Whilst this article provides a simple, brief overview of the forced adoption of the Queue, this was but one of the forms of oppression experienced at the hands of the Qing dynasty, with there being considerably more complexities and laws than can be written about. Great strides have been made towards stronger representations of queerness […]
Jackie Robinson, Wikimedia Commons Jackie Robinson is a significant figure in African American history. He raised issues of race relations, not only in sport, but in society as a whole by becoming the first African American to play in Major League Baseball, erasing the colour line in the United States’ national pastime. When the Brooklyn […]
Air travel today is a chore, involving seemingly endless queues, security checks and waiting in badly carpeted gates, with only the warm light of the holiday at the end of the flight making it worthwhile. Things weren’t always that way though. After World War Two, civilian aviation made tentative steps forward thanks to entrepreneurial characters […]
In 2025, Los Angeles, the ‘City of Angels’ in California fell victim to one of the worst wildfires on record. The four major fires: Palisades, Eaton, Hurst, and Auto, burned more than 12,000 homes, businesses, schools, and other structures. These devastations received unprecedented coverage, revealing the media’s reluctance to acknowledge climate change, and their bias […]
Whilst the social and political elite in exclusive universities had held the monopoly on scholarship for centuries, Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in 1440 revolutionized the potential for learning for ordinary people. The shift from laboriously copying out manuscript to reproducing thousands of copies at a time drove the momentum towards our current […]
The ritual of sacrifice has been an integral part of hundreds of cultures throughout the centuries. Many times this would involve the sacrifice of life, being a cow, a bull, or even a human being. But over the years sacrifice has manifested itself in other forms. Most notably, is the concept of self-sacrifice; the idea […]
Welcome to the first instalment of the Manchester Historian Podcast. In this episode, we spoke to editors of the magazine for the 2018/19 year, Laura Ali and Will Kerrs. We discussed everything from what led them to get involved in the magazine, to the processes they go through to getting the magazine to publish, the […]
With this year’s World Cup in Brazil less than a month away the chances of England adding to their sole victory in 1966 are slim for even the most optimistic fan. On the other hand, Brazil and Argentina are considered favorites and between them they have won 7 out 19 previous tournaments, with fellow South […]
I’m really happy with how the Historian has progressed this term. The team’s been working incredibly hard at coming up with ways to incorporate a more contemporary angle and I’m really happy to announce that we’ll be launching our own website very soon. I’m delighted to see the Historian growing and hope by the end […]
The concept of keeping a concubine is one that society today is unfamiliar with, yet this was a social norm for much of the ancient world and a common happening in China until it was outlawed following the establishment of Mao’s Chinese Communist Party in 1949. Concubinage is essentially the idea of maintaining an on-going […]
The First Thanksgiving, Wikimedia Commons. Nowadays, Thanksgiving is a national holiday. There’s a parade in New York, and everyone gathers with their families and loved ones to eat turkey, spend time with one another and give thanks. But Thanksgiving hasn’t always been like this. The first Thanksgiving took place in 1621 in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Pilgrims […]
The state of Israel was founded in 1948 to provide a home for a people who had not only suffered centuries of oppression, but had just survived one of the worst genocides in history. It is no surprise then, that at the core of Israeli identity is an unresolved sense of trauma, in particular, Holocaust-induced […]
In the west today, charity has become as much about the giver as the recipient. James Green looks at the history of philanthropy and its selfish connotations. Already one of the most talked about pieces of television in recent years, Benefits Street has been accused of demonising the working classes. Ben Beach explores the history […]
In Shakespeare’s day, theatre was intended for all realms of society; the upper and lower classes experienced the same masterpiece, albeit through financially segregated seating zones. Strangely, with the birth of cinema and the inevitable birth of Shakespearean cinematic depictions, this intentional accessibility vanished – Shakespeare became a product of high culture, intended for a […]
