Social

The seventeenth-century Jews regarded Venice as 'the land of promise', where for a few generations they flourished almost free from constraint and prejudice.

The refugee supporters of the House of Stuart, explains Bruce Lehman, made new lives for themselves as Europeans, achieving success as bankers, merchants, soldiers, churchmen and diplomats.

Anne Roberts explores the incidence of plague in England from 1348 to 1679.

The evolution of a saint and his dragon.

by Milton Osborne

With the increase in Irish immigration into Britain in the mid-nineteenth century, concern arose about the resurgence of Catholicism. Yet not all women in convents were helplessly detained there, as explains Walter L. Arnstein.

Scotland was a much more disciplined society in the years before the Industrial Revolution than has usually been supported, as Lenman and Parker, the authors of the first of these two articles on 'Crime in Britain 1500-1800' show.

Shula Marks examines the abundant archaeological evidence, much of it recently gathered, for the widespread settlement of South Africa before 1488 when Portuguese sailors first reached the Cape.

Inspired by the myth of Prince Madoc who was believed to have discovered America before Columbus. Welshmen sought to establish 'Gwladfa' a national home for their people in the new land and sought contact with the Mandan Indians who were said to be Welsh-speaking.