History Today

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.

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire appears to offer a paean to the civilised society of the Antonines. But Gibbon, as A. Lentin reveals, was well aware that it bestowed 'the benefits of order' without the 'blessing of freedom'.

Michael J. Bennet shows how, maligned as self-seeking opportunists, the Stanley family can be seen to have adhered to principles of wise statesmanship which were to earn them accolades as 'good lords' and 'king-makers'.

‘The Universities have been to this nation as the wooden horse to the Trojans’. An article by Irene Coltman Brown.

Geoffrey Parker looks at the moment when the representatives of certain provinces of the Netherlands met together to depose their lawful sovereign Philip II of Spain.