Kashmir
This trouble spot is naturally one of the most beautiful places on earth / sticholidays.com 1947/48 saw the biggest break-up in the disgraceful dismemberment of the British Empire, whose most important ‘colony’ was [...]
National Guards (France and USA)
Artist’s impression of members of the French National Guard / eclatdebois.org The National Guard in France was founded in July, 1789 to replace the royal soldiers who had been forbidden entry to Paris. [...]
Three battles at Ypres (1914, 1915 & 1917)
/ the guardian.co.uk Ypres is a place in Belgium, known mainly by Great War enthusiasts who are taken on guided tours. In October and November of the first year of the war a [...]
Jomo Kenyatta, Nelson Mandela & Archbishop Makarios
Archbishop Makarios / en.wikipedia.org These three names (and the persons themselves) are connected by the historical fact that each was imprisoned as penalty for their nationalism, and each became President of their country. [...]
François Mitterand
/ redwiretimes.com Mitterand was a life-long Socialist who served in the brief French military resistance to German might between 1939 and 1940, and is then said to have co-operated with the rather spare [...]
What is the ‘Code Napoléon?
Napoleon in his study in the Tuileries, a study by David /es.wikipedia.org Napoleon Bonaparte gave his name to the civil code of 1804. Subsequent battles – Trafalgar, Waterloo etc. did not affect [...]
Who was this fellow Clausewitz?
It is a fair bet that many readers have noticed a reference to ‘Clausewitz’ in the history books they are reading, or even in novels; it is a name they know, though they are not [...]
J.R. Dalhousie – Governor-General of India
Not all governors-general, or ‘viceroys’ of India were touched with brilliance, like Lord Curzon. One of them, the last, gave the most important part of the British Empire away as if he were presenting the [...]
The beginnings of Soviet Russia
The February Revolution (1917) / en.wikipedia.org It is easy enough to say that the origin of the Revolution in Russia was mainly due to the unpopularity of the Tsar; but that would preclude [...]
François P. G. Guizot
/ es.wikipedia.org This French Protestant intellectual and statesman was born in 1787; he was an infant when the revolutionaries guillotined his father during The Great Terror (q.v.). When the Revolution was over and [...]
Louis Philippe, King of the French
/ en.wikipedia.org He was a descendant of Louis XIII (the king in The Three Musketeers), and the eldest son of the Duke of Orléans. Both father and son openly supported the French Revolution, [...]
Who was the dreaded Mosley?
The Mosleys in retirement / en.wikipedia.org I doubt if more than a handful of today’s teenagers have ever heard of Sir Oswald Mosley, or if they have, he is but a shadowy figure [...]
Helmuth von Moltke
/ en.wikipedia.org Born in Prussia in 1800, Moltke lived to the astonishing age of ninety-one, almost spanning the nineteenth century. He was born to be a soldier, being Prussian, and became Chief of [...]
The French Radical Republic (1899 – 1940)
Aristide Briand ( en. wikipedia.org) The essential difference between a (strictly) democratic republic and a monarchy is that the first is a government elected by people who have the correct age and the [...]
Second thoughts on General Pinochet
/ the guardian.com He was another military dictator who was and is still hated by almost everybody, even after his death, except a substantial portion of the Latin American population. He ran foul [...]
Second thoughts on General Franco
Franco & Doña Carmen enjoying some Spanish football / insidespanishfootball.com I am not a revisionist. My views on the character and actions of Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell have not changed in fifty [...]
What was the British ‘Raj’?
Last splendours of the ‘Raj’; Mountbatten after his swearing-in as Viceroy / en wikipedia.org Raj is Hindi for ‘rule’. The East India Company (always known as The Company) had opened up this vast [...]
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