History Today

Marilyn V. Longmuir looks at the historical background to the Burmese obsession with pristine bank notes.

British democracy owes a debt to the country’s first civil rights movement, says Malcolm Chase.

Australia and the US were allies during the Second World War, though that wasn’t always apparent in the relationship between GIs and Diggers. This is the story of one especially bitter encounter.

Stuart Andrews profiles a scientist, controversialist, and pillar of the British enlightenment; Joseph Priestley found his spiritual home in the United States.

In the early eighteenth century, writes Zélide Cowan, John Lethbridge spent some forty years salvaging treasure from sunken ships.

Gerald Morgan introduces Byron’s friend and executor; a radical Whig and head of the East India Company during the Afghan troubles of 1835-43.

Rex Winsbury profiles a Soviet gunman and secret agent who assassinated the German Ambassador and was himself shot in 1929 after visiting Trotsky in exile.

Alan Haynes describes how Italian scholars, merchants and craftsmen were welcomed in Elizabethan London and enjoyed high patronage.

Horatio Gates, the victor of Saratoga, had military designs that went unfulfilled, writes Max M. Mintz; both to invade Canada and displace Washington as Continental Commander. 

Louis C. Kleber profiles the Democratic candidate for the Presidency in 1872; a self-made man who combined lofty ideals with many eccentric prejudices.