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Podcast Series: The French Revolution to the Fall of Napoleon
The French Revolution
In this set of podcasts we look at the origins and the development of the French Revolution, the rise and fall of Napoleon, the Peninsular War and the Battle of Waterloo.
These podcasts feature: Professor David Andress, Emeritus Professor Malcom Crook, Emertius Professor William Doyle, Emeritus Professor Alan Forrest &...
Podcast Series: The French Revolution to the Fall of Napoleon
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Magna Carta and the development of the British constitution
Historian article
Robert Blackburn explains why, 800 years on, Magna Carta still has relevance and meaning to us in Britain today.
Magna Carta established the crucial idea that our rulers may not do whatever they like, but are subject to the law as agreed with the society over which they govern. In...
Magna Carta and the development of the British constitution
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Why did the prosecution of witches cease in England?
Pamphlet
This lucid survey of the history of witch trials in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth century focuses on the question of ‘why did the formal prosecution of witches cease?' Accusations of witchcraft can be found throughout the nineteenth century yet the last conviction was in 1712. Clive Holmes explores...
Why did the prosecution of witches cease in England?
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The English Captivity of James I, King of Scots
Article
This booklet tells the story of James the first, with the events leading up to his capture and detailing the eighteen years spent in it. Balfour-Melville puts into writing the colourful, if not tragic, life of the capture and mere 13 year reign James. Brought alive in words, a King...
The English Captivity of James I, King of Scots
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Gary Sheffield: Origins of the First World War
Podcast
Gary Sheffield, Professor of War studies, the University of Wolverhampton, is one of the UK's foremost historians on the First World War. He is the author of numerous books and previously held posts at the University of Birmingham and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. In April 2014 he spoke at an HA event for teachers...
Gary Sheffield: Origins of the First World War
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The Centenary of the First World War: An unpopular view
Historian article
We are delighted to have an original article by Gary Sheffield in this edition of The Historian.
Gary Sheffield is Professor of War Studies, University of Wolverhampton. He is a specialist on Britain at war 1914-45 and is one of Britain's foremost historians on the First World War. He has...
The Centenary of the First World War: An unpopular view
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Beware the serpent of Rome
Article
On 14 February 1868, the Carlisle Journal reported as follows: … two meetings were held in the Athenaeum in this city , “for the purpose of forming an auxiliary to co-operate with the Church Association in London, to uphold the principles and order of the United Church of England and...
Beware the serpent of Rome
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Women and the Politics of the Parish in England
Historian article
Petticoat Politicians: Women and the Politics of the Parish in England
The history of women voting in Britain is familiar to many. 2013 marked the centenary of the zenith of the militant female suffrage movement, culminating in the tragic death of Emily Wilding Davison, crushed by the King's horse at...
Women and the Politics of the Parish in England
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Podcast Series: Origins of the European Financial Markets
Multipage Article
In this podcast Dr Anne Murphy of the University of Hertfordshire looks at the early origins of the European financial markets from the Italian Renaissance to the present day. Dr Murphy also provides a useful introduction to finance, the stock market and the bond market.
Podcast Series: Origins of the European Financial Markets
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Punk, Politics and the collapse of consensus in Britain
Podcast
2012 Annual Conference LectureShot by both sides: Punk, Politics and the collapse of consensus in BritainMatthew Worley: Reader in History, University of ReadingThis paper examines the way in which organisations of the far left and far right endeavoured to appropriate elements of British youth culture to validate their analysis of...
Punk, Politics and the collapse of consensus in Britain
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Polychronicon 145: Interpreting the history of the modern prison
Teaching History feature
On the morning of Sunday 24 January 1932 convicts paraded in the exercise yards at Dartmoor Convict Prison in Devon. Suddenly, inmates began to break ranks, encouraging others to do likewise. Some prisoners were shepherded into cell blocks by officers but control mechanisms quickly collapsed and the remaining inmates had...
