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Recorded Webinar: Ukraine and the Soviet Politics of Empire
Article
Dr Zbigniew Wojnowski is a historian based at the University of Oxford. He specialises in the history of the Cold War and is particularly interested in the history of Soviet social, cultural, and political interactions with Eastern Europe after 1945. In 2017, he published a book entitled The Near Abroad:...
Recorded Webinar: Ukraine and the Soviet Politics of Empire
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Film: Death in Diaspora
British & Irish Gravestones
As British and Irish migrants sought new lives in the Caribbean, Asia, North America and Australasia, they left a trail of physical remains where settlement occurred. Between the 17th and 20th centuries, gravestones and elaborate epitaphs documented identity and attachment to both their old and new worlds.
In this Virtual...
Film: Death in Diaspora
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Filmed Lecture: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution
A Fistful of Shells
In this Virtual Branch webinar we were joined in conversation with Dr Toby Green on his acclaimed book 'A Fistful of Shells'. Shortlisted for the 2020 Wolfson Prize and winner of the 2019 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding, the book explores West Africa from the Rise of the...
Filmed Lecture: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution
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Ancient Elam (3200-539BC)
Life before the Achaemenid Empire
In this podcast, Dr Parsa Daneshmand of University College London, provides an introduction to Ancient Elam.
Elam was an ancient civilization centred in the far west and southwest of modern-day Iran, stretching from the lowlands of what is now Khuzestan and Ilam Province as well as a small part of southern Iraq. Elamite states were among the...
Ancient Elam (3200-539BC)
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Film: The Kennedys and the Gores
HA Conference 2019 - Keynote Speech
This film was taken at the HA Annual Conference 2019 in Chester and features the HA's President: Professor Tony Badger who presented Friday's keynote lecture.
Find out more about the HA Conference.
In a country that prides itself on its egalitarianism and its democracy, it is perhaps surprising that family...
Film: The Kennedys and the Gores
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Recorded webinar series: Commemorating the 75th anniversary of the UN Convention on Genocide
Multipage Article
9 December 2023 was the 75th anniversary of the passing of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (known as the UN Convention on Genocide). The convention was a clear statement by the international community that crimes of that nature should never happen...
Recorded webinar series: Commemorating the 75th anniversary of the UN Convention on Genocide
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Ancient Egypt – The Old Kingdom (2700-2200 BC)
Podcast
This podcast will appeal to anyone who wants to know more about this popular area of history and wants that information from one of the world’s leading academics on the subject.
Most of us have read an article, watched a documentary or visited a museum that has an ancient Egyptian artefact of...
Ancient Egypt – The Old Kingdom (2700-2200 BC)
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Ancient Nubia and the Kushite Civilisations (2500BC-400AD)
2500BC to 400AD
In this podcast Dr Shadia Taha of Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, looks at the long and fascinating history of Ancient Nubia and the Kingdom of Kush. The Kingdom of Kush is divided into three kingdoms: The Kingdom of Kerma (2500BC to 1500BC), the Napatan Empire (1100BC to 590BC) and the Kingdom...
Ancient Nubia and the Kushite Civilisations (2500BC-400AD)
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The Akkadian Empire (2334–2154 BC)
Ancient World History
The Akkadian Empire was the first ancient empire of Mesopotamia after the long-lived civilization of Sumer. It was centred in the city of Akkad and its surrounding region. The empire united Akkadian and Sumerian speakers under one rule. The Akkadian Empire exercised influence across Mesopotamia, the Levant, and Anatolia, sending military expeditions as far south as Dilmun and Magan (modern Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Oman) in the Arabian Peninsula.
The Akkadian...
The Akkadian Empire (2334–2154 BC)
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Espionage in the 20th and 21st centuries
Podcast
In this podcast Trevor Barnes looks at the development of global intelligence and security services from their early origins to the present day. He examines at the role these services had during the two World Wars, the signficance of espionage in the development of the Cold War and the importance and...
Espionage in the 20th and 21st centuries
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An Introduction to Early Mesopotamia (4000-2700 BC)
Podcast
Mesopotamia means 'Between the Rivers'. The oldest known occurrence of the name Mesopotamia dates to the 4th century BC, when it was used to designate the area between the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers. Later, the historical region included not only the area of present-day Iraq, but also parts of present-day Iran, Syria and Turkey....
An Introduction to Early Mesopotamia (4000-2700 BC)
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The Sasanian Empire
Podcast
The Sasanian Empire (224–651 AD) represents one of the high points in the history of Iranian civilisation, with Sasanian cultural influence spreading far beyond the territory that it controlled, influencing regions as distant as Western Europe, Eastern Africa, China and India.
Following the defeat of the Parthian Empire (247 BC–224 AD), Ardashir I of the House of Sasan established an...
