HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: The official website for BBC History Magazine
date: 2025-12-08T12:11:11.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: The US 'voodoo' scare: why 19th-century racists spread fake news about Haiti
items: Let’s think before we flush, with Dr Christopher Harding
items: Spectral beasts and hounds of hell: a spooky history of Britain's ghost dogs
items: Who should decide the stories museums tell?
items: Michael Wood on China's immense suffering in the Second World War
items: “A tidal wave of digital material will overwhelm recordkeeping institutions”: the future of history
items: This ancient goddess commanded a Wonder of the World – but why did she have thirty breasts?
items: Gray Barker: UFO conspiracy theorist
items: Why we should be better about talking about death, with Dr Helen Gittos
items: Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "A UK museum that tells the long, rich history of migration is long overdue"

The US 'voodoo' scare: why 19th-century racists spread fake news about Haiti
type: item
date: 2025-12-08T09:00:17.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical events
subject: Slavery
description: From sexual orgies to Satan incarnated as a snake, lurid depictions of ‘voodoo’ in North America long titillated and shocked readers. As David G Cox explains, they were also wielded as justifications for racist oppression during the social and political upheavals of the 19th-century US
encoded: On 2 January 1893, the black American abolitionist and reformer Frederick Douglass delivered a lecture on Haiti to an audience in Chicago. It was widely alleged, he reflected, that the Caribbean republic was riddled with “voodooism, fetishism, serpent worship and cannibalism”, and that “little children are fatted for slaughter and offered as sacrifices to their voodoo deities”. Such claims, Douglass declared, were false. He told his listeners that, while serving as US minister (effectively, ambassador) to Haiti between 1889 and 1891, he found no evidence of ritual sacrifice, despite diligent investigation. By the time Douglass spoke in Chicago, the idea of Haitian ‘voodoo’ as a murderous cult was lodged in the American public consciousness. As he noted, the features of this myth would have been familiar to many. According to scores of white writers at the turn of the 20th century, ‘voodoo’ was an imported African religion devoted to the worship of Satan incarnated as a snake. ‘Voodoo’ ceremonies, it was claimed, consisted of frenzied dances, sexual orgies and the ritual sacrifice of animals or humans followed by the consumption of their bodies or blood. The priests and priestesses of this imaginary faith were said to be the real rulers of Haiti, holding all its citizens – from presidents to peasants – in the grip of terror. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/GettyImages-556636225webready-f31fffd-e1765183494712.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A painting of a black man dressed in a suit with a small bow tie. He has short hair and a thick moustache" title="Ebenezer Bassett denounced claims that the black-led Caribbean nation was a hotbed of ‘voodoo’ cannibalism and human sacrifice (Image by Getty Images)" /> In 1901, claims about Haitian ‘voodoo’ coalesced in a widely reprinted newspaper report on the “demoniacal orgies” of this purported “devil’s cult”. Supposedly reproducing the findings of the famous American geologist …

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Let’s think before we flush, with Dr Christopher Harding
type: item
date: 2025-11-19T09:00:21.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
description: We can take lessons from Edo Japan about how we deal with our waste, Dr Christopher Harding tells Dr David Musgrove
encoded: There is a campsite at the foot of the South Downs which has tremendous toilets. In a corner of the field, you’ll find a gaggle of handsome timber cubicles, boasting rustic carpentry and impeccable cleanliness. Each cubicle has a raised box inside, with a hole in the middle framed by a comfortable wooden seat. Obviously that’s where you do your business. Then you throw in a handful or two of sawdust from a bucket to the side, and that’s the job done – no flushing involved (obviously you wash your hands, but there are taps outside for that). It’s a relaxingly rural experience that would encourage anyone to dwell on the merits of water-free composting toilets, for that is what they are. You can even educate yourself on what happens to the waste you and your fellow campers are producing because there is an informative handout explaining how it’s turned into a rich compost rather than being washed away to a sewage treatment works. It’s the sort of thing that the residents of Edo period Japan would have been at ease with. I spoke to Dr Christopher Harding, a scholar of Japanese history at the University of Edinburgh, and his Life Lesson from History is that we could learn a thing or two from the way that the Japanese historically dealt with their waste. Peace, prosperity and the problem of poo The Edo period runs from the early 1600s to the middle of the 19th century, an era of peace overseen by the Tokugawa shogunate based in Edo, now Tokyo. With peace came prosperity, and Edo grew to be the largest city in the world at the start of the 18th century. That urban explosion also meant an explosion of excrement, which had to be attended to. You might imagine that the Edo solution was to build sewers and flush it away, particularly as the Japanese at the time were big innovators in municipal water management. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-640505355-2a09790.jpg" width="2654" height="2114" alt="A photograph showing a t…

