Volume 4 Issue 4 April 1954

Christopher Lloyd asserts that the first contacts between Elizabethan England and the Russia of Ivan the Terrible mark the true birth of the British Empire.

Harold Kurtz describes how, ordered by Louis XVIII to arrest Napoleon on his return from Elba in 1815, Marshal Ney went over to his former master.

George Woodcock describes the industry, expeditions, and characters that opened the American North West to European development.

John Izon describes details of the case against Fawkes' co-conspirators.

Anthony Rhodes introduces Diocletian, the first sovereign to voluntarily resign power, and how, at the opening of the fourth century, he spent his last years in a huge fortified seaside palace of his own construction.

Richard Harris describes the various forces of change at play in China's tumultuous first half century.

Roger L. Williams assesses exactly how enlightened a despot was Louis-Napoléon, in light of later European events.