Polychronicon 145: Interpreting the history of the modern prison
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The Byzantine Empire on the Eve of the Crusades
Classic Pamphlet
This resource is a pamphlet titled ‘The Byzantine Empire on the Eve of the Crusades’ and written by R. J. H. Jenkins in 1953. As such, some of the scholarship has been updated since then, although it can provide useful historiography.
It is not strange that there should in recent...
The Byzantine Empire on the Eve of the Crusades
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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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Bonnie Prince Charlie: The escape of the Prince in 1746
Historian article
Thirty thousand pounds was an enormous sum of money in 1746. That was the reward offered by the British government for the capture of Prince Charles. Many Highlanders knew where he was at various times and places after Culloden, but they did not betray him. As one of his helpers...
Bonnie Prince Charlie: The escape of the Prince in 1746
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Mercurial justice: a Jesuit chaplain’s view of life in the prisons of sixteenth-century Seville
Historian article
Justice in the early modern period was discretionary, which meant it could be both violent and deeply unfair. Elites often escaped the most severe punishments inflicted on the poor and minoritised groups. Clare Burgess shows how a Jesuit chaplain in sixteenth- century Seville used his spiritual discretion and zealous belief...
Mercurial justice: a Jesuit chaplain’s view of life in the prisons of sixteenth-century Seville
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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
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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
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Doing history: Contemporary narratives and the legacy of the Dagenham Ford Factory Strike of 1968
Historian feature
In this article, Zubin Burley looks at how a visit to the local archive can transform our understanding of an important event in British social history...
Doing history: Contemporary narratives and the legacy of the Dagenham Ford Factory Strike of 1968
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The Pennsylvanian Origins of British Abolitionism
Historian article
It can have escaped the attention of very few people in the United Kingdom that 2007 marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in British ships. Slavery itself continued to be legal in Britain and its colonies until the 1830s, while other nations continued both to...
The Pennsylvanian Origins of British Abolitionism
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The Wonderful Land of Oz
Article
In the year of the centenary of the first publication of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L.Frank Baum, Douglas Horlock considers its political and intellectual context. On 7 May 1898, Frank Baum sat down in his Chicago home with a group of children including his sons. As on other...
The Wonderful Land of Oz
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The impact and legacy of the First World War: on-demand short course
Online self-guided short course for lifelong learners
Beyond the mud and blood: The First World War and the social, political and cultural impact and legacy on ordinary people
While the first global conflict of the modern world fuelled military and leadership challenges, it also created an environment of social, political and cultural unrest.
2024 was 110 years since...
The impact and legacy of the First World War: on-demand short course
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Recorded webinar: Black Germans: the last forgotten victims of the Nazis?
Article
In this webinar, Professor Robbie Aitken looks at the experiences of Black residents in Germany during the Nazi period. Why have they been largely written out of larger histories of the Third Reich? Professor Aitken suggests that there was a genocidal intent in Nazi policy towards them, signalled partly by...
Recorded webinar: Black Germans: the last forgotten victims of the Nazis?
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Recorded webinar: Britain's eighteenth-century tradition of popular riot and protest
Article
Eighteenth-century Britons were ruled by a restricted oligarchy of landowners and plutocrats. Yet the wider population had a proud tradition of assertiveness and readiness to protest. ‘Britons never will be slaves!’ as the chorus of 'Rule Britannia' (1740) announced pointedly (if somewhat ironically, in view of Britain’s role in the...
Recorded webinar: Britain's eighteenth-century tradition of popular riot and protest
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President Barack Obama and the State of the Union Address
Historian article
Introduction
Shortly after noon on 20 January 2009 Barack Obama began his historic Inaugural Address as 44th President of the United States of America. On the west porch of the Capitol, home to the US Congress, and under propitiously blue skies, the first African American president spoke before more than...
President Barack Obama and the State of the Union Address
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Film: Living with Violence at the End of the British Empire
Age of Emergency
In the 1950s, Britain fought a series of brutal wars against insurgents in the colonies of Malaya, Kenya, and Cyprus. How did people at home experience these wars? How did they learn about the use of torture and other unsettling tactics? And how did they respond to this knowledge?
In...
Film: Living with Violence at the End of the British Empire
