History Today

Elka Schrijver tells the story of the artists who followed the Dutch East India Company to modern day Indonesia.

First a French, then a British colony, these remote and beautiful islands are being gradually drawn into the modern world, writes J. Coen.

In the mid-nineteenth century, writes Christopher Lloyd, a young naval surgeon from Orkney played an important part in West African exploration.

Many missionary hopes in Africa were disappointed, writes W.F. Rea, but Livingstone and his colleagues achieved some successes along the Zambezi river.

Cecil Northcott describes how Mackenzie’s dream of a liberal empire south of the Zambezi met opposition from Cecil Rhodes and from the Boers.

The most distinguished of the three thousand foreign volunteers who fought against Britain during the Boer War, writes Roy Macnab, was a brilliantly gifted French soldier.

Czeslaw Jesman describes the revival of the African Empire and the British expedition of 1868.

After 1807, writes A.J.H. Latham, a Liverpool merchant and a Nigerian chieftain both profited from the palm-oil trade.

Franz Xaver Winterhalter's romantic representations of royal and noble personages, writes Joanna Richardson, have an unquestionable charm for those who live in a more pedestrian age.

In 1773, writes A. Lentin, the radical philosophe paid a difficult visit to his patroness in St Petersburg.