The Sasanian Empire
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The Fatimid Caliphate
909-1171
The Fatimid Caliphate also known as the Fatimid Empire, was a caliphate extant from the tenth to the twelfth centuries CE under the rule of the Fatimids, an Isma'ili Shi'a dynasty. The Fatimids traced their ancestry to the Islamic prophet Muhammad's daughter Fatima and her husband Ali, the first Shi'a imam.
Originating during the Abbasid Caliphate, the Fatimids initially conquered Ifriqiya (roughly present-day Tunisia and north-eastern Algeria). They extended their...
The Fatimid Caliphate
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The Meiji Restoration
Podcast
The Meiji Restoration was a political event that restored imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji. Although there were ruling emperors before the Meiji Restoration, the events restored practical power to, and consolidated the political system under, the Emperor of Japan. The Restoration led to enormous changes in Japan's political and social structure and...
The Meiji Restoration
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Tutankhamun, Howard Carter and the Griffith Institute
Podcast
Tutankhamun (c. 1341 BC – c. 1323 BC), was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh who ruled c. 1332 – 1323 BC during the late Eighteenth Dynasty of ancient Egypt.
Tutankhamun acceded to the throne around the age of nine following the short reigns of his predecessors Smenkhkare and Neferneferuaten. He married his half-sister Ankhesenpaaten, who was probably the mother of his two infant daughters. During his reign...
Tutankhamun, Howard Carter and the Griffith Institute
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The End of the Vietnam War
Podcast
The Vietnam War was one of many conflicts born partly out of the tumultuous global shift of the end of European Empires for which the Second World War had acted as a catalyst. What marked the Vietnam War out from some of the other political changes in the Indo-Chinese and...
The End of the Vietnam War
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The Fall of the Crusader States
Podcast
In this podcast Dr Nicholas Morton (Nottingham Trent University) provides and introduction to the fall of the Crusader states from the Fourth Crusade to the fall of Jerusalem in 1291. Dr Morton illustrates how the Crusaders were able to regain control of Jerusalem in the early 13th century but lost it...
The Fall of the Crusader States
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The Spice and Silk routes in the late medieval era
Podcast
The Silk Road was a network of Eurasian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles), it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and religious interactions between the East and West.
The spice trade involved historical civilizations in Asia, Northeast Africa and Europe. Spices such as cinnamon, cassia, cardamom, ginger, pepper, nutmeg, star anise, clove, and turmeric were known and used...
The Spice and Silk routes in the late medieval era
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The Neo-Babylonian Empire (626-539 BC)
Podcast
The Neo-Babylonian Empire or Second Babylonian Empire, historically known as the Chaldean Empire, was the last polity ruled by monarchs native to Mesopotamia. Beginning with the coronation of Nabopolassar as the King of Babylon in 626 BC and being firmly established through the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 612 BC, the Neo-Babylonian Empire was conquered by Cyrus and the Achaemenid Persian Empire in 539 BC,...
The Neo-Babylonian Empire (626-539 BC)
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The Rise of American Empire, 1865-1920
Podcast
In this extensive podcast series, Dr Alex Goodall of UCL looks at the growth of the United States as an international power from the end of the American Civil War through to the early twentieth century. This was a critical period for understanding the United States rise to superpower status in the twentieth...
The Rise of American Empire, 1865-1920
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Women in the Crusades
Podcast
In this podcast Dr Natasha Hodgson of Nottingham Trent University discusses the role and experience of women during the Crusades.
For Mediterranean women on the eve of the Crusades, life varied greatly depending upon their status. Women in positions of lordship were involved in all levels of strategy, and although women couldn’t...
Women in the Crusades
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Post-War Japan
Modern Japan
In August 1945 Imperial Japan made an unconditional surrender to the Allies following the dropping of two atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima on the 6 August and Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. The surrender announced by Emperor Hirohito finally brought the fighting of the Second World War to an...
Post-War Japan
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Early British America
Podcast
Following on from the complementary podcast on the sailing of the Mayflower, this podcast with Dr Sarah Pearsall of the University of Cambridge explores the early British Settlements in America and their development into a new society moving towards statehood. It looks at who the settlers were and their relationships with the Native...
Early British America
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The Mayflower voyage and the English settlement of North America
Early Modern North America
The 1620 Mayflower voyage was the result of the desire of a religious Christian group, the Puritans, who wished to break away from the Church of England and create a new community away from Catholic-influenced Europe. Plans for the voyage were fraught with problems in the summer of 1620, and the...
The Mayflower voyage and the English settlement of North America
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Abolition of Slavery
Video podcast series by History Hub, Royal Holloway, University of London
In this series of videos, produced by Royal Holloway, University of London, staff and students examine the campaigns to abolish both the slave trade and slavery itself, including a number of actor readings of pamphlets and speeches that help illustrate key arguments made by abolitionists and defenders of slavery. The...
Abolition of Slavery
