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What's New About New Labour?
Historian article
In the 1980s it was often argued that the Labour party was finished as a major force in British politics. Yet on 1st May 1997 it won a landslide victory, securing an overall majority of 179 in parliament. Two years into its term of office, it retains a strong lead...
What's New About New Labour?
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Why did People Choose Sides in the English Civil War?
Article
This paper was delivered at the British Library on 30th January 1999 at a joint meeting to commemerate the 350th anniversary of the execution of Charles I.
Why did People Choose Sides in the English Civil War?
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Durham
Article
Emeritus Professor G. R. Batho a personal perspective on the city of the prince bishops. We all have highly personal impressions of the towns and cities with which we are familiar. Few readers of The Historian are likely to emulate the good lady who hearing that I was leaving the...
Durham
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Sir William Petty: Scientist, Economist, Inventor, 1623-1687
Article
In December 1687 Sir William Petty, a founder member, attended the annual dinner of the Royal Society. He was obviously seriously ill and in 'greate pain' and shortly afterwards, on December 16th, he died in his house in Piccadilly, opposite St James Church. It was a quiet end to a...
Sir William Petty: Scientist, Economist, Inventor, 1623-1687
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Britain and the Formation of NATO
Article
Carl Watts outlines the shift in British security policy and examines the role played by the Foreign Office during the post-War period. April 1999 marks the 50th anniversary of the signature of the North Atlantic Treaty, which came into effect in August 1949. The Cold War is over, but NATO...
Britain and the Formation of NATO
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Eric Hobsbawm: Is History Dangerous?
Article
Professor Eric Hobsbawm’s address at the Annual Dinner of the Historical Association meeting in Cambridge, April 1999, on accepting the Medlicott Medal.
Our annual award the Medlicott Medal is awarded to individuals for outstanding services and current contributions to history.
Eric Hobsbawm: Is History Dangerous?
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The Vikings in Britain
Historian Article
Professor Henry Loyn provides an update on recent studies of the Viking Age. Interest in the activities of the Scandinavian people in Britain during the Viking Age, c 800-1100 A.D., has been strong in the last half-century or so, and it is good to pause and assess contributions to the...
The Vikings in Britain
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Cambridge
Article
Elisabeth Leedham-Green reflects on reality in the famous university town of Cambridge. This is a sharp place, best encountered when, as surprisingly often, the sun is shining and there is frost in the air. Then the stone sparkles and seems to float a few inches above the gleaming grass —...
Cambridge
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The Press and the Public during the Boer War 1899-1902
Article
Dr Jacqueline Beaumont Hughes considers some aspects of the role of the Press during the Boer War. The conflict between Great Britain and the Republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State which slipped into war in October 1899 was to become the most significant since the Crimean war. It...
The Press and the Public during the Boer War 1899-1902
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Vichy France and the Jews
Article
Dr Julian Jackson examines the position and treatment of Jews in Occupied France. When in 1945 France came to try those who had ‘collaborated’ during the war, the fate of the Jews was not central. It was even possible for Xavier Vallat, Vichy’s Commissioner for Jewish Affairs, to defend himself...
Vichy France and the Jews
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The Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Strait 1898-1899: The birth of social anthropology?
Article
Dr John Shepherd reviews the history of a major anthropological expedition one hundred years ago. On 10 March 1898 The Times reported that Cambridge Anthropological Expedition led by Alfred Cort Haddon had sailed from London, bound for the Torres Strait region between Australia and New Guinea. In Imperial Britain, the...
The Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Strait 1898-1899: The birth of social anthropology?
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The Knights Templars
Article
Professor Malcolm Barber explores the rise and fall of the Knights Templars.
"The master of the Temple was a good knight and stout-hearted, but he mistreated all other people as he was too overweening. He would not place any credence in the advice of the master of the Hospital, Brother...
The Knights Templars
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Women in the Tramway Industry 1914-1919
Article
Rosemary Thacker writes about one unusual area of expansion of war-time work for women in the Great War.
Women in the Tramway Industry 1914-1919
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Isaac Butt and Irish Nationality
Article
Alan O’Day reviews and reassesses the career of the major Irish Nationalist figure before Charles Stewart Parnell. Once the most respected man in Irish nationalist circles, Isaac Butt became merely a footnote in Anglo-Irish history after his death on 5 May 1879. Yet, from the mid-1860s until he died his...
Isaac Butt and Irish Nationality
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Photography in Korea, The Hermit Kingdom
Article
Terry Bennett provides an introduction to the earliest surviving photographs of Korea. It is, on the face of it, remarkable how late it was before the camera ventured into Korea. If we accept that photography effectively began with Louis Daguerre’s invention in 1839, it was a full 32 years later,...
Photography in Korea, The Hermit Kingdom
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War Plan Red: the American Plan for war with Britain
Article
John Major discusses an astonishing aspect of past Anglo-American history. All great powers have developed contingency plans for war with each other, and the United States in the early twentieth century was no exception. Each of Washington’s schemes was given a distinctive colour. Green mapped out intervention in neighbouring Mexico,...
War Plan Red: the American Plan for war with Britain
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Travelling the Seventeenth-Century English Economy: Rediscovery of Celia Fiennes
Article
Pam Sharpe reflects on the journals and expeditions of a 17th-century traveller. I first encountered Celia Fiennes (1662-1741), early modern traveller and journal writer, when I was an undergraduate. Being a keen traveller myself and studying social and economic history, Fiennes’ journeys fascinated me1. Here was a woman who travelled...
Travelling the Seventeenth-Century English Economy: Rediscovery of Celia Fiennes
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Jawaharlal Nehru: The Last Viceroy?
Article
Judith M. Brown spoke on Nehru as her subject for the 1998 Cust lecture at the University of Nottingham. Her portrait of this major Indian statesman is published here for the first time.
Jawaharlal Nehru: The Last Viceroy?
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The New History of the Spanish Inquisition
Article
Helen Rawlings reviews the recent literature which has prompted a fundamental reappraisal of the Spanish Inquisition. The Spanish Inquisition — first established in 1478 in Castile under Queen Isabella I and suppressed in 1834 by Queen Isabella II — has left its indelible mark on the whole course of Spain’s...
The New History of the Spanish Inquisition
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Stalin, Propaganda, and Soviet Society during the Great Terror
Historian article
Sarah Davies explores the evidence that even in the most repressive phases of Stalin’s rule, there existed a flourishing ‘shadow culture’, a lively and efficient unofficial network of information and ideas. 'Today a man only talks freely with his wife — at night, with the blankets pulled over his head.’...
Stalin, Propaganda, and Soviet Society during the Great Terror
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Quixotically Generous...Economically Worthless'
Article
William Kenefick considers two views of the dockers and the dockland community in Britain in the 19th and early 20th centuries. 'Quixotically generous and economically worthless’! But what does this mean? How does this curious descriptor help us understand the docker or the waterside community? Indeed, does it tell us...
Quixotically Generous...Economically Worthless'
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The British Communist Party 1920-1945
Article
With the collapse of communism in Russia and Eastern Europe, archival material is becoming available not only on these regimes but also on communist parties in the West. Matthew Worley surveys the latest writing on the Communist Party of Great Britain. Since the collapse of Communism, a number of books...
The British Communist Party 1920-1945
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From Disraeli to Callaghan: Britain 1879 - 1979
Historian article
A previously unpublished survey of British history by A.J.P. Taylor. It is a characteristic piece, though marked by gloom about the then recent inflation. Introduced by Historical Association President Chris Wrigley.
From Disraeli to Callaghan: Britain 1879 - 1979
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Cartooning King Cotton
Historian article
While cartoons have been widely used by historians of ‘High Politics’ or diplomacy, they have been used less often by social historians. Alan Fowler and Terry Wyke examine a source for the social history of the Lancashire cotton industry. Cartoons have long held a fascination for historians, though when using...
Cartooning King Cotton
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The Spanish Armada of...1597?
Article
Graham Darby gives an anniversary account of the later Spanish Armadas, long forgotten, but comparable in size and as threatening to contemporaries as the more famous Armada of 1588. As every schoolboy and schoolgirl should know, the Spanish Armada set sail in 1588: ‘God blew and they were scattered.’ However,...
The Spanish Armada of...1597?
