Volume 61 Issue 9 September 2011

When Raffles Ran Java

The conquest of Java, now part of Indonesia, is one of the least known episodes of British imperialism. But this short interregnum influenced the governance of the Indian Raj and proved a significant stepping stone in the career of the founder of Singapore.

Jewish Brigade: Soldiers of Zion

Having fled Hitler’s Berlin, Oscar Westreich gained a new identity in Palestine. He eventually joined the British army, whose training of Jewish soldiers proved crucial to the formation of Israel, as his daughter, Mira Bar-Hillel, explains.

The Myth of Nazi Germany's Foreign Ministry

The idea that the German foreign office during the Nazi period was a stronghold of traditional, aristocratic values is no longer tenable according to recent research, as Markus Bauer reports.

Photographing Madness

Richard Lansdown introduces Hugh Welch Diamond, one of the fathers of medical photography, whose images of the insane both reflected and challenged prevailing ideas about visually recording insanity.

The Astrologer's Tables

Lauren Kassell reveals how the casebooks, diaries and diagrams of the late-16th-century astrologer Simon Forman provide a unique perspective on a period when the study of the stars began to embrace modern science.

Tacitus: The Continuing Message

Christopher B. Krebs considers Irene Coltman Brown’s article on the ambivalent and ironic Roman historian Tacitus, first published in History Today in 1981.

The History of Sexuality

Since the 1970s, feminists, gay activists and historians have been questioning the notion of sexual repression in the past. Anna Clark considers important recent studies on this most stimulating of subjects.