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In 1916 a British officer, Thomas Edward Lawrence and an Arab prince, Feisal of Mecca led a guerrilla army of Bedouin against the Ottoman Empire in Arabia. In the 1920s Lawrence became an international celebrity due to his wartime exploits and he has remained a mythologised figure for much of the 20th Century. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe a
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In the post war decades the dream of new affordable housing came true for millions of white Americans. Black, Latino, Jewish and other ethnic minority families were excluded from the new utopia of the suburbs and instead many lived in increasingly deprived inner city ghettoes. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.▸ Support the Show & Get
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In the second half of the 19th Century a quiet publishing revolution was taking place. Victorian ladies with education and wealth were able to produce new newspapers, pamphlets and books demanding equal political and legal rights for women. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive ContentBecome a Patron: pat
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Between 1918 and 1939 France’s overseas colonial empire, like Britain’s, grew with the acquisition of Ottoman territories as mandates. France’s empire was ruled using different ideas and institutions to Britain but both systems struggled to hold together during economically and politically turbulent decades. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and
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In 1947, two days after India became an independent nation, the plans to partition the country into a Hindu India and Muslim East and West Pakistan were announced. British policies of divide and rule, combined with hastily drawn up boundaries and a lack of a real understanding about the possible outcome led to ethnic violence on an enormous scale. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If
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In 1945, after the devastation of a long war across Asia, Britain’s hold over her Indian empire was greatly weakened. The new Labour Government was notionally committed to Indian independence, but it was the inability of Britain to continue ruling and the development of India as a powerful new military force in the region that made independence an inevitability. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to t
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In the aftermath of the October Revolution in 1917, Constructivism, a radical avante garde modernist style of architecture became influential. The Constructivists enthusiasm for the revolution was not shared by Lenin and the Bolsheviks who viewed it with suspicion. In 1932 architecture and all other forms of art and culture were finally harnessed in the interests of Stalinism and the Constructivists were replaced by Stalinist architecture. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century
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Following the death of US president Franklin Roosevelt, his successor, Harry Truman entered the Oval Office in the last days of World War Two. The inexperienced and untested president charted a new course in US diplomacy, ending his predecessor’s accommodation of Soviet demands. One of the key moments in the development of the Cold War began in April 1945 with Truman’s presidency. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We co
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By the end of the 1960s the Cold War was in deadlock and America was mired in war in Vietnam. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger attempted to address these crises but in a secretive and controlling fashion. The results were a major shift in Cold War relations but also terrible devastation and destruction in Asia. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe
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In 1974 the government of Edward Heath was defeated in an election called to give Heath a mandate against the trade unions. His nemesis was the miners union organiser Arthur Scargill. In 1984 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher inflicted a crushing defeat on the union movement, a victory long in the planning by the Conservative Government. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy t