The wine trade in medieval Tunis was lucrative, but it caused a moral quandary for the ruling Hafsids.

Depending on one’s vantage point, the meaning of the French Revolution varies. The First Republic succumbed to an imperial ...

Court-martialled in absentia on 2 August 1940, the Vichy regime confiscated de Gaulle’s property and condemned him to death.

Age Beauty Farm’ – a combination spa, charm school, weight-loss clinic, and summer camp – was billed as ‘the only place in ...

An early modern ship’s surgeon had to treat not just broken bones but distress and trauma. I n September 1649 ship’s surgeon ...

José Martí Reader: Writings on the Americas, edited by Deborah Shnookal and Mirta Muñiz, collects the works of Cuba's ‘Apostle of Independence’.

Ancient Egypt’s bureaucratic society depended on an army of scribes. To get ahead, you had to be able to write – but that didn’t necessarily mean mastering hieroglyphs.

In the early 20th century few political issues inspired such passion and vitriol in the United Kingdom as whether to impose tariffs on imported goods. An apparently esoteric issue of high-level fiscal ...

The electric chair was invented by employees at Thomas Alva Edison's works at West Orange, New Jersey in the late 1880s. The inventor's involvement has embarrassed many of his biographers and an entry ...

The 19th-century Korean peninsula was a chessboard on which the fates of great powers were decided. China, Japan and Russia learned this to their cost in the 'Other Great Game’.

Known as ‘James of the fiery face’ for the bright red birthmark that covered a whole side of his countenance, James II was one of the most forceful of the Stewart rulers. Just six when his father ...