HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2025-09-04T09:27:38.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: After Hiroshima: the atomic plague
items: Was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US in WW2 justified?
items: “Some say that the first Jews sailed here on King Solomon’s ships”: Kavita Puri on India's long Jewish history
items: Michael Wood: "Why Elon Musk should take a lesson from Confucius"
items: Michael Wood on an astonishing Hindu pilgrimage
items: Why is a mythical catfish to blame for earthquakes in Japan?
items: Do The Travels of Marco Polo belong in the non-fiction section, or fantasy?
items: Why did Hitler choose the swastika as a Nazi symbol?
items: Kublai Khan: ruler of the waves
items: “Like ancient Greece, India is one of the seedbeds of civilisation” | William Dalrymple on putting India back at the centre of global history

After Hiroshima: the atomic plague
type: item
date: 2025-09-08T08:00:06.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: A big day in history
subject: Death
subject: Hiroshima
description: In the wake of the nuclear attacks on Japan, the official Allied line was that radiation sickness was not a danger. Yet, as Steve O’Hagan reveals, the first western journalist to witness the effects on the people of Hiroshima told a very different story
encoded: At 6am on 2 September 1945, Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett boarded a crowded train heading south-west from the wreckage of war-ravaged Tokyo. He was disobeying strict orders that no westerners should venture outside the Japanese capital – and, though he did not yet realise it, he was undertaking the most momentous journey of his life. The Second World War had ended. However, Japan had not formally surrendered, and American occupation was still to come. Japan’s cities lay in ruins, and Burchett couldn’t even be sure that the train line to his destination, over 400 miles away, was intact. He was also alone and in great danger – hence the Colt .45 pistol in his suitcase. Resentment towards the Allies ran high. Crammed around Burchett in his carriage were Japanese Army officers bearing samurai swords. Although he spoke almost no Japanese, Burchett could feel the animosity in the soldiers’ venomous stares. Also among the passengers was an American priest, who nervously warned Burchett that one wrong move could cost them their lives. Should they smile or shake hands, it could be taken by the Japanese officers as a sign of gloating over the Japanese surrender to the Allies that was being formalised later that day. Burchett later recalled glancing nervously at the soldiers: their hands seemed to toy with the hilts of their swords. As the train plunged in and out of long, dark tunnels, he was convinced that he could hear the sound of steel being unsheathed from scabbards. Thankfully, the assault he feared never came. But even as the train reached its destination some 20 hours after setting out, his tension did not abate. He was arriving in Hiroshima – the city that, four weeks earlier, had been nigh obliterated by the world’s first ever nuclear bomb attack. In one of the 20th century’s most remarkable feats of investigative reporting, Burchett was about to become the first western journalist to bear witness to the aftermath of a nuclear explosion. A scramble to contr…

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Was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US in WW2 justified?
type: item
date: 2025-05-27T14:00:42.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Debate
subject: Evergreen
subject: Hiroshima
description: For years debate has raged over whether the US was right to drop two atomic bombs on Japan during the final weeks of the Second World War. The first bomb, dropped on the city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, resulted in a total death toll of around 140,000. The second, which hit Nagasaki on 9 August, killed around 50,000 people. But was the US justified? We put the question to a panel of expert historians...
encoded: The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States in August 1945 brought the Second World War to a sudden and devastating close, and sparked a moral and historical debate that has continued since. Well over 100,000 people, most of them civilians, were killed instantly or in the immediate aftermath, with many more suffering from long-term effects of radiation exposure. The decision by US president Truman to authorise the use of nuclear weapons against Japan was unprecedented. It marked the first (and so far only) time that atomic bombs have been used in warfare. The justification offered at the time was that the bombings would force Japan’s surrender and avoid a prolonged and bloody invasion of the Japanese mainland. Yet the question remains: was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki justified? Historians continue to debate the military necessity, political motivations and moral implications of the bombings. Was it a strategic decision to end the war quickly and save lives? Or a demonstration of power aimed as much at the Soviet Union as at Japan? Here, a panel of historians offers their perspectives on one of the most controversial chapters of the Second World War, and considers whether the US was right to bomb Japan in 1945. Was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki justified? “Yes. Truman had little choice” – Antony Beevor Few actions in war are morally justifiable. All a commander or political leader can hope to assess is whether a particular course of action is likely to reduce the loss of life. Faced with the Japanese refusal to surrender, President Truman had little choice. His decision was mainly based on the estimate of half a million Allied casualties likely to be caused by invading the home islands of Japan. There was also the likely death rate from starvation for Allied PoWs and civilians as the war dragged on well into 1946. Read more | The Manhattan Project: your guide to the building of the first atomic bomb What Truman did not …

