But how did this period of nearly continuous warfare affect the world beyond Europe? The immensity of the fighting waged by France against England, Prussia, Austria, and Russia, and the immediate consequences of the tremors that spread from France as a result, overshadow the profound repercussions that the Napoleonic Wars had throughout the world. In this far-ranging work, Alexander Mikaberidze argues that the Napoleonic Wars can only be fully understood with an international context in mind. France struggled for dominance not only on the plains of Europe but also in the Americas, West and South Africa, Ottoman Empire, Iran, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Mediterranean Sea, and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Taking specific regions in turn, Mikaberidze discusses major political-military events around the world and situates geopolitical decision-making within its long- and short-term contexts. From the British expeditions to Argentina and South Africa to the Franco-Russian maneuvering in the Ottoman Empire, the effects of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars would shape international affairs well into the next century. In Egypt, the Wars led to the rise of Mehmed Ali and the emergence of a powerful Egyptian state; in North America, the period transformed and enlarged the newly established United States; and in South America, the Spanish colonial empire witnessed the start of national-liberation movements that ultimately ended imperial control. Skillfully narrated and deeply researched, here at last is the complete global story of the period, one that expands our contemporary view of the Napoleonic Wars and their role in laying the foundations of the modern world.

    The ensuing events brought a Spanish word, armada, into the English language and created a host of legends. Intrepid English sea dogs in tiny ships, it was said, had bravely faced down towering Spanish galleons. Finally, a storm sent by a vengeful God wrecked most of that proud fleet on its way home. Award-winning author Jay Williams sheds new light on the traditional picture. Although the English were superior sailors, the two fleets were evenly matched. Moreover, the battle emerges as the high point of a four-year cold war between England and Spain. Only when set in the context of a Europe bitterly divided between Catholics and Protestants can the contest be fully understood. The personalities of Queen Elizabeth I of England and King Philip II of Spain and their commanders - especially Francis Drake - are also key to this dramatic story.

    Jurgen Osterhammel, an eminent scholar who has been called the Braudel of the nineteenth century, moves beyond conventional Eurocentric and chronological accounts of the era, presenting instead a truly global history of breathtaking scope and towering erudition. He examines the powerful and complex forces that drove global change during the "long nineteenth century," taking readers from New York to New Delhi, from the Latin American revolutions to the Taiping Rebellion, from the perils and promise of Europe's transatlantic labor markets to the hardships endured by nomadic, tribal peoples across the planet. Osterhammel describes a world increasingly networked by the telegraph, the steamship, and the railways. He explores the changing relationship between human beings and nature, looks at the importance of cities, explains the role slavery and its abolition played in the emergence of new nations, challenges the widely held belief that the nineteenth century witnessed the triumph of the nation-state, and much more.This is the highly anticipated English edition of the spectacularly successful and critically acclaimed German book, which is also being translated into Chinese, Polish, Russian, and French. Indispensable for any historian, "The Transformation of the World" sheds important new light on this momentous epoch, showing how the nineteenth century paved the way for the global catastrophes of the twentieth century, yet how it also gave rise to pacifism, liberalism, the trade union, and a host of other crucial developments."

    The entire family, including their personal physician, retainers, and even their pets, became tragic victims of the Bolshevik revolution. They were arrested, exiled, and ultimately secretly murdered in a small cellar of a house in the Urals, in the summer of 1918. In this book, you will follow the events which led up to their eventual tragic fate through personal words of each family member, as well as their close friends and associates. Their letters, diaries, and postcards - many of which have been translated into English here for the first time - tell a unique story, and have yet a lot to reveal. Translated from Russian by Helen Azar, along with Eva and Dan McDonald, who translated most of the 1918 letters from French, this book offers an extraordinary glimpse into the very private world, and the final years, of the last Russian imperial family - which they chronicle in their own words.

