Essays on Contemporary History

In “Goodbye Mother” written by Reinaldo Arenas, the Cuban Revolution was taking place and it shows the fall of the Cuban government. This story consists of 6 characters: the mother, the four sisters and a brother that narrates the story. The mother who died in the story represents the country of Cuba. The four sisters...

What we know today as The Silk Road, is said to be first travelled as such, by Marco Polo in the 12th century, but many of the routs within the silk road were used much before. Since the ancient times merchants used them, and the rout in use shifted depending on the political context of...

Thirteen days of stalemate, confusion, mixed signals, and the threat of nuclear annihilation recapitulates the events that transpired during what we now refer to as the Cuban Missile Crisis. To what started as a relatively peaceful climate reached during the cold war came to be a puzzling standoff over nuclear warfare between the United States...

Deception has been and remains a decisive and powerful instrument to the outcome of manoeuvrable operations. The case studies which I have chosen to research and analyse to support this view are focused on the Arab-Israeli conflicts between 1956 and 1973. Principally the 1956 Suez Crisis and the 1973 Yom Kippur War. As I will...

The establishment of the State of Israel presented a “unique and extremely complex”,[1] situation for Jewish-Arab relations, as the Arab majority that had dominated under Mandate metamorphosed into a minority in Israel. Conversely, the Jewish minority became the governing majority of an official homeland, pledging “complete equality of social and political rights to all its...

Nelson Mandela. Mahatma Gandhi. Martin Luther King, Jr.. Mother Teresa. What do these historical figures have in common? They kept a good attitude, that’s what! They lived during difficult times, but they kept a good attitude and succeeded. I believe that a good attitude during difficult times will help you succeed for several reasons. Mother...

From the silk roads to the tremendous development of cotton during the industrial revolution, both commodities silk and cotton reveal the evolution of capitalism over time as they were both utilised as form to facilitate and trade between nations and promoted mass production by transferring them into commercial commodities. The evolution of silk and changes...

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was born on the 26th of August 1910. During her childhood, she was determined towards the work performed by the missionaries. Not only that but the skills she learnt from an early age such as feeding the homeless and donating to the less fortunate were highly influenced to where she was heading...

Jack the Ripper, notorious for his barbarous, merciless and inhumane manslaughters was an infamous serial killer with an unknown identity. ‘The Ripper’ was responsible for numerous ghastly homicides of women now addressed as the ‘canonical five’ during the summer of 1888. Robbery, violence, and alcohol dependency were all driving factors concerning the abundant amount of...

For the greater part of human history, life involved hunting, gathering, hand-making goods and living in agricultural societies. For a long time, people were dependant on the access they have to food and basic human needs. During the 18th century, the process of urbanisation increased and manufacturing of goods became mechanicalised. Goods that had once...