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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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England Arise! The General Election of 1945
Historian article
‘The past week will live in history for two things’, announced the Sunday Times of 29 July 1945, ‘first the return of a Labour majority to Parliament and the end of Churchill's great war Premiership.’ Most other newspapers concurred. The Daily Mirror, of 27 July, proclaimed that the 1945 general election...
England Arise! The General Election of 1945
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The commercial architecture of Victorian Liverpool
Article
In 1857 the Builder enthusiastically described the thriving state of architecture on the banks of the Mersey: 'The impression from a walk through the principal quarters of the town, after visiting other towns, is that more [building of a superior kind] must be doing in Liverpool than at any other...
The commercial architecture of Victorian Liverpool
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Buffalo Bill and his Wild West show opens London's Earl Court in 1887
Historian article
‘It is often said on the other side of the water that none of the exhibitions which we send to England are purely and distinctively American', exhorted Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) in an unsolicited letter of September 1884 to ‘Colonel' William Frederick Cody (1846-1917). ‘If you will take the Wild...
Buffalo Bill and his Wild West show opens London's Earl Court in 1887
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The origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Historian article
On 29 January 1949 there was a debate in the British House of Commons. When Winston Churchill, the leader of the opposition, interrupted Ernest Bevin’s history of the Palestine problem he was told by the Foreign Secretary: ‘over half a million Arabs have been turned by the Jewish immigrants into...
The origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
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Ofsted and History in Schools
Article
HM Inspector John Hamer reviews the evidence. In a lecture marking the 150th anniversary of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Schools, Peter Gordon recalled a nineteenth century HMI, the Reverend W.H. Brookfield. His circle of friends included Tennyson, the Hallams and Thomas Carlyle.
Ofsted and History in Schools
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The Origins of the Local Government Service
Historian article
The concept ‘local government’ dates only from the middle of the nineteenth century. ‘Local government service’ emerged later still. In 1903 Redlich and Hirst1 wrote of ‘municipal officers’, while in 1922 Robson2 preferred ‘the municipal civil service’. ‘Local government service’ perhaps derives its pedigree from its use in the final...
The Origins of the Local Government Service
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After the Uprising of 1956: Hungarian Students in Britain
Historian article
Much has been written during the last 50 years about the events leading up to and during the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. Less consideration has been given to the students who arrived in Britain as refugees. During the weeks following the Soviet intervention in Hungary around 25,000 people were killed...
After the Uprising of 1956: Hungarian Students in Britain
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Iconic Images of War: photographs that changed history
Historian article
The recent photographs taken of US troops apparently abusing Iraqi prisoners-of-war in Abu Ghraib Jail have attracted attention across the world. Although it is too early to say whether these images will come to represent the essential character of the current Iraq conflict, they have altered public perceptions, producing doubt...
Iconic Images of War: photographs that changed history
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A Social History of the Welsh Language
Historian article
When the historian Peter Burke wrote in 1987 ‘It is high time for a social history of language’, he could scarcely have imagined that the first to meet the challenge would be the Welsh. In November 2000 the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, a research...
A Social History of the Welsh Language
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An American showman P. T. Barnum - Promoter of 'freak shows' for all the family
Historian article
Refer nowadays to Phineas Taylor Barnum (1810-91)—once among the most recognisable and talked about of all nineteenth century Americans— only to conjure up visions of Barnum & Bailey’s three-ring circuses, menageries, acrobats, and Jumbo the elephant. Such images tend to obscure that in 1880, on creation of the famous travelling...
An American showman P. T. Barnum - Promoter of 'freak shows' for all the family
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Britain and the Formation of NATO
Article
Carl Watts outlines the shift in British security policy and examines the role played by the Foreign Office during the post-War period. April 1999 marks the 50th anniversary of the signature of the North Atlantic Treaty, which came into effect in August 1949. The Cold War is over, but NATO...
Britain and the Formation of NATO
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The British Union of Fascists: the international dimension
Article
Fascism failed in Britain in the 1930s – Europe’s decade of the ‘Brown plague’. Unlike in many European countries, fascists in Britain were never a serious threat to the democratic order. This was not for want of trying, especially on the part of Sir Oswald Mosley and his British Union...
The British Union of Fascists: the international dimension
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The Resistable Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte
Article
Malcolm Crook examines the remarkable ascent to power of Napoleon at the turn of the nineteenth century. The great Bicentenary of the French Revolution of 1789 may be drawing to a close, but that of Napoleon is about to commence. So now is an opportune moment to present a critical...
