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Found 943 results matching 'brief history' within Historian > Historical Periods   (Clear filter)

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  • The Tudor Court

      Classic Pamphlet
    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...
    The Tudor Court

  • Arnold Wilkins: Pioneer of British Radar

      Historian article
    Whenever British radar is discussed the name that usually comes to mind is that of Robert Watson Watt. Our history books and our dictionaries of biography consistently attribute the discovery of radar in Britain solely to Watson Watt, with little or no mention of the key role played by his...
    Arnold Wilkins: Pioneer of British Radar

  • Francis I and Absolute Monarchy

      Classic Pamphlet
    Francis I of France reign lasted for more than thirty years and coincided with movements as significant as the Renaissance and the Reformation. Text-books are apt to gloss over the domestic history of France before the outbreak of the Wars of Religion and convey the impression that Francis was more...
    Francis I and Absolute Monarchy

  • A Crusading Outpost: the City and County of Edessa - 1095-1153

      Article
    Edessa is not now to be found on maps of the Near East; instead there is Urfa, the Turkish name for the former Christian city lying in the upper region of the Euphrates valley some two hundred and fifty kilometres from the Mediterranean. Like Christian Edessa, Moslem Urfa is a...
    A Crusading Outpost: the City and County of Edessa - 1095-1153

  • The Personal Rule of Charles I 1629-40

      Classic Pamphlet
    Historians are often accused of viewing the past with hindsight, or of being wise after the event. Not being prophets or soothsayers, we have to look backwards in time because we cannot look forwards. The real question is from what vantage point or perspective we view a particular part of...
    The Personal Rule of Charles I 1629-40

  • Culture Shock: The Arrival of the Conquistadores in Aztec Mexico

      Historian article
    When the Spanish Conquistadores arrived in Mexico during the early sixteenth century there were many repercussions for the indigenous people. Their conversion to Christianity and the sacking of their temples are two of the most well known examples.  However, it is often forgotten that the Aztecs had only a pictorial...
    Culture Shock: The Arrival of the Conquistadores in Aztec Mexico

  • The Origins of Parliament

      Classic Pamphlet
    He who would seek the origins of parliament cannot proceed without knowing that this is, and this has been, a matter much controverted. English politics have very often been conducted in terms of what has passed for history, not least because they have so frequently revolved around the rights and...
    The Origins of Parliament

  • English Puritanism

      Classic Pamphlet
    When the modern world was christened Puritanism appeared as a bad fairy and bestowed upon it certain dubious gifts: capitalism, democracy, America. This is a fairy story, but like all fairy stories it contains a small grain of truth. But what was Puritanism? Already in the seventeenth century a critic...
    English Puritanism

  • The Armada Campaign of 1588

      Classic Pamphlet
    Between 1585 and 1588 a state of undeclared war existed between England and Spain. During the course of those years, Philip II devised a plan for the 'Enterprise of England'. It was probably  the most ambitious military operation of the sixteenth century: a massive invasion to be mounted jointly by...
    The Armada Campaign of 1588

  • Scots Abroad in the Fifteenth Century

      Classic Pamphlet
    (Historical Association Pamphlet, No. 124, 1942) Dunlop's research into the occupations and attitudes of Scots abroad during the 15th century uncovers some surprising revelations about all members of the Scottish ex-pat society. She particularly notes the ‘scurrilous' opinions of the French regarding Scotsmen's behaviour. While Scottish diplomatists and envoys tended...
    Scots Abroad in the Fifteenth Century

  • The strange death of King Harold II: Propaganda and the problem of legitimacy in the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings

      Article
    How did King Harold II die at the Battle of Hastings? The question is simple enough and the answer is apparently well known. Harold was killed by an arrow which struck him in the eye. His death is depicted clearly on the Bayeux Tapestry in one of its most famous...
    The strange death of King Harold II: Propaganda and the problem of legitimacy in the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings

  • Louis XIV

      Classic Pamphlet
    Louis XIV was born on 5 September 1638 and became King on May 14 1643 at the age of four years and eight months on the death of his father Louis XIII. He attended the Conseil d'en haut from 1649 when he was eleven years old. He announced his coming...
    Louis XIV

