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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
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 control the narrative about the reality of the deadly nature of nuclear fallout had begun. Reputational risk Dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima presented the US with a public relations dilemma. What story should the country tell the world about unleashing this terrifyingly powerful experimental weapon on a densely populated city? The ‘leaders of the free world’ did not want to be seen as having become monsters while defeating the evils of fascism. As Henry Stimson, US secretary of war between 1940 and 1945, put it, the authorities didn’t want to “get the reputation of outdoing Hitler in atrocities”. Read more | How Nazi secrets triggered the ultimate moral dilemma – and led to Oppenheimer’s atomic bomb No one is sure exactly how many were killed in the attack. The city of Hiroshima initially estimated that 42,000 people died, from a population of around 350,000. A year later this number was revised up to 100,000. More recent estimates suggest that, by the end of 1945, up to 140,000 may have died from the immediate and long-term effects of the bomb. The vast majority were civilians. So when President Harry S Truman made radio addresses announcing the dropping of the bomb, he sought to establish the official narrative. First, he referred to Hiroshima not as a city full of civilians but as a “military base”. Second, the weapon was portrayed solely in terms of its explosive potential, with “more power than 20,000 tons of TNT”. Crucially, there was no mention of the potential dangers of radiation, which the Americans expected – or, perhaps more accurately, hoped – would not be an issue. Three days later, a New York Times article quoted Manhattan Project scientist Robert Oppenheimer saying: “There is every reason to believe that there was no appreciable radioactivity on the ground at Hiroshima and what little there was decayed very rapidly.” In the weeks that followed the bombing, this was the accepted narrative – until, that is, the previously little-known journalist Wilfred Burchett intervened. Born in 1911, Burchett grew up in the Australian Outback in Victoria, and left school at the age of 15 after his father’s business failed. He spent much of the late 1920s and early 1930s as an itinerant labourer. A self-taught linguist with a burning interest in the outside world, he travelled to London in 1937, where he married a Jewish refugee from Germany and worked for a travel agency arranging for German Jews to emigrate to destinations such as Palestine. Front-line reporting Returning to Australia, Burchett forged a career as a journalist. After Japan entered the Second World War in 1941, he filed stories from the Burmese and Chinese fronts. He then joined the US Marines on their island-hopping campaign across the Pacific in 1944, reporting for the UK’s Daily Express. When Japan accepted defeat following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Burchett was due to be part of the official press corps covering the final act of the Second World War: the signing of ceremonial surrender documents aboard the US battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945. However, as some 600 correspondents gathered for the event, Burchett was not among them. Feigning illness to slip away from his US military chaperone, he set out on his illicit and perilous journey to Hiroshima. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/British-Newspaper-Archives-AtomicPlagueDailyExpresswebready-ba8b67e.jpg" width="1500" height="1189" alt="A picture of a newspaper article from the Daily Express newspaper, with the headline THE ATOMIC PLAGUE" title="Burchett’s report on the impacts of radiation sickness in Hiroshima appeared in the Daily Express in 1945. It contradicted the official US narrative about the bomb (Image by British Newspaper Archives)" /> Upon arrival, Burchett was astonished by the sheer physical destruction wreaked upon the city: almost 70 per cent of its buildings had been wrecked. “There was nothing but awful devastation and desolation,” he wrote later, likening what he saw to “some death-stricken other planet”. He was guided by a local journalist to a hospital. “If the evidence of the material destruction of the city had been horrifying,” Burchett wrote, “the effects on humans as I saw them inside the hospital wards was a thousand times more so.” Patients – often whole families – were laid out on filthy tatami mats among the rubble of the damaged facility. Burchett saw how, four weeks after the attack, people were being treated not only for the horrendous effects of the blast but also for something else more mysterious, more sinister. Victims suffered a raft of perplexing symptoms: fever, diarrhoea, hair loss, hideous marks on the skin, bleeding from the mouth and other orifices. We now recognise these as markers of the advanced stages of radiation sickness, but the local doctors at the time had no idea what they were seeing. Many believed that the bomb had released poisonous gases from the ground. Burchett immediately understood that what he was witnessing was not just a visual manifestation of the end of the Second World War but the fate of inhabitants of hundreds of cities worldwide should there be another global conflict. “If that does not make a journalist want to shape history in the right direction, what does?” he wrote. In a state of near shock, Burchett sat on a concrete block among the ruins outside the hospital and tapped out his story on his battered typewriter. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/GettyImages-92425109webready-9744727.jpg" width="3888" height="2592" alt="A black and white photograph of lots of people laying on the floor. One man is standing up, watching over the sick people laying down" title="Tens of thousands who survived the blast over Hiroshima suffered symptoms that mystified doctors who’d never seen the effects of radiation (Image by Getty Images)" /> Three days later, on Wednesday 5 September, Britain awoke to an apocalyptic front cover on the Daily Express. “The Atomic Plague” was the main splash, then: “Doctors fall as they work.” (In the haste to get the story published, authorship was wrongly attributed to “Peter” Burchett.) Read more | Kavita Puri on VJ Day: "We don't talk about the war in Asia – which was a messy, complicated conflict" Burchett’s searing reportage painted a terrifyingly vivid picture: “Hiroshima… looks as if a monster steamroller had passed over it and squashed it out of existence… It gives you an empty feeling in the stomach to see such man-made devastation.” The focus of his piece was, though, on the “uncanny after-effects” from which “people are still dying, mysteriously and horribly” weeks after the attack. The words he chose to describe this sinister malaise – “Atomic Plague” – suggested that the bomb dropped by the US was on a par with a chemical or biological weapon, both outlawed under the 1925 Geneva Protocol. Initiating global opposition Also striking was the polemical strap-line to Burchett’s article: “I write this as a warning to the world.” With these words, he arguably initiated the global opposition to nuclear weapons that persists to this day. His article travelled rapidly around the globe after the Express released the text free to the international press – but this was not the story that the US military wanted the world to read. US authorities immediately moved to shut down Burchett’s narrative. Press conferences were held at which his claims of “atomic plague” were refuted, and military officials accused Burchett of having “fallen victim to Japanese propaganda”. Hiroshima was declared out of bounds to the media, and any reports of radiation sickness were censored. Burchett’s press accreditation was rescinded and he was encouraged to leave Japan. In the American press, stories sympathetic to the official line quoted Manhattan Project officials minimising the reports of radiation sickness. “No Radioactivity in Hiroshima Ruin,” ran one piece in the New York Times on 13 September. General Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, testified to the Senate in November 1945 that scientists believed radiation sickness “is a very pleasant way to die”. In this way, Burchett’s warning to the world was to a large extent successfully suppressed in the months following its publication. But nobody could stop the truth radiating out from Ground Zero forever. In the years that followed, more information about the effects of radiation exposure emerged. In August 1946, the New Yorker ran its now famous John Hersey-penned Hiroshima issue (published as a book later that year), which opened millions of eyes to the horrors of what had happened. In 1954, the crew of a Japanese fishing trawler were poisoned by radioactivity from a US thermonuclear bomb test, with one man dying. And victims in Hiroshima continued to die young as the years ticked by. Nonetheless, it would take decades for the US to accept the full reality of radiation sickness – even after it afflicted American citizens: it wasn’t until the 1980s that US veterans of atomic tests received any compensation. No such compensation has ever come the way of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Wilfred Burchett died in 1983, at the age of 72. By then, his scoop from the ruins of Hiroshima was largely forgotten in the west. But not in the city itself. Over the course of his life, Burchett returned several times to Hiroshima, where he was welcomed and feted by the Hibakusha – the survivors of the world’s first nuclear attacks. For them, there could be no forgetting. Steve O’Hagan is a documentary film and radio producer. His Archive on 4: Exposing Hiroshima programme about Wilfred Burchett’s reporting is available now on BBC Sounds This article was first published in the September 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US in WW2 justified?
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...
