The Black Death raged across Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia in the mid 14th century. Families were thrown into chaos, the Catholic church faced dissension in its ranks, and townships struggled to provide services and control infection. The sheer ubiquity of death even fostered an artistic genre: the Read more…
Between 1522 and 1536, the second most powerful man in the Ottoman empire was Ibrahim Pasha.The most surprising thing about Ibrahim Pasha is not his diplomatic successes or his untimely demise. What is most surprising about Ibrahim Pasha, the second most powerful man in the Ottoman Empire between 1522-36, is Read more…
The 1815 volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora changed history. The year following the eruption, 1816 was known in England as the “Year without a Summer,” in New England as “18-hundred-and-froze-to-death”, and “L’annee de la misere” or “Das Hungerhjar” in Switzerland. Germans dubbed 1817 as “the year of the beggar.” The Read more…
Sex striking is a method of passive resistance, a form of peaceful protest, and something attempted by American Indians in the early modern era, First Wave feminists in Europe and America, Bolshevik women in the 1920s, Chinese women in the 1940s, and perhaps most famously, by the Women of Liberia Read more…
King Ahebi Ugbabe was unique among the men of Igboland in colonial Nigeria. There weren’t many kings in Igboland at all. But the infrequency of kingship is not what set Ugbabe apart: more importantly, in a world dominated by councils of old men, where political, social, economic, and spiritual roles were Read more…
In Germany in the 1930s, the state passed law after law to isolate, disenfranchise, and break down Jewish Germans. It is shocking how easily the German parliamentary government chipped away at Jewish citizenship, attacking the livelihoods and cultural contributions of small groups of Jews, before finally passing the series of Read more…
The Marquis de Sade is a notorious figure in the history of the French Revolution. Some see him as a twisted, debauched lunatic who preyed on the bodies of women and children. Others see him as a literary genius who was a revolutionary spirit ahead of his time. We invite Read more…
What happens when Communist states want to control the reproductive functions of women’s bodies?
Dr. Carson was wrong in his characterization of the American slave experience. On this episode of the History Buffs Podcast, Drs. Earls and Handley-Cousins discuss the force and violence of population transfers in both the Atlantic Slave Trade and the U.S. Indian Removal Act.
Marissa and Averill discuss the wild, weird, and sometimes dangerous methods of family limitation in the pre-modern world.