Bobi Wine in Uganda does it; so do the Economic Freedom Fighters in South Africa. The red beret is worn to signify the revolutionary. Its power lies in a symbolism that combines art and politics.
Today’s protests are driven more by anger over social and economic inequity than deep-seated grievances against a regime.
Orlando Barria/EPA
People get angry far more often than they rebel. And rebellions rarely become revolutions. An expert on the French Revolution explains why today’s protest movements are different.
Hong Kong protesters shelter behind a thin barrier – and umbrellas – as police fire tear gas and encircle a group of demonstrators.
AP Photo/Vincent Yu
Revolutions are built not on deep misery but on rising expectations. History may not provide much hope of immediate change in Hong Kong – but protesters may have a longer view.
Could using the guillotine be more humane than execution by lethal injection?
AlexLMX/Shutterstock
Many recent executions in the US by lethal injections have resulted in prolonged suffering before death. A historian asks: Could the guillotine be a preferable method?
The Seine and Notre Dame, physically and spiritually the heart of Paris.
Iakov Kalinin via Shutterstock
The Notre Dame Cathedral was long a powerful symbol of church authority - but it wasn’t static. The design kept changing to keep up with the changing times.
Tarana Burke created #MeToo in 2006 but it didn’t emerge as a mass social movement until 2017.
AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes
From the French Revolution to #MeToo, social movements often burst into the mainstream with what seems like little warning. Cass Sunstein explains why.
The word ‘terrorism’ was first used at the time of the French Revolution.
Charles Monnet/Wikimedia Commons
Mats Fridlund, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
Terrorism hasn’t always been associated with individuals – in the past, it has described violence used by the state against its subjects.
An 1808 painting by Marie-Gabrielle Capet titled Atelier of Madame Vincent, showing Labille-Guiard at work (centre) as Capet fills her palette.
Wikimedia Commons
Adélaïde Labille-Guiard was a supremely skilled artist. But like so many talented women before and since, she suffered from snide allegations that she could not be capable of such brilliance.
Théroigne de Mericourt, engraving after a painting by Auguste Raffet in 1817.
Wikimedia Commons
Primary school children in France will now have to learn and sing La Marseillaise. But for many people, it is racist and xenophobic.
An Afghanistan national police officer helps a U.S. Army lieutenant, June 14, 2007. Can honour be restored in today’s international conflicts?
Michael Bracken/US Army/Flickr
Donald Trump has a Versailles-inspired apartment. There’s a popular TV series and now, a new exhibition of treasures from the palace. A glittering symbol of aristocratic frivolity, Versailles was, in fact, a place of awesome royal power.
The excitement that accompanied the beginning of the Arab Spring has now largely died down, as a timeworn truth reiterates itself: when an oppressive power is toppled, a similar or worse one will often…
The release of a documentary film in the Czech Republic earlier this year caused much controversy. It is about a dissident named Pavel Wonka who fought against the totalitarian regime in Communist Czechoslovakia…
It’s there in black and white. Tinged, appropriately enough, with blue. On the inventory – handwritten in Afrikaans – of Mnr N Mandela’s personal Eiendom (property) on leaving Victor Verster prison outside…
Maitre de conferences en histoire de l'Europe moderne, Université de York, Fellow 2018 - IEA de Paris, Institut d'études avancées de Paris (IEA) – RFIEA