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April 1, 2026

Bobi Wine’s decision to flee Uganda points to a shrinking landscape for opposition politics

Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Kristof Titeca, Professor in International Development, University of Antwerp

Bobi Wine’s escape from Uganda is not just a striking episode in itself, it also offers insight into the current state of the opposition – particularly his National Unity Platform party – and into the divergences within the Yoweri Museveni regime.

The Ugandan opposition leader had been in hiding for almost two months after the January 2026 presidential election, which Museveni won by 72%. Wine came second with 25% of the vote. Museveni, 81, has been in power since 1986.

Wine, born Robert Kyagulanyi, entered formal politics in 2017 when he won a parliamentary by-election.

He soon emerged as one of the leaders of the People Power movement, a loose, generationally charged mobilisation built around the slogan “People Power, Our Power”. It took shape in the aftermath of protests against the removal of presidential age limits in 2018. At the time, the opposition appeared largely exhausted and unlikely to unseat the regime. Bobi Wine and People Power therefore brought a new energy to Uganda’s opposition.

People Power later formalised into the National Unity Platform party, which Wine used to vie for the presidency in 2021. He secured about 35% of the presidential vote against Museveni’s 59%. National Unity Platform became the largest opposition force in parliament with 57 seats.

These results also highlighted the constraints of electoral politics in the face of extensive repression.

This is a pattern that would again become apparent in the 2026 elections.

As several human rights organisations noted, the 2026 elections took place in an environment marked by widespread repression and intimidation.

After the vote, Wine went into hiding. He posted photos and videos seemingly from Kampala, triggering roadblocks and searches across the capital city. On 18 March 2026, he resurfaced in the United States.

I have researched Ugandan politics for over 20 years, and recently published an article analysing the structural challenges Wine’s political party faces in Uganda’s authoritarian context.

Drawing on this work, my reading is that Wine’s escape reveals controlled tensions within Museveni’s regime, where different factions appear to disagree on how to handle the opposition – without signalling a full split. At the same time, it exposes a deeper dilemma for Wine and his party: how to balance international advocacy with maintaining grassroots legitimacy at home.

This moment matters because it highlights the structural constraints facing opposition politics in Uganda, and raises questions about whether meaningful political change can occur within the current system.

Frictions within the regime

The contrasting approaches within the Museveni regime are illustrated by events that followed the 2026 election. In the weeks following the vote, defence force chief Muhoozi Kainerugaba (Museveni’s son) issued a series of unusually explicit statements about Wine.

In a now-deleted tweet, he claimed that 22 members of the National Unity Platform – whom he labelled “terrorists” – had been killed. He added that he was praying that the next death would be Wine’s.

On 26 January, the defence chief escalated this rhetoric, stating that he wanted Wine “dead or alive”. These statements built on earlier threats, including about beheading Wine.

Taken together, they amount to sustained violent threats directed at the main opposition leader.

Set against this, however, is the fact that Wine was able to evade capture for nearly two months and ultimately leave the country.

It emerged that he did so with assistance from high-level state and security officials.

The same sources and regime insiders reported that intelligence services had informed Museveni about Wine’s whereabouts. The president chose not to act upon this information.

Taken together, these events suggest differences within the regime between factions in the security services, or more broadly between Muhoozi and other centres of power. Potentially even within the first family itself.

But these differences should not be overstated.

The episode does not indicate an open or consolidated split. Criticism of Muhoozi within the regime remains tightly constrained.

What this suggests is a regime where disagreements are contained within narrow limits. Wine’s escape, therefore, points less to a rupture than to an ongoing negotiation over power and strategy within the ruling elite.

And this is becoming increasingly important in light of the anticipated transition beyond Museveni.

Tensions within Wine’s party

Wine’s political strength has always come from where he came from.

He was rooted in the ghetto, and more broadly among urban youth who had long been mobilised by opposition politics but rarely felt represented by it.

Earlier figures like Kizza Besigye could appeal to this group, but Wine embodied it. He spoke the same language and made politics feel accessible to people often treated as outsiders.

That sense of authenticity was central to the early momentum of People Power. It also mattered that Wine broke with a long-standing pattern in Ugandan politics: he did not come from the western region, the core of the ruling elite.

But this “outsider” appeal has become harder to sustain over time. As People Power turned into a political party, and as Wine himself became more embedded in formal politics and international networks, parts of that original base began to feel that something had shifted.

What once felt like a movement of “one of us” increasingly risks being seen as something closer to the political establishment it set out to challenge.

As my research shows, this is not unusual. It is a core dilemma when protest movements turn into parties, especially under repression.

The social media backlash to Wine’s appearance in the United States needs to be read through that lens.

It not only echoes criticism from Museveni that Wine is an “agent of foreign interests”, but also from within the opposition where some radical voices argue that he should have stayed and faced the regime, even if that meant prison. Besigye, for instance, is facing treason charges after he was abducted and extradited from Kenya in 2024.

This criticism echoes a longstanding divide within opposition politics in Uganda: should opposition leaders embody defiance on the ground, or navigate politics through institutional spaces?

Being in the US reinforces a growing perception that Wine is becoming more distant from the people who carried the risks on the ground.

If the party cannot connect its international advocacy and diaspora support back to the everyday struggles of its supporters in Uganda, this episode will likely deepen the feeling that the party has become more of the same.

What role remains for Wine?

There is an uncomfortable reality here. Wine serves a function for the regime. His presence helps maintain the appearance of political competition, particularly within the international community.

Wine now faces a choice. Engaging in electoral politics risks reinforcing the system he seeks to challenge. Stepping outside it risks isolation, repression or loss of political relevance.

How he navigates this tension will shape not only his political trajectory, but also that of his party.

Kristof Titeca does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Bobi Wine’s decision to flee Uganda points to a shrinking landscape for opposition politics – https://theconversation.com/bobi-wines-decision-to-flee-uganda-points-to-a-shrinking-landscape-for-opposition-politics-279475

April 1, 2026

Brutal Mau Mau camps in Kenya were an extension of Britain’s colonial prison system – historian traces their roots

Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Ian Caistor-Parker, PhD student, University of Warwick

During the Mau Mau uprising between 1952 and 1960, the British colonial government confined an estimated 150,000 Kenyans in a sprawling network of “emergency” detention camps.

None of those held in the camps had been found guilty in a court of law. Instead, they were detained on suspicion of supporting the uprising.

British control over Kenya was effectively declared in 1895. A distinctive feature of colonial rule was the decision to encourage white settlement. These settlers were granted vast tracts of Kenya’s most fertile land and pushed policy in an increasingly harsh and unequal direction.

By the early 1950s, many African Kenyans were facing severe land shortages in the countryside and desperate living conditions in urban areas.

In 1952, this situation erupted into the Mau Mau uprising, a broadly anti-colonial rebellion.

The British government responded with overwhelming force. It declared a state of emergency and suppressed the uprising militarily.

Revelations about the extreme violence employed in some emergency detention camps made the continuation of British rule untenable. Particularly key was the Hola massacre of 1959. Guards beat 11 detainees to death and the colonial government attempted to cover up the crime.

Outrage at these events shattered Britain’s grip on the colony, and Kenya achieved independence in 1963 under the leadership of Jomo Kenyatta.

