USA

British Prime Ministers: Lord North

An acceptable minister in peace-time, Lord North’s misfortune was to hold office at the time of the American Revolution and War, as Eric Robson here shows.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin 1852-1952

H.G. Nicholas reconsiders the influence of this famous book on American opinion in the years preceding the Civil war, and on its world-wide public outside the United States.

Thomas Paine

Adrian Brunel profiles the influential revolutionary pamphleteer and political philosopher.

James Madison

Max Beloff profiles the "real author of the Constitution" and one of the most extraordinary of the USA's Founding Fathers.

New York 1900-1950

D.W. Brogan offers a panoramic view of the Big Apple's architecture, society and economic history.

The Causes of the American Civil War

Taking a historiographical angle, Marcus Cunliffe describes how, in 1861, the American federal experiment broke down, and there ensued the greatest and most hard-fought of modern wars before that of 1914.

The Louisiana Purchase, 1803

At the dawn of the 19th century, Napoleon Bonaparte liquidated the French empire in America, selling the vast Bourbon heritage along the banks of the Mississippi to the United States. Why?