Showing titles in 19th Century

On 16 March 1807, the British Parliament passed The Abolition of the Slave Trade Act. In the following year the Royal Navy's African Squadron was formed, its mission to stop and search ships at sea suspected of carrying slaves from Africa to the Americas and the Middle East. With typical thoroughness, the Royal Navy went further, and took the fight to the enemy, sailing boldly up uncharted rivers and creeks to attack the barracoons where the slaves were assembled ready for shipment.

 On January 22, 1879, the British Army in South Africa was swept aside by the seemingly unstoppable Zulu warriors at the Battle of Isandlwana. Nearby, at a remote outpost on the Buffalo River, a single company of the 24th Regiment and a few dozen recuperating hospital patients were passing a hot, monotonous day. It seemed certain that the Rorke's Drift detachment would share the same fate. And yet, against incredible odds, the British managed to defend their station. 

Timothy R. Snyder’s Stonewall Jackson’s Winter Operations: The Raids Against the C&O Canal and the Bath-Romney Campaign, December 1861 to February 1862 offers a fresh perspective on early-war operations led by famed Confederate General Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson.

Socialismo: Utópico y Científico es uno de los textos fundamentales del pensamiento socialista y marxista. Escrito por Friedrich Engels a finales del siglo XIX, este breve pero influyente libro expone la visión marxista del desarrollo histórico, la crítica al capitalismo y la distinción entre el socialismo “utópico” y el llamado socialismo “científico”.

A gripping eyewitness account of a major 20th-century military conflict by the UK's most popular writer on geopolitics. The shattering of Yugoslavia in the 1990s showed that, after nearly 50 years of peace, war could return to Europe. It came to its bloody conclusion in Kosovo in 1999. Tim...

A deeply engaging and completely original book about nineteenth-century Britain’s fascination with good quality murder. Murder in nineteenth-century Britain was ubiquitous – not necessarily in quantity but in quality. This was the era of penny-bloods, early crime fiction and melodramas for...

How did "the West" come to be used as a collective self-designation signaling political and cultural commonality? Was the idea handed down from the ancient Greeks, or coined by nineteenth-century imperialists? Neither, writes Georgios Varouxakis in The West, his ambitious and fascinating genealogy of the idea. "The West" was not used by Plato, Cicero, Locke, Mill, or other canonized figures of what we today call the Western tradition. It was not first wielded by empire-builders.

For over six decades, Queen Victoria ruled a great empire. Beside her for more than 20 of those years was her beloved husband and the father of their nine children, Prince Albert. A composer, engineer, soldier, politician, linguist and bibliophile, Albert was one of the architects of Victorian Britain's transformation as a centre of political, technological, scientific and intellectual advancement. Albert lived only 42 years but fathered four royal dynasties and helped pioneer the modern constitutional monarchy.

Formation: The Making of Nigeria from Jihad to Amalgamation tracks the unlikely series of events and characters that turned a collection of disparate nations into a British colony in 1914. But the story of Nigeria’s formation begins much earlier, in 1804, when the jihadists launched their attack on countries along the Niger river. What unfolds is a story of conquests and slavery, betrayals and bravery, rivers and riots, victors and vanquished, all of which are central to understanding modern Black struggles.

In the fall of 1947, an eighty-four-year-old woman receives an extraordinary invitation. Within is the end of a long journey seeking vindication for a husband who gave his life to the service of the Royal Navy and received, in return, ingratitude. Thus begins the story of Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine. Victoria, the eldest daughter of Princess Alice and Prince Ludwig of Hesse, was born in April 1863. 

In the 1880s, control over northeastern Africa was a political minefield into which Prime Minister Gladstone did not want to step—until his emissary Charles Gordon was besieged in Khartoum, and the city became the focal point for war. It was the height of European colonialism. Injustices were administered, bloody battles fought, and civilians caught in the crossfire. Among the British officers were figures who would later adopt starring roles in the First World War, such as Egyptian Army sapper Captain Herbert Kitchener.

A powerful, fascinating, and groundbreaking history of Checkpoint Charlie, the legendary and most important military gate on the border of East and West Berlin where the United States and her allies confronted the USSR during the Cold War. As tensions between east and west rose during the Cold War, East Germany committed $millions to the creation of the Berlin Wall in the early 1960s....

‘Combines brilliant storytelling with rich and deeply researched evidence . . . essential reading’ – Caroline Elkins, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Imperial Reckoning and Legacy of Violence 'Synoptic in its reach, overwhelming in its detail, The Killing Age leaves one feeling like...

Brought to you by Penguin. Can anyone truly understand Russia? Let one of the world's leading experts show you how, using the fascinating history of a nation to illuminate its future. Russia is a country with no natural borders, no single ethnos, no true central identity. At the crossroads of...

The northeastern quarter of the continent of Africa is drained and watered by the Nile. Among and about the headstreams and tributaries of this mighty river lie the wide and fertile provinces of the Egyptian Soudan. Situated in the very centre of the land, these remote regions are on every side divided from the seas by 500 miles of mountain, swamp, or desert. The great river is their only means of growth, their only channel of progress.

On a summer’s morning in 1860, the Kent family awakes in their elegant Wiltshire home to a terrible discovery; their youngest son has been brutally murdered. When celebrated detective Jack Whicher is summoned from Scotland Yard he faces the unenviable task of identifying the killer – when the grieving family are the suspects.

The thrilling chronicle of two of the most influential and glamorous women in nineteenth-century Europe. When they married Emperors Franz Joseph and Napoleon III, respectively, Elisabeth of Austria and Eugénie of France became two of the most famous women on the planet. Young and beautiful...

The Pursuit of Power draws on a lifetime of thinking about 19th-century Europe to create an extraordinarily rich, surprising and entertaining panorama of a continent undergoing drastic change. The aim of this audiobook is to reignite the sense of wonder that permeated this remarkable era, as rulers and ruled navigated overwhelming cultural, political and technological changes.

Written by two of the world's leading authorities on the subject, Imperial Germany and War, 1871-1918 examines the most essential components of the imperial German military system, with an emphasis on such foundational areas as theory, doctrine, institutional structures, training, and the officer corps. In the period between 1871 and 1918, rapid technological development demanded considerable adaptation and change in military doctrine and planning. 

In 1893 Norwegian zoologist Fridtjof Nansen set sail for the North Pole in the Fram, a ship specially designed to be frozen into the polar ice cap, withstand its crushing pressures, and travel north with the sea's drift. Experts said that such a ship couldn't be built and that the mission was tantamount to suicide. Farthest North, first published in 1897 to great popular appeal, is the stirring first-person account of the Fram and her historic voyage. Nansen tells of his expedition's struggle against snowdrifts, polar bears, scurvy, and the endless polar night.