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Topic Review
The Festival of Diwali: Its Origins and History
Diwali, the Festival of Lights, is one of India's most celebrated festivals, marked by joy, light, and a spirit of togetherness. Originating in ancient India, Diwali has grown beyond its religious roots to become a global celebration symbolizing victory over darkness, ignorance, and evil. While traditionally associated with Hinduism and stories from the Ramayana, Diwali is also celebrated by Sikhs, Jains, and Buddhists, each community attaching its own significance and narratives to the festivities. This article traces the historical evolution of Diwali from its origins in agrarian societies to its current standing as a multicultural and global festival. It examines the religious and cultural stories associated with Diwali, the rituals and customs observed across different communities, and the festival’s role in fostering social cohesion. As Diwali has spread globally, it has taken on new meanings and variations, demonstrating the enduring appeal of this ancient festival in modern times.
  • 4.3K
  • 01 Nov 2024
Topic Review
Ottoman Decline Thesis
The Ottoman decline thesis or Ottoman decline paradigm (Turkish: Osmanlı Gerileme Tezi) is an obsolete historical narrative which once played a dominant role in the study of the history of the Ottoman Empire. According to the decline thesis, following a golden age associated with the reign of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520–1566), the empire gradually entered into a period of all-encompassing stagnation and decline from which it was never able to recover, lasting until the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1923. This thesis was used throughout most of the twentieth century as the basis of both Western and Republican Turkish understanding of Ottoman history. However, by 1978, historians had begun to reexamine the fundamental assumptions of the decline thesis. After the publication of numerous new studies throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, and the reexamination of Ottoman history through the use of previously untapped sources and methodologies, academic historians of the Ottoman Empire achieved a consensus that the entire notion of Ottoman decline was a myth – that in fact, the Ottoman Empire did not stagnate or decline at all, but rather continued to be a vigorous and dynamic state long after the death of Suleiman the Magnificent. The decline thesis has been criticized as "teleological", "regressive", "Orientalist", "simplistic", and "one-dimensional", and described as "a concept which has no place in historical analysis". Scholars have thus "learned better than to discuss [it]." Despite this dramatic paradigm shift among professional historians, the decline thesis continues to maintain a strong presence in popular history, as well as academic history written by scholars who are not specialists on the Ottoman Empire. In some cases this is due to the continued reliance by non-specialists on outdated and debunked works, and in others to certain political interests benefiting from the continued perpetuation of the decline narrative.
  • 4.3K
  • 22 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Time Geography
Time geography or time-space geography is an evolving transdisciplinary perspective on spatial and temporal processes and events such as social interaction, ecological interaction, social and environmental change, and biographies of individuals. Time geography "is not a subject area per se", but rather an integrative ontological framework and visual language in which space and time are basic dimensions of analysis of dynamic processes. Time geography was originally developed by human geographers, but today it is applied in multiple fields related to transportation, regional planning, geography, anthropology, time-use research, ecology, environmental science, and public health. According to Swedish geographer Bo Lenntorp: "It is a basic approach, and every researcher can connect it to theoretical considerations in her or his own way."
  • 3.3K
  • 13 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Epoch (Reference Date)
In the fields of chronology and periodization, an epoch is an instant in time chosen as the origin of a particular era. The "epoch" then serves as a reference point from which time is measured. Time measurement units are counted from the epoch so that the date and time of events can be specified unambiguously. Events taking place before the epoch can be dated by counting negatively from the epoch, though in pragmatic periodization practice, epochs are defined for the past, and another epoch is used to start the next era, therefore serving as the ending of the older preceding era. The whole purpose and criteria of such definitions are to clarify and co-ordinate scholarship about a period, at times, across disciplines. Epochs are generally chosen to be convenient or significant by a consensus of the time scale's initial users, or by authoritarian fiat. The epoch moment or date is usually defined by a specific clear event, condition, or criterion—the epoch event or epoch criterion—from which the period or era or age is usually characterized or described.
  • 3.2K
  • 28 Oct 2022
Topic Review
2010s in Political History
2010s political history refers to significant political and societal historical events of the 2010s, presented as a historical overview in narrative format.
  • 3.2K
  • 04 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Wonders of the World
Various lists of the Wonders of the World have been compiled from antiquity to the present day, to catalogue the world's most spectacular natural wonders and manmade structures. The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World is the first known list of the most remarkable creations of classical antiquity; it was based on guidebooks popular among Ancient Greece sightseers and only includes works located around the Mediterranean rim and in Mesopotamia. The number seven was chosen because the Greeks believed it represented perfection and plenty, and because it was the number of the five planets known anciently, plus the sun and moon. Many similar lists have been made.