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 know, and which has only been established quite recently, is that the Imperial Japanese Army could never contemplate surrender, having forced all their men to fight to the death since the start of the war. All civilians were to be mobilised and forced to fight with bamboo spears and satchel charges to act as suicide bombers against Allied tanks. Japanese documents apparently indicate their army was prepared to accept up to 28 million civilian deaths. Antony Beevor is a bestselling military historian, specialising in the Second World War. His most recent book is Ardennes 1944: Hitler’s Last Gamble (Viking, 2015) “No. It was immoral, and unnecessary” – Richard Overy The dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was justified at the time as being moral – in order to bring about a more rapid victory and prevent the deaths of more Americans. However, it was clearly not moral to use this weapon knowing that it would kill civilians and destroy the urban milieu. And it wasn’t necessary either. WW2 | The Big Questions Member exclusive | Historian and broadcaster Laurence Rees explains major moments of the global conflict in this five-part series. Listen to all episodes now Militarily Japan was finished (as the Soviet invasion of Manchuria that August showed). Further blockade and urban destruction would have produced a surrender in August or September at the latest, without the need for the costly anticipated invasion or the atomic bomb. As for the second bomb on Nagasaki, that was just as unnecessary as the first one. It was deemed to be needed, partly because it was a different design, and the military (and many civilian scientists) were keen to see if they both worked the same way. There was, in other words, a cynical scientific imperative at work as well. I should also add that there was a fine line between the atomic bomb and conventional bombing – indeed descriptions of Hamburg or Tokyo after conventional bombing echo the aftermath of Hiroshima. To regard Hiroshima as a moral violation is also to condemn the firebombing campaign, which was deliberately aimed at city centres and completely indiscriminate. Of course it is easy to say that if I had been in Truman’s shoes, I would not have ordered the two bombings. But it is possible to imagine greater restraint. The British and Americans had planned in detail the gas-bombing of a list of 17 major German cities, but in the end did not carry it out because the moral case seemed to depend on Germany using gas first. Restraint was possible, and, at the very end of the war, perhaps more politically acceptable. Richard Overy is a professor of history at the University of Exeter and editor of The Oxford Illustrated History of World War Two (OUP, 2015) More from us HistoryExtra members can explore this topic further with exclusive content from our archives WW2 the big questions: final stages of the conflict What if...The Enigma code had not been cracked by Alan Turing and Bletchley Park? Oppenheimer | Is Christopher Nolan perpetuating a historical myth? The PoWs who survived Nagasaki "We’ve come to think that peace is normal, but that's not the reality": Margaret MacMillan on humanity's compulsion to go to war Not a HistoryExtra member? Explore our latest membership offers “Yes. It was the least bad option” – Robert James Maddox The atomic bombs were horrible, but I agree with US secretary of war Henry L Stimson that using them was the “least abhorrent choice”. A bloody invasion and round-the-clock conventional bombing would have led to a far higher death toll and so the atomic weapons actually saved thousands of American and millions of Japanese lives. The bombs were the best means to bring about unconditional surrender, which is what the US leaders wanted. Only this would enable the Allies to occupy Japan and root out the institutions that led to war in the first place. Timeline | The countdown to the bombing of Hiroshima The experience with Germany after the First World War had persuaded them that a mere armistice would constitute a betrayal of future generations if an even larger war occurred 20 years down the line. It is true that the radiation effects of the atomic bomb provided a grisly dividend, which the US leaders did not anticipate. However, even if they had known, I don’t think it would have changed their decision. Robert James Maddox is author of Hiroshima in History: The Myths of Revisionism (University of Missouri Press, 2007) Video: Could the Nazis have built the first atomic bomb? View Green Video on the source website “No. Japan would have surrendered anyway” – Martin J Sherwin I believe that it was a mistake and a tragedy that the atomic bombs were used. Those bombings had little to do with the Japanese decision to surrender. The evidence has become overwhelming that it was the entry of the Soviet Union on 8 August into the war against Japan that forced surrender but, understandably, this view is very difficult for Americans to accept. Of the Japanese leaders, it was the military ones who held out against the civilian leaders who were closest to the emperor, and who wanted to surrender provided the emperor’s safety would be guaranteed. The military’s argument was that Japan could convince the Soviet Union to mediate on its behalf for better surrender terms than unconditional surrender and therefore should continue the war until that was achieved. Read more | How and when did the Second World War end? Once the USSR entered the war, the Japanese military not only had no arguments for continuation left, but it also feared the Soviet Union would occupy significant parts of northern Japan. Truman could have simply waited for the Soviet Union to enter the war but he did not want the USSR to have a claim to participate in the occupation of Japan. Another option (which could have ended the war before August) was to clarify that the emperor would not be held accountable for the war under the policy of unconditional surrender. US secretary of war Stimson recommended this, but secretary of state James Byrnes, who was much closer to Truman, vetoed it. By dropping the atomic bombs instead, the United States signalled to the world that it considered nuclear weapons to be legitimate weapons of war. Those bombings precipitated the nuclear arms race and they are the source of all nuclear proliferation. The late Martin J Sherwin was co-author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J Robert Oppenheimer (Atlantic, 2008) Read more | 6 terrible choices people had to make during the Second World War “Yes. It saved millions of lives in Japan and Asia” – Richard Frank Dropping the bombs was morally preferable to any other choices available. One of the biggest problems we have is that we can talk about Dresden and the bombing of Hamburg and we all know what the context is: Nazi Germany and what Nazi Germany did. There’s been a great amnesia in the west with respect to what sort of war Japan conducted across Asia-Pacific. Bear in mind that for every Japanese non-combatant who died during the war, 17 or 18 died across Asia-Pacific. Yet you very seldom find references to this and virtually nothing that vivifies it in the way that the suffering at Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been. Read more | What was the Truman doctrine? With the original invasion strategy negated by radio intelligence revealing the massive Japanese build-up on the planned Kyushu landing areas, Truman’s alternative was a campaign of blockade and bombardment, which would have killed millions of Japanese, mostly non-combatants. For example, in 1946 the food situation would have become catastrophic and there would have been stupendous civilian deaths. It was only because Japan surrendered when it still had a serviceable administrative system – plus American food aid – that saved the country from famine. Read more | Stalin’s famine: a brief history of the Holodomor in Soviet Ukraine Another thing to bear in mind is that while just over 200,000 people were killed in total by the atomic bombs, it is estimated that 300,000–500,000 Japanese people (many of whom were civilians) died or disappeared in Soviet captivity. Had the war continued, that number would have been much higher. Critics talk about changing the demand for unconditional surrender, but the Japanese government had never put forth a set of terms on which they were prepared to end the war prior to Hiroshima. The inner cabinet ruling the country never devised such terms. When foreign minister Shigenori Togo was told that the best terms Japan could obtain were unconditional surrender with the exception of maintaining the imperial system, Togo flatly rejected them in the name of the cabinet. The fact is that there was no historical record over the past 2,600 years of Japan ever surrendering, nor any examples of a Japanese unit surrendering during the war. This was where the great American fear lay. Richard B Frank is a military historian whose books include Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire (Random House, 1999) “No. Better options were discarded for political reasons” – Tsuyoshi Hasegawa Once sympathetic to the argument that the atomic bomb was necessary, the more research I do, the more I am convinced it was one of the gravest war crimes the US has ever committed. I’ve been to Japan and discovered what happened on the ground in 1945 and it was really horrifying. The radiation has affected people who survived the blast for many years and still today thousands of people suffer the effects. Read more | “My God, what have we done?” The moral dilemma of Hiroshima There were possible alternatives that might have ended the war. Truman could have invited Stalin to sign the Potsdam declaration [in which the USA, Britain and Nationalist China demanded Japanese surrender in July 1945]. The authors of the draft of the declaration believed that if the Soviets joined the war at this time it might lead to Japanese surrender but Truman consciously avoided that option, because he and some of his advisors were apprehensive about Soviet entry. I don’t agree with revisionists who say Truman used the bomb to intimidate the Soviet Union but I believe he used it to force Japan to surrender before they were able to enter the war. The second option was to alter the demand for unconditional surrender. Some influential advisors within the Truman administration were in favour of allowing the Japanese to keep the emperor system to induce so-called moderates within the Japanese government to work for the termination of the war. However, Truman was mindful of American public opinion, which wanted unconditional surrender as revenge against Pearl Harbor and the Japanese atrocities. Read more | The Nuremberg Trials: the real history behind the post-WW2 tribunal that brought Nazi leaders to justice Bearing in mind those atrocities, it’s clear that Japan doesn’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to immoral acts in the war. However, one atrocity does not make another one right. I believe this was the most righteous war the Americans have ever been involved in but you still can’t justify using any means to win a just war. