The past is never dead. It's not even past
After the American Civil War ended in April 1865, white Southerners living in the defeated Confederacy faced an uncertain social, economic, and political future. Many, disappointed in the outcome of the conflict and fearful of vengeful reprisals from the victorious Union government, decided to leave the United States altogether and start afresh in a foreign land.
It is no wonder that we cannot agree on China’s future; we cannot even agree on its past. In fact, how to interpret the past is a heavily disputed subject in China, because history has always been a tool to promote one’s political agenda at present. Huaiyin Li’s Reinventing Modern China and Zheng Wang’s Never Forget National Humiliation analyze the complex politics surrounding modern Chinese historiography.
In February 1946, officials in Washington asked the U.S. embassy in Moscow why the Soviet government was failing to cooperate with American plans for the postwar international order. On the receiving end was George Kennan, a career foreign service officer who had risen to be the second-ranking American official in Moscow. Kennan replied with an extraordinary 5,300-word cable later dubbed the “long telegram.”
John Salmon “Rip” Ford had a long military career as a soldier of the Texas Republic (1836-46). He was a volunteer in the Mexican War, a Texas Ranger on Texas’s borders, and commander of a Confederate Cavalry Regiment in the Civil War. Ford’s archive at UT-Austin’s Center for American History, contains records of his activities as a physician and newspaper editor, as well, revealing an uncommon breadth of occupational skills.
By Tania Sammons This essay is reproduced from the book we are featuring this month, Slavery and Freedom in Savannah, edited by Daina Ramey Berry and Leslie Harris. If you would like to know more about the book and especially about the sidebars that feature short essays on interesting figures and events related to the […]
Savannah is a prime location for understanding the centrality of slavery and race to the national and world economy, and the importance of the city to southern landscapes and the southern economy.
Today -- September 29 -- is the 150th anniversary of the Civil War battle of Chaffin's Farm. The battle is significant because Milton Holland, a mixed race native of Texas was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions during the battle.
“May God be pleased with all the Companions of His Prophet.” With these words, the 12th century mayor of Aleppo, al-Zahir, carved in stone a sentiment that powerfully reflects the nuanced, negotiated sectarian history of Islam in Syria and elsewhere in the Islamic world.
by Brian McNeil #BringBackOurGirls has become ubiquitous on the internet, with a wide gamut of politicians and celebrities taking up the cause of the nearly 300 Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by the terrorist organization Boko Haram. While the efficacy of this sort of hashtag activism, or slacktivism, has been questioned by scholars—and openly mocked by some […]
by Andrew Villalon In 2014, we enter the centennial of one of history’s most terrible conflicts. Originally (and quite appropriately) named The Great War, the four-year conflict claimed roughly eight and a half to nine and a half million lives on the battlefield, not to mention millions of civilian war deaths as well as many […]