Political

During the years when France rose to predominance in Europe, writes J.H. Elliott, the Spanish Empire was governed by a man capable of gigantic designs, but lacking felicity in their outcome.

S. Usher introduces Sallust, himself a disillusioned politician, who envisaged no future greatness for Rome until a single man of vision should have restored the old Republican sense of obligation—the individual's obligation to the state, and the state’s obligation to the world at large.

H. Hookham introduces Augustus F. Lindley, a contemporary and opponent of General Gordon’s, who served the Taipings during their nineteenth century rebellion against the Manchu dynasty.

Two very different French travellers, a romantic and a realist, have left us their opinions of the rising civilization of the United States. Arnold Whitridge assesses two contrasting historical viewpoints.

J.H. Shennan offers a study of the relationship between Russian Orthodoxy and the secular power in the time of the Tsars.

Robert Cecil describes how, despite the blandishments of commissions from Philadelphia, and the exercise of force by the Continental Congress, Canada chose to remain separate in the 1770s.

J.P. Kenyon describes how the childlessness of the Queen, and the conversion of James, Duke of York, to Roman Catholicism, produced a febrile state of opinion in Restoration London, out of which rumours of a “Popish Plot” naturally arose.

During his lifetime, George II's son accomplished little of note. However, writes Romney Sedgwick, Frederick's propaganda in his own political interests left behind two fictions that profoundly influenced later historians.

Civil war was always the bane of the Italian city-states. E.R. Chamberlain describes how, at the end of the fourteenth century, it seemed that the whole peninsula might soon be re-united under a single man's control.

James Shiel introduces Jerome, a charming letter-writer and worldly-wise mentor of fashionable proselytes, a learned theologian and fiery controversialist. He lived through a critical period in the history of Western civilization, when the Church established its authority and Rome was sacked by a barbarian foe.