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Vichy France and the Jews
Article
Dr Julian Jackson examines the position and treatment of Jews in Occupied France. When in 1945 France came to try those who had ‘collaborated’ during the war, the fate of the Jews was not central. It was even possible for Xavier Vallat, Vichy’s Commissioner for Jewish Affairs, to defend himself...
Vichy France and the Jews
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Virtual Branch Recording: Crusader Criminals
Article
The religious wars of the Crusades are renowned for their military engagements. But the period was witness to brutality beyond the battlefield. More so than any other medieval war zone, the Holy Land was rife with unprecedented levels of criminality and violence.
In the first history of its kind, Steve Tibble explores...
Virtual Branch Recording: Crusader Criminals
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My Favourite History Place: The Tenement Museum, New York
Historian feature
The Tenement Museum is not remotely like any museum I had previously visited. It is an old tenement building where generations of New York migrants lived and loved, worked and had families before moving both on and out. The Tenement Museum tells the story of the Lower East Side through the...
My Favourite History Place: The Tenement Museum, New York
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The Duchy of Courland and a Baltic colonial venture across the ocean
Historian article
The Duchy of Courland’s attempts to establish outposts in the Caribbean and Africa were not the only Baltic ventures across the Atlantic during the seventeenth century. However, the expeditions of the small vassal dukedom were possibly the most unlikely. The article introduces the motivations behind the Couronian colonial project, as...
The Duchy of Courland and a Baltic colonial venture across the ocean
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History Abridged: Libraries
Historian feature
History Abridged: This feature seeks to take a person, event or period and abridge, or focus on, an important event or detail that can get lost in the big picture. See all History Abridged articles
The collecting of stories through written record is one of the most important methods societies...
History Abridged: Libraries
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Anything but enlightened: child slavery in the Roman world
Historian article
Through evidence and models, Ulrike Roth explores the role of child slavery in ancient Rome.
Ancient Rome has been a source of inspiration throughout the ages. Some of the most remarkable thinkers in human history have drawn on one or other of Roman society’s great achievements. The profound reflection on,...
Anything but enlightened: child slavery in the Roman world
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The Pilgrimage of Grace: Reactions, Responses and Revisions
Article
Dr Michael Bush investigates the interpretations of the pilgrimage of grace. Our perception of the pilgrimage of grace has been largely created by Madeleine and Ruth Dodds and their magnificent book The Pilgrimage of Grace, 1536-7, and the Exeter Conspiracy, 1538 (Cambridge). Published in 1915, it has dominated the subject...
The Pilgrimage of Grace: Reactions, Responses and Revisions
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Cartooning King Cotton
Historian article
While cartoons have been widely used by historians of ‘High Politics’ or diplomacy, they have been used less often by social historians. Alan Fowler and Terry Wyke examine a source for the social history of the Lancashire cotton industry. Cartoons have long held a fascination for historians, though when using...
Cartooning King Cotton
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Polychronicon 165: The 1917 revolutions in 2017: 100 years on
Teaching History feature
The interpretive and empirical frameworks utilised by scholars in their quest to understand the Russian revolutions have evolved and transformed over 100 years. The opening of archives after the collapse of the Soviet Union enabled access to a swathe of new primary sources, some of which have had a transformative...
Polychronicon 165: The 1917 revolutions in 2017: 100 years on
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British organised youth and the First World War
Historian article
This posthumously published article by John Springhall was presented to us, with recommended illustrations, shortly before his death. It reflects his interest in popular culture and how people lived their lives in quite a remarkable manner.
Adult-directed British uniformed youth movements played a significant but often overlooked role during the...
British organised youth and the First World War
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What did you do in The Great War? A family mystery explored
Historian article
Research into family history is well-known as likely to dig up some uncomfortable evidence. Nearly every family has had its bastards; nearly every generation has had someone on poor relief. We had both. But more troubling was my recent suspicion that a hundred or so years ago not one but two...
What did you do in The Great War? A family mystery explored
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Anne Herbert: A life in the Wars of the Roses
Historian article
May I introduce you to Anne Herbert, Countess of Pembroke? I'm very fond of this modern imagined portrait by Graham Turner, partly because of the colour and detail but chiefly because it conveys a respect for the people who lived in the past and especially for Anne herself. My interest...
