International Relations

This article examines the importance of understanding the experiences of the Indian Forces during the First World War and how that can affect young people today. One hundred and four years ago the British Empire was one of the largest global operations in existence. Roughly a quarter of the world’s population...

Travelling from the Western Front to fight former Allies in Russia is not the usual story of 1919 for a British ‘Tommy’.  Yet that was the story of some of those men still serving King and Country. On 9 January 1918 the supplement to The London Gazette, an official paper...

Imperial ambitions during the First World War extended beyond the Middle East and Africa.  In this article Ben Markham looks at the territorial wrangling over Greenland. It is well known that the British Empire grew in size significantly in the wake of the First World War. In the course of...

Richard Broadhead provides a personal view on whether the mammoth task of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission can always be fulfilled, especially at a time of so many anniversaries.

Hitler’s British Isles: The Real Story of the Occupied Channel Islands, Duncan Barrett, Simon and Schuster, 2018, 413p, £20-00.  ISBN 978-1-4711-6637-2 Having just read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Bloomsbury 2008), this very interesting book has now extended considerably my understanding of the nature of the experiences of...

Paradise in Chains: The Bounty Mutiny and the Founding of Australia, Diane Preston, Bloomsbury, 2018, 333pp., £25 hard, ISBN 978-1-63286-610-3 William Bligh hold the unenviable record of having suffered two mutinies in his career. The story of the mutiny on the Bounty in April 1789 and of William Bligh's and his men's survival...

Dave Martin investigates why there is a war memorial for German soldiers, ‘buried in a foreign field’, in a Dorset churchyard.

Guy de la Bédoyère considers whether the Roman Empire ever really fell or simply went through endless processes of change that makes it a integral presence in our lives today. The fall of the Roman Empire is like the end of the dinosaurs. It’s one of the vast dramatic crisis moments we love...

Joe Wilkinson takes us on a tour of the island of Zanzibar, where the slave trade continued long after the British abolished it. Mention Zanzibar and most people will think of an Indian Ocean paradise, perfect for honeymooners, relaxing on the popular pristine white north-eastern beaches of Bwejuu and Paje,...

Daniel Steinbach asks why the loss of the German colonies in Africa was perceived as a powerful symbol of Germany’s deliberate humiliation at the end of the First World War. Famously, Germany’s first and last shots of the First World War were fired in Africa. From its beginning to its...

Amrita Shodhan explores the complex legacy of Partition in India and the difficulties faced by historians in unpicking these narratives. She re-evaluates the events of August 1947 through personal stories and popular memories. The Partition that we have inherited from 1947 has a complicated lineage. It was born out of...

Peter Stanley is working on the largely unexplored history of the thousands of British Territorial soldiers who served in India during the First World War using their letters and diaries. He is trying to discover what happened to these men when they returned to Britain. Did their service in India...

Jules Stewart gives us an insight into how the Germans attempted to destabilise the British strategic position in Afghanistan during the Great War. On a state visit to Berlin in 1928, the Emir of Afghanistan Amanullah Khan was shown a display of the latest in German technology, which included a...

This notable essay by Dr. Erich Eyck, the most distinguished Bismarckian scholar of the mid-twentieth century was written on the invitation of the HA to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Bismark's death. Dr. Eyck, a German Liberal of the school of Ludwig Bamberger, found his way to England in the...

An HA Podcasted History of the Crusades featuring Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith, Professor Jonathan Phillips of Royal Holloway, University of London and Dr Tom Asbridge of Queen Mary, University of London.

Adam Chapman debates the evidence for a Welsh presence among Henry V’s highly-successful force of archers at Agincourt in 1415.Michael Drayton, in his poem of 1627, The Bataille of Agincourt, described the Welsh presence in Henry V's army: ‘who no lesse honour ow'd To their own king, nor yet less...

In the tradition of landscape historians, Peter Hoskins has explored some of the route marches taken by English armies during the Hundred Years War.After the battle of Crécy in 1346 and the capture of Calais by Edward III in the following year the Hundred Years War settled into an uneasy...

Our perspective on how archers performed in battle is enhanced byMark Hinsley's research into their use of protective stakes.On the approach to Agincourt in 1415 a small skirmish took place at Corbie, on the Somme. A force of French men-at-arms sallied out from the town and cut up some of...

An HA Podcasted History of the Spanish Golden Age featuring Dr Glyn Redworth of Manchester University and Dr Francois Soyer of the University of Southampton.

An HA Podcasted History of the Tudors featuring Dr Sue Doran, Dr Steven Gunn, Dr Michael Everett & Dr Anna Whitelock.