In the 20th century, governments considered the “total abolition” of passports as an important goal and discussed the issue in several international conferences.
Many of HG Wells’s futuristic prophecies have come true, but the one on which his heart was most set – the establishment of a world state – remains unfulfilled.
The centenary of the first world war is being memorialised around the world. But as it fades from living memory, our children’s education sits uneasily with the uncritical demands of commemoration.
French and British school children during a Somme memorial in Thiepval.
Yui Mok / PA Wire
A hundred years ago today, the Battle of the Somme began. This conflict, in which a million men died in order to move the front lines about six miles, spelled the end of courage as a cornerstone of masculine identity.
Vickers machine gun crew with gas masks.
John Warwick Brooke/Imperial War Museum
Calculus helped determined the outcome of World War I’s biggest naval battle, 100 years ago.
The Sykes-Picot Agreement divided up the Asiatic provinces of the Ottoman Empire into zones of direct and indirect British and French control.
By Royal Geographical Society via Wikimedia Commons
Over the years the words Sykes-Picot have taken on two meanings – one significant, the other less so.
The promise of recently explored oilfields dictated British interest in Mesopotamia (roughly, modern-day Iraq) during the Sykes-Picot Agreement negotiations.
Reuters/Thaier Al-Sudani
For 100 years, the Easter Rising has occupied center stage in the memory making of republican Ireland. But the role of Irish soldiers in World War I had been all but forgotten – until now.
Irish participation in World War I has been surrounded by a form of “collective amnesia” – largely because of the part the war played in the Easter Rising.