A great deal is known about these detention camps. They were sites of neglect and brutal violence. Detainees were forced to go through a so-called rehabilitation system designed to make them renounce their support for Mau Mau.

In practice, they were subjected to brutal compulsory labour, were at risk of assault and lived in unhygienic conditions. Some of those who refused to cooperate ultimately faced systematic, state-sanctioned torture.

I am a historian researching punishment in Kenya, and I have been investigating the deeper history of detention camps. My research shows that this emergency detention system was shaped by an earlier network of “ordinary” detention camps. These were established in 1926 and processed more than 400,000 people before the uprising.

These camps, intended as a milder alternative to prison, evolved into a poorly regulated system characterised by exploitation, overcrowding and weak accountability.

These findings challenge the idea that the detention system of the 1950s was exceptional. Instead, it was rooted in long-standing colonial practices, shaped by economic incentives, administrative gaps and coercive labour systems.

Understanding this deeper history matters because it changes how we view the Mau Mau emergency. It proves that the brutal 1950s detention system didn’t just emerge from nowhere – it was built on a foundation of state violence and disorder that had been normalised for decades.

The roots

Influenced by a draconian-minded European settler minority, the Kenyan colonial government adopted a harsh approach to punishing the local population. Judges frequently imprisoned Africans for “technical” offences lacking criminal intent. These included failing to pay tax and minor violations of coercive labour laws.

By the 1920s, Kenya’s prisons were overcrowded and “technical” offenders inevitably mixed with hardened criminals.

In response, the colonial government introduced detention in 1926 as a supposedly milder alternative for technical offenders who had simply broken administrative rules. In theory, prisons were to be reserved for those who had committed crimes involving moral violation. In practice, however, these distinctions didn’t (or couldn’t) hold.

To visibly separate detention from imprisonment, the colonial government gave day-to-day control of detention camps to district commissioners (the powerful heads of local governments), not the prison department.

However, this separation was incomplete. Detainees were legally classified as prisoners (though they were not informed of this). The prison department retained ultimate authority over the camps.

This overlapping authority produced a gap in accountability, which ultimately proved disastrous.

In 1930, seeking to divert more people from formal prisons, government officials removed almost all sentencing restrictions on detention. Subsequently, the only limitations were that sentences had to be under six months and that those with more than one prior prison conviction were ineligible.

Numbers surged immediately, with more convicted offenders sent to detention than formal prisons almost every year until 1952.

Judges increasingly used detention for serious offences, including manslaughter. A limited criminal records system meant that individuals with prior convictions – sometimes as many as 16 – ended up in detention.

Conversely, the amendment did not stop harsh magistrates from continuing to send significant numbers of minor offenders to prisons.

This blurring of populations, combined with a lack of structural and legal separation, meant detention camps mutated into a parallel prison system, serving a different colonial master, district commissioners, but lacking fundamental distinction.

Detention camp living conditions were atrocious. Most district commissioners delegated almost all duties to Kenyan African “overseers”. Overseers were under-trained. Yet they were expected to be on duty constantly and often had to guard more than 60 detainees, making meaningful supervision impossible.

Camps were generally collections of temporary wattle-and-daub huts. Over time, these decayed but were not replaced, resulting in squalid conditions.

Furthermore, overcrowding was endemic. Food rations were poor and basic facilities were often absent. Sickness rates were significant. Detainees responded by escaping at a rate of more than one a day.

Failed reform

In 1937, a high-level committee condemned the system as dangerous and inefficient. Calls for reform from London also grew.

But nothing changed.

Why?

The primary reason was economic. Detainees were a vital reservoir of free labour for cash-strapped district commissioners. When camps were introduced, local governments’ labour budgets were cut. This made detainee labour crucial for maintaining government stations.

In the late 1930s, penal officials sought to reintroduce stricter eligibility criteria for detention. However, they abandoned this idea as it would add to overcrowding in the prison system.

Trapped by bureaucratic gridlock, underfunding and economic dependency, Kenya’s detention system limped into the 1952 emergency – unreformed.

Ultimately, “ordinary” detention camps persisted until the 1980s, far outliving their emergency counterparts.

The consequences

This history exposes stark continuities between the pre-emergency and Mau Mau penal systems. Furthermore, as they were under the control of district officials and lacked standard prison regulations, existing detention camps could, and did, easily become dumping grounds for Mau Mau suspects in the early months of the emergency. Ordinary detention was both a model and enabling mechanism for emergency detention.

Ian Caistor-Parker receives funding from the UK Economic & Social Research Council

– ref. Brutal Mau Mau camps in Kenya were an extension of Britain’s colonial prison system – historian traces their roots – https://theconversation.com/brutal-mau-mau-camps-in-kenya-were-an-extension-of-britains-colonial-prison-system-historian-traces-their-roots-277856

April 1, 2026

What the government’s plan for social cohesion gets wrong about community division

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Adam Coutts, Senior Research Fellow, Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge

The government’s new social cohesion action plan, Protecting What Matters, is frank about its urgency: “Social cohesion is … not just a good in and of itself. It is also a vital front in the resilience of our national security.”

The 2024 Southport attacks and subsequent disorder, rising religious hate crime, unrest over migration policy and domestic extremism have all forced the issue of community division. Yet the government’s answer, built around integration, interfaith dialogue and civic ceremonies, mistakes the symptom for the disease.

“Cohesion” is vague, unmeasurable and elastic enough to mean whatever the government of the day needs it to mean. People describe the places they love as close-knit and safe, not “cohesive”.

A better framework would be community resilience: the measurable capacity of neighbourhoods to absorb shocks, resist divisive narratives and recover from crises. You cannot integrate people who are isolated, impoverished and without the infrastructure to bring them together. COVID laid bare what the evidence already showed: communities with stronger social infrastructure and higher levels of social capital demonstrated greater resilience to the pandemic’s social and economic shocks.

The government strategy does contain a chapter on “resilient communities”. However, it frames resilience narrowly, as emergency management of religious and political extremism, rather than as the everyday and routine fabric that makes any form of solidarity possible at all.

The missing piece

There is an extraordinary gap in Protecting What Matters. While there is acknowledgement of the effects of “visible deterioration of public services”, the word “poverty” does not appear once. The plan frames division through religion, identity and Islamophobia, which are outcomes and proxies, not root causes.

A study of over 15,000 residents across 839 English and Welsh neighbourhoods, validated by a 2024 analysis of the Understanding Society dataset, shows that deprivation, not diversity, erodes trust, participation and neighbourliness. Once you control for poverty, diversity is associated with higher volunteering and charitable giving. The crisis of solidarity is a crisis of resources, not cultural difference.

There is an undertone of nostalgia in the government’s plea for communities to “integrate”, a wistfulness for tight-knit mining towns where everyone knew their neighbour. But those communities were built on something material: secure jobs, union membership, working men’s clubs and shared economic fate.

More in Common’s 2025 polling finds that 44% of Britons sometimes feel like strangers in their own country – a figure that could be read as evidence of cultural division. But More in Common’s own analysis shows this alienation is concentrated in economically left-behind areas, not diverse ones. People do not feel like strangers because their neighbours look different. They feel like strangers because the institutions that once made them feel they belonged – clubs, pubs, unions and jobs – have gone.

