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Recorded Webinar: Resisting Reagan
Article
Recorded Webinar: Resisting Reagan
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1968: the year of reckoning
Historian article
Hugh Gault explains why, 50 years later, 1968 is still remembered as a dramatic year.
1967 was 'the summer of love', and that spirit continued into 1968; but there were also many events in 1968 that were of a different sort, when the liberty of 1967 was accompanied by a...
1968: the year of reckoning
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Gone with the Wind: a great book?
Historian article
HA President Tony Badger examines the historical context which shapes our understanding of Margaret Mitchell’s enduring novel.
I had been a historian of the American South for 50 years and like Ringbaum, I had a secret. I had never read Gone with the Wind. As I came up to retirement...
Gone with the Wind: a great book?
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The Indian Mutiny - Pamphlet
Classic Pamphlet
Harrison's booklet takes an evaluative look, at not just the effects of the Indian Mutiny on Indo-British history, but at the reporting of this event over the years. He begins with a look at the prejudices of British writers and British historians' attitude towards the mutiny, highlighting the flawed confidence western...
The Indian Mutiny - Pamphlet
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The Mary Celeste: the history of a mystery
Historian article
Graham Faiella guides us through the historical evidence and literary speculation surrounding one of the ultimately unresolved incidents of recent times.
One hundred and fifty years ago, sometime between 25 November and 4 December 1872, the brigantine Mary Celeste was abandoned at sea somewhere between the Azores and the coast of Portugal....
The Mary Celeste: the history of a mystery
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Exploring Twentieth-Century History
Article
For a long time, history curricula on the 20th century prioritised the narrative of a slide from World War I to World War II and fascism above many other topics. But the history of the 20th century is both far more complicated and far more interesting than that. For the historians writing here, the...
Exploring Twentieth-Century History
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Alexander II
Classic Pamphlet
The ‘great reforms' of Tsar Alexander II (1855-81) are generally recognised as the most significant events in modern Russian history between the reign of Peter the Great and the revolutions of 1905 and 1917. The most important of Alexander's reforms, the emancipation of he serfs in 1861, has been described...
Alexander II
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Sir Francis Dent and the First World War
Historian article
Not your typical soldier, not your typical service
The term ‘citizen soldier' evokes a particularly powerful image in Britain. The poignant histories of the ‘Pals' Battalions' cast a familiar, often tragic shadow over the popular memory of the First World War. Raised according to geographical and occupational connections, names such...
Sir Francis Dent and the First World War
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The British Empire on trial
Article
In the light of present-day concerns about the place, in a modern world, of statues commemorating figures whose roles in history are of debatable merit, Dr Gregory Gifford puts the British Empire on trial, presenting a balanced case both for and against.
In June 2020 when the statue of slave-trader Edward Colston...
The British Empire on trial
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The Japanese History Textbook Controversy: a Content Analysis
Historian article
With almost monotonous regularity the official release in Japan of new or revised secondary school history textbook editions, as well as primeministerial annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine to commemorate the 2.5 million Japanese war dead (including 14 Class-A war criminals), unleash a wave of international protest concerning Japan’s official...
The Japanese History Textbook Controversy: a Content Analysis
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Winston Churchill and the Islamic World: Early Encounters
Historian article
Winston Churchill had a major impact on British and world history in the twentieth century. A great deal has been written on his roles in the two world wars and on many aspects of his career. Yet relatively little attention has been paid to his relations with the Islamic world....
Winston Churchill and the Islamic World: Early Encounters
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Women’s friendship in late eighteenth-century America and its relevance to lockdown
Historian article
Rowan Cookson offers us the opportunity to compare our contemporary anxieties with a stressful era in American history.
Eighteenth-century women’s friendship is worth considering at this time. In my undergraduate dissertation, I concluded that white wealthy women’s friendship in eighteenth-century America equired long distance communication, involved labour and perpetuated race and class...
Women’s friendship in late eighteenth-century America and its relevance to lockdown
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The New Imperialism
Classic Pamphlet
This Classic Pamphlet first published in 1970 comes with a new introduction written by the author M. E. Chamberlain.The New Imperialism - Introduction by M. E. Chamberlain Professor Emeritus at Swansea University. May 2010.When this pamphlet was first published imperialism was a hot political topic and battle raged between Marxist and...
