International Relations

Relations across the UK, Europe and globally are frequently changing, and have done so across our history. How these relations are recorded, monitored and treated are discussed in the collection of articles and podcasts here. The very concept of international relations is explored as are when boundaries and discussions between states and groups started to matter. What are the procedures, protocols and outcomes of a world according to the history of international relations are all under scrutiny?

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  • Films: Brezhnev – Interpretations

    25th April 2025

    (Student and corporate secondary members can view these films in our Student Zone) Leonid Brezhnev was the second longest serving leader of the Soviet Union after Stalin, overseeing some of the most difficult relations between East and West, yet he does not have the popular cultural legacy of some of the...

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  • Recruiting volunteers to fight in the First World War

    Article

    ‘Your Country Needs You’ and other posters are still remembered today as a prominent vehicle by which men were encouraged to fight in the First World War. Virtually absent from the literature, however, is analysis of the impact of thousands of recruitment meetings and their speakers. Robert Bullard explores the contribution...

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  • Films: Lenin – Interpretations

    31st January 2025

    (Student and corporate secondary members can view these films in our Student Zone) Two men – Trotsky and Lenin – symbolise the Russian Revolution for most people. While Trotsky came to an icy end in Mexico, Lenin remains an enduring figure in the history of Russia and the history of Communism...

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  • Film: Lenin, the 1905 Russian Revolution and WWI

    Article

    The founders of Communism, Marx and Engels, had created a set of social structures and industrial developments that were believed necessary for Communism to be achieved. Imperial Russia did not fit these conditions and yet at the start of the twentieth century Russian revolutionaries were some of the most active...

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  • Films: Khrushchev – Interpretations

    9th October 2024

    (Student and corporate secondary members can view these films in our Student Zone) Khrushchev came to power in the Soviet Union at a time when the whole region was used to living on a knife's edge. He appeared to usher in a more relaxed calm era as though that had...

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  • Film: Khrushchev - Background

    Article

    In this film, Dr Alexander Titov (Queen's University of Belfast), provides a profile of Khrushchev’s background and personality and how these influenced his politics and ideas. Dr Titov takes us on a journey from Khrushchev's peasant beginnings in Kursk, his rapid rise in the communist party, his role in the purges, to...

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  • Films: Boris Yeltsin – Interpretations

    19th June 2024

    Borisn Yelstin was the Russian leader from the collapse of the Soviet Union through to the leadership of Vladimir Putin. A key pivotal figure of the twentieth century, he had as an important an impact on Russia and global politics as any of the Soviet leaders of the 1970s and 80s and...

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  • Films: Joseph Stalin – Interpretations

    27th March 2024

    In our new film series running over the course of 2024-2025, some of the leading historians working on Russia have contributed their expertise to build a clear understanding of the leaders of modern Russia and how they have shaped their country and the rest of the world through it. Each of the experts...

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  • Political and social attitudes underpinning the 1924 Olympics

    Article

    The 1924 Olympics in Paris are best known to many British people through the ‘Chariots of Fire’ film from the early 1980s. The film touches on some of the political and social attitudes prevalent in the 1920s and Steve Illingworth explores these issues further in this article. It is argued...

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  • Real Lives: Maharaja’s German: Anthony Pohlmann in India

    Article

    Our series ‘Real Lives’ seeks to put the story of the ordinary person into our great historical narrative. We are all part of the rich fabric of the communities in which we live and we are affected to greater and lesser degrees by the big events that happen on a daily...

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  • Films: Mikhail Gorbachev – Interpretations

    Article

    How much of what Russia is today, how its people behave, and how they are perceived is dependent on its history and those that have led it? Was it the first melting pot of the world? Do its broad range of cultural traditions and diversity play a part in its...

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  • The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

    Article

    The Nazis came to power in 1933 with an openly racist and antisemitic set of policies. In the years leading up to the start of the Second World War, those policies were carried out through legislation and governmental actions, with the support of many members of German society. Once the war started,...

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  • The Legacy of the Z Special Unit in World War II

    Article

    The Spirit of Normandy Trust Essay Competition is aimed at young historians and organised by the Historical Association (as part of the annual Young Historian Awards). The 2023 winner in the Key Stage 3 (lower secondary school) category is Ayan Sinha, a pupil at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Wakefield. In this abridged...

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  • Bonapartism after Napoleon III: the Prince Imperial and Eugene Loudun

    Article

    Emperor Napoleon III of France was deposed in 1870 and then died three years later. His son, known as the Prince Imperial, lived in exile in south-east England. There he and his supporters kept alive ambitions for a triumphant return of the Empire. In this article, Ian Sygrave assesses the...

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  • History Abridged: American Policy: theory and practice over 200 years

    Article

    History Abridged: In this feature we take a person, time, theme or event and tell you the vast rich history in small space. A long dip into history in a shortened form. See all History Abridged articles The ‘Monroe Doctrine’ in 1825 provided a cornerstone for future United States foreign policy. Drafted...

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  • Anti-Americanism in Britain during the Second World War

    Article

    The Second World War saw the development of significant anti-Americanism in Britain. This article locates the centre of wartime anti-Americanism in the politics of Conservative imperialists, who believed the USA was trying to deliberately dismantle the British Empire in order to fulfil its own imperial ambitions. The Second World War...

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  • Doomed to fail: America’s intervention in Vietnam

    Article

    Why did American military involvement in Vietnam fail?  In this article, David McGill explains why the United States never had a realistic chance of defeating the North Vietnamese and their Viet Cong allies. The decision by the United States government to become involved in supporting the South Vietnamese government against the...

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  • The First Crusade, 1095–99

    Article

    As Christianity had spread across Europe, Islam had spread across the Middle East. At the end of the eleventh century the relationship between the Muslim leader of Jerusalem and the Christian communities and travellers to the city fractured. Along with other key relationships across Europe, the Middle East and around...

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  • Berlin and the Berlin Wall: on-demand short course

    Multipage Article

    Introduction The Berlin Wall became a symbol of a time in history, and a physical defining point in an otherwise covert series of battles. To study and explore the Berlin Wall is to explore how the Cold War manifested itself in Central Europe and the impact it had on one...

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  • Film series: Power and authority in Germany, 1871-1991

    Article

    The rise and fall of Germany in the 20th Century is one of the major political arcs of the modern period, and one that many feel familiar with – from the unification of the Germanic states, the defeat of the Kaiser in 1918, revolution, a weak Weimar Republic all the...

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