Europe’s Strangest Special Relationship
The historical partnership between Germany and Turkey is arguably the most paradoxical, if unavoidable, in modern Europe.
Political
‘Desk Revolutionaries’ by Biancamaria Fontana review
Desk Revolutionaries: The Men of the French Directory, 1795-9 by Biancamaria Fontana sets the record straight on the French Revolution’s great experiment in governance.
‘The Rise and Fall of American Europe’ by Glyn Morgan review
The Rise and Fall of American Europe by Glyn Morgan finds a continent powerless before a capricious United States. Is it too late to teach an old world new tricks?
Petitions, Puritans, and the Civil War
Early Stuart England saw the emergence of mass petitioning. These expressions of collective grievance would advance popular politics, uncover division, and lay the road to war.
Visiting Mao’s China
For the thousands of foreign visitors who travelled behind the ‘bamboo curtain’ to visit Mao’s China, hospitality workers – guides, drivers, waiters, chambermaids – were unofficial ambassadors for the new socialist state, and the state knew it.
‘The Shah’s Party and the Iranian Revolution That Followed’ review
In The Shah’s Party and the Iranian Revolution That Followed Robert Templer reveals the hubristic high point of the Pahlavi regime’s self-regard.
General Pinochet’s Return
Redressing the crimes of Pinochet’s regime has been a hard-fought and often contested process. Chile’s current presidency has revealed how easily progress can be reversed.
‘Charismatic Nations’ by Joep Leerssen review
Charismatic Nations: A Cultural History of Nationalism in Europe from 1800 to the Present by Joep Leerssen looks to art and not politics for the birth of the nation.
The Clerkenwell Outrage
The first Irish Republican bomb detonated on English soil was not intended as an act of terrorism, but its impact – and death toll – sent shockwaves through Victorian London.
How Inevitable Was the Rise of the Chinese Communist Party?
It is the most powerful political party in the world, controlling China’s future as well as its past, but was the young CCP in control of its imperial destiny?