History Today

Robert E. Zegger reflects on the the philhellenic crusade to free Greece in the 1820s.

The Education Act of 1870 was a landmark in Liberal policy, writes Paul Adelman, but it failed to satisfy the Nonconformist conscience of many Liberal supporters.

From the first British Viceroy whom he encountered Gandhi received a decoration; the last, ten years ago, sat beside his funeral pyre. During the stormy intervening period he came into contact, and often into conflict, with six others; Francis Watson describes how each relationship marked a different stage in the long historical process that culminated in 1947.

Though he had begun life as an energetic mercenary soldier, writes Alan Haynes, the Duke of Urbino became a celebrated humanist and a generous patron of contemporary art and learning.

Admired by Lord Melbourne; and, later, the author of two popular novels, Emily Eden was one of the liveliest of correspondents. By Prudence Hannay.

‘Human society must be begun again’, wrote Chamfort, who, after delighting the Court and the fashionable world, became an eloquent prophet of the Revolution. By Alaric Jacob.

By the 1840s, writes Gerald S. Graham, there flourished a fast regular steamship between Britain and India, with fierce competition between Calcutta and Bombay.

“There is no analogy,” wrote Bury, “between the development of a society and the life of an individual man.” Martin Braun describes how Spengler, Toynbee, Sorokin and others have sought to controvert him by arguing the case for the “Senescence of the West.”

By victory in the war of 1870, writes Harold Kurtz, Bismarck secured German unity at the expense of France.

Harold Kurtz offers the background to the Franco-Prussian War.