    

    But the historic landfall of October 1492 was only a secondary event of the year. The preceding January, they had accepted the surrender of Muslim Granada, ending centuries of Islamic rule in their peninsula. And later that year, they had ordered the expulsion or forced baptism of Spain's Jewish minority, a cruel crusade undertaken in an excess of zeal for their Catholic faith. Europe, in the century of Ferdinand and Isabella, was also awakening to the glories of a new age, the Renaissance, and the Spain of the "Catholic Kings" - as Ferdinand and Isabella came to be known - was not untouched by this brilliant revival of learning. Here, from the noted historian Malveena McKendrick, is their remarkable story.

    Brooke uses many amusing overtones to tell his story of what was an extremely serious business when the world was standing on the brink of nuclear conflict. The English-Electric Canberra was a first generation, jet-powered light bomber manufactured in large numbers in the 1950s. The Canberra could fly at a higher altitude than any other bomber through the 1950s and due to its ability to evade early interceptors was a popular export product and served with many nations.

    But events turned out differently, for the next day the Argentines invaded and he and his forty-three Royal Marines found themselves fighting for their lives.They took up defensive positions around Government House and on the approach to Stanley from Cape Pembroke to protect the Governor Rex Hunt and delay the advance to Stanley. They were prepared to die executing his orders. After a desperate battle in the gardens and even inside the house against superior numbers Rex Hunt ordered them to lay down their arms. As the surrender took place, an Argentine told a marine: ‘The islands are ours now’. The response was simple: ‘We will be back’. They were, and this is their story.The Royal Marines of Naval Party 8901 as well as some members of the previous detachment volunteered to join the Task Force and, some seventy-five days later, the men who witnessed the raising of the Argentine flag over the islands on 2 April saw the triumphant return of the Union Jack.Mike Norman’s dramatic account draws on his own vivid recollections, the log recording the defense of Government House, the testimony of the marines under his command and newly released files from government archives. It is a powerful and moving tribute to the marines who confronted the Argentines when they invaded and then fought to force them out.

    The story of Russia’s transition from Imperial reign to eventual Communist dictatorship is a tale rooted in the ranks of the common people and the men who rose to lead them. Inside you will read about... ✓ Czarist Rule ✓ Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels ✓ Nicholas Romanov ✓ Rasputin ✓ World War ✓ Lenin ✓ October Revolution ✓ Stalin And much more! Dedication to the ideals of socialism remade Russian society. Worker’s Rights, human equality, world war, murder, mysticism, blood and tyranny collide in the heart of Russia to irrevocably alter the culture of this great nation and the world.

    In this comprehensive and scholarly study Keith Hitchins traces these complex processes and explores how Rumania's leaders attempted to transform the ideology of modern nationhood into strong political, economic, and social institutions and to find ways of preserving independence in an international political and economic order dominated by the great powers.As the new Rumania took shape, the threads of historical continuity remained strikingly evident: in government a strong administrative centralization prevailed, despite the maturing of parliamentary institutions and the diversity of political expression; the national economy remained beholden to agriculture, despite the steady growth of industry; and in cultural life traditional values persisted, despite the adoption of modern forms. In foreign relations the most pressing aim was to untie all Rumanians in a single state and to defend its sovereignty within an uncertain international order. In all of these endeavours, the measure of achievement was the West. After the Second World War, when the Communist Party came to power, this historical continuity was broken. The earlier experiment in nation-building gave way to a new ideology, and Rumania now turned to the Soviet political and economic model.

    It was the age of austerity and criminal opportunity. Thieves broke into warehouses, hijacked trucks and ransacked rail yards to feed the black market; others stole, recycled or forged ration coupons. Scotland Yard was 6,000 men under strength but something dramatic had to be done and it was.Four of the Yards best informed detectives were summoned to form the Special Duties Squad and were told: Go out into the underworld. Gather your informants. Do whatever is necessary to ensure that the gangs are smashed up. We will never ask you to divulge your sources of information. But remember you must succeed.They did. Divisional Detective Inspector Jack Capstick, a brilliant thief-taker and informant runner, Detective Inspector Henry Clark, who knew the south London villains as few other detectives did and in addition, possessed a punch like the kick of a mule, and Detective Sergeants Matt Brinnand and John Gosling, who topped the Flying Squad wartime arrests, both individually and collectively. In under four years they arrested 789 criminals, solved 1,506 cases and recovered stolen property valued at 250,000 or 10 million by todays standards, with the aid of their informants, undercover officers and their own, unsurpassed ability.The Special Duties Squad was a one-off. How the four officers accomplished their task is divulged in this thrilling book, using hitherto unseen official documents and conversations from people who were there.

