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Unequivocally, until today the vast majority of the academic works on the history of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade have focused on the British side of the story.

Leif Jerram’s Germany’s Other Modernity: Munich and the Making of Metropolis, 1895–1930 is a rich and welcome contribution to the urban history of modern Germany, a field which has, for some time now, been dominated by studies on Berlin and Hamburg. Berlin has, as Jerram puts it with little exaggeration, acquired ‘totemic status’ (p.

It has often been observed that the greatest legacy of the Paris Commune of 1871 was its myth. In its short duration the Commune failed to transform Paris in any lasting way – even its supreme gesture of repudiation of the military traditions of the French past, the toppling of the Vendôme column, was to be reversed.

Stephen Gundle, Professor of Film and Television Studies at Warwick University, has written a substantial and engaging history of the elusive concept and practice(s) of glamour.

Charles Darwin died in April 1882 at which time William Bateson and Walter Weldon were still Cambridge undergraduates and, indeed, still friends. In later years their bitter feud over the mechanisms of inheritance, evolution, and, in particular, the status of 'Natural Selection', was to colour Darwinian studies throughout the 1890s and well beyond.

To study Russia before the late 19th century is to labour under a twofold handicap.

General Edward Braddock’s failure to capture the French Fort Duquesne and his defeat at the Battle of Monongahela on 9 July 1755 is often cited as a turning point in the European contest for North America leading to what the English called the Seven Years’ War (1756–63).

This is the latest in a distinguished series of volumes resulting from international colloquia sponsored by the German Historical Institute in London. This one took place in 2002, and the printed proceedings bring together fifteen contributors addressing the theme for Germany, Great Britain, France, and Russia.

In this intellectually stimulating book Andrew C. Thompson criticises a realist interpretation of British foreign policy. His main argument runs that eighteenth-century foreign policy 'was not simply determined either by the desire for profit or territorial gain. It was part of a complex web of ideas that were intimately related to a broader political culture' (p. 2).

Companions and handbooks to various periods or problems of history are currently all the rage. This one is the 37th in its own publisher’s series, which ranges from the whole sweep of a continent’s or a nation’s history (such as Latin America, or Japan) to much more restricted periods or problems of current scholarly interest.