urbicide: warchitecture.
Three men on deck of the H.M.S. Challenger studying Medusae jellyfish

HMS Challenger and the History of Science at Sea

Sailing ships were once used as scientific instruments themselves, but in the 1800s, ships like the Challenger were transformed into floating laboratories.
The interior of a Nootka house

Seeing Cannibals in the Enlightenment

The responses British and Spanish explorers had to the Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka) people and their alleged cannibalism came down to imperialist goals.
A shot taken in front of a concert stage lit in the night, people are visible waving and clapping, but no one is recognizable.

Japanese Tourists at the Dancehall

For some young, working-class Japanese men and women, Jamaican reggae clubs offer an escape from cultural norms and a way to gain currency in the music world.
A flat boulder raised on a pinnacle of ice, by Louis Haghe after J.D. Forbes

How Sports Shaped Glacier Science

The heroic masculinity that governed early glacial science had its roots in nineteenth-century British sporting culture.
The French police arrest the Jews on the orders of the German occupiers and take their personal details, Paris, 1941

Policing the Holocaust in Paris

Unlike in the rest of Nazi-occupied Europe, the arrest of Jewish people was largely in the hands of ordinary policemen in France, especially in Paris.
Nature Morte Aux Citrons, 1918 by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

When French Citrus Colonized Algeria

The citrus industry in Algeria honed French imperial apparatuses and provided a means for France to define and shape the behavior of its colonial subjects.
A Kurdish People's Protection Units, or YPG women fighters pose as they stand near a check point in the outskirts of the destroyed Syrian town of Kobane, also known as Ain al-Arab, Syria. June 20, 2015.

Women Warriors Make Great Propaganda

The presence of female fighters gives legitimacy to armed rebellions and increases the chances of support from international NGOS and other external actors.
A painting of Hong Tianguifu being captured

Taiping: China’s Nineteenth-Century Civil War

Partially coinciding with the American Civil War, the Taiping “Rebellion” in China was one of the most destructive conflicts in history.