    He was a Soviet spy at the heart of British intelligence, joining Britain's secret service, MI6, during the war, rising to become head of the section tasked with rooting out Russian spies and then head of liaison with the CIA. Philby betrayed hundreds of British and US agents to the Russians and compromised numerous operations inside the Soviet Union.Protected by friends within MI6 who could not believe the service's rising star was a traitor, he was eventually dismissed in 1951, but continued to work for the service surreptitiously until his defection in 1963. His admission of guilt caused profound embarrassment to the British government of the day and its intelligence service, from which neither fully recovered.Tim Milne, Philby's close friend since childhood and recruited by him into MI6 to be his deputy, has left us a memoir that provides the final and most authoritative word on the enduring and fascinating story of Kim Philby the legendary Soviet master spy. It is a riveting read, with new detail on Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, two other members of the Cambridge spy ring, and on Konstantin Volkov, the would-be KGB defector who was betrayed by Philby, one of several hundred people who died as a direct result of Philby's treachery.Tim Milne retired from SIS in October 1968 and never spoke publicly of his friendship with Kim Philby.

    Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and the capitalist West.            At the Big Three conferences of World War II, Stalin persuasively played the role of a great world leader. Even astute observers like George F. Kennan concluded that the United States and Great Britain should view Stalin as a modern-day tsarist-like figure whose primary concerns lay in international strategy and power politics, not in ideology. Now Robert Gellately uses recently uncovered documents to make clear that, in fact, the dictator was an unwavering revolutionary merely biding his time, determined as ever to establish Communist regimes across Europe and beyond, and that his actions during these years (and the poorly calculated Western responses) set in motion what would eventually become the Cold War. Gellately takes us behind the scenes. We see the dictator disguising his political ambitions and prioritizing the future of Communism, even as he pursued the war against Hitler. Along the way, the ascetic dictator’s Machiavellian moves and bouts of irrationality kept the Western leaders on their toes, in a world that became more dangerous and divided year by year.               Exciting, deeply engaging, and shrewdly perceptive, Stalin’s Curse is an unprecedented revelation of the sinister machinations of the Soviet dictator.

    As a young man, voraciously addicted to drugs and sex, with men as much as women, marriage and parenthood for the impetuously wayward playboy prince, with his night-clubbing lifestyle and intimate liaisons, was seen as the only stabilizing influence. Enter the stylish and sophisticated Princess Marina, the cultured, artistic and multilingual youngest daughter of Prince Nicholas of Greece and his Russian-born wife, Grand Duchess Yelena Vladimirovna. As Duke and Duchess of Kent, George and Marina were the Crown’s most glittering representatives, not least in the aftermath of the Abdication of George’s adored elder brother, the briefly-reigned King Edward VIII; the man with whom he had not only shared both home and high-flying lifestyles, but who had helped cure him of his addiction to morphine and cocaine.On and off duty, the Duke and Duchess lived life to the full, and after George’s untimely death, Marina continued to do so during the twenty-six years of her widowhood. Revisiting his 1988 best-selling biography, George and Marina: Duke and Duchess of Kent, Christopher Warwick, in this revised and partly re-written study, tells their story anew.

    How was it that the most eligible bachelor in the world fell in love with this unknown American woman, who was not generally considered beautiful? What was the nature of their relationship? Was she responsible for the Abdication? Many questions remain unanswered. Why did her birth go unrecorded? What were the qualities which so infatuated the Prince of Wales? Why did she never have children? Michael Bloch, who spent ten years as Maitre Blum's assistant is the ideal person to provide this biographical reassessment. In it he dispels much of the mystery that has surrounded her, and paints a vivid portrait of a courageous, glamorous and unusual individual - perhaps in some ways not a woman at all.