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa is a professor of history at the University of California at Santa Barbara and the author of Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan (Harvard University, Press 2005) “Yes. The moral failing was Japan’s” – Michael Kort Truman’s decision to use the atomic bomb was the best choice available under the circumstances and was therefore morally justifiable. It was clear Japan was unwilling to surrender on terms even remotely acceptable to the US and its allies, and the country was preparing a defence far more formidable than the US had anticipated. Read more | Who was Hermann Göring? The truth about Hitler’s drug-fuelled enforcer who met his downfall at Nuremberg The choice was not, as is frequently argued, between using an atomic bomb against Hiroshima and invading Japan. No one on the Allied side could say with confidence what would bring about a Japanese surrender, as Japan’s situation had been hopeless for a long time. It was hoped that the shock provided by the bombs would convince Tokyo to surrender, but how many would be needed was an open question. After Hiroshima, the Japanese government had three days to respond before Nagasaki but did not do so. Hirohito and some of his advisers knew Japan had to surrender but were not in a position to get the government to accept that conclusion. Key military members of the government argued that it was unlikely that the US could have a second bomb and, even if it did, public pressure would prevent its use. The bombing of Nagasaki demolished these arguments and led directly to the imperial conference that produced Japan’s offer to surrender. Read more | The science behind the bombing of Hiroshima The absolutist moral arguments (such as not harming civilians) made against the atomic bombs would have precluded many other actions essential to victory taken by the Allies during the most destructive war in history. There is no doubt that had the bomb been available sooner, it would have been used against Germany. There was, to be sure, a moral failing in August 1945, but it was on the part of the Japanese government when it refused to surrender after its long war of conquest had been lost. Michael Kort is professor of social science at Boston University and author of The Columbia Guide to Hiroshima and the Bomb (Columbia Press, 2007) HistoryExtra readers George Evans-Hulme and Roy Ceustermans debate... George Evans-Hulme: Yes, it was justified. The US was, like the rest of the world, soldiering on towards the end of a dark period of human history that had seen the single most costly conflict (in terms of life) in history, and they chose to adopt a stance that seemed to limit the amount of casualties in the war, by significantly shortening it with the use of atomic weapons. It was certainly a reasonable view for the USA to take, since they had suffered the loss of more than 418,000 lives, both military and civilian. To the top rank of the US military the 135,000 death toll was worth it to prevent the “many thousands of American troops [that] would be killed in invading Japan” – a view attributed to the president himself. This was a grave consequence taken seriously by the US. Ordering the deployment of the atomic bombs was an abhorrent act, but one they were certainly justified in doing. Roy Ceustermans: No, the US wasn’t justified. Even secretary of war Henry Lewis Stimson was not sure the bombs were needed to reduce the need of an invasion: “Japan had no allies; its navy was almost destroyed; its islands were under a naval blockade; and its cities were undergoing concentrated air attacks.” The United States still had many industrial resources to use against Japan, and thus it was essentially defeated. Rear Admiral Tocshitane Takata concurred that B-29s “were the greatest single factor in forcing Japan's surrender”, while Prince Konoye already thought Japan was defeated on 14 February 1945 when he met emperor Hirohito. A combination of thoroughly bombing blockading cities that were economically dependent on foreign sources for food and raw materials, and the threat of Soviet entry in the war, would have been enough. The recommendations for the use of the bomb show that the military was more interested in its devastating effect than in preparing the invasion. Therefore the destruction of hospitals and schools etc was acceptable to them. Read more | 7 of the best WW2 films GEH: The USA was more interested in a quick and easy end to the war than causing untold suffering. They had in their hands a weapon that was capable of bringing the war to a swift end, and so they used it. The atom bombs achieved their desired effects by causing maximum devastation. Just six days after the Nagasaki bombing, the Emperor’s Gyokuon-hōsō speech was broadcast to the nation, detailing the Japanese surrender. The devastation caused by the bombs sped up the Japanese surrender, which was the best solution for all parties. If the atomic bombs had not had the devastating effect they had, they would have been utterly pointless. They replaced thousands of US bombing missions that would have been required to achieve the same effect of the two bombs that, individually, had the explosive power of the payload of 2,000 B-29s. This freed up resources that could be utilised for the war effort elsewhere. RC: After the bloody battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the death toll on both sides was high, and the countries’ negative view of one other became almost unbridgeable, says J Samuel Walker in Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and The Use of Atomic Bombs Against Japan. Therefore, the US created unconditional terms of surrender, knowingly going against the Japanese ethic of honour and against the institute of the emperor, whom most Americans probably wanted dead. Consequently, the use of the atomic bomb became a way to avenge America's fallen soldiers while also keeping the USSR in check in Europe. The Japanese civilian casualties did not matter in this strategy. Also, it did not prevent the Cold War, as the USSR was just a few years behind on a-bomb research. Read more | Before the atomic bombs, the USA hit Japan with one of the most overlooked (but deadly) campaigns in WW2 At the time, revenge, geopolitics and an expensive project that could not be allowed to simply rust away, meant the atomic bomb had to be hastily deployed “in the field” in order to see its power and aftermath – though little was known about radiation and its effects on humans. GEH: Admittedly, the US did use the atom bomb to keep the USSR in line, and for that it served its purpose. It may not have stopped the Soviets developing their own nuclear device, but that’s not what it was intended for. It was used as a deterrent to keep the (sometimes uneasy) peace between the US and the USSR, and it achieved that. There are no cases of a direct, all-out war between the US and the Soviets that can be attributed to the potentially devastating effects of atomic weaponry. The atomic bombs certainly established US dominance immediately after the Second World War – the destructive power it possessed meant that it remained uncontested as the world’s greatest power until the Soviets developed their own weapon, four years after the deployment at Nagasaki. It is certainly true that Stalin and the Soviets tried to test US dominance, but even into the 1960s the US generally came out on top. RC: The price to keep the USSR in check was steep: the use of a weapon of mass destruction that caused around 200,000 deaths (most of them civilians) and massive suffering through radiation. However, it did not stop the USSR from creating the same weapon within four years. It might be argued that, following the explosions, Japan virtually disappeared from the world stage while the USSR viewed the bombing as an incentive to acquire the same weaponry in order to retaliate in equal force if the atomic bomb was ever used again. Considering the tension between the two countries, a similar attack with tens of thousands of civilian casualties would have created a nuclear apocalypse. If the US had organised a demonstration, as they had briefly considered, the USSR would still have responded in the same manner, while Japan – which had made clear overtures for a (un)conditional surrender – could have been spared. Furthermore, by postponing the use of the bomb, scientists would have had time to understand the test results, meaning further anguish, like the Bikini Atoll [a huge US hydrogen bomb test in 1954 that had major consequences for the geology and natural environment, and on the health of those who were exposed to radiation] could have been avoided. GEH: The large civilian death toll that resulted from the bombings can be seen as a small price to pay by the United States in return for their assertion of dominance on the world stage. The USSR’s development of an atomic weapon had been underway since 1943, and so their quest for nuclear devices cannot be solely attributed to the events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It should also be considered that the Soviets’ rapid progress in creating an atom bomb was not exclusively down to their desire to compete with the United States, but from spies passing them US secrets. Postponing the use of the atom bomb would only have prolonged the war and potentially created an even worse fate for the people of Japan, with an estimated five to 10 million Japanese fatalities – a number higher than some estimates for the entire Soviet military in the Second World War. Ultimately, the atomic bombs did what they were designed to do. They created such a high level of devastation that the Japanese felt they had no option but to surrender unconditionally to the United States, hence resulting in US victory and the end of the Second World War. RC: Of course civilian casualties of another nation would have been acceptable to the USA. Japan had made clear overtures to peace, but cultural differences made this nearly impossible (the shame of unconditional surrender goes against their code of honour). The determination to use an expensive bomb instead of letting it rust away; the desire to find out how devastating it was and the opportunity to use the bomb as a strong showcase of US supremacy, made Japan the ideal target. Obviously, the USSR would eventually succeed in creating the a-bomb. Therefore, making Hiroshima & Nagasaki the example of the tremendous power of the bombs would make it clear to the USSR that they too needed such weapons to defend themselves. Moreover, other countries claimed the right of nuclear weapons to defend their citizens. Consequently, the tragic bombings became the example of an arm’s race instead of peace. Furthermore, since Japan was already on the brink of collapse the bombing was unnecessary, and peace talks would have taken place within a decent time frame (even after the cancelled Hawaii summit). The millions of deaths calculated by Operation Downfall [the codename for the Allied plan for the invasion of Japan near the end of the Second World War, which was abandoned when Japan surrendered following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki] actually show that only desperation and honour stood between Japan and unconditional surrender. George Evans-Hulme has a passion for military and political history, and enjoys visiting historical sites across the UK. Roy Ceustermans has a master's degree in the history of the Catholic Church, an advanced master's degree on the historical expansion, exchange and globalisation of the world, and a master’s degree in management.