A boarded-up pub with graffiti across the top reading 'I used to be the moon and bell' — The loss of social infrastructure has been devastating to communities across Britain.
chrisdorney/Shutterstock

The argument that more homogenous communities are more cohesive is seductive, but weak. Britain’s most ethnically diverse neighbourhoods are not its least cohesive – they are, as Manchester researchers found, its healthiest. Mining towns were cohesive despite being male-dominated, often racially exclusive and economically coercive. The lesson is to replicate not their demographics, but the material conditions: jobs, institutions and shared infrastructure that give people a reason to show up.

Work provides far more than income: it furnishes identity, routine and daily social connection. Unemployment is not merely an economic condition; it is an isolating one.

A recent randomised controlled trial by the Department for Work and Pensions found that structured group job-search workshops improved both mental health and employment outcomes among benefit claimants, precisely because they restored the social support, routine and shared purpose that work normally provides. Community resilience cannot be separated from economic development. Departments such as DWP and Jobcentre Plus have a direct stake in the social capital agenda.

Building resilient communities

Research I have conducted at the Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods (ICON) and a recent Joseph Rowntree report show that social infrastructure is key to resilience, but that different communities have different needs.

New housing developments need parks and primary schools from day one: accessible spaces that create early encounters and establish trust between newcomers. Established but deprived communities need to restore what has been stripped away, whether the pub, the library or the community centre. Sports facilities build bridging connections across difference, faith buildings deepen bonds within communities and civic spaces create the linking ties between residents and institutions. The task is to match the infrastructure to the social capital gap, not apply a single template everywhere.

The real test, which my colleagues and I call the “Wet Wednesday Night Test”, is whether your investment in social infrastructure gets 14 people to turn up for football (or cub scouts, or a book group) on a wet Wednesday in February. Nobody comes to “build social capital”. They come because the pitch is free, the lights work and there are hot showers. The pint afterwards does more for integration and social capital than any strategy document ever will.

Photo focused on a football sitting on grass while players celebrate in the background — People don’t show up to the football pitch to ‘build social cohesion’.
Natee K Jindakum/Shutterstock

ICON’s research, drawing on over 100 peer-reviewed studies, shows that social infrastructure generates £3.50 for every £1 invested. Every £10,000 invested prevents an estimated £105,000 in riot damages.

During the 2011 riots, 71% of incidents occurred in areas ranked among the most deprived 10% of England – the same year in which 287 community centres had closed. The government described this as a “social cohesion” problem; it was a social infrastructure problem.

The government’s £5 billion Pride in Place programme makes a start at investing in communities. But more investment is needed to address the challenges in our most deprived neighbourhoods, where people face life expectancy four years below the national average.

A serious approach would use existing schools, job centres and childcare settings as social hubs, and make public transport free for under-18s so that young people can move around their own towns. And, it would tackle the poverty, insecure work and collapse of institutions that once gave people a reason and the means to show up for each other.

Build those foundations and what politicians call “cohesion” will follow. Nobody will use that word to describe what they feel when they step outside of their front door. They will just say it is a good place to live. That is enough.

Adam Coutts does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. What the government’s plan for social cohesion gets wrong about community division – https://theconversation.com/what-the-governments-plan-for-social-cohesion-gets-wrong-about-community-division-278702

April 1, 2026

« Nos dix sous sont-ils vraiment allés en Chine ? » : ce que racontent les archives de la Sainte-Enfance

Source: The Conversation – in French – By Catherine Larochelle, Professeure agrégée d’histoire, Université de Montréal

Les organisations comme Vision Mondiale, Plan International ou Care, n’ont pas inventé le parrainage d’enfants : cette pratique s’inscrit dans une longue histoire. Au Québec, des générations ont grandi en « achetant des petits Chinois » par l’entremise de l’Œuvre de la Sainte-Enfance, une pratique aujourd’hui chargée de souvenirs… et de questions.

Jusqu’en 1965, les enfants d’âge primaire étaient appelés à contribuer (à hauteur de 5, 10 ou 25 sous) à cette organisation. L’expression « acheter des petits Chinois » évoque souvenirs ou incompréhensions selon l’âge de celui ou celle qui la rencontre.

Les enfants contributeurs recevaient une carte avec l’image ou la photo de « leur » enfant chinois (ou africain). L’argent, leur disait-on, servait à la conversion, à l’éducation et aux soins de ces enfants.

Plusieurs personnes ont depuis questionné cette pratique, pour ses dimensions marchandes, ses relents de supériorité raciale ou l’exploitation perçue, voire réelle, des enfants donateurs.

L’Œuvre de la Sainte-Enfance, organisation catholique de financement missionnaire fondée au XIX^e siècle en France, a fait l’objet de remises en question aussi quant à la réalité de l’aide apportée et la destination finale de l’argent. Michel Tremblay fait ainsi parler sa mère dans Bonbons assortis (2002) : « Ben quoi ? La suis-tu, c’t’argent-là ? Hein ? Sais-tu où a’ s’en va vraiment ? A’ prend-tu le bateau pour la Chine ou ben le bord des tiroirs des bonnes sœurs ? »

Nous sommes trois des membres d’une équipe de recherche qui travaille depuis plusieurs années sur l’Œuvre de la Sainte-Enfance et sa mémoire au Québec. Dans ce contexte, nous avons consulté diverses archives et mené une série d’entrevues d’histoire orale. Les témoins issus de la génération du baby-boom que nous avons rencontrés ont entre autres réinterprété leur implication catholique avec une vision manichéenne du monde à la manière de celle que le contexte religieux de leur enfance leur inculquait, mais où les repères traditionnels semblent avoir été brouillés par le doute.

Notre recherche, dont l’objectif est d’ouvrir un espace de dialogue et de réflexion sur les thèmes du racisme, de la religion et de la solidarité, nous permet aussi de répondre à la question que nous posent tous les anciens enfants-contributeurs au sujet de la destination de leurs dons.

Si l’on voit d’abord l’histoire comme une discipline qui produit des faits, nous soutenons qu’elle a aussi une fonction thérapeutique et affective, mettant fin à des doutes traînés depuis l’enfance. Ces doutes peuvent être notamment liés à des sentiments de tromperie ou de manipulation institutionnelle.

Des souvenirs révélateurs de la sécularisation

« Mais où allait donc l’argent ? » Plusieurs personnes que nous avons rencontrées questionnent la destination finale de l’argent qu’elles ont donné enfants. Le doute quant à la réalité de l’aide prodiguée, voire la certitude d’avoir été victime d’une arnaque, fait de cette question une sorte de lieu commun mémoriel.

Elle s’inscrit dans le paysage d’une foi qui se métamorphose à travers la sécularisation de la société québécoise, où s’est cultivé un embarras et une méfiance grandissants envers l’Église catholique. Nos témoins vont jusqu’à avancer qu’il est certain que les prêtres et les sœurs détournaient les fonds.

Une lecture englobante et manichéenne de l’Église comme grande entité offre une piste pour comprendre la formation d’impressions tranchantes envers les pratiques financières ecclésiastiques, témoignage d’un vague sentiment de trahison partagé par les personnes chez qui la religion a régi la compréhension du monde durant l’enfance.

Le souvenir de l’implication dans l’Œuvre est également teinté par les scandales d’abus sexuels liés à l’Église catholique ainsi que ceux concernant les finances des organisations humanitaires. Alors que le rapport que ces personnes ont développé à la foi et à l’Église comme enfant était avant tout familial et localisé, leur conception actuelle est plus globale. Dans ce contexte, l’Église n’est pas pensée dans ses complexités et ses différentes échelles.

