An island nation with few resources, Japan was in a precarious enough position when it declared war on the United States in December 1941. That its powerful navy failed to learn the lessons of previous conflicts made matters even worse.
The contrast between Abraham Lincoln and Donald Trump could hardly be more striking, but such is the continually evolving politics of the Grand Old Party.
French history since the revolution has been marked by promises of progress that end in bitter failure. The election of Léon Blum’s Popular Front in 1936 was one such example.
How the collapse of the world he knew and loved in 1914 later made the promising young scholar and diplomat into one of the most extraordinary and controversial historians of our time.
Since it was founded in 1948, the issue of how Britons have laughed with – or at – the NHS reveals much about changes in society.
Long before today’s project for a European political and economic union, William Penn, the English founder of Pennsylvania, offered a utopian vision of a Europe beyond the nation-state.
In the popular imagination, William the Conqueror is, without doubt, the villain, yet the sources we have for his life are ambivalent.
The Great Fire of of London destroyed everything in its path as it swept through the City. But, against the odds and popular belief, one house remained standing.
Mao Zedong’s brutal campaign to purify Communist China, which began in the early 1960s, resulted in a decade of chaos that has left an indelible stain on the nation’s politics.
Since gaining independence Botswana’s history has not been without turmoil, but the country has emerged as a model African state.