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Spectral beasts and hounds of hell: a spooky history of Britain's ghost dogs
type: item
date: 2025-11-16T09:00:41.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
description: From infernal black dogs attacking churches to ravening, red-eyed brutes on remote roads, Britain has long been haunted by fearsome canine phantoms. Karen R Jones explores what these stories can tell us about societies past
encoded: On the morning of 4 August 1577, the good Christian folk of Bungay assembled in St Mary’s Church for their regular Sunday service. But more sinister forces were also gathering in the Suffolk town. Dark clouds massed above, then “there fell from heaven an exceeding great and terrible tempest… not simply of raine but also of lightening and thunder”. This storm was only the prelude to a “straunge and terrible Wunder” described by Abraham Fleming in a pamphlet published soon after the event. For the church was plunged into darkness and a “black dog, or the divel in such a likenesse” burst in. It wrung the necks of two worshippers then “passing by an other man of the congregation… gave him such a gripe on the back, that therewith all he was presently drawen togither and shrunk up, as it were a peece of lether scorched in a hot fire”. The story of the Black Dog of Bungay is extraordinary, but far from unique in the region – East Anglia is the primary hunting ground of the spectral beast named Black Shuck – and, indeed, across the country. Britain is, famously, a nation of animal lovers, with 36 per cent of households having at least one dog. The UK canine consumer market is worth around £10bn a year, while millions of us tune in to watch dog-centric television programmes. These animals have become our trusted aides and loyal companions since domesticated dogs arrived on this island with the first human migrants during the Stone Age. It’s not surprising, then, that Britain’s population of paranormal pups is more diverse and widespread than anywhere else in the world, according to Mark Norman, a folklorist specialising in black dog apparitions. Such creatures reputedly stalk villages and lonely roads from Aberdeen to Penzance, and the British landscape echoes with their chilling howls. Hellhound is round the corner Dogs and humans have lived and travelled together in Britain since the Mesolithic age. Archaeological surveys place dogs at the UK’s oldest excavated house – at …

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Who should decide the stories museums tell?
type: item
date: 2025-11-14T09:00:43.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Debate
description: Increasingly, museums are being challenged on how they select, display and interpret their collections. Six historians explain how these institutions can adapt to suit 21st-century audiences
encoded: “If museums truly want to be inclusive, they should tell the full life history of every object in their collection” – Justin M Jacobs It has become fashionable today for critics of major western museums to call for a ‘reckoning’ or ‘coming to terms’ with the imperialist and racist histories of some institutions. This approach is rooted in the idea that, every time a museum chooses to tell a particular story, this story inevitably reflects the unconscious biases of the curators who tell it. There’s much to recommend this approach – but there’s also a problem. Too often, institutions simply replace the bygone voices of long-dead white men with the present-day voices of people descended from the communities or nations that originally produced the artefact on display. But is this really a more inclusive approach? Scholars who study the history of artefacts in museums are acutely aware that nearly every object on display has served different functions and had a different symbolic value down the years. In addition, many diverse peoples have owned or interacted with these objects. It follows that choosing to tell only a single story closely associated with present-day ideological agendas does a great disservice to the museum-going public. Take the Parthenon (or Elgin) Marbles, for instance. Over the course of the past 2,000 years, they have played an integral role in embodying the political power and cultural beliefs of the ancient Athenians, Romans, Christians, Muslims, British and modern Greeks. Yet according to current intellectual fashions and political sympathies, only one of these stories is deemed legitimate: that promoted by the modern Greeks. This, of course, is merely a reflection of the unconscious bias of our own day and age, which consistently promotes the alleged authenticity of nation states that didn’t even exist prior to the modern era. This is the very antithesis of an inclusive approach. If museums truly want to be inclusive, they should tell the full li…

