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Real Lives: Maria Rye’s emigration home for destitute little girls
Historian feature
Alf Wilkinson explores the controversial story of Maria Rye, who founded the Female Emigration Society in 1861 in order to take ‘surplus’ young ladies to Australia and New Zealand to work as teachers and governesses. As there was insufficient demand for these, she refocused her work on taking pauper children...
Real Lives: Maria Rye’s emigration home for destitute little girls
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Fake news: Psy-war and propaganda in the Indonesian Genocide of 1965-66
Historian article
Geoffrey Robinson explores a little-known episode of the Cold War where half a million people were killed and the Indonesian communist party was destroyed, aided and abetted by the major Western Powers.
Amidst all the talk of fake news and Russian meddling in US politics, it is easy to lose...
Fake news: Psy-war and propaganda in the Indonesian Genocide of 1965-66
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Comparing the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Jameson Raid
Historian article
Duplicated Debacles? A comparison of the 1895-96 Jameson Raid and the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion. Adam Burns and Robert Gallimore take us on two invasions, one by land and one by sea.
Following the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and the rise to power of the socialist regime of Fidel...
Comparing the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Jameson Raid
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Film: Yeltsin - Early Life
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
In this film, Dr Edwin Bacon (University of Lincoln) introduces us to the young Boris Yeltsin, a true product of the Stalinist years. He explores how a young Yeltsin caught the eye of the Communist officials, allowing him to work his way up from a civil engineer to the politburo. Dr...
Film: Yeltsin - Early Life
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What did ‘Mature Socialism’ mean for the Soviet Union?
Historian article
David Shipp analyses the state of socialism in the Soviet Union, from Brezhnev to Chernenko.
‘What is he thinking of? Reform, reform. Who needs it, and who can understand it? We need to work better, that is the only problem.’
These reported words of Leonid Brezhnev epitomise the view of the period...
What did ‘Mature Socialism’ mean for the Soviet Union?
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Film: Why does the massacre of the Armenians in the First World War still get overlooked?
Virtual Branch
Why is the term 'Armenian Genocide' controversial, with many countries still not acknowledging a genocide at all? What do we know about the event of 1915 and the plight of the Armenian community in Turkey? How can we grapple with a history that many people want to forget? In this...
Film: Why does the massacre of the Armenians in the First World War still get overlooked?
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What difference has the opening (and closing) of archives after 1991 made to the historiography of the Cold War?
Twentieth-century history
Prior to the East European revolutions of 1989, and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, commentators outside the region were largely reliant on printed material collected by specialist research libraries, informal rrangements with contacts ‘behind the iron curtain’, information that could be gleaned from visits to the region, and...
What difference has the opening (and closing) of archives after 1991 made to the historiography of the Cold War?
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Film: Lenin and the 1917 Revolutions
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
You wait a lifetime for a revolution and then two come along at once! Such was 1917 in Russia. As the world seemed in chaos and Russia and the Russian people began to collapse, Lenin and the Bolsheviks saw their opportunity and overthrew the government to create the first communist...
Film: Lenin and the 1917 Revolutions
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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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Film: Discussion: Key organisations in the Civil Rights Movement
Film series: The African-American Civil Rights Movement
Professor Tony Badger, Professor Joe Street and Professor Brian Ward discuss the African-American Civil Rights movement and examine different ways we might interpret the significance of key individuals, groups, institutions and events that played a role in its development and progress.
During the Civil Rights campaigns period in the 1960s key...
Film: Discussion: Key organisations in the Civil Rights Movement
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The Second World War
Classic Pamphlet
On 5 September 1939 the German Führer, Adolf Hitler, paid a surprise visit to the corps which was in the forefront of his army's ferocious assault upon Poland. As they passed the remains of a smashed Polish artillery regiment, the corps commander, General Guderian, astonished Hitler by telling him that...
The Second World War
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The Olympics - politics, impact and legacy - its not just about the sport
Article
2024 is an Olympic Games year. Held every four years (with the exception of during the World Wars and Covid-19 restrictions), the modern Olympics is the largest international sporting event in the world. However, historically it has not always been just the sports that are played and the athletes’ performances...
