• Thumbnail I had made a promise to myself to refrain from talking about the happenings in the Middle East and North Africa, both due to an insufficient knowledge of the long durée history of the region and the fact that every day new things come to light, as is normal for ongoing uprisings, revolutions or civil wars [...]

  • victor wrote a new blog post: CSI: Rome 1 year, 3 months ago

    Historical bad-boy Caravaggio’s crimes have been revealed in Rome’s archives. Something tells me, however, that a movie based on this kind of historical detective work wouldn’t sell quite as well as some other ones.

    - Victor

  • Sometimes you get to witness history in the making. Whether the changes will lead to positive or negative things for a society is something that still lays in the future, yet at the moment when a wall comes down or an unpopular leader gives up power, images are sometimes more powerful than analysis. On a [...]

  • ThumbnailIn 1993 a certain Foreign Affairs article caused a stir in the intellectual community in the West. A few years later, a book expanding on its themes came out, introducing the term “ Clash of Civilizations ” into our discourse with a vengeance, making it a popular shorthand for international hotspots and problems. Of course, in the words of [...]