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“Some say that the first Jews sailed here on King Solomon’s ships”: Kavita Puri on India's long Jewish history
type: item
date: 2025-04-25T08:00:33.000Z
creator: Kavita Puri
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Kavita Puri explores lesser-known stories from our past. This month she explores the long-standing but now dwindling Jewish community of Kochi
encoded: In the warm winter sun of Mattancherry, a district of Kochi in Kerala, I wandered the labyrinthine streets of Jew Town. The main thoroughfare, Synagogue Lane, is lined with shops sporting names such as Shalom, some displaying the Star of David in their windows, and selling Kashmiri shawls, spices and handicrafts. This is the historical heart of India’s Jewish community – though today there are hardly any Jews living here. Kochi (formerly Cochin) has a centuries-long Jewish presence. The date of the earliest arrivals is debated; some say that the first Jews sailed to south India on the ships of King Solomon some 30 centuries ago. Certainly, references to Jewish traders in India have been found in documents dating back to the eighth and ninth centuries AD, kept in a synagogue genizah (storage area) in Cairo. A number of Jews settled in the ancient trading port of Kodungallur (formerly Cranganore) and, from the 14th century, dispersed; many moved to Kochi, around 20 miles to the south. Over the following centuries, European Jews, known in the local Malayalam language as Paredesi (literally, ‘foreigners’), began to arrive in India. Many of them were refugees fleeing the Iberian peninsula during the Spanish Inquisition and following the expulsion of Jews in 1492. Over later centuries, more Jews came from western Europe, as well as from north Africa and the Middle East. At its height, Kochi’s Jewish community numbered around 2,000 members. In the 19th century, though, some began leaving to pursue opportunities in Bombay (now Mumbai), and Calcutta (now Kolkata), and then, from 1948, to live permanently in the newly created state of Israel. The Paradesi Synagogue, built in 1568 by Sephardic Jews, still stands next to Mattancherry Palace. As you enter the courtyard today, you can see that it shares a wall with a Hindu temple. The synagogue remains open for visitors and for worship, and is cared for by the local Indian community. The small but colourful interior features hand…

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Michael Wood: "Why Elon Musk should take a lesson from Confucius"
type: item
date: 2025-04-21T08:00:08.000Z
creator: Michael Wood
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: In his latest column, historian Michael Wood looks back on epic medieval Chinese voyages of discovery
encoded: Watching the news on Elon Musk's SpaceX project to make humanity a “multi-planetary species” beginning with a colony on Mars, I found myself reflecting on an earlier moment in history. Between 1405 and 1433, the Chinese sent seven great missions to south-east Asia and across the Indian Ocean, visiting the Persian Gulf, India and east Africa. The first fleet alone comprised many dozens of ships and more than 27,000 men. Admiral Zheng He’s fleets included the biggest wooden vessels yet built, dwarfing the tiny ships that later carried Columbus and Magellan. Modern theories that such Ming ‘treasure ships’ could have exceeded 400 feet (122 metres) in length, however, are now rejected by experts; the size of wooden ships was always limited by the length of trees available for the keel. Read more | Dire straits: the story of Ferdinand Magellan's fatal voyage of discovery For sailing in heavy seas, a single, strongly protected, scarf-jointed keel is the most that shipwrights judge acceptable for safety. According to today’s traditional ship- builders in Fujian, this would allow a boat in Chinese junk style to be at most 200–240 feet (61–73 metres) long. These vessels were highly seaworthy: between 1846 and 1848, a traditional Chinese junk, the Keying, sailed to the US and Britain, where it was visited by Queen Victoria. Why Emperor Yongle commanded this enormous expenditure of resources is still the subject of much controversy. Today in China, these journeys are characterised as peaceable missions to display the flag, encourage trade and wield Chinese soft power. But the idea that Zheng He’s expeditions were done for no real political, economic or practical gain seems, on the face of it, unlikely. These routes had long been travelled by Arab navigators, and the Chinese had first visited east Africa as early as the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907). In some places, such as the Strait of Malacca, there was a deliberate effort to develop commercial entrepots. For example, Palembang, …

