This Week in History recalls memorable and decisive events and personalities of the past.

11th July 1960 – To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is first published, in the United States

The plot and characters in Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel were loosely based on the author’s family and neighbours, and an incident that occurred near her home town in the 1930s.

The novel, set in a small southern town during the Great Depression, tells the story of a working-class black man who is falsely accused of rape by a white woman and her family. The narrative is told from the perspective of the daughter of the white lawyer who is appointed to defend the accused man. 

Ultimately, despite a strong defence and the bad reputation of the white accusers, the jury convicts the defendant, who, though there are hopes that the verdict will be overturned on appeal, dies after being shot while attempting to escape from prison. 

The book examines many factors that threaten a liberal justice system, such as mob mentality, identarianism, pride and revenge. 

An instant success when it appeared, the book has become a staple of high school reading lists across the English-speaking world as a way to introduce young people to topics like justice and racism. 

More recently, proponents of Critical Race Theory have begun to attack the work for the racial slurs in the writing, and for the fact that the story is told by a white narrator. 

As a result, this sterling work with its defence of justice and non-racialism is at risk of disappearing from the curriculum of many schools. 

12th July 70 – The armies of Titus attack the walls of Jerusalem after a six-month siege, breaching the defences three days later

In the year 66, tensions between the Jews of the Roman province of Judea and the Roman authorities were running high after a series of incidents in which Roman troops and officials had disrespected Jewish religious texts and rites.

These tensions soon evolved into a tax revolt, which, with the encouragement of Emperor Nero, was widely and aggressively suppressed by the Roman authorities, most notably in the Roman governor’s plundering the great Jewish temple in Jerusalem (usually referred to as the Second Temple). These actions only encouraged further resistance from the Jewish population, which soon began murdering Roman citizens, and succeeded eventually in driving the Roman authorities and their puppet king out of Judea. 

While the Romans had an often fairly relaxed and decentralised attitude to governing their empire, the challenge to their authority in Judea was not one they were prepared to leave unanswered. Thus, Nero appointed the general, Vespasian, to smash the rebellion, to which end he was given command of the X Fretensis, V Macedonica and XV Apollinaris legions.

In 67, Vespasian and his son,Titus, led their troops through the rebellious territories, burning rebel strongholds, crushing rebel armies and enslaving the local population. In this initial phase, the Romans avoided the city of Jerusalem, which was strongly garrisoned by the main Jewish rebel force. 

This first campaign drove many of the most hard-line rebels, known as Zealots, into Jerusalem as refugees, where they agitated for a more aggressive and less compromising approach to the Romans. 

In 68, the Roman campaign was briefly halted; back in Rome, Nero had been overthrown and committed suicide, at which point the Empire fell into a brief civil war (the year of the four emperors). Vespasian left the Roman armies in Judea in the hands of Titus, and rushed to Rome to claim the Empire, which he ultimately succeeded in doing. 

The Jewish rebels still holding out in Jerusalem soon came into conflict with other Jewish groups in Jerusalem, fighting which crippled their ability to coordinate their efforts against the Romans. 

In April of the year 70, Titus led his legions to the walls of Jerusalem and began a siege of the city. Quickly breaking through the first two lines of defence, he was held up by the third until July. Throughout the siege, infighting continued among the Jews, once again hampering their resistance to the Roman legions. 

On 15 July, after months of bitter siege, the Romans finally broke into the city, and in the chaos of the brutal sack that followed the great Jewish temple was destroyed and looted, the population of the city enslaved and the rebellion’s hopes of victory dashed. 

The ‘First Jewish-Roman War’ is an incredible tale described in vivid detail by an author who witnessed the actual events himself, something which is unusual for histories of the time. Our main source is a one-time Jewish rebel called Josephus, who was captured in the year 67 by the Roman army and enslaved by Vespasian. He would become very close with his masters and eventually be set free, after which he wrote an extremely pro-Roman history of the war. Josephus himself would later become thoroughly Romanised, adopting the name Titus Flavius Josephus. 

The sack of the Second Temple would have a great influence on the Bible, according to which the destruction of the temple is predicted by Jesus in some of his sermons. Much of the Bible was written in the immediate aftermath of the sack and deeply affected the views and attitudes of the early Christians, who had already faced their first persecution under Emperor Nero. 

For Jews, the sack of the city was enormously impactful; in its aftermath the Romans dispersed the Jewish population across the empire, beginning the great Jewish diaspora, which saw Jewish communities scattered across the Mediterranean world. 

