In practice, the nickname or epithet ‘Monty’ was not used when addressing Bernard Law Montgomery, except possibly by the few other soldiers senior to him in rank, and…
Category: Dutch History
Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne, Viscount Turenne
The name could hardly sound more French, and yet Henri was the grandson of William of Orange ‘The Silent’, which should make him at least a Netherlander. Henri’s…
‘Stadhouder’: what was a ‘stadholder’?
The names in Dutch and English are similar; this was the office of the chief executive of the Dutch Republic when Holland was a republic and not, as…
The EIGHTY years war
There have been wars that lasted a few days; the Great War lasted a terrible four years, and the Second World War six. There was a thirty year…
Catalunya, the Revolt of Cataluña & the Count-Duke of Olivares
Catalonia (English spelling), Cataluña (Castilian spelling) and Catalunya (Catalán spelling) all refer to the same autonomous region, made up by the provinces of Barcelona, Gerona, Lérida and Tarragona…
The Barbary Coast, and Wars
It is difficult to find any time since the Byzantine Empire when the North African coast from Morocco to Libya was not infamous for piracy. The worst period…
Commerce in History: the slave trade
Thinking people still get hot under the collar when the subject of the trade in slaves looms. But then, more nonsense is spoken about the slave trade by…
The International Brigade(s)
Volunteers from countries foreign to Spain rushed from around the world to aid the republican cause during the Spanish Civil War (1936 – 1938). Contrary to popular literature’s…
The Thirty Years War
The British were involved in this nasty episode, though only on the margins. All wars are horribly wasting, but this one could be taken as the best example….
What was ‘Apartheid’?
The word itself is Afrikaans or South African Dutch and means ‘separateness’. In the 50s of the last century a morbid joking pun was made…