History Today

In the stormy history of the island of Hispaniola, where Columbus was buried, American intervention has followed upon Spanish, French and British. A survey of the scene since 1492.

The largest of African republics possesses an ancient and composite civilization, but the form that the country takes today owes much to two British colonial administrators.

Charles Chevenix Trench describes how an adventurous Greek in British Service played a large part in the trade and politics of the Horn of Africa.

The British attacked Copenhagen in August 1807 because, Canning claimed, Denmark was about to become a French satellite. Hilary Barnes asks, was he mistaken?

Napoleon returned to Paris in 1814 pledged to the concept of a liberal Empire. From the paradoxical experience of the Hundred Days, writes Harold Kurtz, sprang both the legend and reality of Bonapartism.

The Italian patriot’s visit to England was extraordinarily successful. But Queen Victoria deplored the scenes it provoked; and Karl Marx described them as “a miserable spectacle of imbecility”.

I.F. Clarke offers a study of the “pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war” as foreseen by imaginative writers and artists.

Though some recent historians have been kind to the favourite, writes Douglas Hilt, during his lifetime Manuel Godoy was generally denounced as an intriguing parvenu.

During the earliest phase of World War I, writes Robert Hessen, an enterprising American industrialist helped to turn the tide of naval warfare.

The crossing of the Beresina alone cost Napoleon more than 20,000 men. But, writes Alan Collis, some fortunate survivors of the terrible retreat from Moscow struggled home to tell the tale.