Military

Trade with the English “tobacco lords”, writes William T. Brigham, brought on a private war which outlasted the American Revolution.

Except for the decades between the First and Second World Wars, the Polish people, since the end of the eighteenth century, have always been subjected to some form of foreign domination. Thrice Poland was partitioned by aggressive neighbouring sovereigns, and her promising renaissance after 1772 came to nothing. L.R. Lewitter queries the factors that have determined Poland's tragic destiny.

In 1807, writes C.E.S. Dudley, when the British were enforcing their world-wide blockade against France, a short action took place off the Virginian coast that led to violent controversy.

Unpopular in the country at large, neglected by successive governments, the Victorian army was slowly brought up to date, writes Brian Bond, despite military obscurantism and strenuous bureaucratic opposition.

In the autumn of 1936, on Communist inspiration, a shock force was internationally recruited to assist the Republican Army in the Spanish Civil War. Where did the Brigades come from and why? By Hugh Thomas.

At the crisis of the battle Napoleon withheld the Imperial Guard, writes Michael Barthorp, only to commit it piecemeal at a later stage to its first and last defeat.

Territorial concessions in Anatolia were promised to the Greeks during the First World War but, writes Cyril Falls, hope of fulfilment was defeated by the resurgent republicans of Turkey.

In 1914 the British Expeditionary Force entered the field under the command of Sir John French; Alan Clark describes how, after a year of frustration and defeat, French's leadership was strongly criticized, none of his critics being more effective than his onetime friend Sir Douglas Haig.

The result of the Seven Weeks’ War in 1866 subordinated the Austrian Empire to Prussian ambitions. Brian Bond describes the last lightning victory in the Napoleonic manner, until Hitler’s blitzkrieg of 1940.

A.W. Palmer describes how the troubled politics of Serbia played a large part in precipitating the first World War. By a policy of violence and assassination, a group of army conspirators, known as the “Black Hand,” laid a fuse to the Balkan powder-keg.