Volume 64 Issue 9 September 2014

Roger Hudson on a photograph taken in the Krupp works, Essen in 1861, signalling the arrival of a new industrial force in Europe.

Unlike the British Empire, the vast realms of Philip II owed much to the Church.

Alexander Larman takes issue with some of the assertions made in John Redwood’s otherwise incisive 1974 article on the Earl of Rochester, the fast-living rake who epitomised the Restoration.

David Rundle looks at the current state of the humanities, asking whether we can recapture the confidence and broad cultural ambition of the Renaissance’s studia humanitatis, which sought to define what it is to be human.

Though we share a common humanity with people of the past, their world can seem alien to us, says Mathew Lyons. Was it just as disconcerting for them, too?

David Gentilcore describes responses to a hideous epidemic that affected the rural poor of northern Italy, from the mid-18th century until the First World War, the cause of which is attributed to a diet dependent on maize.

Jad Adams considers the actions of the militant British suffragette movement and its far-reaching impact on the global struggle for female suffrage in the 20th century.

In the early days of the First World War a plan was hatched in Berlin to spread revolt among the Muslim populations of the Entente empires. David Motadel looks at the reasons why it failed.

Glenda Sluga explains the influence of a remarkable group of women as Europe’s elite gathered in Vienna in 1814.

Stella Ghervas examines the 1815 Congress of Vienna, the Great Powers’ attempt to create a new European order following the defeat of Napoleon.