Europe

William Gardener describes how silks, tobacco and tea from China were exchanged across the deserts northwest of Peking for furs, cloth and leather from Asiatic Russia.

‘The Acts of the Apostles’ was written in the first century A. D. and describes a vital thirty years in the expansion of Christianity. J.K. Elliott studies its production and influence.

Stephen Clissold describes how many Christian prisoners in sixteenth and seventeenth century North Africa embraced the Islamic faith, willingly serving their new masters.

William Amelia describes how Baldassare Castiglione's popular book on courtly manners invoked the elegance and charm of Renaissance life, and went on to influence Europe for centuries.

Christopher Lloyd offers a portrait of the most notorious pirate of his day, John Ward; who helped introduce Barbary corsairs to the use of the well-armed, square-rigged ships of northern Europe with which they terrorised the Mediterranean.

In 1809, under Wellington, Beresford regenerated the Portuguese Army which, Michael Glover writes, had suffered from years of neglect.

G.R. Potter tells the story of a Bavarian religious reformer, burnt in Vienna for heresy.

Patrick Turnbull describes how, during the two months that preceded his abdication at Fontainebleau, Napoleon performed ‘prodigies of genius’.

Stephen Clissold describes a world of Christian slaves and Moslem masters in North Africa, from the twelfth to the nineteenth centuries.

Philip E. Burnham Jr. describes how the court of Clement VI at Avignon became a model of humanism and scholarship for princely courts elsewhere in Europe.