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Michael Wood on an astonishing Hindu pilgrimage
type: item
date: 2025-03-27T08:37:52.000Z
creator: Michael Wood
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: "We are witnessing the biggest gathering of people in world history," writes historian Michael Wood.
encoded: I'm sure, like me, readers have been both gripped and saddened recently by the pictures of India’s Kumbh Mela, the biggest pilgrimage in the world. This year, events moved from elation to tragedy with the loss of life in a stampede on 29 January. With such gigantic crowds at religious gatherings in India, there is always a risk of disaster. Every 12 years, the mela takes place at Prayag (also know as Allahabad) at the junction of the sacred rivers Ganges and Jumna. In 2001, we took our daughters, then aged 10 and 8, staying in a tent with Tamil friends. Some 25 million bathed then on the most auspicious date, and 50 or 60 million over the whole six-week festival. This time it will be a staggering 400 million pilgrims, by far the biggest gathering on the planet in history. Read more | 10 historical turning points for modern India The roots of the mela lie far back in Indian civilisation. Though it only reached its present form in the British period, a Chinese visitor in AD 644 describes a huge gathering of half a million pilgrims here on the “Sands of Charity”, which he was told had “gone on since ancient times”. This may well have been the periodic “great synod” that was recorded by the Greek ambassador Megasthenes in 300 BC. Perhaps earlier still the place is the climax of the sacred circuit defining India in the epic book Mahabharata. This I think tells us something essential about Mother India: from early on it was imagined as a holy land from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin. Indian civilisation had many great achievements in science and mathematics, art and architecture, but its essential bent was, in the broadest sense, religious. ‘Hinduism’ as a concept is a western construct, but religion is the ‘ism’ of India. Read more | “Like ancient Greece, India is one of the seedbeds of civilisation” | William Dalrymple on putting India back at the centre of global history The central ritual in the mela is to bathe in the sacred rivers at the most auspicious time. This is…

