History

Economist Nathan Nunn and his team measure the long-term impacts of the Tulsa massacre on Black communities in the US and find a pattern that resonates with an earlier analysis of the transatlantic slave trade, where violence begets long-term economic and...

A political scientist takes a long view of the impact of COVID-19. By Ronald Rogowski The bubonic plague known as the Black Death inflicted more deaths, proportional to population, than any other event in European history. Originating from central Asia...

Historian Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey tells the story of the African migrants who circulated between the Caribbean and the North America in the twentieth century, and how a subset of them built a transnational life, and racial solidarity, along the US...

Once part and parcel of Asia’s political economy during the age of imperialism, the opium trade wreaked social havoc in China and provoked an international movement toward drug control that endures to the present day. By Steffen Rimner For more than one...

Amid the outpouring of ten-year retrospectives on the economic crisis of 2008, historian Charles Bartlett asks what a crisis that occurred almost 2000 years ago can tell us about the enduring relationships between legislative agendas, financial crises...

Harvard Professor Lorgia García-Peña returns to her roots to investigate the narratives that shaped a divide. The border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic forces a conspicuous dividing line between black and non-black, respectively. How the island...

A new book by Harvard historian David Armitage unearths two millennia of thinking about a most ignoble type of war. If you live in a developed country, you are among those enjoying the “Long Peace,” a period marked by the absence of large scale interstate...

Thomas Schelling’s passing last month represents a great loss to many in this community and beyond. He leaves a remarkably rich intellectual legacy. Among his many achievements, Schelling’s influence on the theory and practice of arms control cannot be...

Harvard historian Charles Maier explores the boundaries that separate and bind societies throughout modern history. To read Charles Maier’s latest book, Once Within Borders: Territories of Power, Wealth, and Belonging Since 1500, is to take a bird’s-eye...