Si les entrevues d’histoire orale mettent en lumière ce doute mémoriel et les affects qu’il suscite, les archives de l’Œuvre — autre source au centre de notre démarche — viennent offrir réponse et apaisement aux témoins.

Les réponses de la recherche historique au doute mémoriel issu de l’enfance

Nous avons parcouru le Québec et ailleurs pour fouiller les archives de divers diocèses (Montréal, Ottawa, Saint-Jérôme, La Pocatière, Amos, Trois-Rivières). Dans chacun d’entre eux, des rapports annuels étaient produits à partir de la correspondance reçue des écoles, détaillant le montant donné dans chaque établissement — autant de grands couvents que des écoles de rang.

La précision allait parfois jusqu’à énumérer les montants par classe. Des rapports annuels sont aussi produits par la direction nationale du secteur du Canada français, présentant les recettes et les dépenses de chacun des diocèses. Tous ces documents circulaient dans la province.

Nous avons également été à Rome où sont situées les archives générales de l’Œuvre. Sur place, on trouve le détail des délibérations du conseil central quant à l’allocation à envoyer aux différentes missions. Les demandes faites annuellement par les missionnaires sont également conservées.

Dans les Annales de la Sainte-Enfance, publiées annuellement à Paris par la direction centrale de l’Œuvre, on retrouve non seulement un bilan des réalisations financières de chaque région du monde, mais aussi le détail de la distribution des fonds partout à travers le monde (en Asie, en Afrique, en Amérique du Sud, en Amérique du Nord, etc.). C’est donc l’institution centrale qui gère la distribution des ressources, mais celles-ci sont bien assignées à des missions, comme promis par la propagande missionnaire.

Dans ces différents dépôts, nous avons donc épluché de nombreux livres de comptes, correspondances, rapports annuels, listes détaillées des montants alloués… jusqu’aux reproches du directeur national de l’Œuvre au Canada français aux évêques qui ne favorisaient pas assez l’organisation dans leur diocèse ou aux religieuses qui gardaient l’argent de la Sainte-Enfance pour leurs propres missions. Ainsi, les archives financières et administratives de l’Œuvre permettent bien de retracer le parcours des dons et de rassurer nos témoins.

Cela exclut-il des détournements de fonds à petite échelle ? Pas du tout. Mais cela prouve néanmoins que dans son ensemble, la Sainte-Enfance remplit ses engagements auprès des jeunes associés.

Lorsqu’en fin d’entrevue, nous demandions aux témoins ce qu’ils ou elles aimeraient savoir sur l’histoire de la Sainte-Enfance, la question du destin de leurs « 10 sous » revenait souvent. Face à ces doutes qui semblaient énoncés par les enfants d’autrefois, nous étions en mesure de répondre. L’apaisement affectif qui s’ensuivait était palpable.

Si les scandales d’abus sexuels et certaines pratiques financières discutables font sans aucun doute partie de l’histoire de l’Église catholique, notre recherche montre qu’il existe parfois un décalage entre l’image publique d’une institution à un moment donné et la réalité — bien plus complexe — de son parcours historique.

Catherine Larochelle a reçu des financements du CRSH et du FRQSC.

David Vaillant a reçu des financements de FRQSC et CRSH.

Ariane Marcheterre-Pina ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.

– ref. « Nos dix sous sont-ils vraiment allés en Chine ? » : ce que racontent les archives de la Sainte-Enfance – https://theconversation.com/nos-dix-sous-sont-ils-vraiment-alles-en-chine-ce-que-racontent-les-archives-de-la-sainte-enfance-278348

April 1, 2026

Vous aimez dormir avec votre animal de compagnie ? La science révèle qu’il y a un compromis délicat à trouver

Source: The Conversation – in French – By Renata Roma, Research Associate – Pawsitive Connections Lab, University of Saskatchewan

Pour certains propriétaires d’animaux, ceux-ci font partie intégrante de leur vie, du réveil jusqu’au coucher.

Cela s’explique par le fait que les chats, les chiens et autres animaux de compagnie sont de plus en plus considérés comme des membres de la famille. Je ne parle pas ici d’un cousin éloigné, par exemple, mais de ceux qui font véritablement partie de notre quotidien.

Dans certains cas, cela inclut des moments plus calmes et plus intimes, comme l’heure du coucher. Dormir avec son chat ou son chien peut être réconfortant, voire indispensable.

En effet, selon une enquête menée par l’Académie américaine de médecine du sommeil, près de la moitié – 46 % – des personnes interrogées dorment dans le même lit qu’un animal de compagnie. En tant que chercheuse clinique spécialisée dans les interactions entre les propriétaires d’animaux et leurs compagnons, je travaille avec de nombreuses personnes qui décrivent une relation étroite avec leurs animaux et partagent divers moments avec eux.

Les bienfaits de ce lien sont étayés par la science. Des recherches montrent que les interactions quotidiennes avec les animaux de compagnie peuvent améliorer le bien-être.

Mais les recherches suggèrent également que les bienfaits potentiels qu’il y a à dormir à côté d’un animal de compagnie ne sont pas évidents : cela peut être réconfortant tout en perturbant discrètement la qualité du sommeil.

La logique émotionnelle du co-sommeil avec les animaux de compagnie

L’impact du co-sommeil peut être mesuré à l’aide d’auto-évaluations et de questionnaires, ainsi qu’avec des outils objectifs, comme des montres qui mesurent ce qui se passe physiologiquement pendant la nuit.

Dans des études utilisant des mesures subjectives, de nombreux propriétaires d’animaux de compagnie déclarent mieux dormir lorsque leurs animaux sont avec eux. D’autres avantages liés au co-sommeil comprennent une augmentation du sentiment de confort et de sécurité émotionnelle.

Dans ce contexte, le sommeil nous place dans un état de vulnérabilité perçue. Dormir avec un animal de compagnie, en particulier avec lequel nous avons un lien étroit, peut réduire ce sentiment de vulnérabilité tout en renforçant le sentiment de sécurité.

La régulation émotionnelle est un autre mécanisme possible dans ce contexte, car se sentir plus en sécurité peut réduire l’excitation émotionnelle.

En d’autres termes, la présence d’un animal de compagnie peut aider les propriétaires d’animaux à se sentir en sécurité et à l’aise. Se réveiller avec un animal de compagnie à ses côtés peut procurer un sentiment de bonheur, ce qui peut leur donner l’impression d’avoir bien dormi.

Dans le même temps, certaines études utilisant des questionnaires standard pour évaluer l’insomnie et la qualité du sommeil suggèrent que le fait de dormir avec un animal de compagnie n’est pas lié à une diminution du stress et peut augmenter l’insomnie et réduire la qualité perçue du sommeil.

Ces résultats mitigés suggèrent que les effets du co-sommeil sont plus complexes qu’il n’y paraît – que la façon dont nous percevons notre sommeil ne correspond pas toujours à ce qui se passe dans notre corps.

Le co-sommeil d’un point de vue physiologique

Nous pouvons également étudier les effets du co-sommeil avec des animaux de compagnie de manière plus objective, en utilisant des outils pour évaluer les habitudes de sommeil, les réveils nocturnes et la qualité globale du sommeil.

