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Captain Thomas and the North West Passage
Classic Pamphlet
In the early years of the seventeenth century Englishmen vigorously prosecuted the search for a North West Passage to the Pacific. The fabled wealth of India and Cathay beckoned to them as enticingly as it had attracted their sixteenth century predecessors. The foundation of the English East India Company in...
Captain Thomas and the North West Passage
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The Local Community and The Great Rebellion
Classic Pamphlet
A.M. Everitt goes past a normal look at The English Civil War, and examines individual communities and resurgence in popular interest in it. More than that, how the Civil War has been documented and what the effect of this flawed teaching and writing on the subject has had on popular...
The Local Community and The Great Rebellion
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Upwards till Lepanto
Article
Ottoman society centred on the Sultan. He was lawgiver, religious official, leader in battle-and until the late sixteenth century an active field commander on campaign. The Law of Fratricide of Mehmet (Mohammed) II, 1451-81, urged each new Sultan to kill his brothers in order to produce a capable ruler and...
Upwards till Lepanto
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Central and Local Government in Scotland Since 1707
Classic Pamphlet
This pamphlet provides an interesting approach to a historical topic which has been too frequently covered from a single viewpoint. The pamphlet delivers a thoroughly Scottish approach to the nature of the 1707 Union and the changing nature of Scotland in the following centuries. It highlights the disparity of the...
Central and Local Government in Scotland Since 1707
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Bristol and America 1480-1631
Classic Pamphlet
This pamphlet addresses the relationship between Bristol and America, charting the rising and waning interest the city and its merchants had in discovering new lands and profiting from them, and the success or more often the failure of these voyages. It provides an interesting argument which may be seen to...
Bristol and America 1480-1631
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Tudor Enclosures
Classic Pamphlet
Tudor enclosures hold the attention of historians because of the fundamental changes which they wrought in our system of farming, and in the appearance of the English countryside. At the same time, the subject is continually being re-investigated, and as a result it is no longer presented in the simple...
Tudor Enclosures
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Jacobitism
Classic Pamphlet
In recent years, the debate over the nature, extent, and influence of the Jacobite movement during the 70 years following the Glorious Revolution of 1688 has become one of the new growth industries among professional historians, spawning scholarly quarrels almost as ferocious as those which characterised ‘the Cause' itself.The term...
Jacobitism
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Polychronicon 161: John Lilburne
Teaching History feature
John Lilburne might have been destined for obscurity in less interesting times. He was the second son of a minor gentry family, apprenticed to a London woollen merchant in 1632. It was his master’s connections that drew him into religious opposition to Charles I and the illegal book trade, resulting...
Polychronicon 161: John Lilburne
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Mughal moments made memorable by Movie Maker
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Rosalind Stirzaker has introduced some fascinating topics at Key Stage 3. Her pupils, living in Dubai, have the opportunity to study the Islamic Empire, the Mughal Empire and Mespotamia as well as many of the...
Mughal moments made memorable by Movie Maker
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Sir William Petty: Scientist, Economist, Inventor, 1623-1687
Article
In December 1687 Sir William Petty, a founder member, attended the annual dinner of the Royal Society. He was obviously seriously ill and in 'greate pain' and shortly afterwards, on December 16th, he died in his house in Piccadilly, opposite St James Church. It was a quiet end to a...
Sir William Petty: Scientist, Economist, Inventor, 1623-1687
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Daniel Defoe, public opinion and the Anglo-Scottish Union
Historian article
There is a tendency to represent Daniel Defoe as a novelist and satirical journalist who was at one point placed in the London stocks as a punishment. Ted Vallance's article broadens our perspective to appreciate Defoe's activities as a propagandist in both England and Scotland...
The September 2014 referendum on...
Daniel Defoe, public opinion and the Anglo-Scottish Union
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Currency and the Economy in Tudor and early Stuart England
Classic Pamphlet
Before the development of paper money, which in England did not really occur until later in the seventeenth century, the circulating medium consisted of coins and tokens. The unit of account in which they were valued was the pound sterling; in which there were twenty shillings each of twelve pence,...
