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Found 431 results matching 'brief history' within Student > Historical Periods > Modern   (Clear filter)

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  • The 'Era of the Dictators' Reconsidered

      Article
    Kenneth Thomson reflects on major aspects of the ‘era of the dictators’ after the collapse of Soviet Communism and its satellite regimes. In 1939, on the eve of the Second World War, almost the whole of continental Europe was ruled by dictatorships of various political hues. Even countries, like France,...
    The 'Era of the Dictators' Reconsidered

  • Napoleon III and the French Second Empire

      Article
    The French Second Empire has been variously described as a precursor of Twentieth Century Fascism and a prime example of a modernising regime. Roger Price continues recents efforts to achieve a more balanced assessment by setting the regime within its particular social and political context. The origins of the Second...
    Napoleon III and the French Second Empire

  • Minority rights and wrongs in Eastern Europe in the 20th century

      Article
    Mark Cornwall reflects on past and present attempts by the international community to protect national minorities in Eastern Europe. On 19 March 1995, the Prime Ministers of Hungary and Slovakia met in Paris to sign a ‘Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation’ between their two countries; on 13 June it was...
    Minority rights and wrongs in Eastern Europe in the 20th century

  • Faster, Higher, Stronger: The Birth of the Modern Olympics

      Article
    As the leading athletes of all nations prepare to come together this summer in Atlanta, the global communications media of the late twentieth century are constantly reminding us that 1996 marks the first centenary of the modern Olympic Games. The worldwide impact now made by these sporting festivals is all...
    Faster, Higher, Stronger: The Birth of the Modern Olympics

  • Social Darwinism: the myth and its reinvention

      Historian article
    ‘Social Darwinism’ has been associated in academia and popular consciousness with negative concepts such as hyper-nationalism and eugenics. Geoffrey M. Hodgson challenges the notion that Social Darwinism or its proponents were ever well-defined. By tracing the use of ‘Social Darwinism’ across academic disciplines and globally over a long period, Hodgson...
    Social Darwinism: the myth and its reinvention

  • Tunnel visions: London’s wartime shelters

      Historian article
    Ronan Thomas describes two different Second World War shelters in London. One was the top-secret Mayfair bunker in which Winston Churchill sheltered during the Blitz and governed the country from underground; the other protected thousands of south Londoners and went on to provide shelter to visitors to the capital for several years...
    Tunnel visions: London’s wartime shelters

  • Schools of Vice: how a medical scandal led to the dismantling of Britain’s last prison hulks

      Historian article
    Hulks – former naval ships used as prisons for those convicted of serious crime and sentenced to transportation – were intended to be a temporary solution to a penal crisis caused by the American Revolutionary Wars. These ‘schools of vice’, or ‘floating hells’ lasted 80 years, casting a shadow over...
    Schools of Vice: how a medical scandal led to the dismantling of Britain’s last prison hulks

  • Finding Bad Bridget: the lives and crimes of Irish immigrant women in America

      Historian article
    From the early nineteenth century until the First World War, millions of Irish women emigrated to North America in search of better lives. Elaine Farrell and Leanne McCormick, co-leads for the AHRC-funded Bad Bridget research project, tell us how poverty, discrimination, isolation from family as well as greed and opportunism...
    Finding Bad Bridget: the lives and crimes of Irish immigrant women in America

  • Imperial spaces of a ‘miniature world’: the case of Rugby School, c.1828–1850

      Historian article
    English public schools in the nineteenth century were training grounds not just for society’s elites but also for careers in Britain’s imperial service. In this article, Holly Hiscox explores the ways in which schools such as Rugby provided pupils with a miniature world of domestic and professional life which prepared...
    Imperial spaces of a ‘miniature world’: the case of Rugby School, c.1828–1850

  • Doomed to fail: America’s intervention in Vietnam

      Historian article
    Why did American military involvement in Vietnam fail?  In this article, David McGill explains why the United States never had a realistic chance of defeating the North Vietnamese and their Viet Cong allies. The decision by the United States government to become involved in supporting the South Vietnamese government against the...
    Doomed to fail: America’s intervention in Vietnam

  • 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

  • Muddy Waters: from migrant to music icon

      Historian article
    Matt Jux-Blayney explores the impact of the blues singer Muddy Waters against a backdrop of significant social and racial change in the United States of the mid-twentieth century. On 3 July 1960, a man from Mississippi was introduced onto the stage of the Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island. He...
    Muddy Waters: from migrant to music icon

  • 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

  • Podcast Series: Thomas Paine

      Multipage Article
    In this set of podcasts Emeritus Professor W. A. Speck of the University of Leeds looks at the life and ideas of Thomas Paine.
    Podcast Series: Thomas Paine

  • Harriet Kettle, Victorian rebel

      Historian article
    Harriet Kettle had a remarkable life. She was on the receiving end of everything that the institutions of social control in Victorian England could throw at her, but resisted, survived and fought back. Harriet’s defiance earned her references in the records of a workhouse, two prisons, two asylums and, in...
    Harriet Kettle, Victorian rebel

  • 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

  • Sweden’s forgotten revolution

      Historian article
    People are sometimes surprised to learn that for much of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, Sweden was one of Europe’s great powers. The revolution that transformed Swedish government following the death of Karl XII at the end of the Great Northern War is still less widely-known. But though largely carried...
    Sweden’s forgotten revolution

  • 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?

  • Podcast: Stalin 1928-1941

      Podcast
    On 15th November Dr Jane McDermid gave the first lecture in the HA's Sixth Form Lecture Series on the making of the Stalinist State at the National Archives, Kew. Click on the following links below to listen to her lecture and read the lecture notes!
    Podcast: Stalin 1928-1941

  • The ‘workless workers’ and the Waterbury watch

      Historian article
    Peter Hounsell looks at the role of the Waterbury Watch Company in both the Queen’s Jubilee and the attempt to record and alleviate unemployment in London in the 1880s. In Britain generally, but for London in particular, 1887 was a year of great contrasts. On 27 June, Londoners lined the...
    The ‘workless workers’ and the Waterbury watch

  • Filmed Interviews: The Women of Bletchley Park

      The Women of Bletchley Park
    Bletchley Park was the most important of the top secret intelligence sites during the Second World War. The quiet Buckinghamshire village hosted 10,000 people dedicated to defeating the Nazis, 75% of those were women. In this podcast we are lucky enough to have some of those women talking about their...
    Filmed Interviews: The Women of Bletchley Park

  • 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

  • A-level Topic Guide: USA in the 20th century

      Multipage Article
    The twentieth century in the USA was an eventful period of wars, civil rights movements and political, social and economic developments that shaped the USA into the country it is today. AQA, Edexcel, OCR and WJEC all offer units covering aspects of twentieth-century American history. Whichever board you are studying with...
    A-level Topic Guide: USA in the 20th century

  • Ending the French Revolution

      Historian article
    Malcolm Crook discusses why it was so difficult to end the most famous revolution of the eighteenth century and why it led to bloodshed and absolutism.
    Ending the French Revolution

  • Podcast Series: The Age of Revolutions

      Multipage Article
    This podcast series was commissioned as part of the HA’s education programme on the Age of Revolutions period, funded by the Age of Revolution legacy project. They were recorded with leading academic historians and are intended to shed light on a variety of perspectives on the period. These podcasts were...
    Podcast Series: The Age of Revolutions