History Today

Padraic X. Scanlan levels familiar charges against British colonialism and capitalism in Rot: A History of the Irish Famine. Is there more to the story?

On the 250th anniversary of her birth, Jane Austen still has lessons for readers of history.

The Merovingians have a reputation for long hair and barbarity. Instead, the dynasty, born out of the chaos of civil war, was one of peace, diplomacy, and bureaucracy.

Over the 18th and 19th centuries Britain’s economy, technology, and society were transformed by the so-called Industrial Revolution. Why?

The Roman Empire had two main populations: gods and humans. By its end, there was only one god left. How, and why, did he reign supreme?

Epic of the Earth: Reading Homer’s Iliad in the Fight for a Dying World by Edith Hall sees the signs of environmental collapse amid the adventures of Achilles.

The Vietnam War effectively ended on 30 April 1975 with the arrival of the North Vietnamese army in Saigon. Thousands fled the city, but many more were left behind.

Teodoro Castro or Iosif Grigulevich? Costa Rica’s ambassador to Yugoslavia was a Soviet spy sent to kill Tito.

Renaissance Florence had a problem: it wanted female sex workers, but it also needed to offer them a way out. The solution was a new brothel district – and a nunnery for former prostitutes

Zaga Christ died on 22 April 1638 leaving Europe no wiser as to the authenticity of the self-proclaimed Ethiopian prince who might bring his homeland to Catholicism.