'Now the door has opened.../ ... none shall be turned away/ from the shore of this vast sea of humanity/that is India', wrote Tagore, the poet and cultural nationalist, whose poem was to be echoed in India's national anthem.
In the past, during times of high unemployment, schemes of public works were often developed. This was not only because of the mounting costs of relief, but also because it was considered in the interests of the unemployed to have work to do.
Maggie Black looks at the history of the seasonal traditions of contrasting fasting and excess.
Spread over some ten square miles of the rocky Deccan plateau, explains Geroge Michell, are the remains of the once great city of southern India, Vijayanagara, which is now being rediscovered.
Jonathon Riley-Smith explores the historiography of the Crusades.
A short editorial by Michael Trend.
In a previous issue History Today considered the Lisle Letters as a great publishing enterprise. This article by V.H.H. Green concentrates on what the letters tell the reader about the Lisles themselves, their lives and times.
In his book The Sicilian Vespers, Sir Steven Runciman wrote: 'The massacre was one of those events in history which altered the fate of nations and of world-wide institutions. To understand its importance we must see it in its international setting.'
In the winter of 1939-40, whilst already waging war against the might of Nazi Germany, Britain, together with France, was preparing to send a military expedition to Finland to fight against the Soviet Union. Had this expedition materialised, argues B.D.P. Conduit, the course of the Second World War might well have been disastrously altered.
As a political thinker Cicero has been all manner of things to all manner of men. In order to understand Cicero's political ideas, however, we need to look at the world of Rome in the first century BC, argues J.B. Morrall.