The New Imperialism
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India and the British war effort, 1939-1945
Historian article
India was vital as a source of men and material for the British in the Second World War, despite the constitutional, social and economic issues which posed threats to its contribution.
Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India 1940-5, wrote to Churchill, 8 April 1941: ‘My prime care had naturally...
India and the British war effort, 1939-1945
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Bristol and the Slave Trade
Classic Pamphlet
Captain Thomas Wyndham of Marshfield Park in Somerset was on voyage to Barbary where he sailed from Kingroad, near Bristol, with three ships full of goods and slaves thus beginning the association of African Trade and Bristol. In the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Bristol was not a place of...
Bristol and the Slave Trade
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The Victorian Age
Classic Pamphlet
This Classic Pamphlet was published in 1937 (the centenary of the accession of Queen Victoria, who succeeded to the throne on June 20, 1837).
Synopsis of contents:
1. Is the Victorian Age a distinct 'period' of history?
Landmarks establishing its beginning: the Reform Bill, railways, other inventions, new leaders in...
The Victorian Age
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The Romanov Tercentenary: nostalgia versus history on the eve of the Great War
Historian article
The spring of 2013 was unusually significant for devotees of the Romanov dynasty. Though there was little international recognition of the fact, the season marked the 400th anniversary of the accession of Russia's first Romanov tsar. Historically, the story was a most dramatic one, for Mikhail Fedorovich had not seized...
The Romanov Tercentenary: nostalgia versus history on the eve of the Great War
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Podcast Series: The British Empire 1800-Present
Multipage Article
An HA Podcasted History of the British Empire 1800-Present featuring Dr Seán Lang of Anglia Ruskin University, Dr John Stuart of Kingston University London, Professor A. J. Stockwell and Dr Larry Butler of the University of East Anglia.
Podcast Series: The British Empire 1800-Present
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The End of Colonial Rule in West Africa
Classic Pamphlet
The dissolution of colonial empires since the Second World War is a major theme of contemporary history, and one which will challenge historians for many years to come. There are still sharp disagreements as to how this change should be described. European scholars tend to use the term ‘decolonization' (at...
The End of Colonial Rule in West Africa
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Diagrams in History
Historian article
One of the gifts of the social sciences to history is the use of expository diagrams; but attention is rarely given to the history of diagrams. Maps - schematized representations of locations in spatial relation to one another - can be dated back to Babylonia in the late third millennium...
Diagrams in History
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Stalinism
Classic Pamphlet
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...
Stalinism
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Film: Yeltsin and the fall of the Soviet Union
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
In this film, Dr Edwin Bacon (University of Lincoln), explores the role Yeltsin played in the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Dr Bacon takes us from the fall of the Berlin Wall, the rise of nationalism in the new republics, and how Yeltsin became Russia’s first elected head of state....
Film: Yeltsin and the fall of the Soviet Union
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Ending Camelot: the assassination of John F Kennedy
Historian article
The murder of America’s thirty-fifth president is often regarded as one of the key events in the recent history of the United States. Numerous conspiracy theories have made it appear more complex, and more mysterious, than was in fact the case.
No event in recent American history has been more comprehensively...
Ending Camelot: the assassination of John F Kennedy
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My Favourite History Place: The Tenement Museum, New York
Historian feature
The Tenement Museum is not remotely like any museum I had previously visited. It is an old tenement building where generations of New York migrants lived and loved, worked and had families before moving both on and out. The Tenement Museum tells the story of the Lower East Side through the...
My Favourite History Place: The Tenement Museum, New York
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Real Lives: Anna Wessels Williams (1863–1954)
Historian feature
Patrick J Pead writes about a truly remarkable woman whose contribution to advances in medicine deserves far wider recognition.
Our series ‘Real Lives’ seeks to put the story of the ordinary person into our great historical narrative. We are all part of the rich fabric of the communities in which we live...
Real Lives: Anna Wessels Williams (1863–1954)