Les recherches suggèrent que même lorsque les propriétaires d’animaux déclarent mieux dormir, les mesures physiologiques montrent souvent un sommeil plus fragmenté lorsqu’ils partagent leur lit avec leurs animaux. Dans une étude, des chercheurs ont utilisé un dispositif semblable à une montre-bracelet pour mesurer les mouvements des personnes pendant la nuit alors qu’elles dormaient avec leurs animaux de compagnie.

Ils ont constaté que même lorsque les personnes avaient l’impression d’avoir bien dormi, leur sommeil avait tendance à être plus perturbé.

Dans certains cas, ces perturbations étaient liées aux mouvements de l’animal pendant la nuit. Les chercheurs ont observé une synchronisation dans laquelle les mouvements des animaux influençaient les schémas de mouvement de leurs maîtres, et vice versa.

Dormir avec un animal de compagnie peut donc affecter à la fois le sommeil de la personne et celui de l’animal. Et bien que ces perturbations ne soient pas uniformes, elles peuvent dépendre du type d’animal avec lequel vous partagez votre lit.

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Pourquoi les chiens perturbent-ils davantage le sommeil que les chats ?

Il existe également des preuves que l’impact peut varier en fonction du type et du nombre d’animaux de compagnie. Les personnes qui dorment avec des chiens peuvent connaître davantage de perturbations, tandis que celles qui dorment avec des chats font souvent état de résultats mitigés.

Bien que les raisons de ces différences ne soient pas claires, elles pourraient être liées à la plus grande sensibilité des chiens aux stimuli externes, tels que le bruit des voitures, les aboiements dans le quartier et d’autres sons environnementaux.

Compte tenu de l’influence de ces expériences sur la santé mentale et le bien-être, il est important de noter qu’une mauvaise qualité de sommeil sur le long terme peut avoir un impact sur la régulation émotionnelle.

Cela peut se traduire par une tolérance moindre à la frustration ou une capacité réduite à gérer des situations émotionnellement difficiles. La fatigue, la déprime, les difficultés de concentration et toute une série d’autres symptômes peuvent également être liés à un mauvais sommeil.

Dans l’ensemble, ces résultats remettent en question l’idée selon laquelle le co-sommeil serait simplement soit bon, soit mauvais.

Repenser le débat « bon ou mauvais »

Dormir avec un animal de compagnie semble être à la fois réconfortant et perturbant.

Il s’agit d’un comportement complexe, et il est important de comprendre les motivations qui poussent les gens à partager leur lit. Dans certains cas, par exemple, le co-sommeil avec un animal de compagnie peut être très significatif, en phase avec les besoins des personnes et potentiellement lié au confort et au bien-être.

Dans le même temps, il est important de garder à l’esprit que nos perceptions ne reflètent pas toujours pleinement ce qui se passe dans le corps.

D’un point de vue pratique, une compréhension plus nuancée du partage du lit peut éclairer la manière dont il façonne les expériences quotidiennes, le sommeil et la santé globale. Prêter davantage attention à la manière dont les animaux de compagnie s’intègrent dans nos vies peut aider les propriétaires à prendre des décisions qui tiennent compte à la fois de la santé physique et mentale, sans négliger les impacts potentiels de ces décisions sur l’animal.

Plutôt que de se demander si le co-sommeil avec votre animal de compagnie est bénéfique ou néfaste, une meilleure question à se poser est la suivante : privilégiez-vous le réconfort émotionnel ou un sommeil ininterrompu ? Reconnaître ce compromis peut aider les propriétaires d’animaux à faire un choix éclairé.

Renata Roma ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.

– ref. Vous aimez dormir avec votre animal de compagnie ? La science révèle qu’il y a un compromis délicat à trouver – https://theconversation.com/vous-aimez-dormir-avec-votre-animal-de-compagnie-la-science-revele-quil-y-a-un-compromis-delicat-a-trouver-279420

April 1, 2026

Home or away? Why planning a sustainable holiday is about more than swapping planes for trains

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sarah Barfield Marks, PhD Researcher, Department of Psychology, University of Bath

As we emerge from a relentlessly gloomy winter in the UK, many are itching for a holiday in the sun. For some that means seeking warmer climates abroad and hopping on a plane to get there.

But as climate change brings wetter winters to the UK, flying for holidays is fuelling rapidly rising aviation emissions. And addressing this not only needs a shift towards climate-friendly travel but a reimagining of where holidays take place.

For years we’ve been sold the promise of guilt-free flying through green technologies such as sustainable aviation fuels and carbon offsetting from polluting airlines.

But all come with significant limitations and none are ready to deliver the emissions reductions we need within the time we have. Ultimately, without curbing demand, current climate policies will not deliver any major emissions reductions in aviation. That makes it more important to reduce how much we fly.

In the UK, aviation is set to become the largest emitting sector by 2040 and this rise is being driven primarily by leisure travel. This includes vacations and visiting family or friends with the majority of departing passengers flying for holidays.

Beyond switching planes for trains

The good news is the growth in aviation emissions isn’t being caused by your annual holiday to Spain. Most flights are taken by a relatively small number flying several times a year, with 70% of flights taken by just 15% of people. This group is also more likely to take frequent short-haul flights which could be replaced by train. Shifting the behaviour of this elite group (from planes to trains) would have a significant impact on cutting emissions.

Trains are significantly better for the climate compared to flying, with a single flight from London to Berlin clocking up the same amount of carbon as 11 trips by train.

As a researcher focusing on how to promote flight-free holidays to reduce aviation emissions, I used to find this reassuring. We didn’t necessarily need to change where we went for holidays. We just needed to get frequent flyers on trains instead of planes.

But, sadly, it itsn’t that simple. Recent research has found the majority of UK aviation emissions actually come from long-haul leisure flights. So even if all flights on routes that could be completed by rail in under 24 hours were replaced, this would only address around 14% of UK aviation emissions.

Reducing aviation emissions therefore requires not only getting frequent flyers to shift from planes to trains, but asking wider questions about where people want to go and why.

Rethinking what a ‘proper’ holiday looks like

Reducing demand for flying isn’t just a structural challenge addressing cheap flights and expensive trains, but also a social one. Five minutes scrolling on Instagram bombards you with bucket list destinations and influencers implying a life well lived is a passport full of stamps.

Since the rise of budget airlines in the 1990s, flying for holidays has become increasingly normalised socially, despite largely remaining something only a relatively wealthy few do regularly. And the pull isn’t just about cost and convenience.

Research shows if cost and time weren’t an issue, people say they would fly more. Flying has become a means to an end in reaching the exotic, unfamiliar and – crucially for British people – the sun.

Tourists associate distance with novelty, contributing to domestic holidays being less popular than those abroad. There’s almost a hierarchy of destinations where places furthest away and more novel feel more desirable. My ongoing research on how people talk about holidays reflects this – some questioned whether the UK even counts as a holiday.

I have found that holidays in far-away places seemed to impress participants more than those spent in the UK and Europe, often with responses such as “wow” and “amazing”. Destinations further afield were referred to as “grand”, “swanky”, “extravagant” and “big”, contrasting with the language used when discussing holidays closer to home with “only”, “little” and “just”. In this way, the places we visit on holiday act as social currency in conversations. Being well travelled grants us cultural capital, the accumulated knowledge and experience of the world signalling social status.