The Olympics - politics, impact and legacy - its not just about the sport
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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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Mountbatten in retirement: the abortive trip to rebel Rhodesia
Historian article
Adrian Smith investigates an abortive plan for the earl to intervene in Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence.
Earl Mountbatten of Burma boasted a unique CV: Chief of Combined Operations, Supreme Commander South-East Asia, Admiral of the Fleet and First Sea Lord, Chief of the Defence Staff, and Viceroy of India. Yet somehow...
Mountbatten in retirement: the abortive trip to rebel Rhodesia
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Radiating the Revolution: Agitation in the Russian Civil War 1917-21
Article
When the Bolsheviks seized power in what was essentially a carefully organised coup d’état in October 1917, they seized control only of the levers of central power in the then capital, Petrograd, which had already become the centre of working-class discontent. What they most emphatically did not do was to...
Radiating the Revolution: Agitation in the Russian Civil War 1917-21
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The Long Winding Road to the White House
Historian article
The Long Winding Road to the White House: caucuses, primaries and national party conventions in the history of American presidential elections
Almost the Last Hurrah
At last we know officially. In late August at their 40th national convention in Tampa, Florida, the Republican party formally nominated its candidates to run...
The Long Winding Road to the White House
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How is the source base of the twentieth century different from that of earlier periods?
Article
Historians often debate when, exactly, the twentieth century began; that is, when the themes and trends that we have come to understand as defining this tumultuous, rapidly changing period first started, and when they ended. One place we can look to answer this question is the available primary resources that help...
How is the source base of the twentieth century different from that of earlier periods?
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WWI and the flu pandemic
Historian article
In our continuing Aspects of War series Hugh Gault reveals that the flu pandemic, which began during the First World War, presented another danger that challenged people’s lives and relationships.
Wounded in the neck on the first day of the battle of the Somme, 1 July 1916, Arthur Conan Doyle’s son Kingsley...
WWI and the flu pandemic
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India in 1914
Historian article
Rather as Queen Victoria was never as ‘Victorian' as we tend to assume, so British India in the years leading up to 1914 does not present the cliched spectacle of colonists in pith helmets and shorts lording it over subservient natives that we might assume. Certainly that sort of relationship...
India in 1914
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The Origins of the Second Great War
Classic Pamphlet
This pamphlet provides a detailed account of the events leading up to the outbreak of war in 1939, covering the various factors that played a role in the outbreak of war such as tension over Poland and the Spanish Civil War, as well as the nature and effect of diplomatic...
The Origins of the Second Great War
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The shortest war in history: The Anglo-Zanzibar War of 1896
Historian article
At 9am on 27 August 1896, following an ultimatum, five ships of the Royal Navy began a bombardment of the Royal Palace and Harem in Zanzibar. Thirty-eight, or 40, or 43 minutes later, depending on which source you believe, the bombardment stopped when the white flag of surrender was raised...
The shortest war in history: The Anglo-Zanzibar War of 1896
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Film: An Interview with Margaret MacMillan
An Interview with Margaret MacMillan
The HA are delighted to announce that the Medlicott Medal for 2015 has been awarded to Professor Margaret MacMillan. The Medlicott Medal is for outstanding contributions to the study and enjoyment of history. The award will be presented on Wednesday 8 July 2015 in central London, where she will also...
Film: An Interview with Margaret MacMillan
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Nineteenth Century African chiefs in Nuneaton: A local mystery uncovered
Article
In Nuneaton’s St. Nicolas Churchyard lies a sizeable, though not elaborate, flat gravestone. It commemorates Canon Robert Savage, Vicar of the parish 1845-71, his wife Emma and many of their children. This tombstone, like so many in our graveyards, reveals a wide range of historical information, recording significant detail about...
Nineteenth Century African chiefs in Nuneaton: A local mystery uncovered
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Film: Rethinking the origins of the Cold War
Churchill's Great Game
In this HA Virtual Branch talk Professor Richard Toye explores Churchill’s response to the USSR and how his actions during the early Cold War years intersected with his views of traditional Anglo-Russian tensions and the legacy of the ‘Great Game’.
Richard Toye is Professor of Modern History at the University...
Film: Rethinking the origins of the Cold War
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Recorded Webinar: Resisting Reagan
Article
Recorded Webinar: Resisting Reagan