  • 2.8K
  • 23 Nov 2022
Topic Review
New Chronology (Rohl)
New Chronology is an alternative chronology of the ancient Near East developed by English Egyptologist David Rohl and other researchers beginning with A Test of Time: The Bible - from Myth to History in 1995. It contradicts mainstream Egyptology by proposing a major revision of the established Egyptian chronology, in particular by re-dating Egyptian kings of the Nineteenth through Twenty-fifth Dynasties, bringing forward conventional dating by up to 350 years. Rohl asserts that the New Chronology allows him to identify some of the characters in the Hebrew Bible with people whose names appear in archaeological finds. The New Chronology, one of several proposed radical revisions of the conventional chronology, has not been accepted in academic Egyptology, where the conventional chronology or small variations of it remain standard. Amélie Kuhrt, head of Ancient Near Eastern History at University College London, in one of the standard reference works of the discipline, notes: "Many scholars feel sympathetic to the critique of weaknesses in the existing chronological framework [...], but most archaeologists and ancient historians are not at present convinced that the radical redatings proposed stand up to close examination." Rohl's most vocal critic has been Kenneth Kitchen, one of the leading experts on biblical history and the author of the standard work on the conventional chronology of the Third Intermediate Period of Egypt, the period most directly affected by the New Chronology's redating of the Nineteenth to Twenty-fifth Dynasties.
  • 2.7K
  • 20 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Short Chronology
The short chronology is one of the chronologies of the Near Eastern Bronze and Early Iron Age, which fixes the reign of Hammurabi to 1728–1686 BC and the sack of Babylon to 1531 BC. The absolute 2nd millennium BC dates resulting from these reference points have very little academic support, and have essentially been disproved by recent dendrochronology research. The middle chronology (reign of Hammurabi 1792–1750 BC) is more commonly accepted in academic literature. For much of the period in question, middle chronology dates can be calculated by adding 64 years to the corresponding short chronology date (e.g. 1728 BC in short chronology corresponds to 1792 in middle chronology). After the so-called "dark age" between the fall of Babylon and the rise of the Kassite dynasty in Babylonia, absolute dating becomes less uncertain. While exact dates are still not agreed upon, the 64-year middle/short chronology gap ceases from the beginning of the Third Babylon Dynasty onward.
  • 2.7K
  • 18 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Law of Social Cycle
The law of social cycle is a social cycle theory developed by Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar. It is based on the theory of human historical motivity based on "the ancient spiritual ideas of the Vedas". The theory was developed in the 1950s and expanded by Ravi Batra since the 1970s, Johan Galtung and Sohail Inayatullah since the 1990s and others.
  • 2.5K
  • 14 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Durga Puja
Durga Puja, one of the most celebrated and grand festivals of India, particularly in West Bengal, has a deep historical, cultural, and spiritual significance. Originating as a form of Shakti worship in the Indian subcontinent, Durga Puja has evolved over millennia. This festival honors Goddess Durga, the embodiment of feminine power, who symbolizes the victory of good over evil. However, the practice and celebration of Durga Puja have faced numerous challenges over the centuries, especially during periods of foreign invasions and the rise of Islam and Christianity in India. Despite these obstacles, Durga Puja not only survived but flourished by adapting to the social, political, and religious changes of the time. This article traces the history of Durga Puja from its ancient roots, examines how it weathered foreign invasions, and explores how it continues to thrive in the modern world.
  • 2.5K
  • 31 Oct 2024
Topic Review
House of La Fayette
The House of La Fayette was a French family of Nobles of the Sword, from the province of Auvergne, established during the Middle-Age by the lords of the fief of La Fayette held by the senior branch of the Motier family.
  • 2.5K
  • 14 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Dutch Expedition to Southern Chile (1643)
The following article analyzes how the Dutch expedition to southern Chile during the 17th century (1642–1643) was narrated, in Dutch and in its translations into German, English, and Spanish, considering the interests of empires and the discursive differences that translational variations reveal. This transdisciplinary analysis, combining historiography, translation studies, and historical geography, consists of a critical reading of the original narration and a comparative reading of the aforementioned translations, and within them ethnographic representations made about the Mapuche-Huilliche people and the city of Valdivia and changes introduced by different translations are identified.
  • 2.3K
  • 04 Jan 2024
Topic Review
2019 in Politics and Government
Events pertaining to world affairs in 2019, national politics, public policy, government, world economics, and international business, that took place in various nations, regions, organizations, around the world in 2019.