Anne Herbert: A life in the Wars of the Roses
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King Charles I
Classic Pamphlet
The principles involved in the great religious and constitutional conflicts of the seventeenth century are so important to us today, that it seems desirable on the occasion of the present tercentenary to lay before the members of the Historical Association some means of examining and re-examining their views on the...
King Charles I
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Faction in Tudor England
Classic Pamphlet
'This wicked Tower must be fed with blood' - W. S. Gilbert's dialogue sums up the popular myth of Tudor England. This pamphlet looks at the reality, a society and politics necessarily divided into rival factions by the pulls of patronage, local loyalty and the implications of personal monarchy, and...
Faction in Tudor England
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'Wanted, The Elusive Charlie Peace': A Sheffield Killer Of The 1870s As Popular Hero
Historian article
On 28 November 1876, William and John Habron, Irish brothers habitually in trouble with the police, were tried at Manchester Assizes for the murder three months before of Police Constable Nicholas Cock (on the basis of ‘scientific’ footprint evidence at the scene of the crime). The jury found 19 year-old...
'Wanted, The Elusive Charlie Peace': A Sheffield Killer Of The 1870s As Popular Hero
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Trewarthenick, Cornwall
Historian article
Christine North provides a fascinating insight into the history of Trewarthenick mansion and the resident Gregor family. Trewarthenick, the home of the Gregor family for nearly 400 years, lies on the north bank of the river Fal, in the tiny parish of Cornelly, near what used to be the rotten...
Trewarthenick, Cornwall
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The Mary Celeste: the history of a mystery
Historian article
Graham Faiella guides us through the historical evidence and literary speculation surrounding one of the ultimately unresolved incidents of recent times.
One hundred and fifty years ago, sometime between 25 November and 4 December 1872, the brigantine Mary Celeste was abandoned at sea somewhere between the Azores and the coast of Portugal....
The Mary Celeste: the history of a mystery
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1851 by Asa Briggs
Classic Pamphlet
This classic pamphlet is being re-published in digital form to coincide with the special edition of The Historian devoted to the memory of Asa Briggs. He was one of the most illustrious members of the Historical Association and a devotedly loyal member all his life.
One Historian has said that...
1851 by Asa Briggs
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Will China Democratise?
Historian article
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...
Will China Democratise?
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The Albigensian Crusade
Classic Pamphlet
At the time of the First Crusade southern France was strongly Catholic: the army led by Raymond IV of Toulouse was the largest single force to take part in the expedition and was recruited from all classes. Yet eighty years later the Count's grandson, Raymond V, sent this appeal form...
The Albigensian Crusade
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The snobbery of chronology: In defence of the generals on the Western Front
Historian article
Faced with the testimony of the huge casualty lists of the First World War, the desperate battles of attrition, the emotive evidence of the seemingly endless cemeteries and memorials, the moving war poetry of men such as Owen and Sassoon, and the memoirs of those who fought, it is not...
The snobbery of chronology: In defence of the generals on the Western Front
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Medieval 'Signs and Marvels'
Historian article
Medieval ‘Signs and Marvels': insights into medieval ideas about nature and the cosmic order.
Many aspects of life in the Middle Ages puzzle the modern reader but some are stranger than others. What can possibly explain an event reported from Orford Castle, in Suffolk? This is an amazing tale and...
Medieval 'Signs and Marvels'
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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
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Britain and Brittany: contact, myth and history in the early Middle Ages
Historian article
Fiona Edmonds evidences the enduring links between Brittany and Britain throughout the early Middle Ages.
Every year many thousands of British holidaymakers travel to Brittany in search of beaches, bisque and bonhomie. As they board the ferry, they may notice that they are travelling from one Bretagne to another. The names...
Britain and Brittany: contact, myth and history in the early Middle Ages
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Nazi aggression: planned or improvised?
Historian article
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Since the 1960s, there have been two main schools of thought...
Nazi aggression: planned or improvised?