Making sense of this crazy world

As well as bringing about the rise of the city, the industrial revolution brought about a social revolution that utterly transformed society. It developed a middle class and created a working class, giving shape to the society we live in today. In this episode I will focus on the development of the middle class.

In 1801 25% of British people lived in towns, 75% in the countryside; by the middle of the century, it was roughly 50-50; by the end the century those first figures were reversed with 75% of the population living in towns and cities and only 25% in the countryside. But what was life like in those towns and cities.

Having tried to explain why Britain was the first industrial nation and how an industrialised world began to take shape, in this episode I want to go further into what changed and not just describe what it was like for those who lived through it but show how the miserable lives of the foot soldiers of industrialisation, focusing particularly on agricultural workers, factory workers, coal miners, w...

This episode looks a little deeper at the period in which the industrialising world catches up and overtakes Britain.   *Do note that since researching and recording this episode, India has overtaken Japan to become the world's 4th biggest economy. How fast this world of ours is changing!

I’m continuing my look at the industrialising world by focusing on the globalisation of the industrial revolution, well at least its spread to Europe and America!

I’m looking at the first industrial revolution in Britain that did so much to shape the world we live in today and in this second episode I want to highlight the key motivating factor: the profit motive, as well as the importance of the railways.

I’m changing tack completely in this little series to look at some of the truly big events that shaped the world we live in today. And I’m beginning with the industrial revolution in Britain. Hugely significant because not only did the British economy rapidly grow, and eventually the world economy, but it did so because of a technological revolution, simple though that may have been at first, and...

This week we are going to look at the UN embroiled in a civil war in the Congo at the beginning of the 1960s. A sorry tale that also serves to illustrate just what imperialism had done to Africa.

The way the United Nations is being ignored by the Soviet Union with regard to Ukraine, ignored and attacked by Israel in Gaza (more than 280 UNWRA and other UN Humanitarian personnel killed by the Israeli Defence Force), it seems as if we are witnessing the end of the UNs usefulness. But this isn’t the first time the United Nations has faced huge controversy, has seemed to be finished as an inter...

This is my second episode looking at the Kurds, the largest ethnic group in the world without a home to call its own. Having looked at the Kurds in Turkey and in Syria, today we’ll look at the Kurds in Iraq and Iran.

I’m looking at the Kurds today, the largest ethnic group in the world without a home to call its own. That fact alone makes it necessary for us to know something about their history, I think. Well, this is the first of two episodes doing that.

This episode sets out to explain the reasons behind the schism in the Islamic world between Sunnis and Shi'ites or Shias, as well as the consequences of the schism.

A final episode on Syria taking a look at the consequences of the civil war, most importantly on people but also on the politics of the region.

I don’t want to plot the path of the war so much (though there will inevitably be a bit of that), rather I want to focus on the nature of it, its characteristics, so that we can better understand its significance today.

For a very brief period, Bashar seemed to offer a liberal regime but he soon revived the authoritarian tactics of his late father’s administration. It would eventually lead to protests, that became an uprising or a revolution, and eventually a civil war; and that’s what our focus is for this episode.

Hafez Assad moved Syria ever closer to the Soviet Union (and then lost it). And he set out to position Syria as a regional power and himself as the leader of the Arab world, filling the vacuum left by Nasser, and that meant taking on Israel (or at least at first it did), it also meant rivalry with Saddam Hussein, and, as we have seen, it meant interfering in the Lebanon Civil War and, indeed, its...

The good, the bad and the downright ugly side of Hafez Assad's rule.

The fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime took us all by surprise. The armed coalition, led by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA), put an end to over fifty years of the Assad family’s rule of Syria. And I want to explore how first Hafez al-Assad, and then Bashar al-Assad, got to power and what they did in power. In other words, how did w...

A peaceful, people-led, revolution against Syrian occupation, Hezbollah attacks on Israel and another Israeli invasion of Lebanon. 

With the Israeli’s and the Christian Maronites both eager to cement their relationship and control Syria, and with Syria determined that they should be the leading player in Lebanon and so be the leading player in the Arab world’s settlement with Israel, and with the root of the problem – the question of a Palestinian state – unresolved – nothing was settled in Lebanon. Far from it.

Civil war broke out in Lebanon for a second time in 1975, partly as a result of the communal divisions in Lebanon but partly as a result of communal relationships with Syria and Israel, and because of the Arab world's conflict with Israel. But the consequences of the civil war would do nothing to ease the situation with regard to Israel.

In this, my last episode looking at the impact of the Cold War on the Middle East, I’m going to take us to the end of the Cold War and the part Afghanistan played in the Soviet Union's collapse.

Both America and the Soviet Union continued to build links with the region at every opportunity. But Iran and Iraq made it an unsettling, uncertain experience. 

I thought it important in this long series looking at the Middle East and how we got to where we are today, to include a look at how the Cold War affected what unfolded. And this episode will begin that look in the 1950s.

From the prison massacres in 1988 to the Mahsa Amini protests that started in 2022, this episode takes a look at just what it is that so many Iranians oppose and how the Iranian theocracy has dealt with that opposition.