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Found 190 results matching 'brief history' within Historian > Historical Periods > Modern > Europe   (Clear filter)

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  • Film: A conversation on Goethe with A.N. Wilson

      Article
    In Goethe: His Faustian life, award-winning biographer, critic and writer A. N. Wilson tells the spellbinding story of the life of Goethe. From his youth as a wild literary prodigy, to his later years as Germany’s most heroic intellectual figure, Wilson hones in on Goethe’s undying obsession with the work he would spend his...
    Film: A conversation on Goethe with A.N. Wilson

  • Images of Ukraine through western lenses

      Historian article
    How has the understanding of what Ukraine is and, therefore, its image changed through the centuries? What did the word ‘Ukraine’ mean in the Middle Ages, the early modern times, or in the twentieth century? Even during the last four decades, this image has transformed dramatically, and the first association...
    Images of Ukraine through western lenses

  • Film: Khrushchev - Background

      Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
    In this film, Dr Alexander Titov (Queen's University of Belfast), provides a profile of Khrushchev’s background and personality and how these influenced his politics and ideas. Dr Titov takes us on a journey from Khrushchev's peasant beginnings in Kursk, his rapid rise in the communist party, his role in the purges, to...
    Film: Khrushchev - Background

  • Father of the Free French Navy: Thierry d’Argenlieu

      Historian article
    Thierry d’Argenlieu played a crucial role in the French Resistance during World War Two, but he does not fit the mould of the typical resister. Adrian Smith brings to light d’Argenlieu’s wartime experiences, and follows his career after 1945 as High Commissioner in Indo-China and member of the Carmelite order...
    Father of the Free French Navy: Thierry d’Argenlieu

  • The Battle of Monte Cassino and the D-Day Landings

      Article
    The Second World War is no longer a recent war. Very soon, there will be no veterans left to tell us how they saw things and what it was really like for them. While some eyewitnesses who were children at the time might be with us to see the centenary...
    The Battle of Monte Cassino and the D-Day Landings

  • Political and social attitudes underpinning the 1924 Olympics

      Historian article
    The 1924 Olympics in Paris are best known to many British people through the ‘Chariots of Fire’ film from the early 1980s. The film touches on some of the political and social attitudes prevalent in the 1920s and Steve Illingworth explores these issues further in this article. It is argued...
    Political and social attitudes underpinning the 1924 Olympics

  • Crowdsourcing the heritage of the Second World War

      Historian article
    Stuart Lee, Ylva Berglund Prytz and Matthew Kidd introduce an innovative project to capture objects and the memories they hold.
    Crowdsourcing the heritage of the Second World War

  • Bonapartism after Napoleon III: the Prince Imperial and Eugene Loudun

      Historian article
    Emperor Napoleon III of France was deposed in 1870 and then died three years later. His son, known as the Prince Imperial, lived in exile in south-east England. There he and his supporters kept alive ambitions for a triumphant return of the Empire. In this article, Ian Sygrave assesses the...
    Bonapartism after Napoleon III: the Prince Imperial and Eugene Loudun

  • Forbidden friendships: taverns, nightclubs, bottle bars and emancipation

      Historian article
    The modern gay-rights movement has its origins in a 1960s New York ‘bottle bar’, but as Ben Jerrit explains, drinking establishments have been centres of gay culture and social resistance for centuries. 
    Forbidden friendships: taverns, nightclubs, bottle bars and emancipation

  • The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

      Historian article
    The Nazis came to power in 1933 with an openly racist and antisemitic set of policies. In the years leading up to the start of the Second World War, those policies were carried out through legislation and governmental actions, with the support of many members of German society. Once the war started,...
    The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

  • Women and the French Revolution: the start of the modern feminist movement

      Historian article
    Luke Rimmo Loyi Lego explores the role of women in the French Revolution, and how their challenges to traditional gender roles laid the foundations for the modern feminist movement.  The study of the French Revolution is often restricted to its impact on the Enlightenment ideas of influential men such as Rousseau,...
    Women and the French Revolution: the start of the modern feminist movement

  • Evelyn Waugh’s books on the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935–36

      Historian article
    Philip Woods discusses Evelyn Waugh’s contribution to understanding the nature of journalism before the Second World War. This article compares the value to historians of the two books Evelyn Waugh wrote based on his experiences as a war correspondent covering the Italo-Ethiopian war of 1935–36. The popular satiric novel Scoop (1938) is...
    Evelyn Waugh’s books on the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935–36

  • My great-grandfather and the Italian Campaign

      Historian article
    This remarkable item by a student at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Wakefield was the winning Young Historian entry in the Key Stage 3 Spirit of Normandy Trust category in 2022. I’ve always known my great-grandfather fought in the Second World War, but never like this. When he left the army, he never...
    My great-grandfather and the Italian Campaign

  • Recorded webinar: Ordinary people - Holocaust Memorial Day 2023

      Recorded webinar
    To choose to act, to have no choice to be who you are, to live an ordinary life in extraordinary times? These are all questions that the Holocaust raises. Millions of people became victims of the Nazis, millions more choose not to act to stop the events around them, felt...
    Recorded webinar: Ordinary people - Holocaust Memorial Day 2023

  • Virtual Branch recording: Why has Monarchy survived in Europe?

