Wealth inequality is no 21st-century phenomenon. But it was decisively shaped by public policy during the last 100 years as economies emerged from war and redesigned the structures for life.
Campaign posters of the 11 candidates in the French election. Left, right and centre can seem pretty blurred in 2017 France.
Eric Gaillard/Reuters
Each year at Easter, Christians recreate the spectacularly violent end of Jesus’s life, raising some tough questions about the depiction of suffering on stage.
The Navy converted to oil from coal a few years before the U.S. entered World War I, helping to solidify petroleum’s strategic status.
Naval History and Heritage Command
Before World War I, petroleum had few practical uses, but it emerged from the war as a strategic global asset necessary for national stability and security.
Interactive map of global carbon emissions from 1750 to 2010.
Aurelien Saussay
An interactive map of global carbon-dioxide emissions, from 1750 to 2010, provides a better understanding of the roles of different countries in the ongoing climate crisis.
The so-called ‘prison tree’: over time, myth has coalesced into a ‘fact’ for which there is no evidence.
Author provided
There is no evidence to support the marketing of an ancient boab in Western Australia as a tree that once held Aboriginal prisoners. The story is a myth that elides the tree’s deep significance to Indigenous people.
The UK’s new £1 coin is touted as being the most-secure in the world. Its dodecagonal shape harks back to an old threepenny forebear.
Penny Gulliver wrote to Germaine Greer several times over two decades.
University of Melbourne Archives, Germaine Greer Archive, 2014.0042.00350, Correspondence with Penny Gulliver
Fifty years of correspondence is stored at the Germaine Greer archive. It ranges across topics as diverse as US politics, grassroots feminism, gardening and Queen Victoria’s underpants.
Armée libanaise, Beirut, 1982.
James Case/Wikimedia
Manuel Dorion-Soulié, Graduate Institute – Institut de hautes études internationales et du développement (IHEID)
Over its history Canada has built itself through war and the memory of its wars. The country’s recent military interventions are part of a struggle to define what the country stands for.
The European union and Turkey cannot afford to further strain their relationship.
Vera Kratochvi/PublicDomain
The integration of Turkey into the European Union could have embodied a counter-discourse to the so-called ‘Clash of Civilisations’. Perhaps it is not too late.
Abram Van Engen, Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis
Trump’s budget would eliminate the National Endowment for the Humanities, breaking a tradition of funding humanities scholarship that goes back to the nation’s founding.
Destroying Chinese war junks by Edward Duncan.
Wikimedia Commons
From Chinese laborers to ‘bad hombres,’ the US settler mentality has perpetuated an immigration system that pushes out unwanted groups and bypasses the Constitution.
The BBC’s Taboo is a timely reminder of the violent origins of globalisation, but its villains allow the viewer to disassociate imperial misdeeds from mainstream British history.