History Matters

Teodoro Castro or Iosif Grigulevich? Costa Rica’s ambassador to Yugoslavia was a Soviet spy sent to kill Tito.

The German chancellor Otto von Bismarck saw himself as a puppet-master, engineering British politics from afar in his feud with Gladstone.

As Christianity spread, it carried Catherine of Siena’s legacy to the Americas. Her asceticism inspired Rose of Lima, Kateri Tekakwitha, and others.

Thieves, cheats, and scoundrels. How did early modern millers get their bad reputations?

From imported plant species to water pollution, Britain’s 19th century wool trade transformed the world.

Less famous than its 1215 predecessor, the Magna Carta of 1225 held the true power.

Rome’s first theatre was an enormous spectacle intended to glorify Pompey’s successes. Was it all bread and circuses?

The doomed film collaboration between Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan resulted in two very different features serving the same fascist agenda: The Daughter of the Samurai and The New Earth. 

A battle of wills between Adolphe Sax and musical instrument makers in 19th-century France saw an unprecedented legal contest unfold.

Are beavers beasts or fish? For medieval philosophers, this was an important question with implications for the dining table.