Issue 18

Expert articles from the October/November 2019 issue of BBC World Histories Magazine

Statue of Ibn Battuta at the Islamic culture center, Quanzhou, Fujian, China

Ibn Battuta: the most famous traveller of the medieval Arab world

Migrants at a detention centre in Texas, March 2019

The complex history of concentration camps

A women drives oxen pulling a loaded wagon train through the Black Hills (in South Dakota or Wyoming) in 1887

From the real Calamity Jane to ‘Madam Moustache’: pioneer women of the Wild West

In writing his classical novel, Orwell drew on the very real horrors of the 20th century. (Illustration by Ben Jones for BBC World Histories Magazine)

Rewriting the past: the history that inspired Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four

An African samurai: the tall, strong African man who acquired the name Yasuke in Japan was at first an object of curiosity but soon became a prized samurai warrior serving a powerful warlord in the violent intrigues that wracked the country during that volatile era. ((Illustration by Lynn Hatzius for BBC World Histories)

Yasuke: an African samurai in Japan