“Some say that the first Jews sailed here on King Solomon’s ships”: Kavita Puri on India's long Jewish history
Kavita Puri explores lesser-known stories from our past. This month she explores the long-standing but now dwindling Jewish community of Kochi
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-painted 18th-century Chinese floor tiles and grand Belgian chandeliers. It also preserves engraved copper plates from the Hindu ruler of Kodungallur, given to a Jewish leader in around AD 1000. The last major celebration held here was in 2018, when the synagogue marked its 450th anniversary. Some 150 émigré members of the Paradesi Jewish community arrived from their homes across the world to mark the occasion. Generations of family members who had only heard stories of the synagogue came to visit, and to walk the same streets that their ancestors had strolled decades and centuries earlier. The oldest member of India’s Paradesi Jewish community, Sarah Cohen, died a year later, a few days short of her 97th birthday. Her embroidery shop still stands in Mattancherry, and still bears her name. It’s now looked after by Thaha Ibrahim, a Muslim who had known Sarah and her husband for decades. He looked after her in her old age, and was treated by the couple as their son. He carries on her legacy today in the same place she lived, making embroidery following her patterns. The Paradesi Synagogue is the only one out of eight in Kerala that is regularly active. I was told that the current rabbi is from overseas, and that the congregation for the Friday night service is typically made up of émigré Jewish visitors. A portion of the Torah scrolls is read every Shabbat and during religious holidays, retrieved from the silver cases in which the synagogue’s texts are kept. These cases are topped with gold crowns, some of which were gifts from local maharajas. Though Kochi’s long-standing Jewish community has largely gone, their memories and ancient traditions are kept alive still. This column was first published in the April 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Michael Wood: "Why Elon Musk should take a lesson from Confucius"
In his latest column, historian Michael Wood looks back on epic medieval Chinese voyages of discovery
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, in south Sumatra, became an important Chinese trading post and a base for journeys into the Indian Ocean. Zheng He’s voyages, then, were to advertise Chinese power, exact tribute, open up new trade routes and, in particular, to get the states of south-east Asia to acknowledge the power and majesty of the Ming. When they had to, they engaged in warfare, destroying pirate fleets near Palembang and intervening in civil wars to establish friendly regimes in Sumatra and what’s now Sri Lanka. So though they were not trying to colonise or conquer, their goal was to establish a network of control between China and the Indian Ocean over peoples who, in Zheng He’s words, “resisted the transforming influence of Chinese culture”. To create trading relations mutually beneficial to China and its various tributary states and kingdoms, “the sea routes were cleaned up and made peaceful so the natives were able to pursue their vocations in peace”. At that moment, with its technological lead over Europe, China seemed poised to dominate much of the world. In 1433, however, the voyages were abruptly stopped and the fleets broken up. In a memorable advert for the aerospace company Lockheed in the 1980s, that decision was compared to giving up the moon programme after Apollo 8. Though the greatest scientific inventors of the pre-modern world, the Chinese were dismissed as lacking the desire to push the bounds of knowledge. But that is to misunderstand the concerns of traditional Chinese civilisation. There were two key reasons for stopping the voyages. First was the enormous expense, including inevitable losses at sea. But there was something else. The ruling Confucian ethic was the cultivation of the Middle Kingdom, not the conquest or domination of other peoples. As Matteo Ricci – a Jesuit in the Ming court – observed, it was the Europeans, not the Chinese, who were “consumed with the idea of supreme domination... always covetous of what others enjoy”. So when I hear the SpaceX plans, I think of Zheng He. Curiosity and scientific interest no doubt will drive human beings to the uninhabitable wastes of Mars, if only to harvest its rare earth metals. But beyond? Is Musk right to think that humanity can become a multi-world species? The facts, as I understand them, are completely against it. The distances are too vast for humanity to travel to other habitable systems, even if they exist. Our fate is on our planet – and here our efforts should be redoubled in this time of crisis. Confucius, I’m sure, would agree. This column was first published in the April 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Michael Wood on an astonishing Hindu pilgrimage
"We are witnessing the biggest gathering of people in world history," writes historian Michael Wood.
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 a very ancient idea in Indian culture. The junction of the Ganges and the Jumna was evidently seen as an axis mundi, the place of creation, rather like Delphi to the Greeks, or Cusco to the Incas. On top of that, in later times, many different myths and stories have gathered. On the second evening of our stay we made our trip down to the Sangam, the junction of the rivers. We walked along with vast crowds: it seemed like all the peoples of India in their incredible diversity. At the river pilgrims stood waist-deep, hands lifted in prayer to the setting sun, rapt in concentration. On the sand, crowds were camped with their bundles, smoke swirling from cooking fires. Soon we reached the Sangam itself, where the muddy brown current of the Ganges meets the blue of the Jumna. It was a breathtaking scene: the last golden light shimmering on the water; the boats, the flags, the lamps, the music; streamers of sari cloths drying in the wind – crimson, yellow, gold, green, snapping in the breeze. All around us were excited shouts and bright-eyed women coming out in clinging saris, soaked and shivering, pushing back their glossy, black, dripping hair. There we took our holy dip, as the Indians say. Around us were poor people who had done long journeys by train and bus, and even on foot, to be there for that auspicious moment. Afterwards a group of Rajasthanis in white turbans held our hands and patted the kids on the head, thanking them for coming. At moments like this, many thoughts go through your mind. Where will we be when the sacred rivers dry up, when they become seasonal, as the scientists now predict? How true, the ancient perception that these rivers’ glaciers and snow-capped mountains are life-giving presences, which are indeed in a profound sense sacred. Back in our tent that night, as we mulled it all over, our eight-year-old said this: “The Indian people think that rivers are holy, and maybe it’s true, because millions of people came here to do this, who all believe the same thing that rivers are holy... I also think that maybe they are saying that nature is holy and you have got to look after it. Because if it gets polluted, then all the animals die and the creatures die. So they are saying that, I think.” Read more | Where history happened: pilgrimage Looking back now on that magical time, though still sombre after recent events, I guess my daughter’s words touch on the point of any great pilgrimage: the shared experiences in such a splendid natural setting, the age-old rituals and stories, the human solidarity. And our aware- ness of our place on this fragile planet. This article was first published in the March 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Why is a mythical catfish to blame for earthquakes in Japan?
