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In the latest episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we explore the historiography of the civil rights movement and the problem of the “happy ever after” narrative – the idea that the struggles of the 1950s and 60s somehow “solved” racism in America.** The Problem of Happy Ever After For many years, there was an impression in British high schools – and, I suspect, in schools across the world – that the civil rights movement had a happy ending. The struggles of the 1950s and 60s, the marches, the speeches, the sacrifices, culminated in something like victory. And then, well,…
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In the latest Explaining History Podcast episode, the discussion explores neocolonialism, revealing how the decline of formal empires led to neoliberalism’s rise. By analyzing historical imperial practices, it highlights the exploitation of Global South resources and labor, illustrating how capitalist elites shifted focus inward to maintain wealth amidst changing global dynamics.
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The Dream and the Nightmare In the decades after the Second World War, a very different kind of world emerged. The British and French colonial empires finally decayed and died, and large swathes of Africa and Asia became independent. It was a moment of profound hope – a chance for newly liberated peoples to chart their own futures, free from the exploitation of distant European capitals. But the hope was short-lived. One of the darkest chapters of 20th century history is the reestablishment of Western control, primarily in Africa, through the creation of neocolonialism. The dreams of a post-colonial world…
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The latest Explaining History Podcast episode discusses California’s penal system’s origins, revealing its ties to coerced labor replacing chattel slavery. Highlighting the gold rush era’s lawlessness, it shows how racialized crime led to a system of convict labor serving capitalist interests. This historical narrative underscores ongoing implications in America’s prison-industrial complex.
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In this episode, Tony Fox discusses “Remember Me to My Comrades,” a collection of letters and diaries from International Brigade volunteers from Northern England. The narrative explores the political dimensions of these volunteers, their sacrifices during the Spanish Civil War, and their lasting legacy in the fight against fascism, highlighting their humanity and commitment.
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In August 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru addressed the Indian Constituent Assembly on the eve of independence: ‘Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge.’ The phrase captured something genuinely extraordinary. But it concealed as much as it revealed. Independence came simultaneously with partition — and the violence that accompanied it remains one of the largest catastrophes of the twentieth century. The tryst with destiny was written in blood before it was written in ink.
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In 1839, Louis Daguerre announced to the French Académie des Sciences a process by which light acting on a chemically prepared surface could produce a permanent image of whatever lay before the lens. It was not simply a technical innovation. It was an epistemological event. For the first time in human history, the external world could be made to represent itself, bypassing the intermediary of the human hand. The question of what this meant — for knowledge, for art, for memory, for truth — has been argued over for nearly two centuries, and has not yet been resolved.
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On 17 December 2010, a twenty-six-year-old street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi stood outside the regional headquarters of the Tunisian government in the provincial town of Sidi Bouzid, doused himself in paint thinner, and set himself alight. His act of self-immolation became the symbolic catalyst for the most significant wave of popular uprisings in the Arab world since decolonisation. Within weeks, the president of Tunisia had fled. Within months, the presidents of Egypt and Libya had fallen. Within five years, most of those hopes were extinguished.
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How Witte’s state-driven industrialisation of the 1890s made Russia a modern power — and manufactured the working class that would rise against the autocracy in 1905 and 1917.
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The counter-reforms, Russification and the paradox of a regime that industrialised the economy while forbidding the political change industrialisation everywhere produced.