The achievements of the Meiji regime in transforming Japan into one of the most powerful of modern states are regarded as among the most remarkable events in history. But the restoration of the Emperor and the fall of the Shogun was brought about at the cost of a fierce domestic struggle.
In the 1860s a group of the younger Samurai launched the Meiji revolution in the Emperor's name. This event, writes Henry McAleavy, helped convert Japan into a modern country, with Western fashions and techniques imposed upon the national habits of centuries.
On August 20th, 1914, writes John Terraine, the British public was startled to read the first authentic newspaper accounts of “heavy losses” and “broken regiments” during the fierce fighting in Belgium.
British Malaya since 1786 has become the home of many different races, whose harmonious union, writes C. Northcote Parkinson, would offer an example from which the rest of the world might profit.
Leonard W. Cowie traces six centuries in the history of a former London barrier.
Educationalist. Co-operator. Capitalist. Utopian. W.H. Oliver describes how Robert Owen was doomed to foster ideas and programmes which caused him considerable distress.
J.W. Davidson describes how whalers, traders, and settlers represented the first waves of Western colonisation of the Pacific islands.
Pre-revolutionary Paris, writes Jeffry Kaplow, was a densely populated city of over six-hundred-thousand inhabitants, where the social classes rubbed shoulders.
During the war years the English way of life underwent a far-reaching transformation. While shortages reduced the gaiety of existence, women achieved a new freedom, wages rose and labour increased its bargaining power.
The revolutionary upheaval that brought down Louis-Philippe swept into power a famous French Romantic poet. Gordon Wright describes how Lamartine acquitted himself with courage and energy; but his fall was as swift and sudden as his rise.
