In the April issue:
Germany under Bismarck, East Africa’s Tourist War, Oliver Cromwell, Protector of the Jews, Decimalisation, ‘Gifted Children’, Ancient Egypt, the American Civil War, Wartime Widows.
Plus: reviews, opinion, crossword and much more!
You can buy this issue from our website, from newsstands across the UK, or read it as a digital edition via the History Today App.
Or, subscribe to receive your copy of History Today in the post every month.
The obsession with gifted children is an ancient one, but it took on new life in the 20th century.
A newly independent Tanganyika hoped to capture part of the lucrative European market for African tourism. But its rivalry with neighbouring Kenya proved an obstacle.
The first German constitution was ratified in April 1871. Designed by Otto von Bismarck to preserve the old regime, it would eventually help bring about its downfall.
Historians are tethered to the archive, but sometimes fixing the gaps requires the techniques of a novelist.
Oliver Cromwell’s desire to bring about the readmission of Jews to England was met with prejudice and opposition. But he succeeded, with help from powerful friends.
The introduction of decimal coinage to the UK was a long while coming. But the transition was surprisingly smooth.
Not every Egyptian was convinced of the certainty of an eternal afterlife.
A great European novel says much about its age of crisis – and ours.
A miniature Emancipation Proclamation helped to recruit Black soldiers during the Civil War.
Japan’s responsibility for ‘comfort women’ is avoided by the state and written out of national histories. Activists are working to make Japan confront its past.
John Spilsbury, the engraver behind the ‘dissected’ map, died on 3 April 1769.
Holbein the Younger’s image still startles 500 years after its creation.
‘Classics is the playing field for some very important questions.’
Men who spent their working lives underground found a new world of freedom in racing birds.
The First World War threw widows and their brothers-in-law together, but their marriages were considered incestuous.
The tension between colonial government and the work of missionaries characterised British colonialism in Nigeria.
A thief who had been dead for more than a century caused a moral panic in the theatres of Victorian London.
It is among the most commercial as well as maligned fields of history. Four distinguished scholars consider its value – and its future.
How the humble radio station organised resistance, inspired the masses and countered powerful settler propaganda.
The multi-layered complexity of ‘Europe’s smallest successor state’ between 1918 and 1921.
