Europe

Roy Porter on the European concept of Enlightenment.

This month History Today publishes the first in a new regular series of bibliographical essays on a wide variety of historiographical topics. The idea of the series is to survey the subject and to provide a guide to the most important and most recent books about it. In the first of the series, Douglas Johnson looks at the French Revolution.

Edited by Geoffrey Barraclough

Robert Tombs

The popular revolts of 1578-79 and 1586-89 in Normandy were triggered by an unruly military presence and the high level of royal fiscal exactions. Joan Davies shows how the revolts were exploited by the nobility in their struggle with Henri III, who met the threat thus posed with force.

Neither the Greeks nor the Romans paid much attention to the achievements or customs of the peoples that they conquered. As Jenny Morris shows here, in the case of their Jewish subjects this indifference caused problems that had both religious and political repercussions.

Branded as a Tsarist agent by Marx, Mikhail Bakunin was in fact trying to foment revolution throughout Europe, argues James G. Chastain.

J.B. Donnelly looks at the many pictures carried off from Vienna by the victorious Italians, including the magnificent Madonna of the Orange Grove by Cima da Conegliano.

Christopher Fyfe looks at how, in 1975 the Cape Verde Island gained their independence from the Portuguese after five hundred years of colonial administration that left them one of the poorest states in the world.

Thomas Gretton presents a special review of the impact of the 19th century French satirical artist.