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Michael Wood on China's immense suffering in the Second World War
type: item
date: 2025-10-29T09:00:55.000Z
creator: Michael Wood
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Historical events
description: "China suffered horrendous losses, second only to the Soviet Union", writes Michael Wood
encoded: The Second World War still plays a massive role in our national mythology in Britain. But if I were to ask you: “Who was the fourth ally?” I imagine that most readers would have to think twice. The answer is China. China fought the entire war – and longer – and suffered horrendous losses, second only to the Soviet Union. Frank Capra’s Why We Fight documentaries, which included a 1944 film called The Battle of China, saw the war with Japan as part of “the struggle of freedom against slavery, civilisation against barbarism”. Films in the series close with the hope that a victory for the democracies – Republican China in the 1930s, don’t forget, had been a fledgling democracy – will bring about “the utter defeat of the war machines of Germany and Japan”. Today, history is a big deal in China. Since 1949, the Chinese view of modern history has centred on the ‘century of humiliation’ following the First Opium War (1839–42), when foreign powers carved up the country. But more recently, the Second World War has assumed a powerful new role in Chinese nationalism. There’s a museum to the war in Beijing, the Museum of the War of Chinese People’s Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and a harrowing memorial to the 1937–38 Nanjing Massacre. At the China Modern History Museum in Nanjing, you can dress up in nationalist Kuomintang or communist uniforms and have your photo taken in wartime dioramas. The Chinese view of the conflict has shifted towards showing the country as a heroic participant in a war that was moral and just. The Chinese had been engaged in hostilities with Japan since 1931, when the Japanese invaded Manchuria. The conflict proper lasted from July 1937 until 2 September 1945 – the 80th anniversary of the conflict’s end is being marked this year. So the Second World War effectively started earlier, and lasted longer, here than in Europe. And without China, the course of the wider war might have been very different. Read more | Michael Wood on amazing insights …

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“A tidal wave of digital material will overwhelm recordkeeping institutions”: the future of history
type: item
date: 2025-10-27T15:00:09.000Z
subject: 21st Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Debate
description: If you’ve ever posted a comment on social media, you’ve created a potential source for future historians. But what problems does this mass of new material pose? Matt Elton asked historians Jane Winters and John Wills about how recent archives differ from those of the past – and how experts might make sense of them
encoded: Matt Elton: How do the kinds of records created now and in the recent past differ from those left in previous centuries? Jane Winters: Records and sources now come in a whole range of formats. In some cases, they are very familiar analogue sources that have become digital, whereas in others they are in a completely new format. Newspapers offer a great example of how this has changed: we used to read them only in physical form. Then those physical newspapers were digitised, keeping essentially the same structure. We now have both physical and digital newspapers, which differ in both form and content. An issue of The Guardian published in print today will not contain the same information as the online version: there will also be multimedia material and lots of online comments and conversations, whereas in the past you would have had only letters to the editor, for instance. And to take the example of people’s reflective writing, that’s a type of source that has also moved into new formats. A diary is not exactly the same as a blog entry or a post on social media, for instance. John Wills: One example that offers an interesting way of thinking about some of these issues is the ‘Barbenheimer’ phenomenon – the point in 2023 when the movies Barbie and Oppenheimer were released at the same time. That’s a very recent instance of the kind of cultural moment that’s really interesting to research – but doing so is not easy, because you’re dealing not just with the films themselves but also the digital content produced by the films’ fandoms, the actors’ response to that content, and the wider public responses to those two movies, in a way that we’ve never been able to do before. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/2RKFGYE-8d3d650.jpg" width="4475" height="2983" alt="A movie poster shows characters from the films Oppenheimer and Barbie, creating a layered montage to promote "Barbenheimer". That word is written in pink across the bottom" t…

