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Found 812 results matching 'brief history' within Publications > The Historian > Historian articles   (Clear filter)

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  • Quixotically Generous...Economically Worthless'

      Article
    William Kenefick considers two views of the dockers and the dockland community in Britain in the 19th and early 20th centuries. 'Quixotically generous and economically worthless’! But what does this mean? How does this curious descriptor help us understand the docker or the waterside community? Indeed, does it tell us...
    Quixotically Generous...Economically Worthless'

  • The Spanish Armada of...1597?

      Article
    Graham Darby gives an anniversary account of the later Spanish Armadas, long forgotten, but comparable in size and as threatening to contemporaries as the more famous Armada of 1588. As every schoolboy and schoolgirl should know, the Spanish Armada set sail in 1588: ‘God blew and they were scattered.’ However,...
    The Spanish Armada of...1597?

  • 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

  • Minority rights and wrongs in Eastern Europe in the 20th century

      Article
    Mark Cornwall reflects on past and present attempts by the international community to protect national minorities in Eastern Europe. On 19 March 1995, the Prime Ministers of Hungary and Slovakia met in Paris to sign a ‘Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation’ between their two countries; on 13 June it was...
    Minority rights and wrongs in Eastern Europe in the 20th century

  • Faster, Higher, Stronger: The Birth of the Modern Olympics

      Article
    As the leading athletes of all nations prepare to come together this summer in Atlanta, the global communications media of the late twentieth century are constantly reminding us that 1996 marks the first centenary of the modern Olympic Games. The worldwide impact now made by these sporting festivals is all...
    Faster, Higher, Stronger: The Birth of the Modern Olympics

  • Kangxi and Louis XIV

      Historian article
    Recently the French and Chinese governments have joined together in a nostalgic reflection on cultural interactions between King Louis XIV and Emperor Kangxi in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. As Sean Heath explains here, these modern reflections are particularly interesting for an aspect of the relationship which they...
    Kangxi and Louis XIV

  • Out and About: Bedfordshire’s airship memory

      Historian feature
    This article explores the Cardington airship hangars in Bedfordshire as reminders of Britain’s ambitious but short-lived airship programme. Built during the First World War, Cardington became central to the 1924 Imperial Airship Scheme and the construction of the R-100 and R-101. Celebrated as symbols of technological optimism, the programme ended...
    Out and About: Bedfordshire’s airship memory

  • In conversation with Ayoush Lazikani

      Historian feature
    Ayoush Lazikani’s The Medieval Moon follows the moon between roughly 700 and 1600, tracing how it became a meeting-place for prophecy, medicine, devotion, and art across a globally conceived Middle Ages. Carolin Gluchowski met with Ayoush Lazikani to explore the many moons of the Middle Ages...
    In conversation with Ayoush Lazikani

  • Social Darwinism: the myth and its reinvention

      Historian article
    ‘Social Darwinism’ has been associated in academia and popular consciousness with negative concepts such as hyper-nationalism and eugenics. Geoffrey M. Hodgson challenges the notion that Social Darwinism or its proponents were ever well-defined. By tracing the use of ‘Social Darwinism’ across academic disciplines and globally over a long period, Hodgson...
    Social Darwinism: the myth and its reinvention

  • White heat or hot air? The politics of science in 1960s Britain

      Historian article
    Britain in the 1960s was captivated by scientific advancements. The public interest in ‘science’ was reflected in popular culture during this period. This zeitgeist for scientific revolution also captured aspects of British politics. The government of Harold Wilson sought to encourage scientific progress. Yet the difference between political aims and...
    White heat or hot air? The politics of science in 1960s Britain

  • Edgar Ætheling: what happened to the boy who never became king?

      Historian article
    Edgar Ǣtheling, grandson of Edmund Ironside, was the last serious Anglo-Saxon claimant to the throne of Edward the Confessor. In this article, Jamie Page explores how his long life after 1066 sheds a fascinating light on the emerging Anglo-Norman world and its significant impact in Europe and the Middle East.
    Edgar Ætheling: what happened to the boy who never became king?

  • Tunnel visions: London’s wartime shelters

      Historian article
    Ronan Thomas describes two different Second World War shelters in London. One was the top-secret Mayfair bunker in which Winston Churchill sheltered during the Blitz and governed the country from underground; the other protected thousands of south Londoners and went on to provide shelter to visitors to the capital for several years...
    Tunnel visions: London’s wartime shelters

  • Coroners, communities, and the Crown: mapping death and justice in late medieval England

      Historian article
    Life in medieval cities could be violent and dangerous, and the records generated by state officials charged with regulating that violence offer invaluable insight into everyday life. Stephanie Emma Brown takes us behind the scenes of the recently launched Medieval Murder Map project, which was based on coroners’ rolls, to...
    Coroners, communities, and the Crown: mapping death and justice in late medieval England

