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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  • GCSE Podcasts: The Road to World War II

    Multipage Article

    Aaron Wilkes and Katrina Shearman of Castle High School in Dudley discuss one of the key topics for modern world history students: The Road to World War II.

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  • GCSE Podcasts: The World War 1 Peace Treaties

    Multipage Article

    Aaron Wilkes and Katrina Shearman of Castle High School in Dudley discuss one of the key topics for modern world history students: The Peace Treaties of World War 1. We have produced four podcasts with the first looking at the The state of Europe after the War, the second podcast examining...

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  • HA Podcasted History: Ancient Persia

    Multipage Article

    In this series of podcasts Professor Thomas Harrison of the University of Liverpool examines the Persian Empire, life in ancient Persian society and the Greek-Persian War.

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  • Podcast Series: The Cold War

    Multipage Article

    An HA Podcasted History of the Cold War featuring Dr Elena Hore of the University of Essex, Dr Matthew Grant of Teeside University, Dr Holger Nehring of the University of Sheffield, Dr Michael Shin of the University of Cambridge, Professor Mark White of Queen Mary University of London, Professor Charles...

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  • The Origins of the Second Great War

    Article

    This pamphlet provides a detailed account of  the events leading up to the outbreak of war in 1939, covering the various factors that played a role in the outbreak of war such as tension over Poland and the Spanish Civil War, as well as the nature and effect of diplomatic...

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  • The Great Powers in the Pacific

    Article

    This pamphlet covers a very large period of history in a very important region with great detail and focus. Themes that are covered include the transition of power and dominance in the pacific region, the conflicts that frequently arose in the struggle for pacific dominance throughout the centuries, as well...

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  • GCSE Podcasts: The League of Nations

    Multipage Article

    Aaron Wilkes and Katrina Shearman of Castle High School in Dudley discuss one of the key topics for modern world history students: The League of Nations. We have produced three podcasts with the first looking at the Origins, Structure and Limitations of the League of Nations, the second podcast examining the League of...

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  • CRIC Research Project

    Article

    Recent conflicts in Europe, as well as abroad, have brought the deliberate destruction of the heritage of others, as a means of inflicting pain, to the foreground. With this has come the realisation that the processes involved and thus the long-term consequences are poorly understood. Heritage reconstruction is not merely...

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  • Cyprus: another Middle East issue

    Article

    Although Cyprus, the third largest Mediterranean island, remained nominally under Turkish suzerainty until 1914, the British were established there after the 1878 Congress of Berlin. The idea then was that, from this base, Britain could protect Turkey against threats from Russia, while ensuring that the Turks reformed their treatment of...

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  • Neville Chamberlain: Villain or Hero?

    Article

    Perhaps no other British figure of the twentieth century has been as vilified or as celebrated as Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister from 1937 to 1940. In 1999, a BBC Radio 4 poll of prominent historians, politicians and commentators rated Chamberlain as one of the worst Prime Ministers of...

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  • The Byzantine Empire on the Eve of the Crusades

    Article

    This resource is a pamphlet titled ‘The Byzantine Empire on the Eve of the Crusades’ and written by R. J. H. Jenkins in 1953. As such, some of the scholarship has been updated since then, although it can provide useful historiography. It is not strange that there should in recent...

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  • The Coming of War in 1939

    Article

    I. The Legacy of VersaillesThe Outbreak of a second world war on 1 September 1939 might have been expected to produce in due course a great controversy on ‘war guilt'. But there has been nothing comparable with the debate which took place during the 1920s on the 1914 issues. The angel...

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  • The Second World War

    Article

    On 5 September 1939 the German Führer, Adolf Hitler, paid a surprise visit to the corps which was in the forefront of his army's ferocious assault upon Poland. As they passed the remains of a smashed Polish artillery regiment, the corps commander, General Guderian, astonished Hitler by telling him that...

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  • Polychronicon 143: the Balfour Declaration

    Article

    In a letter from the British Foreign Secretary, A.J. Balfour, to Lord Rothschild, the Anglo-Jewish leader, on 2 November 1917, the British Government declared its intention to ‘facilitate' the ‘establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people'. The Balfour Declaration, as it became known, was endorsed by...

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  • Imperialism resurgent: European attempts to 'recolonise' South East Asia after 1945

    Article

    ‘To think that the people of Indochina would be content to settle for less [from the French] than Indonesia has gained from the Dutch or India from the British is to underestimate the power of the forces that are sweeping Asia today'. An American adviser in 1949 cited: Robin Jeffrey...

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  • 1914: The Coming of the First World War

    Article

    This pamphlet argues that the outbreak of the First World War represented not so much the culmination of a long process started by Bismarck and his successors, as the relatively sudden breakdown of a system that had in fact preserved the peace and contained the dangerous Eastern Question for over...

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  • Stalinism

    Article

    Stalin's remarkable career raises quite fundamental questions for anyone interested in history. Marxists, whose philosophy should cause them to downgrade the role of ‘great men' as an explanation of great events, have problems in fitting Stalin into the materialist interpretation of history: did not this man ride rough-shod over the...

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  • The War of American Independence

    Article

    In the two-hundredth year of American Independence, it is proper to ask: why did it occur? It need not have happened; it was the act of men, not immutable forces. But once the tensions became acute, the three thousand miles of ocean were a difficult chasm to bridge. The War...

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  • The American Diplomatic Tradition

    Article

    Indisputably, the United States of America has been and continues to be the leading power of the twentieth century. No country or people, however large or small, has been immune from American influence. A succession of American presidents have become international celebrities whose personal strengths and weaknesses are discussed and disssected...

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  • Nazism and Stalinism

    Article

    Is it legitimate to compare the Nazi and Stalinist regimes? There might seem little room for doubt. It is often taken as self-evident that the two regimes were variations of a common type. They are bracketed together in school and university courses, as well as text books, under labels such...

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