On the morning of 30 July 1929, a man carrying a small axe entered the upper terrace of the Sri Maha Bodhi in Anuradhapura and struck one of its principal branches several
Sri Lankan activist Jeewaratnam Suresh was among dozens of people from the Malayaiha, or “upcountry” Tamil community who walked around 124 miles over 15 days in 2023. “I don’t see this merely as a march, but
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Millions of years ago, in the Miocene Epoch (23 to 5.3 million years ago), about 100 species of apes roamed Europe, Asia, and Africa. Just a few million years later, this number
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Why were Clean Slates so important to Bronze Age societies? From the third millennium in Mesopotamia, people were aware that debt pressures, if left to accumulate unchecked, would distort normal fiscal and
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An ancient Greek myth tells the story of Prometheus, who, after molding humans out of clay and teaching them the fine arts of civilization, defied the Olympian Gods by stealing the secret of
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Considering whether modern states are empires tells us almost nothing useful about either modern states or empires. A better question is what policies and structures pioneered by empires are still employed by
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Empires historically possessed a unique ability to organize diversity and successfully rule over people quite different from one another. The national states that succeeded them in Europe were organized on the basis
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If a colloquium on early entrepreneurs had been convened in the early 20th century, most participants would have viewed traders as operating on their own, bartering at prices that settled at a
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The crash of a helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on Sunday brought many similar incidents under the spotlight in which heads of state or government survived or lost their lives. Anadolu
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FATEFUL MISREADING OF SADDAM Gideon Rose, a Senior Fellow and deputy director of National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations from 1995 to 2000, was appointed managing editor of Foreign
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As the world celebrates International Museum Day on Saturday, Iraq remains haunted by the poignant scars of looted antiquities in the wake of the U.S.-led invasion. Boasting an ancient civilization of thousands
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A few years ago, I hired a ‘safari’ jeep to take me into the Bundala National Park, one of the world’s great bird reserves, on the south-east coast of Sri Lanka. After
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There are multiple differences between antiquity’s economic practices and those of the modern world, and these should be borne in mind when considering the changing context for enterprise through the centuries. Whereas
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On 2 October 1958, Guinea declared its independence from France. Guinea’s President Ahmed Sékou Touré clashed against France’s President Charles De Gaulle, who tried to strong arm Touré into abandoning the project
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In the first part of this two-part series, the author explored the historical geopolitics behind India’s North-East states. In this final part, the author examines how the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act
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In a recent press release by the National Security Archive, fresh insights into Fidel Castro’s clandestine voyage to the Soviet Union in April-May 1963 have come to light. The release uncovers a
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