Decolonisation

In 1959 Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba after a masterly campaign of guerrilla warfare. Drawing on this success, Castro and his followers, including Che Guevara, sought to spread their revolution, as Clive Foss explains.

Richard Cavendish remembers how a former-British colony gained a long-serving leader.

The independent Federation of Malaya came into being on August 31st, 1957.

This West African state was a focus of the slave trade for centuries, and the first African colony to win independence, exactly fifty years ago. Graham Gendall Norton finds lots of history to explore.

Jonathan Colman provides an overview of modern British Imperial History, introducing the key events and issues that students need to understand.

Anthony Fletcher uses the papers of his artistic great-aunt, who, as a young nationalist, wrote an eyewitness account of the Easter Rising, to explore her youthful patriotism and vigorous activism.

The organisation which would become the political arm of the Irish Republican Army was founded as a nationalist pressure group on November 28th, 1905.

David Anderson looks at the contentious issues raised as Kenya comes to terms with the colonial past.

On November 1st, 1954, an insurrection broke out in Algeria.

Harold Perkin discusses the role of the extraction and distribution of surplus production in historical change, from Ancient Egypt to the 21st century.