History Matters

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.

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

Teodoro Castro or Iosif Grigulevich? Costa Rica’s ambassador to Yugoslavia was a Soviet spy sent to kill Tito.

The German chancellor Otto von Bismarck saw himself as a puppet-master, engineering British politics from afar in his feud with Gladstone.

As Christianity spread, it carried Catherine of Siena’s legacy to the Americas. Her asceticism inspired Rose of Lima, Kateri Tekakwitha, and others.

Thieves, cheats, and scoundrels. How did early modern millers get their bad reputations?

From imported plant species to water pollution, Britain’s 19th century wool trade transformed the world.

Less famous than its 1215 predecessor, the Magna Carta of 1225 held the true power.

Rome’s first theatre was an enormous spectacle intended to glorify Pompey’s successes. Was it all bread and circuses?