      Virtual Branch
    In the lead-up to the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, Dr Bob Morris joined the HA Virtual Branch in March 2022 to consider why the monarchy has survived in Europe.  Dr R. M. (Bob) Morris is a Senior Honorary Research Associate at the Constitution Unit, University College London. He was formerly a...
    Virtual Branch recording: Why has Monarchy survived in Europe?

  • How Sweden almost became a nuclear-armed state – and why it didn’t

      Historian article
    This article examines the conditions under which Sweden considered and subsequently pursued nuclear weapons. After failing to secure the establishment of a Scandinavian defence union, the Swedish government initially viewed nuclear arms as an effective means to safeguard the country’s neutrality. Owing to technical limitations, reassessments on the value of such...
    How Sweden almost became a nuclear-armed state – and why it didn’t

  • Out and About in Stockholm

      Historian feature
    When Désirée Clary – wife of French Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte – arrived in Stockholm in 1811, she was appalled. It was true that she would eventually become Queen Desideria of Sweden and Norway, her husband having been elected heir-presumptive to the throne the previous year. But she left her new capital...
    Out and About in Stockholm

  • The Great Spa Towns of Europe: a UNESCO World Heritage Site

      Historian article
    Catherine Lloyd introduces us to an international heritage initiative to celebrate ‘spa’ culture. From ancient times, people believed that gods and spirits brought the means of natural healing. Step back in time to imagine an eerie wilderness, a glade in a wood, or a pool by a river, where the snow...
    The Great Spa Towns of Europe: a UNESCO World Heritage Site

  • Capturing public opinion during the Paris Commune of 1871

      Historian article
    In the year of its 150th anniversary, Jason Jacques Willems offers his thoughts on the importance of centrist opinion to our understanding of the Paris Commune. 2021 is the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune, when a revolutionary Parisian movement was pitted against the French government. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870...
    Capturing public opinion during the Paris Commune of 1871

  • Film: Life and Death in Occupied France

      Silent Village
    Robert Pike joined the HA Virtual Branch to discuss the research for his latest book Silent Village: Life and Death in Occupied France. This work explores life in the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane before, during and after the infamous massacre and destruction by Nazi Germany that took place on 10 June...
    Film: Life and Death in Occupied France

  • Why was it so important to see Dunkirk as a triumph rather than a disaster in 1940?

      Historian article
    Karin Doull investigates the perceptions of the outcome of the Dunkirk evacuation within the contextual framework of the time at which it occurred. In May 1940 the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and a proportion of the French First Army group had withdrawn, under heavy fighting to the port of Dunkirk on the...
    Why was it so important to see Dunkirk as a triumph rather than a disaster in 1940?

  • Origins of the European financial markets

      Transcribed podcast lecture
    This article is transcribed from a 2015 podcast given by Dr Anne Murphy of the University of Hertfordshire. In it Dr Murphy looks at the early origins of the European financial markets from the Italian Renaissance to the present day, as well as providing a useful introduction to finance, the stock market and the bond market....
    Origins of the European financial markets

  • British-Army camp followers in the Peninsular War

      Historian article
    Charles J. Esdaile throws light on a vital part of a field army that receives little study, the ‘baggage train’. The subject of the involvement of women’s involvement in warfare is one that over the past 20 years has become increasingly fashionable, and there is, therefore, a growing literature on...
    British-Army camp followers in the Peninsular War

  • Losing sight of the glory: five centuries of combat surgery

      Historian article
    Michael Crumplin traces developments in surgery that can be directly attributed to changes in the conduct of war. Little doubt exists that war accelerates and innovates medical care. Today, our armed services can rely upon sound medical treatment if they are sick or wounded, with survival rates of above 90%. This...
    Losing sight of the glory: five centuries of combat surgery

  • Moresnet: a small country in a big narrative

      Historian article
    Wim van Schijndel explores the intriguing story of Moresnet, a tiny enclave in Europe that existed from 1816 until 1920 between the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, until it was finally annexed by Belgium at the time of the Treaty of Versailles. A big part of our modern-day society is based...
    Moresnet: a small country in a big narrative