Currency and the Economy in Tudor and early Stuart England
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Enlightened Despotism
Classic Pamphlet
This pamphlet covers the often confused concept of Enlightened Despotism (also known as Enlightened Absolutism). The essential nature of Enlightened Despotism and its origin are discussed, as well as the development and character of Enlightened Despotism in various governments, followed by a judgement of its' achievements and significance. Catherine the Great,...
Enlightened Despotism
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War, Society and the State in Early Modern Europe
Podcast
Lecture from the 2012 HA Annual Conference
Frank Tallett: Fellow in History at the University of Reading and former Head of its School of Humanities
Until recently, military history has largely been concerned with ‘badges and buttons', an approach that stressed tactics, strategy and weapons. The so-called New Military History has sought...
War, Society and the State in Early Modern Europe
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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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Francis I and Absolute Monarchy
Classic Pamphlet
Francis I of France reign lasted for more than thirty years and coincided with movements as significant as the Renaissance and the Reformation. Text-books are apt to gloss over the domestic history of France before the outbreak of the Wars of Religion and convey the impression that Francis was more...
Francis I and Absolute Monarchy
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The Jesuits and the Catholic Reformation
Classic Pamphlet
The society of Jesus, formally approved by Pope Paul III in his bull Regimini Militantis Ecclesiae of September 1540, was one of many new religious orders of men and women - such as Barnabites, Capuchins, Oratorians, Piarists and Vincentians among the male orders, and Daughters and Sisters of Charity, Ursulines,...
The Jesuits and the Catholic Reformation
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A Commercial Revolution
Classic Pamphlet
The pattern of overseas trade is always in movement: new commodities are constantly appearing, old ones fading into unimportance, different trading partners coming to the fore-front. But between the latter end of the sixteenth and the second half of the eighteenth century, change took specially far reaching forms. In 1570...
A Commercial Revolution
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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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Kett's Rebellion 1549
Classic Pamphlet
On 20 june, 1549, the men of the town of Attleborough and of the neighbouring hamlets of Eccles and Wilby, in South Norfolk, threw down the fences recently erected by John Green, lord of the manor of Beckhall in Wilby, round part of the common over which they all had...
Kett's Rebellion 1549
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English Puritanism
Classic Pamphlet
When the modern world was christened Puritanism appeared as a bad fairy and bestowed upon it certain dubious gifts: capitalism, democracy, America. This is a fairy story, but like all fairy stories it contains a small grain of truth. But what was Puritanism? Already in the seventeenth century a critic...
English Puritanism
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Charles XII
Classic Pamphlet
The reputation of Charles XII who became king of Sweden before he was fifteen years old and had the responsibility of absolutist goverment thrust upon him within the next six months - contrary to the plans laid down for him by his father - has tended to attract political rather...
Charles XII
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An English Absolutism?
Classic Pamphlet
The term 'Absolutism' was coined in France in the 1790s, but the concept which described it was familiar to many Englishmen in the late seventeenth century. They talked of 'absolute monarchy', 'tyranny', 'despotism' and above all 'arbitrary government'. Their use of such terns were pejorative: they described political regimes of...
An English Absolutism?
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The Eighteenth Century in Britain: Long or Short?
Article
W. A. Speck reviews an historical debate central to the interpretation of the eighteenth century in Britain. Few British historians treat the eighteenth century as consisting simply of the hundred years from 1701 to 1800. Until recently political historians tended to end it in 1783. Many textbooks reflect this treatment...
The Eighteenth Century in Britain: Long or Short?
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Peter the Great
Classic Pamphlet
No European ruler except Napoleon I has impressed both contemporise and later historians so profoundly as Peter I of Russia by the originality and the personal character of his achievements. Like Napoleon, Peter appeared to some observers, at least in his later years, as almost more than human. He seemed...
Peter the Great
