Essays

Long-form writing from leading scholars and commentators on history, statecraft, warfare, philosophy and culture.

The first farm in Germantown, Pennsylvania.
essays

In search of the Sylvan Commonwealth

The state of Pennsylvania, once a utopian project now grappling with its history of strife, holds the key to understanding modern America.

Phil Tinline November 14, 2024
A cartoon lampooning the 19th-century 'robber barons'.
essays

The fragile equilibrium of technology, liberty and power

In a striking reversal of history's pattern where technological progress and liberalism reinforced each other, today's innovations threaten to tip the balance toward authoritariani..

Paul Tucker November 12, 2024
A woodblock print by Utagawa Hiroshige. From One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, 1856. Credit: incamerastock / Alamy Stock Photo
essays

When Edo became Tokyo

As the ancient city of Edo evolved into Tokyo, Japan's capital, much was lost but a great deal was gained. For better and for worse, Japan’s emergence as Asia’s first modern power ..

Christopher Harding November 7, 2024
United States soldiers roll up the American flag.
essays

America’s European security dilemma is nothing new

Trump's America First policy echoes the ambivalence that emerged after the Second World War among many American policymakers towards the defence of Europe.

Charlie Laderman November 6, 2024
A print illustrating a street scene somewhere in the Roman Empire.
essays

Going with the grain: the rise and fall of the Roman market

The market forces of supply and demand applied to Ancient Rome as much as anywhere. But two essential goals of the Roman state complicated matters: the capital’s need for grain, an..

David Butterfield November 5, 2024
George C. Scott as General 'Buck' Turgidson Peter Sellers as President Merkin Muffley and director Stanley Kubrick in Dr Strangelove.
essays

Dr Strangelove’s comedy of nightmares

The Cold War was a conflict marked by endemic deception and secrecy. Dr Strangelove, its greatest satire, highlights that the era's sense of imminent, invisible threat still haunts..

Phil Tinline October 31, 2024
John Gast's 1872 painting, American Progress, an allegorical respresentation of manifest destiny.
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How the US origin myth triumphed over history

The myths of origin that give the United States its distinctive character and political culture remain potent, in spite of a lack of historical underpinning.

J.C.D. Clark October 29, 2024
Ernest Bevin in 1947.
essays

Ernest Bevin and the spiritual dimension of British foreign policy

Ernest Bevin, Labour foreign secretary between 1945 and 1951, was a visionary who held that political values and moral principles were at the core of a nation’s foreign policy.

Andrew Ehrhardt October 24, 2024
John Zoffany's The Tribuna of the Uffizi.
essays

Why human creativity matters in the age of AI

A world of machine art would be an eerie one. Art connects us to one another. We cannot, and we should not, replace that connection with an uncanny simulacrum of it.

James Marriott October 22, 2024

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