But ideas of a good holiday are open to change. In one survey, half of the respondents said they flew less because they knew someone who had given up flying due to climate change. So social influence works in both directions.

Some, for example those part of the slow travel movement, are already resisting the idea that closer destinations are somehow lesser. Participants in our ongoing research described planning trips around where they can feasibly get to by train, making the journey part of the holiday or foregrounding quality time with loved ones over the destination.

This isn’t about giving up holidays abroad and foregoing the sun, especially if you’re only flying to a European destination once or twice a year. Structural change, like fairer pricing and better rail connections, is also essential (and long overdue) if people are to make changes.

Even taking the train from London to Edinburgh costs on average 60% more than flying and this will persist until airlines are taxed fairly and train tickets are made the same price or cheaper than plane tickets. These are policies which the public supports.

So as we look ahead to summer it’s worth asking if what we’re actually longing for – whether it be warmth, rest, adventure, quality time, cultural interest or a change of scenery – really requires a long-haul flight (or lots of short-haul flights). A sustainable holiday starts with asking that question before deciding where to go.

Sarah Barfield Marks does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Home or away? Why planning a sustainable holiday is about more than swapping planes for trains – https://theconversation.com/home-or-away-why-planning-a-sustainable-holiday-is-about-more-than-swapping-planes-for-trains-277802

April 1, 2026

How Sweden’s communal laundries shield renters from rising energy bills

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tullia Jack, Associate Professor, Service Studies, Lund University

Many Swedish apartment blocks built in the 1960s and 1970s have shared laundry facilities. Cathy Xiao Chen/Shutterstock

People in many parts of the world are worried about rocketing energy bills as the conflict in the Gulf continues. But for the majority of renters in Sweden’s apartment blocks, this is not so much of an immediate concern.

Part of the reason for this is that many buildings have communal laundries where washing machines and dryers (as well as water and heating) are provided and the cost is included in the rent.

In Sweden, nearly one third of all water and energy is consumed domestically, with two thirds of this through activities relating to cleanliness. Electricity for washing and drying clothes also accounts for a substantial share of residential electricity use.

Communal laundries are one of Sweden’s environmental success stories. They began as part of the post-war million homes project, when modern apartment blocks were equipped with shared tvättstugor (laundry rooms) instead of individual residents having to buy their own machines. These rooms usually have a handful of semi-industrial washing machines, dryers and drying rooms serving an entire building. Access is through a communal booking system, and use is free to residents of the building. That set-up is efficient because it means share use of generally high-quality machines which encourages people to use full loads of washing.

I live in the Swedish city of Lund. Since I met my husband 11 years ago he’s been the go-to person for laundry, and takes the loads down to the communal room. For our family, using this facility is convenient because someone else takes care of maintenance and servicing of the machines and we don’t pay extra for washing clothes. It’s all included in the rent, which is negotiated for the building annually.

Tvättstugor rose to prominence during the Swedish government’s widespread building programme of the 1960s and 1970s, as part of a commitment to improving living conditions and creating a fairer society.

Clean running water, reasonably priced central heating and access to a laundry were part of a broader social project: raising living standards collectively, through shared infrastructure. This often meant that shared facilities such as laundry rooms and heating were included in the rent at no extra cost. This means that many people living in apartment blocks dotted around many Swedish cities don’t have to worry about too much about hikes in energy costs for washing, or heating, if, as expected, household energy prices rise this summer, due to the conflict in the Gulf.

Around 51% of Sweden’s housing is in these apartment blocks (2.3 million homes). And a survey of tenants in Sweden in 2020 found that around 53% have access to the tvättstuga.

How communal laundries save resources

If each household in Sweden had its own appliances, the material stock of machines – and future waste – would escalate quickly. A tvättstuga, by contrast, can serve dozens of residences with just a few semi-industrial machines that are built to last, maintained professionally and replaced strategically. It is a denser, leaner way of organising cleanliness.

Shared laundry spaces change how often we wash. Interviews and time-use data suggest that people with easy access to their own machine tend to wash more frequently, with smaller loads. If the washing machine is in the next room and energy and water are relatively cheap, it is tempting to wash “just in case”, or to avoid the minor inconvenience of airing clothes or dabbing away a single stain. When you have to book a slot, carry clothes down to the basement and work within a fixed time window, the calculation shifts. People batch their washing, fill machines properly and think twice before throwing something in after a single wear.

Communal laundries also make technological improvement easier. Upgrading a handful of machines in a shared space is far more straightforward than relying on hundreds of individual households to replace old appliances. Shared infrastructure can be a powerful lever: change the system once, and many people benefit.

But tvättstugor are also social spaces. Where I live the laundry room doubles as a small community centre. There’s a children’s book swap, a noticeboard with local events, and a steady trickle of neighbourly encounters. My husband has his gang of dads that he sees there every Sunday. They chat while folding, sharing tips about laundry liquid and life. Negotiations over booking times, cleaning lint filters and wiping benches are not always idyllic – there are passive-aggressive notes and the odd conflict – but they are also a form of everyday democracy. We learn, in a very concrete way, how to share resources, negotiate conflict, respect common rules and live together.

Two men folding the washing in the author's communal laundry area. — Two dads folding the washing in the author’s communal laundry area.
Tullia Jack, CC BY

Despite the environmental and social benefits, communal laundries are disappearing from new housing schemes. Many municipal housing companies are not including tvättstugor in new builds. This is a shame because it’s not possible to solve the energy crisis individually.

We need shared infrastructures – from tvättstugor to public transport to district heating (a centralised heating system that distributes heat to a range of buildings). Sweden shows how these facilities can work in practice: these shared laundry rooms spread costs, reduce waste and nudge people towards sufficiency. Just as importantly, they give us a reason to meet, compromise and practice our negotiation skills. This can help us build the solidarity needed to tackle the climate crisis.

Tullia Jack receives funding from Formas, grant number 2024-02280.

– ref. How Sweden’s communal laundries shield renters from rising energy bills – https://theconversation.com/how-swedens-communal-laundries-shield-renters-from-rising-energy-bills-279415

April 1, 2026

Why Iran targeted Amazon data centers and what that does – and doesn’t – change about warfare

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Dennis Murphy, Ph.D. Student of International Affairs, Georgia Institute of Technology

Smoke rises in Abu Dhabi on March 1, 2026, after Iranian drone strikes around the city, including on data centers. Ryan Lim/AFP via Getty Images

Before dawn on March 1, 2026, Iranian Shahed drones struck two Amazon Web Services data centers in the United Arab Emirates. A third commercial data center in Bahrain was hit, though it is less clear whether it was deliberately targeted. Iran has also indicated that it considers commercial data centers to be targets.

This is the first time that a country has deliberately targeted commercial data centers during wartime. Data centers have been targets of espionage and cyberattacks in the past, notably when Ukrainian hackers destroyed data stored in a Russian military-affiliated data center in 2024. This, however, was a physical attack. Drones damaged buildings.

Advances in artificial intelligence have increased the importance of data centers. The U.S. military, in particular, has made great use of AI systems for decision support in its attacks on Iran and Venezuela. Given how important data centers are, Iranian forces could be targeting the infrastructure Iran’s leaders believe is supporting strikes on Iran.

