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Real Lives: Maria Rye’s emigration home for destitute little girls
Historian feature
Alf Wilkinson explores the controversial story of Maria Rye, who founded the Female Emigration Society in 1861 in order to take ‘surplus’ young ladies to Australia and New Zealand to work as teachers and governesses. As there was insufficient demand for these, she refocused her work on taking pauper children...
Real Lives: Maria Rye’s emigration home for destitute little girls
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Fake news: Psy-war and propaganda in the Indonesian Genocide of 1965-66
Historian article
Geoffrey Robinson explores a little-known episode of the Cold War where half a million people were killed and the Indonesian communist party was destroyed, aided and abetted by the major Western Powers.
Amidst all the talk of fake news and Russian meddling in US politics, it is easy to lose...
Fake news: Psy-war and propaganda in the Indonesian Genocide of 1965-66
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Western Dress and Ambivalence in the South Pacific
Article
Michael Sturma examines an aspect of the cultural impact of the West in the South Pacific. ‘States of undress, or the partially clad body, invite particularly ambivalent responses.’ One of the main preoccupation’s of early European visitors to the South Pacific was the nudity or partial nudity of the indigenous...
Western Dress and Ambivalence in the South Pacific
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War Plan Red: the American Plan for war with Britain
Article
John Major discusses an astonishing aspect of past Anglo-American history. All great powers have developed contingency plans for war with each other, and the United States in the early twentieth century was no exception. Each of Washington’s schemes was given a distinctive colour. Green mapped out intervention in neighbouring Mexico,...
War Plan Red: the American Plan for war with Britain
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A (non-Western) history of versatility
Historian article
Waqās Ahmed broadens our perspective on where in history we might find polymaths, those who embody versatility of thought and action. While Western scholars might identify the likes of Leonardo da Vinci or Benjamin Franklin as the archetype of the polymath, they have in reality existed throughout history and across...
A (non-Western) history of versatility
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Film: The Kennedys and the Gores
HA Conference 2019 - Keynote Speech
This film was taken at the HA Annual Conference 2019 in Chester and features the HA's President: Professor Tony Badger who presented Friday's keynote lecture.
Find out more about the HA Conference.
In a country that prides itself on its egalitarianism and its democracy, it is perhaps surprising that family...
Film: The Kennedys and the Gores
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Radiating the Revolution: Agitation in the Russian Civil War 1917-21
Article
When the Bolsheviks seized power in what was essentially a carefully organised coup d’état in October 1917, they seized control only of the levers of central power in the then capital, Petrograd, which had already become the centre of working-class discontent. What they most emphatically did not do was to...
Radiating the Revolution: Agitation in the Russian Civil War 1917-21
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Film: Lenin and the 1917 Revolutions
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
You wait a lifetime for a revolution and then two come along at once! Such was 1917 in Russia. As the world seemed in chaos and Russia and the Russian people began to collapse, Lenin and the Bolsheviks saw their opportunity and overthrew the government to create the first communist...
Film: Lenin and the 1917 Revolutions
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Film: Discussion: Key organisations in the Civil Rights Movement
Film series: The African-American Civil Rights Movement
Professor Tony Badger, Professor Joe Street and Professor Brian Ward discuss the African-American Civil Rights movement and examine different ways we might interpret the significance of key individuals, groups, institutions and events that played a role in its development and progress.
During the Civil Rights campaigns period in the 1960s key...
Film: Discussion: Key organisations in the Civil Rights Movement
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Comparing the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Jameson Raid
Historian article
Duplicated Debacles? A comparison of the 1895-96 Jameson Raid and the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion. Adam Burns and Robert Gallimore take us on two invasions, one by land and one by sea.
Following the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and the rise to power of the socialist regime of Fidel...
Comparing the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Jameson Raid
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The British Empire on trial
Article
In the light of present-day concerns about the place, in a modern world, of statues commemorating figures whose roles in history are of debatable merit, Dr Gregory Gifford puts the British Empire on trial, presenting a balanced case both for and against.
In June 2020 when the statue of slave-trader Edward Colston...
The British Empire on trial
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Film: Why does the massacre of the Armenians in the First World War still get overlooked?
