History Matters

Strategically important during the Second World War, US soldiers could not wait to leave Greenland.

The testimonies of formerly enslaved people, collected in the 1930s by the Federal Writers’ Project, provide a unique archive for historians.

The early modern Islamic world was embroiled in a bitter controversy over coffee. Much ink was spilt by poets on both sides.

Early modern cancer experiments such as that undertaken by English surgeon Samuel Smith privileged the senses, but the effects could be fatal.

In the first century BC Cyprus was caught between a waning Ptolemaic dynasty and an ambitious, indomitable Rome.

The men and medics of the 17th century were consumed with anxiety over women’s pregnancy cravings.

1960s San Francisco is remembered as the capital of gay liberation, but it also saw the birth of conversion therapy.

The 18th-century Dutch Republic was a hotbed of secretive Jacobite networks producing seditious pamphlets.

The vast deserts of the American West posed logistical problems for the US Army. Camels offered a novel solution.

In early modern England the time and date was often an informal matter, which had the potential to pose problems.