History Today

Paul Edwards traces the leading black figures of the period.

Shula Marks puts racial stereotypes in South Africa in historical perspective.

Harriet Berry shows how the Venetian artist, Canaletto, who first came to England in 1746, was to give the English a new and lasting image of their land.

Alan Wood argues that the real significance of 1905 lies not so much in what was achieved as in the portents provided for the achievements of the future.

Branded as a Tsarist agent by Marx, Mikhail Bakunin was in fact trying to foment revolution throughout Europe, argues James G. Chastain.

History taught Hume that faction, next to fanaticism, is of all passions the most destructive of morality' and that the wise and just are never purely party men.

London must be transformed into a place 'safe from fire and beautiful and magnificent' decreed James I – and Patrick Youngblood finds it was only the wealthy who were to be entrusted with the privilege of building such a city.

Why was Francis Drake in the Pacific in the 1570s? Was the Golden Hind bound on a trade voyage or was there a deeper political motive? The documents are lost, but David Cressy feels the historian can still speculate.

The Exhibition held in Wembley in 1924 was intended to herald a great Imperial revival - in fact, as Kenneth Walthew shows here, it was to prove an escapist delight from post-war gloom and retrenchment.

Stuart Andrews shows how Tom Paine not only popularised the idea of American independence but helped to keep the spirit of Union alive through seven years of war.