Virtual Branch
Why is the term 'Armenian Genocide' controversial, with many countries still not acknowledging a genocide at all? What do we know about the event of 1915 and the plight of the Armenian community in Turkey? How can we grapple with a history that many people want to forget? In this...
Film: Why does the massacre of the Armenians in the First World War still get overlooked?
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‘Zulu’ and the end of Empire
Historian article
In this article, Nicolas Kinloch examines the 1964 film Zulu. He suggests what it might tell us about the reality of the British Empire and asks if it has anything to say about the era in which the film was made.
One of the most successful British films of 1964...
‘Zulu’ and the end of Empire
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From strategic routes to economic lifelines: the historical and contemporary importance of La Pintada
Article
In his work on the local history of his hometown in Panama, Miguel Elias Escobar Cornejo highlights the importance of understanding the geography of the historical sites we study. Here, he explains how a defensive route from the coast to the rugged mountain interior developed into one of the most important...
From strategic routes to economic lifelines: the historical and contemporary importance of La Pintada
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Recorded Webinar: India and the Second World War
Article
Two-and-a-half million men from undivided India served the British during the Second World War. Their experiences are little remembered today, neither in the West where a Euro/US-centric memory of the war dominates, nor in South Asia, which privileges nationalist histories of independence from the British Empire. What was it like...
Recorded Webinar: India and the Second World War
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Film: Yeltsin - Early Life
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
In this film, Dr Edwin Bacon (University of Lincoln) introduces us to the young Boris Yeltsin, a true product of the Stalinist years. He explores how a young Yeltsin caught the eye of the Communist officials, allowing him to work his way up from a civil engineer to the politburo. Dr...
Film: Yeltsin - Early Life
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The End of Germany’s Colonial Empire
Historian article
Daniel Steinbach asks why the loss of the German colonies in Africa was perceived as a powerful symbol of Germany’s deliberate humiliation at the end of the First World War.
Famously, Germany’s first and last shots of the First World War were fired in Africa. From its beginning to its...
The End of Germany’s Colonial Empire
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Podcast: Richard Evans Medlicott -The Origins of the First World War
Medlicott Podcast
This year the Historical Association's Medlicott medal for services to history went to Professor Sir Richard Evans. Richard Evans is the Regius Professor of History at Cambridge and President of Wolfson College, Cambridge. He has written numerous highly respected and internationally best-selling books. Evans is bests known for his works on...
Podcast: Richard Evans Medlicott -The Origins of the First World War
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Films: Mikhail Gorbachev – Interpretations
Film series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
How much of what Russia is today, how its people behave, and how they are perceived is dependent on its history and those that have led it? Was it the first melting pot of the world? Do its broad range of cultural traditions and diversity play a part in its...
Films: Mikhail Gorbachev – Interpretations
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What did ‘Mature Socialism’ mean for the Soviet Union?
Historian article
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...
What did ‘Mature Socialism’ mean for the Soviet Union?
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Filmed Lecture: Medlicott Lecture 2022 by David Olusoga
Article
Professor David Olusoga is a revered TV historian, a writer and a practising academic at Manchester University. In 2022 he was the recipient of the Historical Association's annual Medlicott medal, awarded for outstanding contributions to history.
The recipient of the medal provides the closing lecture of the HA's annual awards evening. Professor...
Filmed Lecture: Medlicott Lecture 2022 by David Olusoga
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Eighteenth-century Britain and its Empire
Article
The concept of an ‘English’ or even of a ‘British’ empire has been in use at least from the sixteenth century. What the term then conveyed was of course very different from what it was to convey in modern times. By the mid-eighteenth century, however, contemporaries were beginning to envisage...
Eighteenth-century Britain and its Empire
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Film: Yeltsin and the Oligarchs
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
If you're unable to see the film below, please use the link for your Membership type:Historian members | Primary members | Secondary members | Student members
Film: Yeltsin and the Oligarchs
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... the impact of the British Empire on Britain?
Teaching History feature
The murder of George Floyd during the summer of 2020 and the ongoing ‘culture war’ in Britain over the legacy of the British Empire have reignited interest in imperial history. This focuses, in particular, on the question of the empire’s impact on Britain itself: on how the act of conquering...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... the impact of the British Empire on Britain?
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The Spanish-American War revisited: rise of an American empire?
Historian article
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...
The Spanish-American War revisited: rise of an American empire?
