David Abulafia is emeritus professor of Mediterranean history at the University of Cambridge.
Ships change not just their location but their identity throughout their lives. Medieval trading vessels became warships at royal command. The Queen Mary was a troop ship during the second world war. Ian Kumekawa, of Harvard University, has had the clever idea of following a modern ship through its metamorphoses and asking how these changes
Ceremonial cannibalism was not a European invention but a regular feature of South American societies Simon Park, who teaches Portuguese history and literature at Oxford University, aims to recast the early period of European exploration as a story of disasters rather than successes. His target is the notion that those who led the first European
Frustrated by a High Court injunction that prohibits protestors from occupying University buildings in Cambridge so as to block a degree ceremony on 1 March, ‘Palestine Action’ has resorted to violence (for that is what it is) to make its point. The fifteenth-century gateway to the Old Schools, the administrative headquarters of the University, has
When passions are aroused, all of us are liable to overstate our case. Dan Hicks, a curator at Oxford’s extraordinary Aladdin’s Cave of anthropology, the Pitt-Rivers Museum, is perhaps a case in point. A Swedish academic, Staffan Lunden, has convincingly argued that Hicks is guilty of ‘distortion’ when writing about the British raid on Benin
The British Museum is beginning to think about the possibility of embarking on a massive programme of refurbishment, repairs and the reorganisation of its galleries, now that the building is showing its age. At the same time, many groups would like to use this opportunity to change the very character of the museum. One such
It is difficult to complain about the sentiments expressed by Bridget Phillipson, the Secretary of State for Education, in her article entitled ‘We will give teachers the resources to root out anti-Semitism for good’, published in the Telegraph on the anniversary of the Hamas pogrom in southern Israel. Universities have turned a blind eye to some atrocious
It is easy to assume that there is not much to be said about the history of the Atlantic before 12 October 1492, when Christopher Columbus reached the Bahamas. In 2005, the Harvard historian Bernard Bailyn published a little book entitled Atlantic History: Concept and Contours which said absolutely nothing about what happened before Columbus,
In an extraordinary outburst, a government source has described the new Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, introduced by the Conservatives, as a ‘hate-speech charter’. This is an outrageous distortion of the new laws that aim to guarantee free speech within universities. The best that can be said about that phrase is that, so long
A new eight-part TV series co-produced by the BBC about England in 1066, entitled King and Conqueror, has diverse actors playing Anglo-Saxons. Elander Moore will reportedly play the real historical role of Morcar, an Earl of Northumbria who fought against Viking and Norman invaders. At first sight there might be plausible precedents for the choice of
The interim director of the British Museum, Mark Jones, has broached the idea that our national museums should charge foreign visitors for entry, though not British visitors. On the surface it may seem an attractive idea. Our national museums are major attractions – not just in London but in Edinburgh and elsewhere, drawing in millions of
The Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford has won a reputation for its energetic programme of ‘decolonisation’. Its director, Laura van Broekhoven, is an expert on the Amazon. Nonetheless, on the museum website she actually begins her account of her academic work with the words ‘Laura’s current research interests include repatriation and redress, with a focus on the
To quote Private Frazer in Dad’s Army, ‘We’re doomed, doomed!’ That seems to be the message of Paul Cooper’s eminently readable series of essays about how and why 14 civilisations rose to greatness and then collapsed. He begins with the Sumerians in the fourth millennium BC, at the northern tip of the Persian Gulf, and
Cambridge has made a mistake in returning to the tribe that made them some spears collected by Captain Cook’s men in 1770. It is always dispiriting to write something and then discover that no one with the power to act has paid any attention. Last year, I complained on Coffee House that Trinity College, Cambridge
The flow of histories of the world, or parts of it, in a bundle of items never ceases, 12 years after Neil MacGregor presented world history through 100 objects from the British Museum. Many of these were of unknown provenance and therefore disconnected from their original context. By contrast, world history built around shipwrecks offers
I put the case in last week’s Spectator that museums in this country have been gripped by a sort of infectious madness. Since I wrote that article the number of cases of museumitis has piled up further, and there are worrying signs that the infection is spreading into Europe. It has been announced that 32
I spent Christmas in Turin, with its superb and often neglected museums that are a particular delight because they are uncontaminated by preaching about the evils of European colonialism. It is not that I have no moral perspective on how the creators of empire across four millennia have acted towards their subjects. But the use
It is becoming a familiar conundrum: whether to employ actors who match the ethnicity of the person they are portraying. Helen Mirren made the mistake of playing Golda Meir in a truly dreadful new film. The real mistake there was not the use of a non-Jewish actress, as some have complained, but the appalling quality
Even the Black Death of the mid-fourteenth century, we are now being told, practised racial discrimination as it raged through Europe wiping out maybe half of the existing population. The new idea is that black people were more likely to die from the plague than white ones. The ‘evidence’ presented by an American researcher and
The Royal Academy has nominated Tracey Emin to be a trustee of the British Museum. There is quite a fanfare about the appointment – she is the first female artist to join the Board. Emin’s ability to shock and to push at the boundaries of what might be considered art, often invoking her own sex life,
Librarians across Cambridge University are on the look out. Their target, among the ten million-odd volumes in the main library and in the independently-run libraries of the colleges, is ‘problematic’ books. ‘We would like to hear from colleagues across Cambridge about any books you have had flagged to you as problematic,’ a memo sent to colleges by
