USA

Washington is Burning

In August 1814, the US capital was torched by British troops. The ‘greatest disgrace ever dealt to American arms’ left its legacy on the US, Britain and Canada.

Launching the Confederate Navy

David Woodward describes how the Confederacy's hope of continuing to exist depended upon gaining command of the sea and of vital coastal and inland waters.

George III to the United States Sendeth

On November 11th, 1791, George Hammond, the first British Minister to the United States, presented his credentials to George Washington. Despite favourable auguries, writes Leslie Reade, his was to prove “a stormy and frustrating mission.”

Prescott’s Visit to England, 1850

In the mid-nineteenth century, writes Roger Howell, the eminent historian of Spain, Mexico and Peru paid a most successful visit to the British Isles.

The Lost Leader: William D. Haywood

Patrick Renshaw introduces an archetypal twentieth century figure: the American Trade Unionist who fled to Russia and who Comintern believed they could use to lead an American Bolshevik revolution.

The Miracle of Independence

Arnold Whitridge explains how a group of instinctively conservative, wealthy gentlemen led the American people to an unlikely victory in war and a miraculous nationhood.

Spain and England in Florida

Louis C. Kleber writes how Florida was ceded to Britain in 1763; retroceded to Spain after the American Revolution, and acquired by the United States in 1819.