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
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 after a series of major earthquakes between 1854 and 1860, the so-called Great Ansei Earthquakes, that the Namazu myth truly became embedded in Japanese popular imagination. In particular, the 1855 quake that hit Edo (Tokyo), which resulted in as many as 10,000 deaths, was blamed firmly on the catfish. In the aftermath, hundreds of woodblock prints, namazu-e, were produced showing the catfish wreaking havoc or being weighed down by the stone-wielding god. Read more | The Great Kantō earthquake: a 1923 disaster that left Tokyo in ruins Namazu was also a force for good Namazu was not depicted solely as a destructive force, but a purifying one. At a time of cosmic imbalance – caused by a corrupt government or social ills, say – Namazu can be a force for good by bringing about yonaoshi (world renewal). Therefore, Namazu equally represented good fortune and the redistribution of wealth. After all, the 1855 quake hit the affluent parts of the city the hardest, as well as the government district, which meant that there was suddenly a lot of work, and money, for poor labourers and builders. In some of the namazu-e prints, the catfish was shown showering gold on the people (in others, rich people are seen firing out coins from their behinds) or, in a half-human form, celebrating with the workers in the entertainment districts of Edo.
Do The Travels of Marco Polo belong in the non-fiction section, or fantasy?
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
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 are Marco Polo's travels so famous? To answer this question, we first need to untangle what kind of book Le Divisament was, and what it aimed to do. At its heart is the tale of how – in the early 1270s, at the age of just 17 – Marco embarked on an extraordinary journey to China with two other Polos: his father, Niccolò, and his uncle Maffeo. The trio, so Le Divisament tells us, travelled to the far east at the end of a superlative period of imperial expansion triggered by the rise of the great Mongol leader Genghis Khan (c1162–1227). So formidable was Genghis as both a warlord and a conqueror that the empire he established would, at its peak, extend all the way from eastern Europe to the Sea of Japan. However, by the time Marco and his companions arrived on the scene, the Mongol empire had split into a number of virtually autonomous states – and the age of rapid expansion was all but over. Only to the east – in the dominion of Genghis’s grandson, Kublai Khan – were major wars of conquest being fought, notably when, in 1279, Kublai extinguished the rule of southern China’s indigenous Song dynasty emperors Sadly, the original text of Le Divisament, describing the world that greeted Marco and his companions on their arrival in China, is lost. But there’s enough consistency between the various manuscripts to indicate that what we’re reading is essentially the same book. However, this is not necessarily the book you might expect. For all that its English title talks of Polo’s travels, Le Divisament is emphatically not a travelogue. Rather, it is a description of the known world, based loosely around Marco’s experiences. As descriptions go, it’s often an unsatisfactory one. The text is rambling and discursive. It is also given to maddeningly artificial changes of direction, such as when it embarks on a description of the Black Sea, before – having recalled that Marco has already given an account of this – heading off abruptly in another direction. There are other irritations. Despite repeatedly promising to confine himself to describing lands he had seen – and to distinguish personal observation from hearsay – the book includes regions, such as the coast of east Africa, that it’s highly unlikely Marco ever visited. For the most part, there is little sense of an itinerary. And yet, despite these limitations, there are extraordinary details to be found. What do we learn about the Mongols in the book? Le Divisament states that, having arrived at the court of Kublai Khan, Marco swiftly made a favourable impression on the Mongol ruler, who recruited him into his service. The Great Khan apparently despatched Marco as his representative on missions within China – and, in a number of cases, around the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. The Venetian was often charged with securing exotica for Kublai’s collection, such as the alms-bowl of the Buddha, and drafting interesting reports on these journeys. Marco’s accounts of his interactions with the Great Khan are remarkable. Read more | What was life like under the Mongol empire? Yet arguably more astonishing to his contemporaries were his descriptions of the marvels he had witnessed on his travels. Some of these are undoubtedly in the tradition of the fantastic – take, for example, the giant bird called the ruc, which could drop elephants from a great height. Many others, however, use exaggeration – and explore the remarkable within nature – rather than employ pure fabrication. So we read of a king of Champa (the southern part of present-day Vietnam) who has 326 children, and of a giant ruby in the possession of the king of Ceylon, a jewel Marco allegedly saw at first hand. Marco also describes huge Chinese ships, and invites us to marvel at the enormous populations of Chinese cities – not to mention the vast number of islands to be found in the Indian Ocean and the China Sea. The book sings the praises of a great island lying due east of China, named Cipingu, which abounds in gold and pearls. That island is now known as Japan – and Marco’s book was the earliest western source to mention it. Marco (or Rustichello) seems to take a positive pleasure in demolishing common misconceptions about the east back in western Europe. The mythical salamander is not a living creature but asbestos, an incombustible substance mined from earth. The corpses sold in India as dead pygmies are, in fact, dried monkeys. The unicorn is identified as a rhinoceros – not at all the kind of creature, the book assures us, that allows itself to be ensnared by virgins. Timeline: the life and travels of Marco Polo c1254 Marco Polo is born in Venice to a wealthy merchant. His mother dies when he is young and he is raised by extended family 1269 Marco’s father, Niccolò, and uncle Maffeo – both merchants – return to Venice after having visited the court of the Mongol leader Kublai Khan 1271 Niccolò, Maffeo and Marco set out on a new expedition. It’s believed that their journey east takes them through Iran, Afghanistan and on to China c1275 According to Marco’s account of his travels, the Polos arrive at Kublai Khan’s summer capital of Shangdu in modern-day north-eastern China c1275–c1292 In Marco’s words, he is appointed to serve as Kublai’s foreign emissary and spends the next 17 years travelling extensively across China c1292 The Polos escort a Mongol princess to Persia, visiting modern-day Vietnam and Sri Lanka en route. They eventually return to Venice c1298 Marco is captured by Venice’s enemies the Genoese. His cellmate in Genoa – an author called Rustichello – begins writing up (and embellishing) Marco’s memoirs c1300 Copies of Rustichello’s book The Travels of Marco Polo proliferate. It will help make Marco arguably the most celebrated explorer of the Middle Ages 8 January 1324 After living out the final years of his life in his native Venice, Marco Polo dies Did Marco Polo make up details in his Travels? So Marco witnessed some extraordinary sights on his travels – and he was all too happy to share them with his readership. Yet, to return to the question posed earlier: can we trust Marco’s word? When he lectured his fellow Europeans on the intricacies of life in the far east, how far was he dipping into the well of lived experience, and how much was make-believe? Certain details in the Le Divisament are undeniably questionable on historical grounds. Prominent among these is the claim that the Polos rendered invaluable assistance to Kublai’s forces in the capture of the city of Xiangyang. This is known to have occurred in 1273, a year or two prior to the Venetians’ arrival in China. In fact, Chinese sources give Muslim siege experts the credit for assisting Kublai’s assault on the city. This is not the only passage that stretches credulity. Niccolò and Maffeo had already travelled to China (in the early 1260s), and Le Divisament tells us that, during this first visit, they had been commissioned by Kublai to bring back to China 100 Christian missionaries together with some holy oil from Jerusalem. Read more | Your guide to the Silk Roads The book also claims that Pope Gregory X appointed the Polos as his ambassadors to the Mongol Ilkhan in Iran following a meeting in Acre. Both are great stories; neither is likely to be true. Many historians have also questioned the credibility of Marco’s co-author. Rustichello was known from his other writing to have been a habitual name-dropper – once claiming, for example, that the Lord Edward (the future Edward I of England) had lent him a book of Arthurian romance. Were Marco Polo's Travels believed at the time? Such scepticism has a long history. Le Divisament started making waves across western Europe from as early as the second decade of the 14th century – and it wasn’t long before rave reviews were being counter-balanced by the voicing of doubts. In particular, Marco’s contemporaries struggled with the contrast between the received image of the Mongols – a people customarily portrayed in 13th-century Europe as nomadic barbarians – and the book’s depiction of the wealth and impressive organisation of Kublai’s empire. In short, while Europeans could accept the existence of a sophisticated polity in the east, the idea it was presided over by the Mongols was far more difficult to swallow. Europeans were all too willing to lap up the fictional story of the Christian king Prester John, who, according to the traditional legend, ruled over a kingdom in the east. However, the