History Today

‘If this Empire seems an evil thing to me, it is not because I hate the British...’ B.G. Gokhale on Gandhi’s attitudes to empire upon the centenary of his birth.

In 18th-century British politics, eloquence might change votes on the spot. Loren Reid describes how the voice of Whig politician Charles James Fox often did exactly that.

Donald Read describes how, during the 1830s and 1840s an Irishman, claiming royal descent, became the hero of British working men in the Chartist campaign for universal suffrage and equal Parliamentary representation.

From Jefferson onwards, writes Arnold Whitridge, many nineteenth century United States leaders hoped that Cuba could be induced to “add itself to our confederation.”

Bela Menczer introduces the role of an Hungarian at the Congress of Berlin.

Raymond A. Mohl describs how the nineteenth century history of Anglo-Russian conflict in Central Asia is marked by gradual Russian advances and gradual British retreats.

Nicholas Henderson describes the work of the Bourbon monarch and his reforming Ministers.

Nicholas Henderson describes how a Bourbon Prince of a junior line became the greatest monarch Spain had seen since Isabella the Catholic.

In the cynical atmosphere of the Congress of Vienna, Consalvi imposed himself on his fellow statesmen and fought a successful battle for the restoration of the Papal States. E.E.Y. Hales describes a master of European diplomacy.

The first sod of the longest railway on earth was turned by the last of the Tsars in 1891; Hilda Hookham describes an epic process of construction, with the line finally completed in 1904.