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Polychronicon 138: The Civil Rights Movement
Teaching History feature
"He was The One, The Hero, The One Fearless Person for whom we had waited. I hadn't even realized before that we had been waiting for Martin Luther King, Jr, but we had."
So spoke the novelist Alice Walker in 1972, looking back on her teenage years. And so wrote...
Polychronicon 138: The Civil Rights Movement
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The Second World War
Classic Pamphlet
On 5 September 1939 the German Führer, Adolf Hitler, paid a surprise visit to the corps which was in the forefront of his army's ferocious assault upon Poland. As they passed the remains of a smashed Polish artillery regiment, the corps commander, General Guderian, astonished Hitler by telling him that...
The Second World War
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Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal
Classic Pamphlets
New Deal is the name given to the policies of the American president Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1930s. Elected in 1932, at a time of great economic depression, he sought to alleviate distress by using the inherent powers of government, and the New Deal era come to be seen...
Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal
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The Versailles Peace Settlement
Classic Pamphlet
This classic pamphlet takes you through the Paris Peace Conference and the 'German Question', Peacemaking and the Treaty of Versailles, Europe and the German question after Versailles.
The Versailles Peace Settlement
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The American Diplomatic Tradition
Classic Pamphlet
Indisputably, the United States of America has been and continues to be the leading power of the twentieth century. No country or people, however large or small, has been immune from American influence. A succession of American presidents have become international celebrities whose personal strengths and weaknesses are discussed and disssected...
The American Diplomatic Tradition
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British Defence and Appeasement Between the Wars 1919-1939
Classic Pamphlet
Armed forces never exist in isolation, but always operate against a background of political, economic, social, cultural, intellectual and ideological conditions and attitudes, as well as in relation to diplomatic and strategic factors. Some governments regards their military forces especially their armies, more as instruments for maintaining internal order than...
British Defence and Appeasement Between the Wars 1919-1939
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Brazil and the two World Wars
Article
Brazil and the outbreak of the First World War At the beginning of the twentieth century Brazil was on the periphery of a world order that revolved around decisions made by the great European powers. Although it was the largest and most populated nation in South America, Brazil possessed an...
Brazil and the two World Wars
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Dean Mahomet: Travel writer, curry entrepreneur and shampooer to the King
Historian article
The National Portrait Gallery in London is home to many thousands of portraits, photographs and sculptures of the great and the good, as well as those who travelled on the darker side of history.
In 2007 it hosted a small exhibition in the Porter Gallery entitled Between Worlds: Voyagers to...
Dean Mahomet: Travel writer, curry entrepreneur and shampooer to the King
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Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Introducing students to historical interpretation
Historian article
High school history teacher Brent Dyck is one of our Canadian readers. He has offered this item to The Historian as a contribution to our commitment to explore the historical approaches and values that we are seeking to convey to young people and the wider public. We hope that you may...
Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Introducing students to historical interpretation
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The Migration of Indians to Guiana and Surinam
Article
While migration from Europe to North America and elsewhere is well known, that from India is less familiar to Western readers. Ananda Dulal Sarkar provides an account of Indian migrants to the former British and Dutch Guianas. Within India, particularly during British rule, young and able-bodied males migrated hundreds of...
The Migration of Indians to Guiana and Surinam
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The Military Historian and the Popular Image of the Western Front, 1914-1918
Article
Ian Beckett reviews recent revisionist interpretations of the Western Front. English teachers have much to answer for in terms of the enduring popular image of the Great War. Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves are still pressed regularly into action as if they could possibly stand representatives of the...
The Military Historian and the Popular Image of the Western Front, 1914-1918
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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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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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Echoes of Tsushima
Historian article
In 2005 East Asian regional strategy is once again a hot topic for policy makers, diplomats and journalists. As China begins to reassert herself regionally and as her economy revives to challenge conceptions of her place in the world, Japan, Russia, Korea (North and South) and the United States are...
Echoes of Tsushima
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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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The Japanese History Textbook Controversy: a Content Analysis
Historian article
With almost monotonous regularity the official release in Japan of new or revised secondary school history textbook editions, as well as primeministerial annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine to commemorate the 2.5 million Japanese war dead (including 14 Class-A war criminals), unleash a wave of international protest concerning Japan’s official...
The Japanese History Textbook Controversy: a Content Analysis
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Lyndon Johnson & Albert Gore: Southern New Dealers and the Modern South
Historian article
Lyndon Johnson and Albert Gore were elected to Congress within a year of each other in 1937-38. They were elected in the old style of patronage-oriented southern Democratic Party politics in which a plethora of candidates, with few issues to divide them, contested primary elections. Both circumvented the local county...
Lyndon Johnson & Albert Gore: Southern New Dealers and the Modern South
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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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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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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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A-Level Essay: To what extent does the art of the Edo period of Japan reflect the contentment of the classes within its society?
Article
The Edo period in Japanese history fell between the years 1600 and 1867, beginning when Tokugawa Ieyatsu, a daimyo (samurai lord), became the strongest power in Japan, and ending with Tokugawa Keiki’s abdication. The Tokugawas claimed the hereditary title of Shogun, supreme governor of Japan. (The emperor had become a...
A-Level Essay: To what extent does the art of the Edo period of Japan reflect the contentment of the classes within its society?
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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 Generous Turk': Some Eighteenth-Century Attitudes
Article
Notwithstanding the tribal hatred recently shown for each other by a handful of English and Turkish football fanatics, nobody who has travelled in Turkey or taken a holiday in that country can have failed to notice the courtesy and generosity with which visitors are invariably treated. Indeed, one of the...
'The Generous Turk': Some Eighteenth-Century Attitudes
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The Gallipoli Memorial, Eltham
Historian article
On April 13 2000 the Bishop of Oxford, the Right Reverend Richard Harris, gave the final Gallipoli Memorial Lecture in the Gallipoli Memorial Chapel at Holy Trinity Church, Eltham. The National Gallipoli Memorial was established there due to the effort and enthusiasm of Holy Trinity’s Vicar, the Reverend Henry Hall,...
The Gallipoli Memorial, Eltham
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Bertrand Russell's Role in the Cuban Missile Crisis
Historian article
'An attack on the United States with 10,000 megatons would lead to the death of essentially all of the American people and to the destruction of the nation.’ ‘In 1960 President Kennedy mentioned 30,000 megatons as the size of the world’s stockpile of nuclear weapons.’ In the autumn of 1962...
Bertrand Russell's Role in the Cuban Missile Crisis
