Historical Marginalia Christopher Bardsley

The First Nations of Tasmania had existed on-country for some 40,000 years. In 1836, just three decades after the British colony was established, a twenty-six year-old Charles Darwin visited. The native population had vanished with horrible speed, leaving behind the shadow of a monumental question: what were the implications of applying notions of natural selection to the human animal? In episode one of the Black Line, Christopher Bardsley examines an international crisis of conscience, as th...

On Christmas day, 1978, Phnom Penh fell to the people's army of Vietnam. Over the preceding weeks, the Khmer Rouge had crumbled in the face of a far superior force, and their leadership had melted away into the jungles of eastern Cambodia. Slowly, the Vietnamese military settled into the unfamiliar role of foreign occupiers. They would be compelled to remain in the country for over a decade, fighting an exhausting war of counterinsurgency against their one-time socialist allies. In these year...

On the 30th of April, 1975, the world's eyes were fixed on Saigon. After three decades of bitter civil war, Vietnam's struggle for independence finally seemed to be coming to an end. Peace, however, would remain elusive. Over the next fifteen years, the country would be compelled to dislodge the Khmer Rouge regime from Cambodia, bringing to an end one of the worst genocides in modern history. In episode one of this two-part series, Christopher Bardsley sifts through the convoluted causes of t...

Shortly after gaining national independence, Lebanon descended into a hellish kaleidoscope of sectarian violence. Decades later, the reasons for this conflict remain poorly understood and largely unresolved. In the first episode of Historical Marginalia, Christopher Bardsley stitches together a tragic timeline of hatred, chaos, and misguided interventions.

Norfolk Island, according to Captain James Cook, had everything a settlement could possibly need. In 1788, shortly after the first fleet arrived in New South Wales, an abortive attempt was made to establish a strategic outpost on this isolated speck in the Pacific void. Over the next four decades, Norfolk became a byword for brutality, impunity, and the worst excesses of the British empire. It was also the setting for bold experiments in reform and progress, and serves as a most suitable micr...