History Today

The Vatican Council now in session, writes John Raymond, faces many issues very different from that which dominated its predecessor nearly a century ago.

The Battle of Majuba Hill during the First Boer War, had immense political and military significance to British arms—and not only in South Africa. Its chief cause, writes Brian Bond, was a gross underestimation of the Boer’s tactical aptitude and courage.

British Malaya since 1786 has become the home of many different races, whose harmonious union, writes C. Northcote Parkinson, would offer an example from which the rest of the world might profit.

The problems of the interwar mining industry, which led to a General Strike in 1926, writes W.H. Chaloner, epitomized the struggle between capital and labour in twentieth-century Britain.

For 80 years the Braganza dynasty guided the destiny of Brazil. How did Dom Pedro I and his successor come to reign in a continent of republicans?

In 1902 a revolutionary dictator named Castro provoked an unlikely Anglo-German naval demonstration off the coast of Venezuela.

Crevecoeur fought under Montcalm at Quebec in 1759 and, writes Stuart Andrews, afterwards settled in New York and Pennsylvania.

Robert Blake traces the career of Edward Geoffrey Stanley, a low-profile leader who nevertheless became British Prime Minister three times: firstly in 1852; then from 1858-59; and lastly from 1866-68.

Leonard W. Cowie traces six centuries in the history of a former London barrier.

Harold Kurtz writes that the torments of a false conscience formed a secret experience that was with Talleyrand all his life.