History Today

Owen Matthews revisits two articles, one of them from the earliest days of History Today, on Russia’s American empire.

The Oxford by-election of October 1938 became a referendum on the Munich Agreement of the previous month. As such it was watched closely by Roosevelt, Mussolini and Hitler. Christopher Farman describes the event. 

Frank Prochaska has made a remarkable discovery in the personal library of John Stuart Mill. It proves that Mill not only read the works of his American contemporary, Ralph Waldo Emerson, but was surprisingly harsh in his judgement of him. 

Erich B. Anderson describes the fortunate alliance between Julius Caesar and a Roman knight and mercenary, Publius Sittius, who helped the dictator defeat his enemies in Africa once and for all.

The San Paulo Railway, funded with money from the City of London, was one of the engineering marvels of the Victorian age.

The cold but continuing conflict between China and Japan is the subject of sustained attention from scholars, says Jonathan Fenby.

The state of Britain’s historic battlefields often compares poorly with that of other countries. Things are changing, says Julian Humphrys. 

In September 1513 the fourth James Stewart became the last king to die in battle on British soil. Linda Porter argues that his life and achievements deserve a more positive reassessment.

Marseille is the 2013 European Capital of Culture – time to recall the heroics of Varian Fry, a US citizen who lived there during the Second World War. Markus Bauer reports.