Volume 30 Issue 10 October 1980

In 1945 Tito wrote. ‘We mean to make Yugoslavia both democratic and independent’. How was this possible, asks Basil Davidson, for a war-torn Communist country in a world of super-powers?

The Roman invasion of Britain divided its constituent kingdoms and tribes. Some supported the Romans, others fiercely opposed their occupation and suffered dreadfully as a consequence. In the face of continuing resentment at their occupation the Romans, argues Graham Webster, changed from a policy of repression, and began to pay careful attention to the feelings and aspirations of their British subjects.

Princess Abida Sultaan, granddaughter of the last woman ruler of Bhopal, Begum Sultan Jahan, examines the rule of the Begum dynasty.

The beautiful summer palaces of Yuan Ming Yuan outside Peking, designed by Europeans for the Emperor of China in the middle of the eighteenth century, have now been recognised as a curiosity of their country's heritage.

Popular art in the form of cartoons, caricatures and simple engravings offered great potential for political propaganda as the revolutionary leaders discovered. 

The tango was to Argentina what jazz was to New Orleans. As Simon Collier explains, it swept the world in the pre-First World War era and Carlos Gardel was its star.

"We belong to that little group of peoples destined... for a special role, the tragic role. Their anxiety is not whether they will be prosperous tomorrow, great or small, but whether they will be at all..." - Lionel Groulx, Quebec historian