Where did refugees from the American and French Revolutions go? This remarkable historical perspective shows how opening doors can be more profitable than closing borders.
In his memoirs, Gorbachev wrote that the explosion at Chernobyl's power plant was "perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union." Plokhy's diagnosis is meticulous and his minut... read more
A global history of jurisprudence by an Oxford anthropologist. FP shows how European legal ideas came to dominate other ancient legal traditions, whether Mayan, Indian or Chinese, with the r... read more
How Stalin isolated and pampered Western journalists in the gilded cage of the Metropol Hotel in order to control their output: their translators were often paid to share their beds, but oth... read more
Walls are famous for their ears - but they can also speak: Pelling gathers these silent shouts into a remarkable history through the scratchings and carvings in prisons, walls, lead roofs, t... read more
In 1849 Garibaldi gave up the defence of Rome to the besieging French troops and made his way northwards with a few thousand volunteers; this is an earlier phase of the attempt at Italian li... read more
The British empire observed through the lens of a single day: the 29th September 1923, when the Mandate for Palestine became law and the British empire reached its maximum extent, just as i... read more
Nubia and Egypt, the empires of the Sudan, the kingdoms of Ethiopia and Benin and those of the Asante, Yoruba, Hausa and Zulus... Nine scholars on African kingship; some illustrations.