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This ancient goddess commanded a Wonder of the World – but why did she have thirty breasts?
type: item
date: 2025-10-24T12:00:22.000Z
creator: Isabel King
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Gods
description: The strange and powerful symbol at the heart of one of history’s greatest temples reveals the importance of the goddess Artemis in ruling fertility, childbirth and nature
encoded: When we think of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Great Pyramid of Giza or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon may be the first examples that come to mind. However, the oldest-known versions of the list start with a landmark that is often forgotten: the Temple of Artemis. Located in the ancient city of Ephesus (near modern-day Selçuk, Turkey), this remarkable place of worship was renowned for its size and scale, standing at least 20 metres tall and boasting an enormous tile-covered roof supported by 127 marble columns. With a floor plan of some 6,000 square metres, the temple was also nearly three times as large as the famous Parthenon in Athens. But some of the most startling archaeological evidence from Ephesus isn’t concerned with the dimensions of the temple, nor its complicated history of destruction and rebuilding. Instead, much attention has been directed towards a collection of statues depicting the temple’s patron deity, Artemis. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/BAL957668-36357fc.jpg" width="7715" height="4533" alt="A large temple with a triangular roof and many columns holding it up. It sits on top of a large flight of stairs. The roof has a mural of the goddess sitting in the middle and surrounded by crowds of people and two golden horses" title="A 20th-century depiction of the Temple of Artemis, dedicated to the goddess Artemis (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> Rather than portraying the goddess as a conventional Greek beauty, the sculptures display Artemis in an altogether different guise. And, according to classicist and broadcaster Bettany Hughes, these statues bear a particularly striking physical characteristic. Read more | On the steps of a sacred temple, Cleopatra's feud with her sister came to a blood-soaked end “[This] is not the Artemis that you probably have in your heads… this image of a beautiful young woman in a tiny Greek chiton, artfully pulling a bow and arrow,” reveals Hughes on an episode…

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Gray Barker: UFO conspiracy theorist
type: item
date: 2025-10-05T08:00:36.000Z
creator: David Clarke
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Amazing lives
subject: Historical people
description: Tales of alien sightings and government cover-ups have captured American imaginations for decades – but few with such global appeal as the Men in Black. David Clarke introduces the ufologist who popularised these shadowy space-age legends
encoded: One night in 1953, three mysterious men sporting black suits reportedly arrived uninvited at the home of Albert K Bender in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The menacing trio, who reportedly identified themselves as agents of the US government, threatened Bender with prison if he told anyone about a secret he had discovered – information relating to the source of the flying saucer mystery. They scared him so badly that he was physically sick for three days. Bender was no mere disinterested civilian. An obsessive ufologist, he was the founder of the International Flying Saucer Bureau (IFSB), the world’s first civilian UFO investigation club. Shortly after that ominous visit, and on the orders of those ‘secret agents’, he shut down the IFSB. At least one person was both disappointed and intrigued by this development: Gray Barker, only recently recruited as the IFSB’s chief investigator and a contributor to its magazine, Space Review. “He was 6ft 4ins tall, with a gentle southern accent and a sly sense of humour,” recalled his friend John Keel, a fellow investigator of UFOs and monster stories. “And it can truly be said that he knew too much about flying saucers.” It was Barker’s exploration of the ‘men in black’ (latterly abbreviated as MIB) that had a long-lasting and global impact on ufology and wider popular culture. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GreyBakerHRillowebready-cdc7915.jpg" width="2232" height="1488" alt="A photograph shows a man in a dark shirt, sitting at a type writer with a black phone next to him. He is smiling widely up at the camera. In the background, there are the opening pages of a book called BOOK OF SAUCERS" title="Writer Gray Barker shared reports of UFOs in his books and journal The Saucerian Bulletin, but also “launched hoaxes, joined others’ deceptions, and manipulated people’s beliefs”, according to a friend and co-author (Images by TopFoto, collage by Rachel Dickens)" /> Born in West Virginia in 1925…