  • 2.1K
  • 08 Nov 2022
Biography
Shivaji Shahaji Bhonsale
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, a name etched in the annals of Indian history, stands as a symbol of courage, resilience, and unwavering devotion to the principles of justice and self-rule. Born in the turbulent 17th century, he carved out an independent Maratha kingdom, challenging the might of the Mughal Empire and laying the foundation for a powerful regional force. His life, filled with daring
  • 2.1K
  • 20 Feb 2025
Topic Review
The Provocation Trigger of Adultery
Excuse for the husband killing his wife’s lover in the form of the partial defence of provocation was set following the Mawgridge’s case in 1707. This meant the husband could be found guilty of manslaughter rather than murder. In 1810, another precedent was set, where the adulterous wife's killing could follow a sentence of manslaughter rather than murder. This entry investigates the shaping of adultery as a defence to murder under the partial defence of provocation.
  • 1.9K
  • 27 Oct 2023
Topic Review
Heraldic Visitation
Heraldic visitations were tours of inspection undertaken by Kings of Arms (and more often by junior officers of arms (or Heralds) as deputies) throughout England , Wales and Ireland. Their purpose was to regulate and register the coats of arms of nobility and gentry and boroughs, and to record pedigrees. They took place from 1530 to 1688, and their records (akin to an upper class census) provide important source material for historians and genealogists.
  • 1.9K
  • 25 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Timeline of Women's Suffrage in California
This timeline provides an overview of the political movement for women's suffrage in California. Women's suffrage became legal with the passage of Proposition 4 in 1911 yet not all women were enfranchised as a result of this legislation.
  • 1.9K
  • 17 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Global Intellectual History
Global intellectual history is the history of thought in the world across the span of human history, often understood from the invention of writing to the present. The discipline is part of the field of intellectual history, also known as history of ideas, and can also be termed global history of ideas. In recent years, historians such as C. A. Bayly have been calling for a global intellectual history to be written. They stress that to understand the history of ideas across time and space, it is necessary to study from a cosmopolitan or global point of view the connections and the parallels in intellectual development across the world. Yet these separate histories and their convergence in the modern period have yet to be brought together into a single historical narrative. Nonetheless, some global histories, like Bayly's own Birth of the Modern World or David Armitage's The Declaration of Independence: A Global History offer contributions to the huge and necessarily collaborative project of writing the history of thought in a comparative and especially connective way. Other examples of transnational intellectual histories include Albert Hourani's Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age. In 2013, Samuel Moyn and Andrew Sartori published the anthology Global Intellectual History. In 2016, the Routledge journal Global Intellectual History (ed. Richard Whatmore) was established. In January 2019 the historian J. G. A. Pocock stated in that journal: "The beginnings of the ‘global’ critique are well known and may as well be accepted as common ground. They reduce to the assertion that ‘Cambridge’ scholarship in this field is ‘Eurocentric’; that is, that it has dealt exclusively with the ‘political thought’ generated in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean, transmitted to medieval and modern Europe, and taken up in the Euro-colonized Americas and a world (or ‘globe’) subjected to European or ‘western’ domination. This is obviously true, and calls for reformation." It has been argued that the historians of ideas Arthur O. Lovejoy and Hajime Nakamura should be read as modern founders of the discipline global intellectual history. Other recent contributors are Siep Stuurman, Sanjay Subrahamnyam, and Martin Mulsow. The origins of human intellectual history arguably began before the invention of writing, but historians are by definition only concerned with the eras in which writing was present. In the spirit of a historiographic project that is relevant to all human beings and that has yet to be completed, the sections that follow briefly review currents of thought in pre-modern and modern history of the world, and are organized by geographic area (and within each section, chronologically).
  • 1.8K
  • 25 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Grahan Mala
Grahan Mala is an astronomical treatise on the calculation of the dates and timings for the lunar and solar eclipses written by the Indian Astronomer Hemangad Thakur in the 16th century AD.
  • 1.8K
  • 15 Dec 2023
Topic Review
Coral Gardens Incident
The Coral Gardens incident, also known as the Coral Gardens atrocities, the Coral Gardens massacre, the Coral Gardens riot, and Bad Friday refers to a series of events that occurred in Jamaica from April 11-13 1963. Following a violent altercation at a gas station in Montego Bay, Jamaican police and military forces detained Rastafarians throughout Jamaica, killing and torturing many. Exact numbers are not available, but estimates place the number of detained individuals "as high as 150". In April 2017, following a legal investigation, the government of Jamaica issued an official apology condemning the government's actions in the incident, and established a trust fund for survivors as reparations.
  • 1.7K
  • 27 Oct 2022
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