Capitalism: A Global History by Sven Beckert looks beyond the cities to the coffee and cotton that fuelled a global market.

Chaucer’s meadows are romantic landscapes of leisurely frolicking. But for medieval haymakers July meant a month of hard ...

Bede wrote that the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes invaded Britain en masse in the fifth century. Does the evidence agree?

On 1 July 1903 a publicity stunt for a sporting paper cycled into history as the first Tour de France. Cycle racing was all the rage. The Paris-Brest-Paris race was launched in 1891. (Its inaugural ...

On May 31st, 1902, the Peace of Vereeniging was signed, ending the Second Boer War between Britain and the two Afrikaner republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State. The Second Boer War between ...

The treaty to bring parts of present-day Arizona and New Mexico into the United States was signed on December 30th, 1853. It was the Gadsden Purchase that settled the main boundaries of the United ...

In 1811 skilled textile workers in Britain attacked factories and factory owners to defend their livelihoods. By the time the Luddite cause hit Yorkshire in 1812, it had become a genuine mass movement ...

Robert Peel was 62 when he died. He had sat in the Commons for more than 40 years and had held high office many times. As Home Secretary in 1829 he had created the ‘Peelers’ or ‘Bobbies’, the ...

Ancient Egyptian monuments are covered in graffiti made by visitors from Cyprus. Why were they there, and what does it mean? In antiquity carving one’s name on a monument was a common and culturally ...

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