Why is a mythical catfish to blame for earthquakes in Japan?
type: item
date: 2025-02-07T09:36:31.000Z
creator: Jonny Wilkes
subject: General History
subject: Period
subject: Evergreen
description: According to Japanese mythology, the thrashing of a giant subterranean catfish causes the earthquakes that wreak havoc on the country. Far from being a feared or hated monster, however, this catfish can also be a force for good
encoded: Japan is no stranger to earthquakes. Located on the Ring of Fire, a seismically active area around the edge of the Pacific Basin, the country experiences around 2,000 quakes every year and around 20 per cent of all the world’s seismic events over a magnitude of six on the Richter Scale. Long before scientific explanations, Japanese folk myth came up with its own reasons to explain why the ground could suddenly and violently shake. At first, the blame was placed on dragons or serpents; then in the 17th century, it shifted to a creature called Namazu. Who is Namazu, the Earthshaker? Namazu is a giant catfish believed to live in underground rivers and seas beneath Japan and caused earthquakes by rubbing its body against the rocks or thrashing its mighty tail. In Japanese myth, the thunder god Takemikazuchi did manage to subdue and restrain the creature by pinning the head down with a stone (though in some versions, he thrust a sword through the catfish’s head.) The stone, kaname-ishi, is so large that its uppermost tip can supposedly be seen on the earth’s surface, sticking out of the ground at the Kashima Jingu shrine in Japan’s Kanto region. When Takemikazuchi becomes distracted, however, or is called away to an annual gathering of the gods, Namazu is able to wriggle around. That’s enough to bring about an earthquake. Read more | Dragons: from mythological beasts of history to the fire breathers of fantasy Images of symbolic catfish in Japan date back to the 15th century, and the animal may have been chosen as the mythical harbinger of destruction as the result of a widely held belief among Japanese fishermen. Apparently, they would observe catfish acting strangely right before a seismic event. Today, the catfish is used as the logo for early earthquake warnings sent out by the Japan Meteorological Agency, and also appears on the road signs to let drivers know which highways will be shut in the event of a quake. Which earthquakes have been blamed on Namazu? It was af…

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Do The Travels of Marco Polo belong in the non-fiction section, or fantasy?
type: item
date: 2025-01-23T10:11:34.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Marco Polo’s adventures in Asia in the 13th century earned him everlasting fame, with his very name now synonymous with the excitement of exploration. But are his accounts of his travels essentially works of fiction? Peter Jackson asks if we can trust this medieval travel-writing superstar
encoded: Life had taken a turn for the worse for Rustichello of Pisa. In the dying days of the 13th century, the Italian romance writer found himself locked up as a prisoner of war. Over the previous years, Rustichello had made something of a name for himself as the first author to pen an Arthurian romance in Italian. Yet he had got himself captured while fighting for his native city in the Genoese-Pisan War. And so here he was, denied his freedom, languishing in a Genoese jail. Yet if Rustichello was searching for some sort of salvation, he didn’t have to look far. It lay in the identity of the curious individual with whom he shared his cell. That man began telling Rustichello an extraordinary story. It was a tale of an epic journey to China – of encounters with unimaginably rich and powerful rulers, of strange and exotic lands, of brushes with creatures that would make your heart race and skin crawl. And it triggered in Rustichello an idea. The Italian writer soon saw the potential of turning the memoirs of his well-travelled cellmate into a book. And so he set about writing them up in the default language of medieval romance: Old French, but with a smattering of Italian. The result – The Travels of Marco Polo, or Le Divisament du Monde (‘The Diverse Parts of the World’), as it was originally known – was Rustichello’s crowning achievement. And it would turn his cellmate, Marco Polo, into one of the most famous figures of the entire Middle Ages. Can we trust The Travels of Marco Polo? Le Divisament transformed perceptions of the far east across medieval Europe, introducing generations of readers to a world that they could barely conceive of, let alone visit. But look beyond its remarkable impact, and how much credence should we give to the text that Rustichello committed to paper following his incarceration with Polo? How useful is the book in understanding life in Asia – especially China – in the Middle Ages? In short, can we really trust Marco Polo’s word? Read more | Why…

