Third-year UoP history student Elliott Thomas examines the surprisingly pragmatic relationship between Catholic Venice and the Islamic Ottoman Empire, which caused the Venetians first to fight against the Ottomans at the Battle of Lepanto in defence of Cyprus, and then, motivated by economic considerations, to betray their Catholic allies in signing a peace treaty with the Turks resulting in three-quarters of a century of détente. One of the most consequential events of the end of the medieval period was the fourth crusade (1202-1204), where crusaders were ferried by the Venetians to sack the city of Constantinople.[1] This sacking would cause the collapse of the Byzantine Empire into a series of […]
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The domestic colonisation of eighteenth-century Scotland
Third year student Kathryn Watts chose an original focus for her dissertation in investigating the eighteenth century attack on Scottish culture. As she argues below, colonialism is often looked at in the global context, but the domestic colonialism of Scotland (and Ireland) predated it, and provided a prototype for many of the colonialist ideas of racial hierarchy and methods of cultural indoctrination which followed. It has been fascinating supervising Kathryn’s dissertation journey – ed. On April 16, 1746, the bloody battle of Culloden ended with Jacobite defeat; the rebellion of Bonnie Prince Charlie, crushed. This date became synonymous with the decimation of Highland culture, as pro-Government forces sought to destroy […]