History Today

Roderick Barman examines the circumstances surrounding Brazil’s entry into the Great War and appraises the conflict’s legacy on the developing nation.

As commemorations of the outbreak of the First World War get underway, Stephen Cooper offers an overview of the often fierce debate among British historians about the conduct and course of the conflict over the last hundred years.

Not for the first or last time in their history, writes David Ward, the Czechs in 1848 made a bid for political freedom.

During a period of Austrian decline as a great power, writes Tudor Edwards, Vienna flourished in an atmosphere of expansive gaiety.

Between the Congress of Vienna and the Year of Revolutions, Vienna enjoyed a homely, idyllic period of gaiety, security and peace. In 1848, writes Tudor Edwards, the idyll was shattered by bloody revolts throughout the Empire.

Eighteenth-century men of taste had begun to build themselves mock-medieval houses. Tudor Edwards writes how their descendants carried on the vogue by constructing a series of impressive castles.

Despite sneers and some natural forebodings, writes Joanna Richardson, this brief alliance proved extremely happy.

Widespread fever followed military sloth, writes Antony Brett-James, and the fiasco on Walcheren brought down the tottering British Government.

Dufferin urged upon an unresponsive government in London moderate proposals for representative reform in India. In fact, writes Briton Martin Jnr., reform was carried out twenty years later; too late, in the light of history.

Briton Martin Jnr. describes how Lord Dufferin set out for India, intending his rule to be a period of conservative calm, but found himself involved in the anxieties of “The Burmese Adventure”.