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Why did Hitler choose the swastika as a Nazi symbol?
type: item
date: 2025-01-16T07:00:00.000Z
creator: Jonny Wilkes
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Evergreen
description: By the early 1920s, the swastika, an ancient religious symbol, had been adopted by Adolf Hitler to represent the German Reich. How did it become the symbol of the Nazi party?
encoded: The swastika is today synonymous with Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime; a red and black symbol of the Second World War. But this hasn't always been the case – the swastika existed as a symbol long before it was adopted by the Nazis, and the symbol's story is longer and more complex than you might expect. So how and why did the Nazis use the swastika, and what is the ancient origin of the symbol made infamous by Hitler? Why did Hitler choose the swastika? When Adolf Hitler began his rise to power and looked for a symbol to encapsulate his movement, the Nazi Party and a strong future for Germany, the swastika became the clear choice. German antiquarian Heinrich Schliemann had grown obsessed with finding Troy, the lost city of Greek mythology, and in 1868 he set out with his copy of The Iliad to search the Mediterranean. Schliemann's search led him to the mysterious mound of Hisarlik on the Aegean coast of Turkey. There, during the 1870s, Schliemann unearthed layers of civilisations dating back thousands of years, and declared the oldest to be Troy. The city of legend had been found – although it turned out to be a different layer than the one Schliemann thought – as well as a cache of jewellery, bronze, silver and gold. Yet in the ancient ruins he made another fateful discovery: some 1,800 depictions of a symbol that resembled a cross with bent arms: the swastika. News of Schliemann’s sensational excavations spread far and wide, quickly followed by the swastika, which became a ubiquitous sign, visible throughout Europe and North America. At the same time, however, the swastika’s long history saw it become a favourite of German nationalists, who subscribed to a warped theory that they had descended from an ancient ‘master race’ known as the Aryans. This belief persisted into the 20th century, growing more pernicious until it appealed to Adolf Hitler, the leader of the burgeoning Nazi Party. Hitler understood the power of an image and knew it would give the Nazi ideals an his…

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Kublai Khan: ruler of the waves
type: item
date: 2024-12-04T08:30:09.000Z
creator: Emily Briffett
subject: Magazine
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
description: Jack Weatherford explains how the Mongol leader became the emperor of China – and dominated the sea in the process
encoded: Genghis Khan may have built a formidable land empire, but his grandson Kublai Khan mastered the seas. So how did a nomadic leader come to have such a formidable navy – and conquer China in the process? Emily Briffett spoke to Jack Weatherford about his new book on the subject, Emperor of the Seas, to find out more. Jack Weatherford is the author of Emperor of the Seas: Kublai Khan and the Making of China (Bloomsbury Continuum, 2024) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones

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“Like ancient Greece, India is one of the seedbeds of civilisation” | William Dalrymple on putting India back at the centre of global history
type: item
date: 2024-11-21T16:09:01.000Z
subject: General ancient history
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Danny Bird talks to historian William Dalrymple about why we need a greater understanding of how Indian ideas and culture have shaped global history – a story too often obscured by colonial narratives
encoded: Danny Bird: Your book, The Golden Road, addresses the influence of ancient India on the myriad cultures and civilisations of Eurasia. What was it that attracted you to this topic? William Dalrymple: When I first arrived in India, aged 18, I visited the early Buddhist sites at Sanchi and Ajanta [which were at their peak in the first and fifth centuries AD, respectively], and was astonished by them. They were so sophisticated, yet created at a time when in Britain – including Scotland, where I’m from – there were Picts scratching symbols, and an Anglo-Saxon putting up a wobbly church tower. During the same period in India, beautiful murals were being painted in cave temples, and profound philosophies developed. As a teenager, I spent a lot of time on archaeological excavations in Scotland and England. I always thought I’d be an archaeologist, dealing with early history. I’m now on the verge of turning 60, and I think my teenage self would be very surprised to find that I ended up spending most of my adult life writing about the 18th century. That 18-year-old would be very disappointed in the middle-aged version ‘selling out’ to modern history and writing about India, which in my teens was way beyond my horizon. In fact, this is a period about which I’ve written before in From the Holy Mountain, which is set in the same monastic milieu [as Ajanta and Sanchi], though from a Mediterranean vantage. But for the past 20 years I’ve been writing about the East India Company and the Mughals, so this is my first non-Mughal book after two decades of research in that area. It feels very nice to be writing and thinking about a different topic, although there’s also that slight anxiety when you’re dealing with something that you don’t know so well. Read more | “This was a corporation that could topple kings”: William Dalrymple on the East India Company What do you hope readers will gain from reading this book? I wanted to have a very broad, wide-angle focus spanning over 1,000 year…

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