version of Prester John’s life in Le Divisament – which described him as a minor prince overthrown, paradoxically, by Genghis Khan with the help of astrologers – was much less to their liking. What is the modern assessment of The Travels of Marco Polo? Modern critics are more troubled by what seem like glaring omissions from the Venetian’s text than his depiction of the Mongols. Marco’s failure to mention the Great Wall of China shouldn’t be held against him because, contrary to popular belief, the continuous structure that exists today had not yet been built. But it is more difficult to account for his silence regarding tea-drinking, the use of fingerprinting for authentication of documents, or the way Chinese women bound their feet. Other critics have pointed to the fact that, although Marco is at great pains to depict himself as a highly valued agent of the Great Khan, no reference to him has been found in Chinese sources. In the eyes of some modern academics, such omissions fundamentally undermine Marco’s entire story. One has even gone as far as to claim that he never made it further east than the Black Sea. Do I agree with this assessment? No. In my opinion, there is nothing intrinsically improbable about a Venetian finding employment in China under the Great Khan. Kublai is known to have recruited men of diverse talents to serve him. In fact, this seems to have been a trait of Mongol rulers: by 1289, the Ilkhans were employing Italians as envoys, interpreters and mercenaries. Marco’s maritime voyages on the Great Khan’s behalf fit easily within the burst of diplomatic activity that took Kublai’s representatives to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and peninsular India between 1278 and 1294. One explanation for the Polos’ absence from Chinese sources is that they would simply have been classed in the same category as all the many other foreign agents drawn from lands to the west of China. So numerous were these visitors that the Chinese had two terms for them: xiyu (‘westerners’) or semu (‘people of various nations’). What of the accusation that Marco grossly inflated the role he played in Kublai’s court and exaggerated his adventures? Even his most vigorous of defenders would have to concede that it’s highly likely that he did both. Yet he’d hardly be the first traveller to be guilty of such a ‘crime’. This doesn’t mean that he didn’t have any adventures at all. Read more | A knight's (tall) tale: why medieval traveller Sir John Mandeville was more popular than Marco Polo Maybe the best way to make any significant headway in the quest to determine the veracity of Marco’s writings is to locate documentary evidence to support his presence in the Mongol world. Unfortunately, this is in vanishingly short supply. Marco’s later life, in which he became a successful merchant, is comparatively well documented. But firm proof of his travels remains elusive. In fact, the nearest we get to documentary evidence is his uncle Maffeo’s will. This refers to “the three tablets of gold that were from the magnificent Chan of the Tartars”, a term that could mean either the Great Khan or one of his relatives. It is presumably one of these tablets that is mentioned in an inventory of Marco’s property drawn up decades after his death, during a dispute among his notoriously litigious kinsfolk. Why were Marco Polo's travels so significant? Ultimately, given the difficulties of the sources, and the doubts swirling around Marco’s account, perhaps we have to make an admission – that the most remarkable thing about the Polos’ travels is not so much that they happened, but when they happened. Their long journey to China fell several years before an Italian presence in Asia is even documented. It would be up to 30 years before the great age of Italian settlement in China’s coastal cities would get under way. That makes the Polos true pioneers. In the 13th century, Venetian and Genoese traders established footholds in Crimea and the chief camp-cities of Mongol princes in Iran and in the western steppes. Yet no one ventured nearly as far east as Marco and his two relatives. Is it any wonder, then, that generations of western Europeans read his accounts of his travels with slack-jawed wonder? As the 14th century went on, European voyages to China began to decline. Then, in 1368, a native Ming dynasty less ready to welcome foreign merchants kicked out the Mongol rulers from China. But the western imagination never lost sight of the image of a fabulously wealthy empire lying to the east. When Christopher Columbus embarked on his transatlantic journeys in the 1490s, which led to the ‘discovery’ of the New World, he was seeking an alternative route to ‘Cathay’. Before he boarded his ship on one of his famous voyages, Columbus packed an indispensable guide. It was a copy of Marco Polo’s book. Peter Jackson is emeritus professor of medieval history at Keele University. His books include The Mongols and the West (Routledge, 2018) This article was first published in the January 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Why did Hitler choose the swastika as a Nazi symbol?
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?
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 historic foundation. He could not adequately reconcile his view of Germany’s Christian history with the religion’s historical Jewish connections – essentially, that Christ was himself Jewish – so the idea that Germans descended from a white master race with a tried and tested symbol had great appeal. Read more | How did the Nazi party rise to power in Germany in 1933? And what were Hitler’s motivations? And so the swastika, or hakenkreuz (hooked cross), became the emblem of the Nazi Party in 1920; Hitler himself took personal credit for designing the flag. It used the red, white and black of the old German imperial flag – a cunning move to link Germany's past with its future – but attributed new meanings to them. "In red we see the social idea of the movement, in white the nationalistic idea, in the swastika the mission of the struggle for the victory of the Aryan man," wrote Hitler in his 1925 autobiographical manifesto, Mein Kampf. The new design became the national flag on 15 September 1935 during the mass annual rally at Nuremberg. On the same day, two race laws were passed prohibiting marriages between Germans and Jews and declaring that only those of German blood could be citizens of the Reich. And so the act of cultural, religious and social theft that was the appropriation of the swastika was complete. It ensured that the Nazi flag would be associated with evil – under which a brutal war raged, atrocities committed and some six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. What is the swastika? A cross with arms bent at right angles meant many things to many people, but had always been used as a sign of hope and positivity. It could represent good fortune or prosperity; symbolise the Sun or the infinity of creation; or, as it still does in several religions, evoke a sense of the divine and call for auspiciousness. The word swastika itself derives from the Sanskrit svastika, meaning "conducive to well-being". What is the history of the swastika? The oldest-known example of the swastika dates back some 15,000 years. Discovered in Ukraine in 1908, an ivory mammoth tusk carved into the shape of a bird includes an intricate pattern of connected swastikas on its body, which may have been used as a fertility symbol. There is no knowing how the design first came about. It may have simply been an elegant, easy-to-create geometric shape, although its inspiration possibly came from a comet in the night sky. It was also in Eastern Europe that single swastikas were carved by the Vinca culture during the Neolithic period, some 7,000 years ago, before they became widespread from the Bronze Age. The swastika symbolised the Sun to the Illyrians; became a common sight on Mesopotamian coins; appeared on vases and clothing in Greece; formed mosaic motifs in Rome, and stands in as a stylised cross in Celtic design. There are 27 swastikas on the Iron Age Battersea Shield, found in London in 1857, but the symbol had been in Britain long before that as the so-called Swastika Stone on Ilkley Moor, Yorkshire, from c2,000 BC, shows. This carving resembles the swastika’s shape, although with more curved arms and added spots. The swastika, often known as a gammadion or fylflot, continued to be used throughout Europe, occasionally being subsumed into religious iconography. Early Christian art depicts the hooked cross to represent Christ's victory over death, while a left-facing version of the swastika showed up in reference to the Norse god Thor's hammer. Still a popular symbol in medieval times, the swastika can be seen today on surviving church decorations, coats of arms and on textile fragments from the 12th century thought to be from a dress owned by a Slav princess. The monastery school a young Adolf Hitler attended, Lambach Abbey in Austria, had swastikas carved on the stone and woodwork. Yet the influence of the swastika reached much further than can be explained by the migration of peoples over the centuries. It has appeared in several cultures across northern Africa, including as window decorations in churches in modern-day Ethiopia, while also showing up in the Mayan, Aztec and Kuna civilisations of South and Central America. A number of Native American and First Nation tribes of North America, such as the Navajo, Hopi and Passamaquoddy, also adopted the symbol, which they called ‘whirling logs’. Undoubtedly the most enduring relationship with the swastika began in Asia, especially in India, among followers of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, for whom it has served as a holy symbol for millennia. To Jains, the swastika represents one of the 24 Tirthankara, or saviours, while Buddhists regard the symbol as the footprints of the Buddha. For Hindus, the right-hand svastika – a term that emerged c500 BC – is a sign of surya (the Sun) and auspiciousness, so