History Today

Gyanesh Kudaisya considers how the Sino-Indian war of 1962 has shaped relations between Asia’s two largest nations.

For three generations one Calcutta family pioneered cultural, political and social advance, making a profound mark on Indian modernity, says Chandak Sengoopta.

The great English king was born on November 13th, 1312.

The first commercially successful machine gun emerged on November 4th, 1862.

The erudite courtier, and inventor of the flush water closet, died on November 20th, 1612.

The Battle of Milvian Bridge is remembered as the moment when Constantine I secured the future of Christianity. The real turning point took place a few months earlier.

Humiliating, painful and reminiscent of crucifixion, the British army’s Field Punishment No 1 fuelled public outrage during the First World War, as Clive Emsley explains.

Roger Hudson expands on an image of Russian ships destroyed by the Japanese at Port Arthur, 1904.

Jacob Middleton finds that, far from being a relic of a cruel Victorian past, corporal punishment became more frequent and institutionalised in 20th-century England.

Since the 1980s the American family has evolved towards greater diversity and complexity. Yet, paradoxically, it is the essentially conservative nuclear family forged in the 1950s that continues to hold sway as a touchstone in US politics and culture, says Tim Stanley.