History

Anything to do with History

Monserrat @Monserrat - over 3 years ago

Urban Encounters | History Today

The Mohawk chief Joseph Brant (detail), by William Berczy, 19th century © Getty Images.In most artistic depictions of 18th-century American cities, busy harbours jostle with brick houses and grand civic buildings, while church steeples dominate the skyline. Representing p...continued

1 minute read

Nelson @Nelson - 9 months ago

‘The World at War’ and the Holocaust at 50

Less than a minute into the 20th episode of The World at War the first interviewee appears. He is an old man, impeccably dressed in a black suit jacket with a white pocket square. After a few moments, a caption appears: ‘Karl Wolff’, it reads, ‘S.S. GENERAL’.Wolff describ...continued

6 minutes read

Wilmer @Wilmer - over 2 years ago

The Murder of Hintsa | History Today

Chief Hintsa of the Gcaleka Xhosa, c.1800s © Africa Media Online/Mary Evans Picture Library.There are many inconsistencies in the stories surrounding the murder of the Xhosa chief Hintsa, executed by British forces in the Cape Colony in 1835. What is incontrovertible is t...continued

1 minute read

Assunta @Assunta - almost 4 years ago

The Invention of Chinese | History Today

A street in Guangzhou/Canton, 1870s © Bridgeman Images.The Chinese language is deceptively difficult to define. To speak ‘Chinese’ today usually means Mandarin, the national language of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan. Called Putonghua, or the ‘common lang...continued

1 minute read

George @George - 4 days ago

How Ancient Greece Shaped the British Raj

The British colonisers who travelled to India from the 18th century onwards were steeped in the Classics; they knew their Greek and Latin (if not the languages of India) and quoted liberally from Horace and Virgil. Not all Britons, of course – but it was not a small conti...continued

1 minute read

Alexandro @Alexandro - about 4 years ago

The Price of Life | History Today

Gum merchants, Senegal River Valley region, coloured engraving, 1796 © Archive Charmet/Bridgeman Images. Since the start of the Covid-19 crisis, historians have been quick to note apparent parallels between this pandemic and other moments of widespread disease in humani...continued

1 minute read

Juliet @Juliet - about 2 years ago

Renaissance Wonder Women | History Today

Bronze parade mask perhaps worn by male soldiers representing the Amazons. Nola, Italy, second century. Photo © The British Museum/ Trustees of the British Museum.First conceived in the ancient world, the legend of the Amazons resurfaced in the age of Shakespeare to becom...continued

1 minute read

Josiah @Josiah - over 3 years ago

Popes: Power to the People

Delivery of Keys to St Peter, by Vincenzo Catena, c.1520 © akg-images.A group of princes gathered in Schmalkalden, a small town in central Germany, in February 1537. These men of the Schmalkaldic League were eminent followers of Martin Luther, the Augustinian friar who ha...continued

1 minute read

Kraig @Kraig - over 2 years ago

The Original Rock Star | History Today

Contemporary replica of the Rosetta Stone © The British Museum/Trustees of the British Museum.As the most viewed object at the British Museum, the Rosetta Stone is admired by far more people than were ever expected to see it in ancient times. An infinitesimally small numb...continued

1 minute read

Joe @Joe - over 5 years ago

Life after Death? | History Today

In this bold new social history, Hallie Rubenhold explores the lives of five women who found fame only in the manner of their deaths. ‘The five’ of the title are Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly, who are remembered a...continued

7 minutes read

Delia @Delia - almost 3 years ago

Lynching the British | History Today

‘An Englishman is Lynched to Save Expense’, detail from the Illustrated Police News, 11 July 1896 © British Library Board.The mob took no chances. Acting under cover of darkness, all of them masked and some wearing women’s dresses to further conceal their identities, they...continued

1 minute read

Hank @Hank - 9 months ago

‘Sparta and the Commemoration of War’ and ‘The Killing Ground’ review

These are books of very different kinds, not exactly chalk and cheese, but certainly apples and oranges. All three authors are military historians, if of dissimilar stripes and with very varying direct, practical experience of warfare. (Full disclosure: born in London in ...continued