  • Mercurial justice: a Jesuit chaplain’s view of life in the prisons of sixteenth-century Seville

      Historian article
    Justice in the early modern period was discretionary, which meant it could be both violent and deeply unfair. Elites often escaped the most severe punishments inflicted on the poor and minoritised groups. Clare Burgess shows how a Jesuit chaplain in sixteenth- century Seville used his spiritual discretion and zealous belief...
    Mercurial justice: a Jesuit chaplain’s view of life in the prisons of sixteenth-century Seville

  • James Macpherson: a Scottish Robin Hood

      Historian article
    James Macpherson led a notorious gang of robbers in late seventeenth-century Scotland, and he became infamous for robbing rich lairds to give to the poor. Anne-Marie Kilday explains how his notoriety is also significant for revealing how people in early modern Scotland could hold complex attitudes towards the Gypsy Roma...
    James Macpherson: a Scottish Robin Hood

  • Schools of Vice: how a medical scandal led to the dismantling of Britain’s last prison hulks

      Historian article
    Hulks – former naval ships used as prisons for those convicted of serious crime and sentenced to transportation – were intended to be a temporary solution to a penal crisis caused by the American Revolutionary Wars. These ‘schools of vice’, or ‘floating hells’ lasted 80 years, casting a shadow over...
    Schools of Vice: how a medical scandal led to the dismantling of Britain’s last prison hulks

  • Finding Bad Bridget: the lives and crimes of Irish immigrant women in America

      Historian article
    From the early nineteenth century until the First World War, millions of Irish women emigrated to North America in search of better lives. Elaine Farrell and Leanne McCormick, co-leads for the AHRC-funded Bad Bridget research project, tell us how poverty, discrimination, isolation from family as well as greed and opportunism...
    Finding Bad Bridget: the lives and crimes of Irish immigrant women in America

  • Imperial spaces of a ‘miniature world’: the case of Rugby School, c.1828–1850

      Historian article
    English public schools in the nineteenth century were training grounds not just for society’s elites but also for careers in Britain’s imperial service. In this article, Holly Hiscox explores the ways in which schools such as Rugby provided pupils with a miniature world of domestic and professional life which prepared...
    Imperial spaces of a ‘miniature world’: the case of Rugby School, c.1828–1850

  • Decoding medieval pilgrimage

      Historian article
    Pilgrimage played a significant role in medieval life and belief. Pilgrims travelled far and wide to express their devotion to saints and their cults. Who were the pilgrims and what did pilgrimage involve? Luke Daly makes sense of this fascinating and complex phenomenon...
    Decoding medieval pilgrimage

  • Update: Revisiting the Court of King Charles I

      Historian feature
    The reputation of kings, as with all political figures, is problematical. It would be surprising if it were any other way. Yet, the monarchy of Charles I remains as controversial as ever. In this article, Michael Questier looks at two diametrically opposed contemporary accounts of monarchical authority in the Stuart...
    Update: Revisiting the Court of King Charles I

  • The nature of Charles I’s government

      Historian article
    Charlotte Brownhill explores the nature of Charles I’s government. Rather than dismissing this as a disaster, she argues that there were many positive features of his government before the outbreak of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and suggests that we should consider the difficulties caused by the complexities of...
    The nature of Charles I’s government

  • ‘By his Majesties authoritie’: worship and religious policy in Caroline Britain and Ireland

      Historian article
    When Charles I acceded to the throne in 1625, he inherited a situation that appeared stable but which simmered beneath the surface. As Chris R. Langley explains, in seeking to maintain his Royal Supremacy, Charles I had to manage the very different, but interconnected, religious affairs of England, Ireland and...
    ‘By his Majesties authoritie’: worship and religious policy in Caroline Britain and Ireland

  • Charles I in objects and architecture

      Historian article
    We asked some of Britain’s leading museums and archives what object in their collections best exemplifies the reign of Charles I and why. Join Alden Gregory, Jessica Evershed, Mike Webb, Denise Greany, Glyn Hughes and Kevin Winter as they discuss some prominent objects and places in their collections and the...
    Charles I in objects and architecture

  • The Exclusion Crisis (1679–81)

      Historian article
    The Exclusion Crisis in the reign of King Charles II was a fierce struggle over the issue of whether the King’s Catholic brother James should be the heir to the throne. At the same time, circumstances promoted an outpouring of polemical pamphlets on a massive scale. Here Gregory Gifford examines...
    The Exclusion Crisis (1679–81)

  • ‘The Nazi Service’? The Prussian origins of the Luftwaffe

      Historian article
    The Luftwaffe had been a real achievement of Prussian military culture, but under poor Nazi leadership it degenerated into an ineffective fighting force, writes Stephen Graham.
    ‘The Nazi Service’? The Prussian origins of the Luftwaffe