‘With the exceptions of economics and demography, I don’t think social-science methods can be used to engineer historical research. In place of methodological prescriptions, I would invoke two remarks by historians I admire. Marc Bloch said (I am speaking from memory and may get the words slightly wrong): ‘The historian is like the ogre of… Read More Robert Darnton and Zhang Chi: a conversation
Hong Kong (CNN): When Ho Feng Shan died at the age of 96, he took a secret to his grave. The only clue was a single sentence in his obituary in 1997. Throughout his long life, Ho never mentioned his heroic deeds during World War II – not to his wife, his children or friends.… Read More Ho Feng Shan: The 'Chinese Schindler' who saved thousands of Jews. By Wayne Chang
For around three centuries, the girl reading a letter in the dimly-lit solitude of a Johannes Vermeer painting gave no indication of what the message contained. Facing an open window, her figure gently curved as she scanned the note in her hands, her body appeared slight against the vacant wall behind her. But last week,… Read More Vermeer's 'hidden' Cupid is the enigmatic artist's latest mystery
NB: ‘Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past’ – Big Brother, in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four. DS What is the purpose of remembrance? Revenge? Remorse? Restitution? Reconciliation? Rekindling the dying embers of mindless hate? Reapportioning blame? Remembering? Or, reminding oneself, “never again”? Before asking our prime minister to… Read More Mani Shankar Aiyar – Partition: What does the prime minister want us to remember?
Almost everyone knows the name of Einstein, but that of Lev Landau is familiar only to a few followers of the exact sciences. And yet, both of them share several common features: They occupy first-rank positions in the short list of the greatest geniuses of the past century. They distinguished themselves by their freedom of thought and… Read More Albert Einstein and Lev Landau: Scientific geniuses as well as anti-capitalists and anti-Stalinists
NB: Saleem was a dear personal friend and colleague at Ramjas College, in the University of Delhi. Both of us were also alumni of St Stephens College, albeit separated by a couple of years. He was a gentleman to his core and a brilliant historian. On the rare occasions he spoke in Staff Council meetings,… Read More Goodbye Saleem / सबके मेंटर थे सलीम किदवई
The natural living barrier was described as “utterly impassable to man or beast”, and snaked across India from the Indus River to the Mahanadi. But why doesn’t anyone remember it? In a second-hand bookstore in London, in late 1994, author Roy Moxham made a discovery that would consume the next three years of his… Read More Kamala Thiagarajan: The mysterious disappearance of the world's longest shrubbery
NB: For many decades now, the world has been held hostage by the American election cycle, and the criminal tendencies of American Presidents. Our short memories, our weakness in resisting propaganda; and the degeneration of journalism into op-ed commentary by spin-doctors have contributed to this. The rise of violent Islamist movements has a great deal to… Read More Thom Hartmann: Myths and lies about Afghanistan's role in 9/11 live on, Bush and Cheney escape justice / Karen Greenberg: The Endless Shadow of the War on Terror
Approach to Battle is an excellent and meticulously researched narrative of pure vanilla military history. It explores the transformation of the Indian Army from a bloated, undertrained, and poorly led force during World War I and the early years of World War II into a fighting machine that gave the British Empire one of its most… Read More Book review: Approach to Battle: Training the Indian Army during the Second World War
In the summer of 1947, two years after the end of the Second World War, the British historian Eric Hobsbawm travelled to the British occupation zone of Germany to re-educate young Germans. A recent graduate of King’s College, Cambridge, where he had also joined the Communist Party, Hobsbawm was working on his PhD dissertation and… Read More Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann – Repetition and rupture: Reinhart Koselleck, theorist of history
After the truth-shower 