6 minutes read

Iva @Iva - about 2 years ago

Cuban Missile Crisis: the View from Havana

Cuban soldiers stand by an anti-aircraft gun, Havana, 1962. Bettman/Getty Images.On the morning of 29 May 1962 Cuba’s leaders welcomed a delegation of ‘hydrotechnic specialists’ from the Soviet Union. To the Cubans’ surprise, the Soviet delegation also included top milita...continued

1 minute read

Marlon @Marlon - about 3 years ago

The Sin King | History Today

William II, ‘Rufus’, kneeling before Archbishop Lanfranc, from the Chronique de Normandie, French, 15th century © British Library Board/Bridgeman Images.A group of floppy-haired youths flaunt their bodies and flirt with one another. A religious leader in his sixties berat...continued

1 minute read

Teagan @Teagan - over 3 years ago

Solving the Insoluble | History Today

This is the final volume in Charles Townshend’s trilogy tracing Ireland’s path to independence from Britain, which sets his earlier works on the Easter Rising and the revolutionary period in greater context. The partition of Ireland, seen by some as the only possible sett...continued

6 minutes read

Zetta @Zetta - almost 2 years ago

The Cold, Cold War | History Today

Explorer Robert E. Peary and husky aboard the Roosevelt, c.1909 © Archive Pics/Alamy Stock Photo.In 325 BC, the Greek explorer Pytheas attempted to sail to the frozen north, a place that he called Thule. He reached Brittany, then Cornwall, eventually travelling past the n...continued

1 minute read

Bart @Bart - 8 months ago

William Adams: English Adviser to the Shogun

In 1600 a Dutch galleon arrived on the shores of a small fief on Kyushu, the westernmost of Japan’s four main islands. It was the first Dutch ship to reach Japan. Among the crew was an English navigator, William Adams, who managed to gain the trust of Tokugawa Ieyasu, a p...continued

7 minutes read

Anderson @Anderson - almost 4 years ago

When They Get to the Border

A breathless account of a furtive and perilous border crossing appeared in 1905 in a Hebrew-language literary journal published in Warsaw. Its author, Yosef Haim Brenner, was an aspiring writer and intellectual, self-educated in Russian literature, philosophy and the soci...continued

6 minutes read

Bobby @Bobby - 8 months ago

William Adams: English Advisor to the Shogun

7 minutes read

Garnet @Garnet - 7 months ago

‘Churchill’s American Network’ and ‘Mirrors of Greatness’ review

For seven decades the powerful, influential and successful beat a path to Winston Churchill’s door. He shook hands with every prime minister from Lord Rosebery to Mrs Thatcher, and almost every president from William McKinley to Richard Nixon. He talked physics with Alber...continued

6 minutes read

Wilmer @Wilmer - about 3 years ago

The Darien Scheme | History Today

Map of Darien by Herman Moll (detail), engraved c.1730 © National Library of Scotland.In 1698 an ambitious new Scottish trading company established an outpost on the narrow isthmus between North and South America. A colony there, it was thought, would unlock trade between...continued

1 minute read

Jany @Jany - over 3 years ago

A Feather in her Cap

Settled into a comfortable married life in Didsbury, then a leafy part of Manchester, Emily Williamson held a succession of afternoon teas in 1889. Yet, while serving tea and fruitcake in her drawing room filled with ladies, Williamson, by all accounts a gentle and compas...continued

6 minutes read

Oren @Oren - 1 day ago

The Female Detectives of Victorian Britain

For those who sought their services, there were many professional female detectives in Britain in the 1880s and 1890s, and not just in London – you could find them in Bristol, in Cardiff and in Glasgow, too. By January 1875 The Times was advertising, back-to-back, the ser...continued

1 minute read

Elian @Elian - 8 months ago

When Nostalgia Was Deadly | History Today

In 1688 a young Swiss milkmaid clambered over a rocky outcrop. She was halfway up an Alpine slope when she slipped and tumbled down several feet. Seriously injured, she was carried away to hospital in the nearby town where she lay, unconscious, for days. Physicians plied ...continued

6 minutes read

Garnet @Garnet - over 3 years ago

Greek Myths | History Today

Statue of Mado Mavroyenous in Mykonos. Tibor Bognar/Alamy.The bicentenary of the Greek Revolution of 1821 has unleashed a frenzy of publications and patriotic displays in Greece and across the vast Greek diaspora. The revolution was certainly an event of major historical ...continued

1 minute read