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Why we should be better about talking about death, with Dr Helen Gittos
type: item
date: 2025-09-05T08:00:56.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Burial
subject: Death
description: For our ancestors, death was part of daily life. We can learn from their open conversations about this taboo topic, says Dr Helen Gittos, and create modern rituals to help us cope
encoded: We don’t know how to talk about death. It’s a modern taboo. Search the topic online and you’ll quickly find people who deal in end-of-life matters arguing that we need more transparent, more honest conversations about an event that is, after all, going to come to us all. Charities like Hospice UK definitely want us to be better about talking about it. It wasn’t always this way. In fact, it’s only really in the 20th century that we’ve actively disassociated ourselves from death. The process has been institutionalised and medicalised. The palliative care physician and author Kathryn Mannix wrote about it in a Guardian article a few years ago. In the 19th century, according to the historian Judith Flanders, discussing Victorian death and mourning on a recent episode of the HistoryExtra podcast, “ it was part of daily life. It wasn’t tucked away neatly in hospitals where you go in and visit for an hour, but you don’t see all the day-to-day stuff, you don’t see people die”. She continues: “Many people go happily through their whole lives without ever seeing a dead person, which is simply not possible in the 19th century. Then, hospitals were very limited in the kind of diseases or illnesses they cared for. They were very specifically for certain things only. If you could afford it, you were looked after at home. Hospitals were a place of last resort for people who were too poor, too desperate, so everybody saw death.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/GettyImages-464472069-ccb7e8d.jpg" width="5204" height="3383" alt="A bracelet with two gold edged picture frames on it. In each, there is a photo of a girl with brown ringlets and wearing a purple dress" title="This Victorian bracelet has a band of woven hair and may have been a piece of mourning jewellery, which was in fashion during that era (Image by Getty Images)" /> Past and present rituals I went to a funeral the other day. It was of a dear friend who had died far too young, …

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Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "A UK museum that tells the long, rich history of migration is long overdue"
type: item
date: 2025-08-28T08:00:15.000Z
creator: Kavita Puri
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Civil rights
subject: Global cities
subject: Historical people
description: Kavita Puri on explorations of the migrant experience
encoded: If you gaze up at the skyline in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, you might spot a new addition. Made from stainless-steel panels and shaped like a rollercoaster, the Tornado sits on top of the city’s newly opened Fenix, a museum that tells the story of human migration. Visitors climb to the distinctive Tornado up a sweeping staircase at the museum’s entrance, along a meandering route that represents the many different journeys people take to reach their destinations. On arriving at the viewing platform, you can take in a panoramic view of the city and its waterways where millions of Europeans once boarded ships in Europe’s largest port, many of them leaving for a new life in the US. Today, Rotterdam is home to more than 170 nationalities. It’s an interesting choice to open a museum to migration at a time when the subject has become so toxic, not least in the Netherlands. Designed by the Chinese firm MAD Architects, the museum displays have exhibits including thousands of suitcases, images of refugees, and a life-sized city bus. Perhaps reasoned discussions about migration can be inspired by art. Read more | "Museums are magical places": Kavita Puri on a new initiative encouraging close encounters with history This is not the first European museum dedicated to migration: they exist in many countries, including Germany, Sweden, Greece, Italy, Poland and France. So it is surprising that the UK does not have a permanent migration museum, only one that has spent years in makeshift venues. After all, millions of people have left Britain over the centuries, not least during the building of its empire, while inward migration – particularly during the postwar years – has shaped our language, culture, cuisine and art. Until recently, you could visit the Migration Museum in its temporary home in Lewisham Shopping Centre, housed in a former H&M store between Foot Locker and TK Maxx. Outside the entrance stood a sculpture entitled Wall, comprising two panels from the Berlin Wall …

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