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Podcast Series: Russia and the USSR
Russia and the USSR
An HA Podcasted History of Russia and the USSR featuring Dr Beryl Williams, Dr Jonathan Davis of Anglia Ruskin University, Dr Edwin Bacon of Birkbeck University of London and Professor Peter Waldron of the University of East Anglia.
Podcast Series: Russia and the USSR
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Bristol and the Slave Trade
Classic Pamphlet
Captain Thomas Wyndham of Marshfield Park in Somerset was on voyage to Barbary where he sailed from Kingroad, near Bristol, with three ships full of goods and slaves thus beginning the association of African Trade and Bristol. In the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Bristol was not a place of...
Bristol and the Slave Trade
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The Story of the African Queen
Historian article
Where fact and fiction intercept: the story of The African Queen(s) by C.S. Forester
When the Königin Luise was hull down over the horizon and the dhow was close in-shore the lieutenant left his post and went down to the jetty to meet his senior officer. The dhow ran briskly in,...
The Story of the African Queen
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Podcast Series: The Cold War
Multipage Article
An HA Podcasted History of the Cold War featuring Dr Elena Hore of the University of Essex, Dr Matthew Grant of Teeside University, Dr Holger Nehring of the University of Sheffield, Dr Michael Shin of the University of Cambridge, Professor Mark White of Queen Mary University of London, Professor Charles...
Podcast Series: The Cold War
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WWI and the flu pandemic
Historian article
In our continuing Aspects of War series Hugh Gault reveals that the flu pandemic, which began during the First World War, presented another danger that challenged people’s lives and relationships.
Wounded in the neck on the first day of the battle of the Somme, 1 July 1916, Arthur Conan Doyle’s son Kingsley...
WWI and the flu pandemic
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Gary Sheffield: Origins of the First World War
Podcast
Gary Sheffield, Professor of War studies, the University of Wolverhampton, is one of the UK's foremost historians on the First World War. He is the author of numerous books and previously held posts at the University of Birmingham and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. In April 2014 he spoke at an HA event for teachers...
Gary Sheffield: Origins of the First World War
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The Centenary of the First World War: An unpopular view
Historian article
We are delighted to have an original article by Gary Sheffield in this edition of The Historian.
Gary Sheffield is Professor of War Studies, University of Wolverhampton. He is a specialist on Britain at war 1914-45 and is one of Britain's foremost historians on the First World War. He has...
The Centenary of the First World War: An unpopular view
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India in 1914
Historian article
Rather as Queen Victoria was never as ‘Victorian' as we tend to assume, so British India in the years leading up to 1914 does not present the cliched spectacle of colonists in pith helmets and shorts lording it over subservient natives that we might assume. Certainly that sort of relationship...
India in 1914
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The world in 1913: friendly societies
Historian article
Friendly societies were designed to help members to cope with the illness, death or unemployment of a household's breadwinner. Each month members, mostly men, paid into the society, often at a meeting in a pub and in return payments from the pooled funds were made to ill members and to...
The world in 1913: friendly societies
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Women, War and Revolution
Classic Pamphlet
On the surface, the period 1914 to 1945 seems to have encompassed massive changes in the position of women in Europe, in response to the demands of war and revolution. Yet historians have questioned the extent of the transformation, since the acquisition of the vote, as well as improvements in...
Women, War and Revolution
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Imperialism resurgent: European attempts to 'recolonise' South East Asia after 1945
Historian article
‘To think that the people of Indochina would be content to settle for less [from the French] than Indonesia has gained from the Dutch or India from the British is to underestimate the power of the forces that are sweeping Asia today'.
An American adviser in 1949 cited: Robin Jeffrey...
Imperialism resurgent: European attempts to 'recolonise' South East Asia after 1945
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President Barack Obama and the State of the Union Address
Historian article
Introduction
Shortly after noon on 20 January 2009 Barack Obama began his historic Inaugural Address as 44th President of the United States of America. On the west porch of the Capitol, home to the US Congress, and under propitiously blue skies, the first African American president spoke before more than...
