The American Civil War
By Dean Swift Like all civil wars, none of which are the least civil, the American Civil War was a murderous and bloody conflict between brothers, fathers and sons, uncles and nephews and cousins. In [...]
The American Revolution
1776 – 1783: American colonists revolt and declare independence One of the more obvious oddities about the American War of Independence is that it need not have happened. By no means all citizens established in [...]
Jack The Ripper and the British Royal Family
The name describes the pseudonymous murderer of at least seven women, all of them prostitutes, in or near the poor district of Whitechapel in London from August 7 to November 10, 1888. The identity of [...]
Alexander the Great
All records of Alexander by his own contemporaries have disappeared. We have to depend, all of us, including historians, historical novelists, and teachers, on histories compiled three or four centuries later from the material that [...]
The Charge of the Light Brigade
Though the actual battle was inconclusive (18 October, 1854), a part of it has entered the lexicon of war myths as strongly as Hastings (1066) or Trafalgar (1805) because of the added refinement of ‘human [...]
Josef Stalin
Iósif Stalin Born in Georgia, his family name was actually Djugashvili, and his adopted middle name was Visarionovitch. This hero of the Soviet Union was a living reminder of the ancient truth that [...]
The British Empire
What we mean by this expression was (formerly) an apparently haphazard collection of lands throughout the world linked by common allegiance to the British throne. In 1800, though Britain had lost her Thirteen Colonies in [...]
The orchestrated Suez Canal Affair (1956)
Suez is a ship canal joining the Mediterranean Sea (at Port Said) with the Red Sea (at the Gulf of Suez). It was built to provide a sea route from Europe to Asia that did [...]
The Great Cabinet Re-shuffle: the significance
On a recent Sunday the President of the Government was asked at a meeting if he intended to remodel his government, by making changes among the ministers. Rodríguez Zapatero replied briefly to the effect that [...]
Imperialism
Called by some ‘colonialism’ – a mistake – imperialism is a term frequently abused by being used pejoratively by politicians and journalists. For historians, the word can be applied to numerous epochs, in each of [...]
England: The fall and rise of Socialism
England’s Labour Party has elected the new party leader, Ed Miliband. This unsurprising event was described in this column in our last edition. It must have been a good choice, because the opinion polls held [...]
All American Presidents
Early United States history may be conveniently studied by reference to the 32 Presidents of the period 1789 – 1945: (I) George Washington, Federalist 1789 – 97; (II) John Adams, Federalist 1797 – 1801; (III) [...]
The Congress of Vienna (1814/15)
This international assembly could be said to have established the system of diplomacy that lasted throughout the 19th century, and a long way beyond. It set out to settle the affairs of Europe after the [...]
The abdication of Edward VIII (1936)
The crisis arose from the expressed desire of King Edward VIII of England to marry a twice-divorced American woman. While his father George V was ill, struggling through the last years of a longish reign, [...]
Spanish Civil War (1936-39)
These three years saw a conflict that really was a civil war, just as the Wars of the Roses in England were not. A real civil war splits the country, regions, families, married couples and [...]
Treaty of Versailles: Facts, Causes and Effects
One of the chief contributing causes of the Second World War was the Treaty of Versailles (June, 1919), that officially ended the First World War. Its main terms were surrender of ALL German colonies [...]
English Civil War (1642 – 49) (updated in 2012)
Execution of Charles I The history of Great Britain can produce only one genuine civil war. Those students who think that the Wars of the Roses (see also in Toda Historia) was a [...]
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