Political

Around the rising of the Paris Commune against the Provisional Government of France many myths have accumulated, writes John Roberts, which in varying versions have influenced all subsequent French politics.

Elizabeth Wiskemann describes how Hitler ruthlessly consolidated his power in Germany by the slaughter of some of his closest former colleagues.

The achievements of the Meiji regime in transforming Japan into one of the most powerful of modern states are regarded as among the most remarkable events in history. But the restoration of the Emperor and the fall of the Shogun was brought about at the cost of a fierce domestic struggle.

In the 1860s a group of the younger Samurai launched the Meiji revolution in the Emperor's name. This event, writes Henry McAleavy, helped convert Japan into a modern country, with Western fashions and techniques imposed upon the national habits of centuries.

The problems of the interwar mining industry, which led to a General Strike in 1926, writes W.H. Chaloner, epitomized the struggle between capital and labour in twentieth-century Britain.

In a continent dedicated to republicanism, writes George Woodcock, the Braganza dynasty for eighty years guided the destinies of Brazil.

Robert Blake traces the career of Edward Geoffrey Stanley, a low-profile leader who nevertheless became British Prime Minister three times: firstly in 1852; then from 1858-59; and lastly from 1866-68.

Harold Kurtz writes that the torments of a false conscience formed a secret experience that was with Talleyrand all his life.

What he had always wanted to be, Talleyrand wrote in later life, was “the man of France”—not the representative of a party, a political system or a sovereign master. Does this ambition, asks Harold Kurtz, explain his various changes of allegiance, including his “betrayal” of Napoleon, for which many French historians cannot forgive him?

A gifted utilitarian, and sometime Member of Parliament, Douglas Hurd writes that John Bowring spent ten tumultuous years in China where he believed in supporting the cause of progress with British gunboats.