It is not altogether clear that these particular data centers were used by the U.S. military. Instead, the attacks may have been part of a broader effort to punish the United Arab Emirates for its ties with the U.S.

In my experience as a Ph.D. candidate at Georgia Tech studying how technology drives changes in international security, I don’t think the attacks signal any significant change in the nature of warfare. But they are forcing nations to recognize that data centers are targets of war – even if they don’t directly support military operations.

Data centers and the cloud

The United States military is increasingly incorporating advanced AI capabilities into its decision support systems. From the operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to supporting military strikes against Iran, the U.S. has been using AI, especially Anthropic’s Claude, for intelligence analysis and operational support.

AI is unlocking faster ways to carry out operations in war, but the AI tools the military often uses are not located on a plane or ship. When a service member uses Claude, the computing infrastructure that powers the model and its analysis usually goes to a secure Amazon Web Services cloud that hosts secret government data and software tools.

The basics of data centers explained.

Commercial data centers are where the cloud lives. The next time you pull up Netflix and watch your favorite shows, you are likely streaming the programming from a data center, possibly AWS. When AWS data centers go down, outages affect all sorts of entertainment, news and government functions.

With AI as a driver of economic growth, data centers are key forms of infrastructure. They ensure that AI can continue to run, as well as much of the underlying internet that governments and industry rely on. When Iran attacked the UAE’s data centers, it caused widespread disruption to the local banking system.

Commercial data centers enable most of the technology that runs the modern world, including AI systems. Disrupting them is key to disrupting the military and society of a country. Given that AWS provides and operates many of the commercial data centers where the cloud lives, it is likely that its data centers will continue to be targeted in conflict.

Going after US allies

Researchers at Just Security noted on March 12, 2026, that the United States requires cloud-computing service providers to store government and military data within the U.S. or on Department of Defense bases: “Moving such data to Amazon data centers in the Gulf region would require special authorization; we are unaware if that has been granted.”

Nevertheless, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed the strikes were against data centers supporting “the enemy’s” military and intelligence activities. And 10 days after the initial attack on the data centers, an Iranian news agency claimed that major tech company data centers and other physical assets in the region were considered “enemy technology infrastructure.”

Instead of military reasons, Iran may well have targeted the UAE to rattle the global economy and garner attention. Given the prominence of the Gulf as a major recipient of U.S. technological investment, the attack may also have been a symbolic one aimed at the heart of U.S.-Gulf cooperation. AI infrastructure such as commercial data centers is a growing part of U.S. leadership in the region, and this war could jeopardize the future of AI infrastructure in the Gulf.

men wearingwhite robes and headdresses stand over a model of an industrial park — This model shows a massive data center, part of the Stargate project involving U.S. tech companies, currently under construction in the United Arab Emirates.
Giuseppe CACACE/AFP via Getty Images

Growing importance, easy targets

Though data centers are increasingly important for national security, the economy and society at large, it can be tempting to suggest these strikes represent a fundamental shift in the nature of war. While that is a possibility, it is important to remember that Iran launched thousands of missiles and drones at targets in the UAE. Though the vast majority were intercepted, the two that struck data centers are a small portion of the ones that got through to civilian targets in UAE territory, including strikes on airports and hotels.

The relative vulnerability of commercial data centers – they are large, relatively fragile and lack dedicated air defenses – suggests that the ones in the UAE may have been targets of opportunity or convenience. In other words, they were hit because they could be hit.

Nevertheless, it seems likely that as the use of AI tools and other cloud-based resources continues to grow in importance for countries around the world, commercial data centers will be targets in future conflicts.

Dennis Murphy is affiliated with Georgia Tech, the Georgia Tech Research Institute, the RAND Corporation, the Notre Dame International Security Center, and the Astra Fellowship. He previously was affiliated with Lawrence Livermore National Lab, Marine Corps University, and the Cambridge University ERA Fellowship.

– ref. Why Iran targeted Amazon data centers and what that does – and doesn’t – change about warfare – https://theconversation.com/why-iran-targeted-amazon-data-centers-and-what-that-does-and-doesnt-change-about-warfare-278642

April 1, 2026

Astronaut Victor Glover is the latest in a long line of Black American explorers − including York, the enslaved man who played a key role in the Lewis and Clark expedition

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Craig Fehrman, Adjunct instructor at the Media School, Indiana University

The Artemis II crew will include Victor Glover, second from left, the first Black astronaut to fly to the Moon. NASA/Frank Michaux

In April 2026, four astronauts are scheduled to fly around the Moon. As part of NASA’s Artemis II mission, they will become the first humans to do so in half a century. One crew member, pilot Victor Glover, will become the first Black astronaut to ever orbit the Moon.

Glover’s achievement is worth celebrating. But it’s also worth remembering that he belongs to a long and underappreciated history. America’s first Black explorer didn’t fly an Apollo rocket or sail with the U.S. Exploring Expedition. He traveled with Lewis and Clark, and he was known by a single name: York.

I’m a historian who spent five years writing a book about Lewis and Clark, and I found new documents that show York was one of the most important people on their expedition. Even in a party that could number as many as 45 men, York stood out – for his courage, his skill and his sacrifices that helped the famous captains reach the Pacific Ocean.

York’s life as a slave

A bronze statue of a man holding a bird and a gun, looking off into the distance — A statue of York stands at the Riverfront Plaza in Louisville, Ky. The statue is speculative, as there is no record of what York looked like.
Lucky For You/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

York was born in Virginia around 1770. Growing up, he was a creative and sociable child, unusually tall with dark hair and a dark complexion – “black as a bear,” a contemporary noted.

He was also enslaved by the Clarks. William Clark, who was around the same age, was also unusually tall, though his hair was a rusty red, and sometimes the boys played together. But the playing stopped once York turned 9 or 10. That’s when he joined the adult slaves in working full time. That’s also when he began to note the differences between his life and William’s – differences that became only clearer once William started ordering him around.

In the 1780s, the Clark household headed to Kentucky. York met a Black woman there and married her. He also became William’s “body servant.”

A body servant was a slave who stayed close to his owner and prioritized his comfort, laying out his clothes and serving his meals. When Meriwether Lewis asked Clark to join his expedition, in 1803, Clark ordered York to accompany him.

Perhaps York was excited for this adventure. Perhaps he was not – it would be punishing, and he would be separated from his wife.

Either way, York didn’t have a choice.

The Corps of Discovery

York proved his worth from the start. Once they reached St. Louis, the soldiers, later known as the Corps of Discovery, rushed to raise winter quarters. Working in hail and snow, York and the others built log huts. They needed rough planks for their tables and bunks, but the carpenters had only a single whipsaw to make them. They chose two men to operate this crucial tool. One of them was York.

On May 14, 1804, the corps began ascending the Missouri River. York helped row and tow the party’s barge, which was the size of a semi-truck trailer. He carried a rifle and hunted – according to the expedition’s journals, he was only the fifth named member to bring down a buffalo. York cooked for the captains. He collected scientific specimens. He nursed the sick, including several soldiers and, later on, Sacagawea, a Shoshone woman who would also prove essential to the expedition’s success.

An old photo of a river with rushing rapids — York helped Lewis and Clark’s expedition cross rapids in the Columbia River.
Carleton Watkins/Oregon Historical Society

The soldiers were not always kind in return. During this period, officers rarely brought along enslaved body servants. York’s race probably made some of the men angry or uncomfortable. One day, someone threw so much sand in his face that it nearly blinded him. Clark claimed it was “in fun,” but he also wrote that York was “very near losing his eyes,” and no one else got cruelly sprayed with sand.

