History Today

A century ago, writes Patrick Renshaw, Karl Marx and his colleagues founded in London the first International Workingmen's Association, a body from which many varieties of socialism and communism have since developed.

From 1848 until 1867, writes E.R.R. Green, the romantic nationalists of Ireland, with strong backing from the Irish-Americans, conspired in vain to make their country an “Independent Democratic Republic.”

During the Industrial Revolution, many “dark Satanic mills” arose to scar the English landscape. But in Gloucestershire, writes Esther A.L. Moir, home of the cloth industry, commerce and the art of architecture achieved a happy compromise.

Tsarist Minister of Finance, and briefly Prime Minister, Witte was one of the pioneers of Russian industrialization, writes Lionel Kochan.

A youth of brilliant promise, a man of commanding gifts, Gladstone's friend and lieutenant quitted the political arena before he had reached the age of fifty. None of the statesmen of his period, writes John Raymond, presents the modern biographer with a more absorbing problem.

At a time when class-distinctions were still immensely powerful, writes Lucy Masterman, Lloyd George became the first working-class Prime Minister of Great Britain.

In the mid-nineteenth century, writes Roger Howell, the eminent historian of Spain, Mexico and Peru paid a most successful visit to the British Isles.

W.J. Fishman describes how Lenin adopted Tkachev's maxim: “to destroy Tsarism now and to establish the Socialist society before Capitalism took root.”

During the years before the French Revolution, writes D.M. Walmsley, Mesmer’s treatment of patients by 'animal magnetism' in some ways foreshadowed the methods of modern pyschiatry.

For the landed gentry at the end of the eighteenth century, writes J.F.G. Gornall, there were two main components in marriage. Jane Austen’s novels reveal how 'equal alliance' was at least as important as mutual affection.