USA

George III to the United States Sendeth

On November 11th, 1791, George Hammond, the first British Minister to the United States, presented his credentials to George Washington. Despite favourable auguries, writes Leslie Reade, his was to prove “a stormy and frustrating mission.”

Prescott’s Visit to England, 1850

In the mid-nineteenth century, writes Roger Howell, the eminent historian of Spain, Mexico and Peru paid a most successful visit to the British Isles.

The Lost Leader: William D. Haywood

Patrick Renshaw introduces an archetypal twentieth century figure: the American Trade Unionist who fled to Russia and who Comintern believed they could use to lead an American Bolshevik revolution.

The Miracle of Independence

Arnold Whitridge explains how a group of instinctively conservative, wealthy gentlemen led the American people to an unlikely victory in war and a miraculous nationhood.

Spain and England in Florida

Louis C. Kleber writes how Florida was ceded to Britain in 1763; retroceded to Spain after the American Revolution, and acquired by the United States in 1819.

Great Britain and the Confederate Navy, 1861—1865

The Civil War coincided with an era in naval technology that was revolutionizing sea warfare.” Could the Confederate government build a fleet of “ironclad blockade breakers” in the shipyards of neutral Great Britain? By Frank J. Merli and Thomas W. Green.

Emerson: A Prophet Not Without Honour

Unlike everybody else in his generation, writes Arnold Whitridge, Ralph Waldo Emerson understood, loved and castigated the two different, but closely related, strains in American life and represented the national conscience.

Lexington: The End of a Myth

On April 19th, 1775, the fatal clash took place, on the Common of a small Massachusetts town, between British troops and local militia. From this village battle the American War of Independence took its start. John A. Barton queries whether the clash was deliberately organized by “Patriot” leaders in order to provoke an incident, after which there could be no retreat?