is used to mark entrances, offerings, ceremonies, festivals and each year's account books. The left-hand version, the sauvastika, is symbolic of the night and the goddess Kali. The swastika remains as spiritually significant today, in the face of the stigma towards the symbol in the West brought on by the Nazis. How did the swastika become a Nazi symbol? Heinrich Schliemann's discovery of Troy in the 1870s set in motion the events that transformed the swastika, a symbol of fortune and hope for thousands of years, into a hated and feared sign of fascism. He concluded it to be a "significant religious symbol of our remote ancestors" when he unearthed 1,800 examples, but his colleague, Emile-Louis Burnouf, thought differently. Knowing the symbol appeared in India, Burnouf studied a sacred Hindu text called the Rigveda and claimed to have found a connection between the swastika and an enigmatic ancient people, the Aryans. Supposedly, this 'master race' of white-skinned warriors constituted the peak of human civilisation, conquering lands such as India and bringing the swastika with them. The word Aryan itself derived from Sanskrit, like svastika. Pots from the sixth-century had been found in Germany with swastikas on them and scholars noted the similarities between Sanskrit and German as further proof that the Aryans had come from Germany. But the whole notion of this 'pure' race, as well as being deeply racist, was based on a misunderstanding. The Sanskrit word for Aryan (ārya) actually meant "honourable, respectable or noble" and referred to a social or linguistic distinction, not a separate ethnic group. But the theory of the Aryans’ existence grew in popularity from the mid-19th century. The unification of Germany in 1871, the same year Schliemann started work at Troy, led to a swell of uninhibited nationalism in the country and the idea that Germans descended from Aryans. To them, the discovery at Troy of their symbol, the swastika, proved they had been a dominant race. So while the swastika existed as a benign good-luck charm across Europe and North America, it simultaneously became an icon for German nationalists and anti-Semitic groups. What is the swastika a symbol of today? In the aftermath of World War II, publicly displaying the swastika was banned in Germany, where it remains illegal. Yet while reviled in the Western world, it continues to be a potent symbol with far-right and white-supremacist groups. In the US, where its use is permitted, incidents involving swastika flags and graffiti have increased in recent years, most infamously when neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. But the swastika also remains a feature of worship for Hindus, Buddhists and Jains. It can be seen seemingly everywhere in parts of the Indian subcontinent – from temple entrances to the front of taxis – and plays an important role in ceremonies and festivals. During Diwali – the Hindu festival of lights – the swastika is drawn with coloured sand, or rangoli, and depicted with lanterns to celebrate the victory of light over darkness and good over evil. In 2007, when German politicians attempted to introduce a swastika ban across the European Union, Hindus vehemently opposed the measure on religious grounds. Such disparate attitudes towards the swastika raises the question of whether the symbol – which for so long has been a force for good – can be reclaimed from its association with Hitler and the neo-Nazis who still display it. Would reclaiming the symbol mark the final defeat of the Third Reich and the hatred it advocated? Or is that impossible? The 20th-century corruption of the swastika came to represent so much of the horrors of Nazism that it should never be forgotten. The answer, although not a neat one, may be that there will always be two utterly conflicting interpretations of the swastika, both of which are part of our history, present and future: one representing the worst of humanity and the other symbolising the best.
Jack Weatherford explains how the Mongol leader became the emperor of China – and dominated the sea in the process
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
“Like ancient Greece, India is one of the seedbeds of civilisation” | William Dalrymple on putting India back at the centre of global history
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
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 years. Each of my previous four or five books was a micro-history of a couple of years in a single Indian city. This is a very different book, stretching from 250 BC to AD 1200, over a whole continent. It looks at the way that Indian ideas spread: first, with Buddhism going up through Tibet and central Asia to China, and then Hinduism going to south-east Asia. Notably, the largest Hindu temple in the world is not in India but in Cambodia – Angkor Wat, a Vishnu temple built in the 12th century. When I was halfway through my work on this book, the Berenike Buddha was discovered on Egypt’s Red Sea coast. This extraordinary statue, sculpted around the second century AD, was discovered at an ancient port where Indian traders were landing, highlighting the reach of Indian influence. Today, everyone’s waking up to the fact that India was, for most of history, the richest country in the world. Turning to mathematical numerals and the concept of zero, these came out of India, first to the Arab world, then passed on from there to Europe via the Italian mathematician Fibonacci in the early 13th century. We know these figures today as Arab numerals because we got them from the Arabs, but the Arabs got them from the Indians. Read more | Digital revolution: the evolution of Hindu-Arabic numerals My book makes the point that India is like ancient Greece, in that it’s one of the seedbeds of civilisation – but it has been totally eradicated from our consciousness and our education systems. This is surely a lingering legacy of colonialism and, more specifically, Victorian Indology, which undermined, misrepresented and devalued Indian history, culture, science and knowledge from the period when Thomas Babington Macaulay confidently proclaimed that “a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia”. If India were acknowledged to already have been a powerful, cosmopolitan and profoundly sophisticated civilisation, then what justification would there be for Victorian Britain’s civilising mission? How would you set out to bring civilisation to a part of the world that you recognised has been supremely civilised for thousands of years and which indeed was spreading its influence all over Asia long before the coming of Christianity? What is the ‘Golden Road’ of your book’s title? It’s an idea that is deliberately pitched in contrast with the concept of the Silk Road. My book argues that almost all intercontinental activity and trade during this period occurred by sea, with much less over land. This was primarily because of the hostile land borders separating the Roman world from Persia. One of the fortunate aspects of geography for India was the monsoon winds. These are predictable and regular, reversing directions every six months: they blow cold from the Tibetan Plateau in winter and warm from the south-west in summer. Once the monsoon winds were understood, sailors could travel efficiently from regions such as Kerala, Gujarat and the coast of Sindh to the Red Sea coast of Egypt or the Persian Gulf. Similarly, it was easy to sail across the Bay of Bengal to Thailand, Laos, the Mekong Delta, Cambodia and beyond to China. The ‘Golden Road’ refers to a trade route, mentioned by Strabo and Pliny the Elder around the time of the early Roman empire, that exported luxuries from southern India. Pliny disapproved of the expensive luxuries flowing into Rome at great cost, remarking that India was “the sink of the world’s precious metals”. This lucrative trade route brought significant amounts of Roman gold to India in the early centuries AD. Conversely, my colleague at All Souls College in Oxford, Andrew Wilson, who specialises in the history of the Roman economy, has estimated that possibly as much as one-third of the entire Roman military budget was powered by the customs take on the Red Sea ports. However, events such as the Justinianic Plague [from around AD 541] and raids by nomads such as the Blemmyes on southern Egypt led to the decline of this trade by the seventh century. This had consequences including curbing the arrival of garnets – which were popular in places like the Merovingian kingdoms and Anglo-Saxon England, where they were found at Sutton Hoo – from Rajasthan and Sri Lanka, signalling the end of this trade. You introduce the notion of an ‘Indosphere’. How did ancient India influence the lands and cultures beyond its territory? In India, the decline of its trade with Rome led to a crisis in gold supply. Although India had gold reserves, they hadn’t been fully discovered in the early centuries AD. As a result, Indian traders set off to Suvarnabhumi [a general term for south-east Asia], the ‘Lands of Gold’. This shift led to civilisational transformation in the region. Before that time, south-east Asia had no writing system. Suddenly, everyone there started using the Brahmi script, particularly the Tamil forms. Hinduism and Buddhism took root and produced even more dramatic monuments in that region than in India. The Khmer empire, with its million-strong urban population centred around Angkor Wat, produced the world’s largest Hindu temple. The most sophisticated Buddhist monument was built at in Java. Hindu forms of kingship and literature spread through out the region, and reminders of this influence endure to this day. The name of Thailand’s old capital, Ayutthaya, came from Rama’s kingdom in the Hindu epic Ramayana, for example. And Indonesia’s national airline is named Garuda, after Vishnu’s mount. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/11/marble-Buddha-body-found-in-2018-and-head-in-2022-d0b59ec-e1731335783128.