President Barack Obama and the State of the Union Address
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The Journey to Icarie and Reunion: A Romance of Socialism on the Texas Frontier
Historian article
The viewer of the internationally popular television show Dallas was routinely treated to an aerial tour that skimmed across the open prairie over the distinctive skyscrapers across the fifty-yard line of Texas Stadium and up the manicured pastures of South Fork.
This façade of larger-than-life Texana reflects an urban reality...
The Journey to Icarie and Reunion: A Romance of Socialism on the Texas Frontier
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The Russian Constitutional Monarchy, 1907-17
Classic Pamphlet
The defeat of the revolution of 1905 afforded the absolutist Tsarist monarchy an opportunity to reform the administration and to seek a new basis of support in place of the declining gentry class. Historians have been divided ever since over the constitutional system's chances of success. Had Tsardom advanced far...
The Russian Constitutional Monarchy, 1907-17
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Anti-Americanism in Britain during the Second World War
Historian article
The Second World War saw the development of significant anti-Americanism in Britain. This article locates the centre of wartime anti-Americanism in the politics of Conservative imperialists, who believed the USA was trying to deliberately dismantle the British Empire in order to fulfil its own imperial ambitions.
The Second World War...
Anti-Americanism in Britain during the Second World War
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Facing the Revolution: the other Americans
Historian article
The American Revolution presented all who lived through it with difficult choices about allegiance, identity, and self-interest. The responses of American loyalists, enslaved people, and Native Americans reveal much about the country’s revolutionary foundation and the United States of today.
The American Revolution was at once universal and narrowly nationalistic....
Facing the Revolution: the other Americans
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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?
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Evelyn Waugh’s books on the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935–36
Historian article
Philip Woods discusses Evelyn Waugh’s contribution to understanding the nature of journalism before the Second World War.
This article compares the value to historians of the two books Evelyn Waugh wrote based on his experiences as a war correspondent covering the Italo-Ethiopian war of 1935–36. The popular satiric novel Scoop (1938) is...
Evelyn Waugh’s books on the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935–36
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Napoleon: First Consul and Emperor of the French
Classic Pamphlet
Four years after the battle of Waterloo, Richard Whately publicised a philosophical essay in which he argued that there was no real proof of Napoleon's existence. The deeds attributed to him were either so wondrously good or so amazingly bad that they far outran the evidence available to support them:...
Napoleon: First Consul and Emperor of the French
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Between the Revolutions: Russia 1905 to 1917
Classic Pamphlet
"The key question is this - is the peaceful renovation of the country possible? Or is it possible only by internal revolution?"This quotation succintly expresses the problem that faced both contemporaries and subsequant generations of historians confronting the development of Russia between the revolutions of 1905 and 1917. The upheavals...
Between the Revolutions: Russia 1905 to 1917
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The Northern Limit: Britain, Canada and Greenland, 1917-20
Historian article
Imperial ambitions during the First World War extended beyond the Middle East and Africa. In this article Ben Markham looks at the territorial wrangling over Greenland.
It is well known that the British Empire grew in size significantly in the wake of the First World War. In the course of...
The Northern Limit: Britain, Canada and Greenland, 1917-20
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Journeys Home: Indian forces and the First World War
Historian article
This article examines the importance of understanding the experiences of the Indian Forces during the First World War and how that can affect young people today.
One hundred and four years ago the British Empire was one of the largest global operations in existence. Roughly a quarter of the world’s population...
Journeys Home: Indian forces and the First World War
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Populism, Progressivism and Trumpism
Historian article
Populism, Progressivism and Trumpism: third party, inter-party and intraparty candidates in campaigns for the American presidency
Michael Dunne explores the complexities of American presidential political campaigning over the last 200 years.
Vox populi, vox dei. The voice of the people is the voice of God. Since these words were first...
Populism, Progressivism and Trumpism
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British armoured cars on the Eastern Front in the First World War
Historian article
Charlotte Alston reveals a little-known British involvement on the Eastern Front in the Great War.In early January 1918, Lieutenant Commander Soames of the British Armoured Car Division at Kursk, in Russia, telegraphed to his commandingofficer Oliver Locker Lampson, who was in London, to thank him for his Christmas greetings. All...
British armoured cars on the Eastern Front in the First World War
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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?
