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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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Philip II of Spain: The Prudent King
Article
On the eve of the 400th anniversary of Philip II’s death James Casey rejects the traditional portrayal of the Spanish ruler as a cruel despot and argues his achievements were more the result of an extraordinary sense of duty fully in tune with the hopes and aspirations of his people....
Philip II of Spain: The Prudent King
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A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: The Forgotten William Dampier
Historian article
In September 1683 in the Cape Verde Islands William Dampier lay 'obscured' among the scrubby vegetation to do some bird watching. He was excited for he had just caught his first sight of flamingos. The detail and delicacy of his description would gladden any modern ornithologist. They were, he wrote,...
A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: The Forgotten William Dampier
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The Spanish Collection
Article
For the art historian, a thorough study of works of art, their creators and the environment in which they were produced, as well as their significance then and now, is a specialised endeavour. This, nevertheless, does not exhaust the presentation of art to contemporaries, least of all in the context...
The Spanish Collection
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Podcast Series: The British Empire 1600-1800
The British Empire
An HA Podcasted History of the early British Empire featuring Professor Trevor Burnard of the University of Warwick, Professor Stephen Conway of University College London, Dr Jon Wilson of King's College London, Professor Gad Heuman of the University of Warwick.
Podcast Series: The British Empire 1600-1800
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A Tale of Two Chancellors: The Ineffectual Reformation in Elizabethan Staffordshire
Historian article
The Elizabethan Reformation in Staffordshire had a shallow seedbed. The radical reformers of the 1540s had greeted the conversion of the county with a mixture of high hopes and hyperbole. The East Anglian preacher and disciple of Latimer, Thomas Becon, wrote a treatise The Iewel of Ioye urging that itinerant...
A Tale of Two Chancellors: The Ineffectual Reformation in Elizabethan Staffordshire
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London and the English Civil War
Historian article
In the spring of 1643 William Lithgow, a Scot born in Lanark in 1582, who had spent most of his life travellingaround Europe, often on foot and having many fantastic adventures, decided to return to Britain. Having just turned sixty, he was obviously feeling pretty gloomy. ‘After long 40 years...
London and the English Civil War
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Enduring Civilisation: cities and citizens in the ‘Aztec Empire’
Historian article
Katherine Bellamy explores the cities and citizens at the heart of the so-called ‘Aztec Empire’, a vast and complex network of distinct indigenous communities who endured despite Spanish colonisation.
The term ‘civilisation’ is derived from the Latin, civilis (civil), and closely connected to civitas (city) and civis (citizen). The cities...
Enduring Civilisation: cities and citizens in the ‘Aztec Empire’
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Black Death to global pandemic: London then and now
Historian article
Christine Merie Fox compares the impact of the Black Death on fourteenth-century London with our present-day experience.
In 1347, a terrifying disease was carving a path from the East into Northern Africa and Europe. Its entry point into Europe was the south of Italy, via merchant ships from the Black Sea. The...
Black Death to global pandemic: London then and now
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My Favourite History Place: The Beguinage at Bruges
Historian feature
Richard Stone introduces us to a quiet neighbourhood in Bruges which has played its part in the development of women’s independence.
Close to the Minnewaterpark, on the fringe of the bustling historic centre of Bruges, with its medieval buildings and atmospheric cobbled streets, the Beguinage is a tranquil haven. Cross the...
My Favourite History Place: The Beguinage at Bruges
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Havelock Hall: the East India Company college gymnasium at Addiscombe
Historian article
Trevor James emphasises the importance of this structure in England’s sporting landscape.
Tucked behind the houses in Havelock Road in the East Croydon suburb of Addiscombe is a seemingly unprepossessing building, known locally as ‘Havelock Hall’. Now converted into flats, it derives its name from its late nineteenth-century religious use,...
Havelock Hall: the East India Company college gymnasium at Addiscombe
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The Jesuits and the Catholic Reformation
Classic Pamphlet
The society of Jesus, formally approved by Pope Paul III in his bull Regimini Militantis Ecclesiae of September 1540, was one of many new religious orders of men and women - such as Barnabites, Capuchins, Oratorians, Piarists and Vincentians among the male orders, and Daughters and Sisters of Charity, Ursulines,...
