What makes a state? Is it its people, its borders, its government, or does it rest on recognition from international powers? Across the 19th and 20th centuries, the process by which states have been created and recognised has taken many forms.
The Indefatigable Asa Briggs: A Biography by Adam Sisman is a detailed portrait of that voluminous chronicler of Victorian things.
Mary Chamberlain’s groundbreaking oral history turns 50. This new edition of Fenwomen: A Portrait of Women in an English Village invites reflection on half a century of change.
By the 19th century, standard classification systems were struggling with new species. Then the platypus arrived.
Fearing the loss of regional identity, at the end of the 19th century, the French Basques invented a cultural tradition – but did that make them a threat to national unity?
For the Victorians and Edwardians, the late British summer was a time of sun, sand – and sea serpents.
Industrial Birmingham was an important stop on the grand tours of various Muslim rulers, all eager to learn from the city of a thousand trades.
A routine Native American cattle round-up at the US-Mexico border in 1898 became an international incident.
Though his relics are reviled, his impact is more keenly felt than ever. Can The Colonialist: The Vision of Cecil Rhodes by William Kelleher Storey find the man for our time?
José Martí Reader: Writings on the Americas, edited by Deborah Shnookal and Mirta Muñiz, collects the works of Cuba's ‘Apostle of Independence’.