That fall, during councils with Native leaders, York played a surprising and vital role. The Arikara, Mandan and Hidatsa all crowded in to see him and to touch his skin. They had never met a Black person before, and York showed off his strength and played with the Native children. Later, the Arikara said York was “the most marvelous” thing about the corps.

The next year, the expedition crossed the Rockies and the Continental Divide. York’s most important – and most overlooked – contributions came soon after. On the Columbia River and its tributaries, the party had to dig out five new canoes and then paddle them through treacherous rapids.

Lewis and Clark allowed only their best rivermen on these foaming, rock-riven waters. One of them was almost certainly York. During my research, I found an unpublished letter in which Clark praised York’s ability to “manage the boats.”

Just as important, York was a strong swimmer, a rare thing in an era when many people never learned to swim.

York’s life as an explorer

On the Columbia River, the corps survived a series of terrifying choke points – soggy hazards they referred to as the “Long Narrows” and the “Great Chute.” After that came the ocean. They had traveled together for more than 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers), and when the captains asked the men to vote on where to put their final winter quarters, they made sure to ask York, too.

a photo of a journal scrawled with cursive handwriting — In his elk-skin journal, William Clark recorded York’s winter quarters vote.
Missouri Historical Society

It was the latest sign that his role had changed during this epic journey. But those changes began with York. In the West, he found ways to make choices and assert himself. He sent a buffalo robe to his wife in Kentucky. When Clark told him to scale back his performances for Native people, York ignored him – because he wanted to, and because he could.

York’s vote was also evidence that, like Victor Glover today, he was an official American explorer, a key member of a sprawling, federally funded mission. From 1804 to 1806, the government devoted a larger percentage of its budget to the corps than it devotes to NASA today.

Part of that money was earmarked for York. The Army gave officers who brought along their slaves a monthly ration or its cash equivalent. When the corps made it home, the government paid US$274.57 for York’s labor, a sum similar to what the privates received. But that money didn’t go to York. It went to Clark.

The hidden history of Black explorers

There have been many Black explorers in American history. Thomas Jefferson launched other expeditions besides Lewis and Clark’s, and those expeditions also included enslaved people, though their names have not survived. Isaiah Brown served on the Wheeler Survey, which mapped the West in greater detail after the Civil War. Matthew Henson accompanied Robert Peary on his Arctic expeditions, which received some federal support. More recently, NASA has depended on Black astronauts such as Guy Bluford, Mae Jemison and Jeanette Epps, among others.

York and Victor Glover are, for now, the first and most recent examples of this inspiring tradition. But their contributions go beyond that. When the captains asked York to vote on the winter quarters, they were acknowledging in some small way that he’d proven he was more than a body servant.

Of course, York had always been more than that. It just took 4,000 miles for Lewis and Clark to see it.

Craig Fehrman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Astronaut Victor Glover is the latest in a long line of Black American explorers − including York, the enslaved man who played a key role in the Lewis and Clark expedition – https://theconversation.com/astronaut-victor-glover-is-the-latest-in-a-long-line-of-black-american-explorers-including-york-the-enslaved-man-who-played-a-key-role-in-the-lewis-and-clark-expedition-279168

April 1, 2026

Suplemento cultural: desde Irán hasta China

Source: The Conversation – (in Spanish) – By Claudia Lorenzo Rubiera, Editora de Cultura, The Conversation

Corredor interno en las paredes exteriores para el paso de los antiguos guerreros en el castillo de Abrand, Shahediyeh, cerca de Yazd, Irán. La fortaleza fue construida durante el período sasánida. Poliorketes/Shutterstock

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Hablemos de Irán. De hecho, más que hablar, les ofrezco leer sobre ello. Porque se menciona mucho a Irán estos días, sus ciudadanos, el islam, el velo, la represión. Decimos cosas, pero en ocasiones conocemos poco aquello que no dejamos de sacar en las conversaciones. Por eso Carlos Martínez Carrasco acudió al rescate y desarrolló, en un artículo histórico fabuloso, dónde nace la identidad iraní, su cultura.

Martínez Carrasco recorre su pasado sasaní, preislámico, y también la impronta religiosa tras la conquista árabe. Asimismo, alude a las referencias que el actual régimen hace de esos mitos antiguos para utilizarlos como propaganda. Su repaso abre la puerta a una cultura rica en matices que ha sufrido apropiaciones interesadas por demasiadas figuras. Conocer el pasado, hacer memoria y permitir que todos poseamos esa información sienta las bases de un futuro que esperamos sea mejor, pacífico y posible para esa tierra.

Y si queremos hablar de potencia cultural, China, que cuenta con 56 etnias diferentes, es otro ejemplo de ello. Al hilo de la nueva aprobación de la llamada “ley de unidad étnica”, explicamos tanto el origen de la civilización han, etnia mayoritaria en el país, como la importancia del patrimonio de esas otras 55 que ahora se ven más desprotegidas.

Los retos tecnológicos

¿Alguna vez han oído hablar del “valle inquietante”? Es ese límite que cruzan algunos avances tecnológicos cuando nos provocan, al parecerse tanto a los humanos, un poquito de yuyu; ese ver algo que se mueve como un señor, que parece que habla como un señor pero que… no es un señor.

Se solía aplicar, obviamente, a los robots, pero ahora que la inteligencia artificial está cogiendo fuerza, cada vez hay más entornos en los que notamos que algo (o alguien) no llega a ser humano del todo. Ricardo Fernández Rafael explica perfectamente qué problemas nos crea no saber si estamos viendo, escuchando o interactuando con un ente de carne y hueso o de unos y ceros.

Las salas no descansan

En las carteleras españolas coinciden dos películas de sendos pesos pesados en la industria nacional: Santiago Segura y Pedro Almodóvar.

El primero ha estrenado la sexta entrega de su saga sobre Torrente, un filme en el que este se postula a presidente del país y que, por tanto, contiene más carga política que los anteriores.

Sin embargo, la sociedad que ha recibido con los brazos abiertos esta película –lleva más de 16 millones recaudados– no es la misma de hace una década, y eso se revela tanto a la hora de percibir la ironía de la propuesta como al abrazar el mimetismo con su protagonista.

El director más internacional del cine español, por su parte, presenta en Amarga Navidad un ejercicio de metacine en el que la autoficción y la discusión sobre si es ético narrar la vida privada de otros en público ocupan el centro del argumento.

Es, también, un drama, una tendencia constante en las últimas décadas del cine de Almodóvar (salvo Los amantes pasajeros). Sin embargo, el manchego lleva días declarando que tiene ganas de volver a rodar una comedia loca como las de sus inicios. Pero ¿podemos decir que a lo largo de estos años no ha hecho ningún guiño a la risa en sus guiones?

Para rematar, les regalamos una lectura preciosa que tal vez les remita a su infancia, a su adolescencia o, como en mi caso, a la nostalgia de un tiempo que no viví pero que, tras amar Cinema Paradiso, querría haber conocido: el cine de barrio.

– ref. Suplemento cultural: desde Irán hasta China – https://theconversation.com/suplemento-cultural-desde-iran-hasta-china-279350