by Aseem Gupta | Jan 10, 2016 | History, Empires & Civilizations
The Great Emu War sounds like something invented by the internet. Australia, a country already famous for deadly snakes, giant spiders, crocodiles, kangaroos, and animals that seem specifically designed to test human confidence, once sent soldiers with machine guns to...
by Aseem Gupta | Jan 9, 2016 | History, Empires & Civilizations
The American Revolution did not begin as a clean, heroic march toward independence. It began as an argument inside an empire. For more than a century, Britain’s mainland colonies in North America had lived in an uneasy middle ground. They were British subjects. They...
by Aseem Gupta | Jan 8, 2016 | History, Empires & Civilizations
English is a strange language because it remembers its invaders. You can ask someone to “come in,” or you can invite them to “enter.” You can talk about a “kingly” duty, or a “royal” one. You can “buy” something, or you can “purchase” it. You can raise a cow in a...
by Aseem Gupta | Jan 7, 2016 | History, Empires & Civilizations
There is a version of this story that sounds almost too ridiculous to be true. Two countries play a football match. The fans riot. National pride boils over. A few days later, the armies march. That is how the 1969 war between Honduras and El Salvador is usually...
by Aseem Gupta | Jan 6, 2016 | History, Empires & Civilizations
Introduction: A Small War That Was Never Small At first glance, the Falklands War can look almost absurd. A short war. A remote archipelago. A British task force sailing 8,000 miles across the Atlantic. An Argentine dictatorship trying to recover islands most of its...
by Aseem Gupta | Jan 2, 2016 | History, Empires & Civilizations
World War II is often remembered through a handful of images: Hitler shouting before a crowd, Churchill refusing to surrender, soldiers landing on Normandy’s beaches, mushroom clouds rising over Japan. But the war was much bigger than its most famous moments. It was...
