History Today

For 18th-century smugglers in Guernsey and the Isle of Man, plague was a business opportunity.

The greatest early modern authority on Ottoman Greece was Martin Cruisius – a man who had never left Germany.

In Liverpool and the Unmaking of Britain, Sam Wetherell discovers a city of slavery, ships, soccer, and socialism, whose fortunes rose and fell with the tide.

‘What historical topic have I changed my mind on? The collapse of the Soviet Union. I used to think it was a relatively peaceful event.’

Arsenic was a hidden killer in Victorian homes, but it also played a large part in the British economy. Which comes first: commerce or public health?

On 11 May 1891 the future Tsar Nicholas II narrowly escaped assassination on a trip to Japan.

How did medieval holy men cope with the strictures their devotion placed upon them?

With North Vietnam’s victory in 1975, its southern counterpart ceased to exist. What happened to South Vietnam?

Padraic X. Scanlan levels familiar charges against British colonialism and capitalism in Rot: A History of the Irish Famine. Is there more to the story?

On the 250th anniversary of her birth, Jane Austen still has lessons for readers of history.