The Jesuits and the Catholic Reformation
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Podcast Series: The Spanish Golden Age
Multipage Article
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.
Podcast Series: The Spanish Golden Age
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Britain: the regional battlefields that helped to create a nation
Historian article
In this article Geoffrey Carter will be taking a look at battlefields as key elements in British history and how these can be incorporated into the study of history at various levels and in various periods. The regional nature of many historic conflicts is sometimes forgotten but this is an...
Britain: the regional battlefields that helped to create a nation
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An Intimate History of Your Home - Lucy Worsley
Historian Article
‘You've gone over to The Dark Side'.
These were the words of a well-respected historian to whom I'd been enthusing about the pleasures and perils of Dressing Up.
During 2009-10 I spent several months in historic costume, recreating the habits and rituals of domestic life in the past. It was...
An Intimate History of Your Home - Lucy Worsley
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'The Generous Turk': Some Eighteenth-Century Attitudes
Article
Notwithstanding the tribal hatred recently shown for each other by a handful of English and Turkish football fanatics, nobody who has travelled in Turkey or taken a holiday in that country can have failed to notice the courtesy and generosity with which visitors are invariably treated. Indeed, one of the...
'The Generous Turk': Some Eighteenth-Century Attitudes
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John Wilkes 1725-1797: A Man of Principle
Historian article
For Lord North in 1775, one John Wilkes was enough, ‘though ... to do him justice, it was not easy to find many such'. The impact of Wilkes between 1760 and 1780 was profound, a cause as much as a person. For Philip Francis, thought to be the satirist ‘Junius',...
John Wilkes 1725-1797: A Man of Principle
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The Pilgrimage of Grace: Reactions, Responses and Revisions
Article
Dr Michael Bush investigates the interpretations of the pilgrimage of grace. Our perception of the pilgrimage of grace has been largely created by Madeleine and Ruth Dodds and their magnificent book The Pilgrimage of Grace, 1536-7, and the Exeter Conspiracy, 1538 (Cambridge). Published in 1915, it has dominated the subject...
The Pilgrimage of Grace: Reactions, Responses and Revisions
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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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The Creation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707
Historian article
Why did both the parliaments of Scotland and England vote themselves out of existence in 1707 in order to create a new ‘United Kingdom of Great Britain’? From an English perspective, there was always a strong feeling that this union did not create a new kingdom and that it certainly...
The Creation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707
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Secular acts and sacred practices in the Italian Renaissance church interior
Historian article
Joanne Allen reveals a fundamental structural and architectural development in Italian churches in the Renaissance era, demonstrating that careful observation of structures and archives can substantially inform our appreciation of all church buildings.
In the opening to The Decameron (c. 1350), Boccaccio described how the ten young people who would become storytellers...
Secular acts and sacred practices in the Italian Renaissance church interior
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What have historians been arguing about... decolonisation and the British Empire?
Teaching History feature
Decolonisation is a contested term. When first used in 1952, it referred to a political event: a colony gaining independence; it has since come to describe a process. When, where and why this process began, however, and whether it has ended, are all fiercely debated. Is it about new flags...
What have historians been arguing about... decolonisation and the British Empire?
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The Irish historians' role and the place of history in Irish national life
Historian article
The debate on the nation and its history is new to England; and there is, perhaps, a tendency to assume that what is new in England is new everywhere. In Ireland, the debate has been going on since the 1970s, fuelled by what is called ‘revisionism’; or rather, by a...
The Irish historians' role and the place of history in Irish national life
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Religion and Science in the Eighteenth Century
Historian article
Much has been said about the clash between religion and science in Victorian times but there has been less research into the relationship between them in the eighteenth century. This article considers three Georgian clergymen who were also notable scientists – the Reverend William Stukeley, the pioneer of scientific field...
Religion and Science in the Eighteenth Century
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William the Silent: the first tolerant Prince
Historian article
There will be many readers of The Historian whose knowledge of the 16th Century is wide and deep. This article is designed to fill in some of the corners to the map of that warravaged century, and to focus on a man, William of Nassau, who fought the battle of...
William the Silent: the first tolerant Prince
