In the 13th century a remarkable trading block was formed in northern Europe. Stephen Halliday explains how the Hanseatic League prospered for 300 years before the rise of the nation state led to its dissolution.
More than two decades ago, Adam Zamoyski wrote a history of the Poles and their culture. As a major revision of the work is published, he reflects on the nation’s change in fortune.
A subject and servant of Europe’s most cosmopolitan empire, the composer Joseph Haydn played an important role in the emergence of German cultural nationalism during the 18th and 19th centuries, writes Tim Blanning.
Simon Lemieux provides an overview of 16th-century Catholicism, focusing on the key issues often selected by examiners.
John Etty questions whether Serb nationalism was an irresistible force that helped unleash the First World War.
As an integrated system of politics, economy and religion evolved in Europe around the year 1000, the figure of the Virgin Mary – so central to the lives of monks and nuns – became the core of a widely shared, though highly varied, European identity, says Miri Rubin.
Mark Rathbone asks why the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia emerged in the 1850s as the likely unifier of Italy.
Rowena Hammal explains why the United Provinces enjoyed a ‘Golden Age’ in the first half of the Seventeenth Century.
Reconciliation is not following in the wake of the search for truth about the past in one fomer Warsaw Pact country, Colin Graham reports.
Tony Chafer examines the paradoxes and complexities that underlie belated recognition of the contribution of African soldiers to the liberation of France in 1944.