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="The marble Berenike Buddha, carved around the second century and unearthed in Egypt, is the first Buddha statue found west of Afghanistan (Photo by E Sidebotham and S Poplawski)" title="The marble Berenike Buddha, carved around the second century and unearthed in Egypt, is the first Buddha statue found west of Afghanistan (Photo by E Sidebotham and S Poplawski)" /> The mythical battle of Kurukshetra, fought just north of Delhi, is depicted at Angkor Wat, along with images of Krishna cavorting with consorts and devotees in Mathura [that god’s traditional birthplace]. These ideas, originating from specific areas of India, were sculpted on a vast scale thousands of miles away. This was a fascinating moment in history, when south-east Asia became an extension of the Indian holy land. Even more dramatically, Indian ideas conquered China. In the 660s AD, Wu Zetian took power, becoming the only ‘female emperor’ in Chinese history. This was viewed as a dark period by the patriarchal Confucians. To bolster her power, Empress Wu imported Indian monks who proclaimed her to be the Bodhisattva Maitreya – the long-foretold future Buddha – giving her a divine right to rule, and Buddhism, an Indian faith, became the state religion of China for a time. That did not last, but it brought a massive wave of Indian ideas: literature, cosmology, mathematics and more. Though Chinese civilisation eventually rolled back some of these influences, Buddhism remained a significant presence. To this day, China has more Buddhists than any other country. Who are some of the other figures that you highlight? There’s a motley crew of murderous empresses, Buddhist wizards and tantric magicians. One of the first figures in the book is Saint Thomas – an unexpected presence. According to legend, he travelled the spice route between Berenike and Muziris [on India’s Malabar Coast], arriving in India as part of the Jewish merchant diaspora. He converted Brahmins (the priestly caste), built seven churches and was reputedly martyred in Mylapore [now part of Chennai] in AD 72. Though the legend is recorded in the Acts of Thomas, written around the turn of the third century, early conversion to Christianity in Kerala is documented from the second century, with Indian Christians seeking bishops, patriarchs and relics from Alexandria. One of my favourite figures is Vajrabodhi, a tantric wizard from the Pallava dynasty of Tamil south India – akin to a Buddhist Merlin. In the early eighth century, during a period when Buddhism was competing with Hinduism, Vajrabodhi – with his magical powers and Vajra staff, like a kind of magic wand – was sent on a diplomatic mission to Tang China. Detailed hagiographies describe his journey to Sri Lanka, a centre of tantric Buddhism, and his possible role in the construction of Borobudur, a monumental Buddhist site designed as a spiritual ‘power generator’ reflecting the void and nothingness central to tantric Buddhism. Another notable individual is the wandering Buddhist monk Xuanzang. He realised that the texts in his monasteries were corrupted and missing advanced tantric and Mahayana Buddhist scriptures, which were unavailable in China. Despite a travel ban imposed by Tang authorities, Xuanzang secretly went to India. There he spent 10 years at Nalanda, a renowned monastery equivalent to the Library of Alexandria with an exceptional educational institution, where he copied many manuscripts. Though some were lost on his return journey in a mishap while crossing the Indus river, he brought back enough to fill the Great Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi’an, which still stands today. Xuanzang’s generation faced prejudice against Indian learning, which was dismissed as ‘barbarian’ by the Confucian and Taoist elite. Buddhism in China peaked under Empress Wu, who was a spiritual follower of Xuanzang. She entered the imperial harem as the fifth concubine at the age of about 15, around the time Xuanzang returned from India, and the two became allies. Recognising her influence, Xuanzang regarded Wu as a key figure in advancing the Buddhist cause. Thus there was a growing awareness in China of India’s sophistication, driven largely by Buddhists who comprised one of several competing factions at court. How was ancient India’s cultural influence spread? Indian nationalism often promotes the idea of a ‘Greater India’, a concept popular with the current regime. This narrative suggests that the spread of Indian epics and gods throughout south-east Asia was the result of the actions of imperial warriors – an idea that gained traction in the 1930s with the Greater India Society. However, this notion seems unfounded. The spread of Indian culture was more likely driven by merchants and the appeal of Indian ideas, in much the same way as Hellenistic ideas spread to ancient Rome. Indian concepts in mathematics; architectural manuals such as the Shilpa Shastras; and jyotisa – a Sanskrit word encompassing both astronomy and astrology – spread widely. This happened not through conquest but via trade and the movements of Brahmins, who, despite legal restrictions, travelled across the Bay of Bengal. They brought with them ideas of Indian kingship and governance, influencing regions such as the Mekong Delta, Thailand and the Malay Peninsula. You’ve mentioned colonialism already, but are there any other reasons why ancient India’s impact on the history of human civilisation has been overlooked? I do think that the number one reason is colonialism. Britain went to India, conquered it and dismissed it as a barbaric civilisation. And the attitude I mentioned earlier – reflected in Macaulay’s disregard for India’s cultural sophistication – lingered. But in addition, history itself has been split up. The spread of Buddhism, Sanskrit and Arab numerals are treated as separate stories by different academics and museums. China, on the other hand, has done a better job of advancing its version of history, especially the romantic idea of the Silk Road. Read more | The chaotic conquest of India In my view, the Silk Road as an east–west phenomenon didn’t really exist until the Mongols punched an enormous hole through Eurasia, connecting the Mediterranean to the sea off China. This then enabled the likes of Marco Polo to travel with a single passport. Before that, trade was more of a relay, with goods gradually moving from one merchant to the next, sometimes taking 100 years to reach places such as Rome or Antioch from China. The idea of a single, ancient road connecting east and west simply wasn’t based in fact. India, as shown by a new map of the distribution of Roman coin hoards just published by Professor Wilson, was the primary long-distance trading partner of the Roman empire. Rome had only an extremely vague under standing of the location of China. This changed in the 13th century when the Mongols created a hostile border with India, effectively snapping the Golden Road. Then, as Persian intellectuals fled the Mongols and settled in Delhi from around the 13th century onwards, the cultural landscape of India shifted from a Sanskrit-speaking world to a Persianate one. India is on track to become a 21st-century superpower. Is this region predisposed to be a geopolitical and cultural powerhouse? Yes. It’s a great civilisation, with several unique traits. China was largely a single political unit throughout most of its history, though there were periods like the Warring States [c475–221 BC] when it fragmented. India, by contrast, experienced brief moments of unity under the Guptas, Mauryas and Mughals, but mostly remained a cultural unit divided into many small political fragments. When Xuanzang arrived in India, he described it as a region of 70 states bounded by the ocean and the Himalayas. India doesn’t share China’s history of centralisation but has always had a strong sense of itself as a civilisation, a geographical unit and a spiritual centre, as evident in its earliest literature. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/11/J47ND1web-7dbd217-e1731335656408.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A painting of the monk Xuanzang, who went to India to copy Buddhist texts. Such travellers returning to medieval China increased awareness of India’s sophistication (Photo by The History Collection/Alamy Stock Photo)" title="A painting of the monk Xuanzang, who went to India to copy Buddhist texts. Such travellers returning to medieval China increased awareness of India’s sophistication (Photo by The History Collection/Alamy Stock Photo)" /> India, like Greece, has always been one of the places where humanity’s fundamental questions have been addressed: what are we doing here? Why are we here? How should we live? How do we count? How do we pray? What’s the point of life? Over half of the world’s population today lives in countries that were influenced by Indian religion and philosophy, including China, Japan, Korea, Mongolia and Siberia. Despite this, the European perspective on civilisation overwhelmingly focuses on ancient Greece, overlooking India’s contributions. As far as we do know about India, we tend to know about the Mughals or the British in India. We don’t learn in our schools about the civilisations of ancient India. This book aims to correct that omission, placing India back at the centre of global history. India has almost always been one of the world’s richest areas, alternating with China as the wealthiest. By the end of this century, India is expected to be one of the three largest economies, alongside the US and China. And it’s time we learned this stuff. We need to know this stuff. It’s a whole chapter of high civilisation that colonialism removed from the curriculum – and it’s time to put it back. William Dalrymple is a historian, broadcaster, writer and cultural critic. He is currently a visiting fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. He is the author of The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World (Bloomsbury, 2024) This article was first published in the November 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine