History Today

In 1580, Portugal was joined with Spain in a sixty-year long and unpopular union.

When the British and Maori signed the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, Governor Hobson declared: 'We are one people'. Today, as Professor Keith Sinclair shows, this hope has still to be realised.

The island of lona became the centre of Celtic Christianity in Scotland with the arrival of St. Columba in 563. Yet the monuments remaining there, argues Ruth Hildebrandt, are representative of another age and do not reflect the beliefs or practices of the Columban church.

Our understanding of coral and coral reefs, believes C.M. Yonge, was greatly advanced by the voyages of Cook and Darwin to the South Pacific.

Hitler's contribution to the history of the twentieth century has been one of destruction. The war he started in 1939, argues Jeremy Noakes, was to recast the pattern of our world irreparably.

Peter Beck sets contemporary reportage of and reaction to the 1924 Olympics in the context of their times.

Much of the research that has established social history as a serious branch of historical study has been carried out in County Record Offices explains J.A. Sharpe, of which Essex is an outstanding example.

Richard Cavendish visits an association dedicated to the 19th-century poet, socialist and craftsman.

Overburdened by taxation, the people of Naples, as Neil Ritchie explains, led by a poor fishmonger's boy and inspired by Giulio Genoino's vision of a more just society, rose in revolt against their Spanish overlords.