John McKendrick considers how Scotland’s wish to create a trading empire was dashed and made the Act of Union of 1707 almost inevitable.

Anthony Ruggiero reveals how United States foreign policy evolved from its effective adherence to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 into securing its own overseas ‘empire’. The Spanish-American War of 1898 was pivotal in launching the United States into recognition as an empire.  Following the war, the United Sates accepted its role...

In 1976, in one of his challenging Presidential addresses to the Royal Historical Society, Professor Geoffrey Elton drew attention to the importance of the court as a ‘point of contact' between the Tudors and their subjects. It was, he suggested, a central and essential aspect of personal government, but in...

Guy de la Bédoyère considers whether the Roman Empire ever really fell or simply went through endless processes of change that makes it an integral presence in our lives today. The fall of the Roman Empire is like the end of the dinosaurs. It’s one of the vast dramatic crisis moments we love...

Frances Houghton examines how and why the popular memory of the Second World War continues to be contested. Early on the morning of Monday 21 January 2019, still-wet white gloss paint was discovered to have been thrown across the Bomber Command Memorial in London’s Green Park. The bronze sculpture of a...

Richard A. Gaunt explores a tragedy at the heart of early nineteenth century British politics, with the suicide of Viscount Castlereagh. At 7.30 in the morning on Monday 12 August 1822, Robert Stewart, second Marquess of Londonderry, died from self-inflicted injuries caused by cutting the carotid artery in his neck...

John Coffey shows us what insights can be gained from the diaries of leading abolitionist, William Wilberforce. The diary is a distinctively modern genre... In English, the first diaries date from the Tudor era, but it is in the seventeenth century that the trickle becomes a flood. Alongside the famous...

This classic pamphlet takes you through the Votes for Women in Britain movement from its origins to its eventual success, following the case for women's suffrage presented, tactics and strategies, the anti-suffragist argument, party political complications, international perspectives, the Pankhursts and militancy, the revival of non-militant suffragism, the impact of...

Alexander Collin examines the significance of cities within the Holy Roman Empire in early modern times. With a strong political identity of their own, cities were at the heart of the Empire’s economy and, also, centres of theological and social change. If you have ever read a description of a...

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...

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...

Almost 30 years after the end of the Cold War, diversity is suddenly galvanising the field of scholarly research into the Cold War. As the historian Federico Romero has argued, older, simpler interpretations ‘seem to be giving way to a looser understanding of the Cold War as an era that encompassed...

The years between the Armistice of November 1918 and the German attack on Poland in September 1939 were undoubtedly a period of massive transformations. Public appetite to learn about specific aspects of this era remains strong. The making of communist rule in revolutionary Russia, the tribulations of Weimar Germany, the rise...

There is a peculiar tension at the heart of scholarship about the years and decades after the Second World War. On the one hand, the political developments following the breakdown of the war-time alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union have spawned an enormous literature, in parts as old...

The early 2020s have seen various investigations and reports about discrimination in English cricket. As well as finding many examples of racial and gender prejudice, these investigations have unearthed a long history of social elitism in the sport. In this article, Duncan Stone explores some of the historical background to...

Paula Kitching interview with Professor Anthony J. Badger about his latest book. 2024 is an election year in the United States. For many in the UK and around the world the US political system can be confusing, with simple processes seemingly more complex than you would expect. It is not just the system...

Karin Doull investigates the perceptions of the outcome of the Dunkirk evacuation within the contextual framework of the time at which it occurred. In May 1940 the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and a proportion of the French First Army group had withdrawn, under heavy fighting to the port of Dunkirk on the...

Michael T. Davis compares the parallels between the democratic expectations, or possibilities, of modern-day China with Britain's democratic evolution from the eighteenth century to the emerging democracy of the nineteenth century. The future is an unfamiliar place for historians. Yet we stand on the edge of an historic shift away...

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,...

Spies were a common feature of political, diplomatic and courtly life in the period of early medieval Europe. In this article, Jenny Benham explores some interesting contemporary representations of spies, in both literature and art. These stories and images reveal key features of the culture and practices surrounding these so-called...