  • Alexander II

      Classic Pamphlet
    The ‘great reforms' of Tsar Alexander II (1855-81) are generally recognised as the most significant events in modern Russian history between the reign of Peter the Great and the revolutions of 1905 and 1917. The most important of Alexander's reforms, the emancipation of he serfs in 1861, has been described...
    Alexander II

  • Benjamin Jesty: Grandfather of Vaccination

      Historian article
    Commonly hailed as a discovery or a ‘medical breakthrough', vaccination against smallpox with cowpox exudate was a development of variolation i.e. inoculation with live smallpox matter - a technique popularised amongst the gentry in the early eighteenth century by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu who had observed the procedure in Turkey...
    Benjamin Jesty: Grandfather of Vaccination

  • Charles XII

      Classic Pamphlet
    The reputation of Charles XII who became king of Sweden before he was fifteen years old and had the responsibility of absolutist goverment thrust upon him within the next six months - contrary to the plans laid down for him by his father - has tended to attract political rather...
    Charles XII

  • Christopher Hill: Marxism and Methodism

      Historian article
    Christopher Hill, the eminent historian of seventeenth century England, was a convinced Marxist throughout most of his long and productive life (1912-2003). He embraced this secular world-view when he was a young History student at Oxford in the polemical 1930s and never lost his ideological commitment, even though he resigned...
    Christopher Hill: Marxism and Methodism

  • Smithfield's Bartholomew Fair

      Historian article
    On the north-western side of the City of London, directly in front of St Bartholomew's Hospital near the ancient church of St Bartholomew the Great, there once lay a ‘smooth field', now known as Smithfield. This open space of around ten acres had a long and turbulent history. In medieval...
    Smithfield's Bartholomew Fair

  • 1066: The Limits of our Knowledge

      Historian article
    As the most pivotal and traumatic event in English history, the Norman Conquest continues to generate controversy and debate, especially among those who know little about it or enjoy passing judgement on the past. Who had the better claim to the English throne, William the Conqueror or Harold Godwineson? Was...
    1066: The Limits of our Knowledge

  • Verdun: the endless battle

      Historian article
    Most can agree that the battle of Verdun started 100 years ago, on 21 February 1916, when the Germans began attacking French positions north and east of the old fortress town on the Meuse river. Few can agree on when it ended. The Germans might draw a line under it...
    Verdun: the endless battle

  • Chartism

      Classic Pamphlet
    It is not surprising that Chartism has attracted a great deal of interest from historians and students, for at no other period in British history, with the possible exception of the second and third decades of the twentieth century, has so much excitement and activity been aroused at the working-class...
    Chartism

  • MOOCs and the Middle Ages

      Historian article
    Deirdre O’Sullivan explains how history courses such as England in the Time of Richard III are now freely available to people anywhere in the world who have online access. She reports that in the past two years 40,000 learners have followed this course. MOOCs (Massive Open Access Online Courses) are...
    MOOCs and the Middle Ages

  • King Charles II

      Classic Pamphlet
    The conclusions of historians change over the years, not only as a result of the discovery of new evidence, but as a result of the changing times in which historians themselves live and work. We have become familiar with the notion that each generation of historians may have its own...
    King Charles II

  • French chivalry in twelfth-century Britain?

      Historian article
    The year 1066 - the one universally remembered date in English history, so well-known that banks advise customers not to choose it as their PIN number - opened the country up to French influence in spectacular fashion. During the ‘long twelfth century' (up to King John's death in 1216) that...
    French chivalry in twelfth-century Britain?

  • Real Lives: Surviving the War in the Soviet Union: recollections of a child deportee

      Historian feature
    This 'Real Lives' piece is based on a series of interviews Annette Ormanczyk carried out in 2019 with Mrs Irena Persak, who was deported as a five-year-old child with her family in February 1940. As well as offering a fascinating personal account of life in the Soviet Union during the Second...
    Real Lives: Surviving the War in the Soviet Union: recollections of a child deportee

  • Real Lives: Harry Daley

      Historian feature
    Our series ‘Real Lives’ seeks to put the story of the ordinary person into our great historical narrative. We are all part of the rich fabric of the communities in which we live and we are affected to greater and lesser degrees by the big events that happen on a daily...
    Real Lives: Harry Daley