During the sixteen years of Portugal's first Republic there were forty-five governments. Douglas Wheeler shows how this turbulent period of parliamentary rule gave birth to the Estado Novo (the New State), Europe's longest surviving authoritarian system of the twentieth century.
Richard Mullen looks back on the wedding of Prince Albert Edward to Princess Alexandra of Denmark.
Thomas Gretton presents a special review of the impact of the 19th century French satirical artist.
In the month that the population of Britain will be counted for the eighteenth time, Sydney D Bailey argues that census taking, 'molesting and perplexing every single member of the kingdom... for the sake of political arithmetic' has always been a sensitive subject, reflecting the social concerns of the age.
In the mid-seventeenth century Spain was at the apogee of artistic and cultural achievement under the patronage of her monarch, Philip IV - but, as R.A. Stradling shows here, she was fighting for survival as a great imperial power.
Robert Stephens looks at how Nasser left his mark on nearly twenty years of Egyptian, Arab and world history. An anti-colonialist who extended his concern to the newly liberated countries of the Third World, he has been acclaimed as a nationalist liberator - and condemned as a warmonger.
The career of Colonel Fernando Santos Costa explodes the myth of Salazar's Portugal as a politically stable country with 'no history'. In charge of Portugal's army for twenty-two years, Santos Costa played a powerful and often unscrupulous role within this dictatorship.
The invasion of Poland by Tsar Alexis of Russia in May, 1654, marked the emergence of his country as a major European power. As Philip Longworth argues here, it was also to inaugurate, albeit indirectly, a decisive stage in the Westernisation of Russia.
Japan had two great infatuations with the West: in the 1870s and during the American occupation of 1945-52. Forsaking traditional isolationism, Japan welcomed Western ideas and customs with open arms, and according to Jean-Pierre Lehmann, what resulted was not an ersatz Western culture but one that retained a distinct national identity
Dixon Hoste attempts to locate a common element between Marxism and traditional Chinese ideas.
