A swashbuckling history of pirates and slave traders, and a legend of Miguel Cervantes being held as a slave in the local tower are all part of the colorful background of the town of Ulcinj. And it is the descendants of those who were left behind after the slave trade ended that are the most …
When the pre-eminent Russian poet Alexander Pushkin died on 10 February 1837, it was in a tragic echo of an incident of the life of his great-grandfather, Avram Petrovich Gannibal (also written as Hannibal). Pushkin was killed by his brother-in-law in a duel over Pushkin’s wife Natalya, a parallel to the first marriage of Gannibal, …
When King Cetshwayo died on 8 February 1884, the circumstances were suspicious. Officially his death was due to a heart attack, but not even the British representatives who observed his autopsy could agree on whether or not the last independent king of the Zulu had been poisoned. Cetshwayo’s life was remarkable in many ways. His …
In the 1940s an uncomfortable truth was emphasized by the Portuguese Labor Inspectorate in the colony of Sao Tome – the conditions of the workers on the cocoa plantations there could only be compared to slavery. “The reality today is the following: many agriculturists of Sao Tome organize their agricultural possessions on the basis …
At break of day a signal of three smacks of a whip called them to work, when each betook himself with his spade to the plantation, where they worked almost naked in the heat of the sun. Their food was bruised or boiled maize or bread made of cassava root, their clothing a single piece …
As is emblematic of Balkan countries, when the Greek Prime Minister and head of the Fourth of August Regime, Ioannis Metaxas, died of septicemia from a throat abscess on 29 January 1940 there were whispers of a dark conspiracy of assassination. The whispers seemed to converge on the arrival of a British medic who …
In February 1979, Joe Biden – the future American president – attended the funeral of Edvard Kardelj in Yugoslavia. Kardelj, although scarcely remembered outside the former Yugoslavia, was a figure of enormous importance in his time. An early adopter of communism (at age 16 in 1926), he spent time in a Kingdom of Jugoslavia jail …
Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone’s head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward to guarantee the future of their children. When Amilcar Cabral was shot by his own men on 20 …
It was pretty much a requirement that politicians of a certain age in Yugoslavia have served as Partizans during World War II, and Džemal Bijedić was no exception to that rule. Raised by Muslim parents in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, by 1939 Bijedić had joined the League of Communists. He was arrested at least four …
On 10 January 1946 the man who would become the most powerful communist dictator in Europe solidified his power and the People’s Republic of Albania was proclaimed and Enver Hoxha was proclaimed its Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, Defense Minister, and the army’s Commander in Chief. Although the Albanian Royal Family had been banned from Albania …