History Today

Between 1744 and 1767, the eldest son of a small Shropshire squire laid the foundations of what was to become the British Indian Empire. By Percival Spear.

C.H. Brown studies French imperial achievement in Morocco during the first half of the 20th century, as well as the nationalism with which it eventually came into conflict.

Nancy Mitford describes how Louis XV never talked politics out of the Council Chamber. Hunting was his only distraction until Madame de Pompadour introduced him to “plans and designs ... bibelots and stuffs ... gaiety and lightness.”

Julian Piggott, former British Commissioner in Cologne, tells the story, as he witnessed it, of the French attempt in 1923 to create a buffer state on their eastern frontier. The first part of this articles can be found here.

C.V. Wedgwood on the the links between the Stuart monarchy and its German relatives preceding, and throughout, the Civil War period. 

C. Howard introduces Mary Kingsley: the devoted daughter amd energetic middle-class housekeeper who had become a distinguished explorer by the age of thirty-five. More than any other publicist of the 1890’s, she helped to make Englishmen aware of their responsibilities on the African continent.

Eric Robson provides the social and economic backdrop to the outbreak of revolutionary war between the nascent USA and her British colonial masters.

E.E.Y. Hales profiles Pope Pius IX (1846-78), who saw the end of the Papacy as a temporal power as the opening of a new era in its world-relationships.

The impact of the Soviet Revolution in October 1917 has been so overwhelming that we seldom look back to the February days when the Tsar was compelled to abdicate forty-eight hours after the outbreak of disturbances, and even more seldom to the First Revolution of 1905. Yet, A.J. Halpern writes, October came as a culmination of the February crisis, and 1905 was the necessary prologue to the 1917 drama. 

Steven Watson offers a defence of Britain's imperial experience in India.