The Resistable Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte
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Tony Blair, the Iraq War, and a sense of history
Historian article
Blair the war leader provided historians with countless opportunities to get their names in the newspapers, let alone voice their opinions across the airwaves. The usual suspects were lined up (Eric Hobsbawm and Ben Pimlott in the Guardian, Andrew Roberts and John Keegan in the Telegraph, Niall Ferguson in The...
Tony Blair, the Iraq War, and a sense of history
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Chamberlain Day and the popular meaning of Tariff Reform
Historian article
Few Conservative institutions appealed to the Tory rank-and-file activist like the Tariff Reform League did in the opening two decades of the Twentieth Century. From its foundation in 1903, the League spearheaded Joseph Chamberlain’s crusade to grant tariffs on imported goods, acting as his grassroots organisation. This article attempts to...
Chamberlain Day and the popular meaning of Tariff Reform
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The Uses of History in the Twenty First Century
Historian article
During the last century or so there has developed a new ‘public role’ for history: the past as personal history, a vital element in the nourishing of people in society. During the past decades a new perception of what history is has manifested itself on two levels: first a shift of...
The Uses of History in the Twenty First Century
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The 'Era of the Dictators' Reconsidered
Article
Kenneth Thomson reflects on major aspects of the ‘era of the dictators’ after the collapse of Soviet Communism and its satellite regimes. In 1939, on the eve of the Second World War, almost the whole of continental Europe was ruled by dictatorships of various political hues. Even countries, like France,...
The 'Era of the Dictators' Reconsidered
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Attitudes to Liberty and Enslavement: the career of James Irving, a Liverpool slave ship surgeon and captain
Historian article
Prior to abolition in 1807, Britain was the world’s leading slave trading nation. Of an estimated six million individuals forcibly transported from Africa in the transatlantic slave trade in the eighteenth century, almost 2.5 million (40 per cent) were carried in British vessels.2 The contemporary attitudes and assumptions which underpinned...
Attitudes to Liberty and Enslavement: the career of James Irving, a Liverpool slave ship surgeon and captain
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Personality & Power: The individual's role in the history of twentieth-century Europe
Article
What role do individuals wielding great power play in determining significant historical change? And how do historians locate human agency in historical change, and explain it? These are the issues I would like to reflect a little upon here. They are not new problems. But they are inescapable ones for...
Personality & Power: The individual's role in the history of twentieth-century Europe
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Russian Revolution: Social Movements between the Revolutions Feb-Oct 1917
Lecture
On the 29th November Dr Jane McDermid gave the second of her lectures on the Russian Revolution, at the Weston Theatre, Manchester. John Laver, Principal Examiner in History at AQA also gave some invaluable advice on how to answer A Level History Exam questions.
Click the links below to access their lecture notes>>>...
Russian Revolution: Social Movements between the Revolutions Feb-Oct 1917
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The ideological contribution of 'The Times' in favour of motherhood in Great Britain between 1910–1920
Historian article
During the early years of the twentieth century, the New Liberals spread a political ideology which was much closer to socialism than to Victorian liberalism. Indeed, they preached State intervention in favour of social welfare, national prosperity and imperialistic strength; that social policy which logically required extra care and increased...
The ideological contribution of 'The Times' in favour of motherhood in Great Britain between 1910–1920
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Podcast: Stalin 1928-1941
Podcast
On 15th November Dr Jane McDermid gave the first lecture in the HA's Sixth Form Lecture Series on the making of the Stalinist State at the National Archives, Kew. Click on the following links below to listen to her lecture and read the lecture notes!
Podcast: Stalin 1928-1941
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The Irish historians' role and the place of history in Irish national life
Historian article
The debate on the nation and its history is new to England; and there is, perhaps, a tendency to assume that what is new in England is new everywhere. In Ireland, the debate has been going on since the 1970s, fuelled by what is called ‘revisionism’; or rather, by a...
The Irish historians' role and the place of history in Irish national life
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‘Savages and rattlesnakes’ Washington, District of Columbia: A British Diplomat's view 1823-5
Historian article
Henry Unwin Addington, a nephew of the former British prime minister, Henry Addington, had joined the Foreign Office at the age of 16 in 1806. After serving in various junior diplomatic posts in Europe he learnt in 1822 that he was to be promoted to secretary of legation in Washington....
‘Savages and rattlesnakes’ Washington, District of Columbia: A British Diplomat's view 1823-5
