Empires Nations

The sudden rise and fall of Great Britain should not have come as a surprise to those few persons who study the increase and fall of empires, and they are acquainted with the lands which, in every single case, have caused their dissolution. No writer who controls a heart can, however, afford to go through the fall of Britain merely with all the eye with the moralist or perhaps the calm historian. I would, therefore, remind my listeners of the wealth which the British Empire enjoyed in her quest to conquer the world.

A legendary diplomat, scholar, and civil rights leader, Ralph Bunche was one of the most prominent Black Americans of the twentieth century. The first African American to obtain a political science Ph.D. from Harvard and a celebrated diplomat at the United Nations, he was once so famous he handed out the Best Picture award at the Oscars. Yet today Ralph Bunche is largely forgotten. In The Absolutely Indispensable Man, Kal Raustiala restores Bunche to his rightful place in history.

The modern history of Africa was, until very recently, written on behalf of the indigenous races by the white man, who had forcefully entered the continent during a particularly hubristic and dynamic phase of European history. In 1884, Prince Otto von Bismark, the German chancellor, brought the plenipotentiaries of all major powers of Europe together to deal with Africa's colonization in such a manner as to avoid provocation of war. This event - known as the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 - galvanized a phenomenon that came to be known as the Scramble for Africa.

Where did writing, culture, and agriculture begin? The Middle East is the cradle of civilization - where humankind once roamed in small groups of hunter-gatherers and foraged for food and shelter, then learned to plant crops and build structures. Today, we are an advanced civilization that has conquered the skies, oceans, and even the moon. To understand how this transformation occurred, take a brief trip back into the history of the Middle East, where it all began.