History Today

The popular revolts of 1578-79 and 1586-89 in Normandy were triggered by an unruly military presence and the high level of royal fiscal exactions. Joan Davies shows how the revolts were exploited by the nobility in their struggle with Henri III, who met the threat thus posed with force.

Plekhanov refused to accept that Lenin's coup in October 1917 was a Marxist revolution. To him it was an anti-Marxist revolution that violated history's economic laws. By Irene Coltman Brown.

James Madison, the fourth president of the United States, is best remembered, according to Esmond Wright, for his personal integrity and the scholarly application which he brought to constitutional questions in which he collaborated with Thomas Jefferson.

Maggie Black completes her history of the year in food, with a look at the history of a festive favourite

A hundred years ago this month the Smoke Abatement Exhibition was held in London. In this article, John Ranlett explains how the exhibition demonstrated the practicality of smoke control equipment and how a century later the efficacy of this can be observed in the city streets.

A review of the origins of the Labour Party.

D.G. Chandler continues our series, looking at the relevance of military history in contemporary training for the armed forces.

Steven Huebner on the attempts to stage Richard Wagner's works in Paris between the 1870s and 1891.

In the years following their seizure of the West Indian Island of Martinique from the French, the British had the task of maintaining internal order and restoring the island's prosperity before handing their protectorate back to Napoleon's envoy.