South America

George Pendle finds that the authoress of Little Arthur's History of England was also an inquisitive and adventurous traveller.

For all its faults C.E Hamshere’s account of Francis Drake’s 16th-century circumnavigation, published in History Today in 1967, applies a historical imagination lacking in more recent studies, argues Hugh Bicheno.

At Deptford, on April 4th, 1581, Francis Drake, who, during the previous autumn, had returned from his triumphant circumnavigation of the globe, knelt before Queen Elizabeth and received a knighthood

A.L. Lloyd savours modern Argentina, “a civilization of horses, cattle and leather”.

C.A. Burland describes the highly developed, sprawling and ancient Incan civilisation in the years preceding its conquest by the Spanish seaborne empire.

Ramona Wadi reports on the continuing struggle to shed light on the death in 1973 of the Chilean singer and political activist Victor Jara.

Robin Whitlock asks if studies of the decline of societies such as that of Easter Island can shed light on contemporary concerns.

What role did Simon Bolivar play in the history of Venezuela's declaration of independence from Spain? Here John Lynch argues that the history of Spanish American independence is incomprehensible without him.

Richard Cavendish explains how Hiram Binham discovered the 'lost city of the Incas'.

Brazil may be one of the 21st century’s emerging superpowers, but its history is a mystery to many. Gabriel Paquette tells the story of its early years as an independent state.

Britain's connections with Chile date from her War of Independence, and were powerfully re-inforced by a Victorian company-promoter in the City of London.

In the event Spain and Portugal divided almost all of South America between, them but in the sixteenth century the French also had commercial and colonial ambitions in Brazil. Robert Knecht tells the stories of two French expeditions that ended in disaster.

Anthony Aveni explains how the people planning great monuments and cities, many millennia and thousands of miles apart, so often sought the same inspiration – alignments with the heavens.