Military

In 1709 Russia emerged as a major power after a clash of armies in Ukraine. Peter the Great’s victory, Derek Wilson argues, had repercussions that last to this day.

With a solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians as far away as ever, James Barker looks back to Britain’s occupation of the region and the efforts made by the future Viscount Montgomery to impose peace on its warring peoples.

Mark Bryant on how French cartoonists of the 1870s responded to national humiliation at the hands of a beligerent Prussia.

Richard Cavendish remembers the birth of Birth of the First Earl of Clarendon on February 18, 1609. 

Vietnamese troops faced little resistance when they entered Cambodia's capital on January 7th, 1979.

Clive Pearson assesses the Soviet dictator’s war record.

Michael Morrogh shows that Renaissance men like Sir Walter Ralegh had a decidedly darker side.

The head of Japan's Second World War government was executed on Dec 23rd, 1948

Tony Chafer examines the paradoxes and complexities that underlie belated recognition of the contribution of African soldiers to the liberation of France in 1944.

Alan Sharp looks at the factors shaping national policies in the weeks preceding the Paris Peace Conference, when the failure of the victorious allies to agree on aims and a process for negotiations with the Germans resulted in a ‘tragedy of disappointment’.