13th July 1977 – Somalia declares war on Ethiopia, starting the Ogaden War

The Ogaden is a region in what today is eastern Ethiopia which, from Somalia’s founding in 1960, was disputed territory. The region was originally held by the British as part of their Somaliland colony, but was given to Ethiopia in 1948 to honour agreements signed with Ethiopia in the 19th century. 

Newly independent Somalia claimed the region as a rightful part of its territory, and, when a hard-line pro-Soviet communist regime came to power in 1969, resolved to take it back.

In 1974, the Ethiopian monarchy was overthrown and a hard-line communist military regime took power there, and began to align the country with the Soviet Bloc. 

But three years later, in 1977, the Somali government realized it was in a far better position than Ethiopia, and in July that year launched an invasion of the Ogaden. In the opening phase of the conflict, the Ethiopian army crumbled under Somali attacks and, by the end of July, most of Ogaden was under the invaders’ control. 

However, the Soviets and their Cuban allies were outraged that the Somalis had attacked a communist nation, and, cutting off all military assistance to the Somalis, they transferred it to Ethiopia. 

Cuban troops were dispatched to Ethiopia and soon the combined Ethiopian and Cuban armies drove back the invading Somalis and took the region back. 

In the aftermath, Somalia’s government collapsed due to discontent in the army following the failed invasion.

15th July 1410 – Polish–Lithuanian–Teutonic War: Battle of Grunwald: The allied forces of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania defeat the army of the Teutonic Order

In the 1230s, the crusading order known as the Teutonic Knights, moved their headquarters to Kulmerland in modern-day Poland at the request of local Christian nobles who wanted assistance against the pagan Baltic Prussian tribes. The Knights were extremely successful and soon established themselves as a powerful force in the region, capturing much Baltic territory – straddling modern-day Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia – converting the population to Christianity and in some areas encouraging significant German settlement. (This would create major problems in the 20th century).

While originally enemies, Christian Poland and Pagan Lithuania (the last pagan kingdom in Europe) grew increasingly fearful of the Knights and their powerful armies, which were often aided by crusading nobles from across Europe. 

In 1385, the Lithuanians and Poles agreed on a marriage alliance and Lithuania agreed to convert to Christianity to remove the religious rationale of the Knight’s presence in the area. The Teutonic Knights contested the sincerity of this conversion and took the Lithuanians to the Papal court to declare their conversion invalid. 

Tensions grew and, in 1409, the local Baltic peasants of the border regions rose up against the Knights. Soon full-scale war broke out between the Knights and Lithuania, with the Poles joining on Lithuania’s side. 

After some skirmishing, the two sides met in battle at a place called Grunwald in 1410. The Polish–Lithuanian army was an amalgam of ethnic groups and religions: the Catholic Polish–Lithuanian troops fought side by side with pagan Samogitians, Eastern Orthodox Ruthenians, and Muslim Tatars. Numerous peoples from across the German parts of Europe joined the Teutonic side. 

One of the largest battles in medieval European history, the clash involved two armies numbering between 20 000 and 30 000 each. At first, the battle went largely the way of the Knights, with almost the entire Lithuanian army being routed. But the Knights were unable to break the Polish forces and soon the Lithuanians regrouped and returned to the battle, attacking the Knights from the rear. 

This led to the panicked retreat of the entire Teutonic army and a near total victory for the Polish-Lithuanian forces. 

Around 2 000 Poles and Lithuanians were killed, while the Knights lost 8 000 troops and lost another 14 000 to captivity. 

Today, the Battle of Grunwald is remembered as one of the most important battles in Polish and Lithuanian history, as it secured these nations against control and conquest by German invaders for centuries to come. Indeed, following this battle, Poland and Lithuania would grow closer and eventually be merged into one nation, the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, a state that would dominate eastern Europe for the next two centuries. 

The battle has such legendary potency in Eastern European history that modern Russian nationalists have tried falsely to claim the battle as a Russian victory against bloodthirsty German invaders.

16th July 622 – The beginning of the Islamic calendar

The Islamic calendar begins not, as most modern calendars do, from a medieval estimate of Christ’s birth, but rather from the exit of Muhammed from his home in the city of Mecca to the nearby city of Medina, an event Muslims call the Hijra, which is thought to have occurred on 16 July 622. 

The Islamic calendar is based not on the Sun and Earth’s orbit of it, but on the cycles of the Moon. Thus, over time, it drifts slightly through the solar calendar year, as it has between 354 and 355 days in a year.

The current Islamic year is 1441 years after the Hijra, and will end on 20 August 2020. 

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