Revolutions of 1830
France, Belgium, Poland & Central Italy: The July Revolution in France expelled Charles X and replaced him as King with Louis-Philippe. The Austrian Netherlands belonging to Belgium were united with Holland at the Congress of [...]
Some notes on the 2000 Scarlet Pimpernel series
Some notes on the 2000 TV series ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’ I have in my possession a box set of this production, the material contained in four DVD discs. The series was adapted from the books [...]
Who were the ‘Sans-Culottes’?
The fashion for both men and women to wear trousers ending at the knee, or just below it, has been with us for five years or more. Some shops even name this article of clothing [...]
Friedrich W. Nietzsche
With a name tricky both to spell and to pronounce, this German philosopher was born in 1844, son of a sheep herder in Saxony. He was brought up a true Protestant, and became Professor of [...]
What was the ‘Mir’
It was a commune of 19th century Russian peasants, dominating almost every aspect of rural life in that vast country. It is not generally known that the commune system was well established in the century [...]
Field Marshal Montgomery (‘Monty’)
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 even then, with caution. He was born [...]
The importance of Burgos and the Spanish Democracy
Burgos is one of the principal cities in Spain, it has a large population, a famous cathedral, biting arctic winds that freeze one to the marrow and, at the moment anyway, a town hall where [...]
(Thomas) Woodrow Wilson
The twenty-seventh President of the United States was born in 1856 in Virginia, son of a Presbyterian minister. The family were slave-owners. Thirty-four years later Woodrow was made a professor at Princeton, one of the [...]
Guess who said (or wrote) these things?
Give us your answers in the form of a Comment “I must have a drink of breakfast.” “Somebody left the cork out of my lunch!” “She’s all done up like a well-kept grave.” “I [...]
Union general William T Sherman
This successful but invariably severe soldier with a Native American middle name – Tecumseh – was born in 1820, went into the Army in his teens, and rose so fast he was commanding a division [...]
Transcontinental railroads in the USA
In previous posts we have seen how the two largest countries in the world, Russia and Canada, were to plan, construct and successfully manage transcontinental railways, a marvellous example of the skills, patience, endurance and [...]
Burke, politician, essayist & long-lasting influence
Edmund Burke was born in Dublin in 1729. Educated in this city, it was not long before he quit ‘the bogs of Ireland’ and moved to London, where he got the job of being private [...]
Bonapartism
This is not merely a philosophy: it is a political movement, a system of governance, and a decided set of political principles. As a political movement it was the lynch-pin of the descendants of Napoleon [...]
What was the Cheka?
Felix Dzerzhinsky / knightsofsolomon.org This colourful European word in initials stood for ‘The Extraordinary Commission for combatting Counter-Revolution, Sabotage and Speculation’ and we will not attempt to put that in Russian. It was [...]
The Trans-Siberian Railway
/ foto8.com Only six years after the first trans-continental railway (Canadian Pacific q.v.) was opened, Russia followed suit with her very lengthy railroad built between Moscow (actually Chelyabinsk in the Urals) and Vladivostok, [...]
The Canadian Pacific Railway
/ focusedonlight.com The name of the longest railway in the world may confuse. It is transcontinental, not a railroad running along the western or Pacific coast of Canada. Work began in 1880, under [...]
New Year’s message from Dean Swift
The book, a compilation of selected articles from three years of General-History.com is keeping us all it, mainly because the website has so many categories. Between bouts of sciatica (don’t try it yourself) and Christmas [...]
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