You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The victory at Trafalgar marked the beginning of nine years of expansion and domination by the Royal Navy right across the globe. This book charts the events of those years, including the Battle of San Domingo in 1806, the attack on Copenhagen in 1807 and the capture of the French base on Mauritius in 1810. Also covered is the Navy's crucial support of Wellington's army in the Peninsula War. Thematic sections of the book feature the skills of the seaman and the lives of prisoners of war. The prints and drawings collection of the National Maritime Museum is the source for the 300 contemporary illustrations.
None
Here, Patrick Crowhurst identifies the crucial political problem that faced Czechoslovakia between 1918 and 1939 - the rift between the Czechs and the Sudeten Germans that would open the way for the rise of Konrad Henlein's right-wing 'Sudeten Deutsch' party, and which was exploited ruthlessly by Hitler during Nazi Germany's 1938 annexation of Czechoslovakia. A History of Czechoslovakia Between the Wars deepens our understanding of a fragile Europe before World War II, and is essential for students and scholars of 20th century history.
On the 15th day of December in the year of our Lord 1664, a great light bloomed in the dark sky and crept slowly and silently across the blackness: a comet. Every evening afterwards, though snow lay on the ground and the air bit with frost, men across the land threw open their windows and went out of their doors in cloaks and mufflers to gaze at the heavens, necks stretched up, hands shielding eyes, crooking long fingers to trace the burning thing that flamed across the night, while dogs moaned in their kennels and wise women chanted incantations against bright malignant spirits. Born on the night of an ill-auguring comet just before Charles II's Restoration, Ursula Flight has a difficult future written in the stars. Against the custom of the age she begins an education with her father, who fosters in her a love of reading, writing and astrology. Following a surprising meeting with an actress, Ursula's dreams turn to the theatre and thus begins her quest to become a playwright despite scoundrels, bounders, bad luck and heartbreak. A vivid, passionate and gutsy tale of a most unusual girl in a world far away.
This is the story of the oldest warship afloat in the world, the venerable frigate USS Constitution, the cornerstone of the nascent American navy created by act of Congress in 1794. Colonel David Fitz-Enz re-creates the world of sail, when seven knots an hour was considered blinding speed for a warship. In Old Ironsides, Fitz-Enz tells the story of the ship, from its construction to the ongoing restoration efforts that keep it active today.
Historians of piracy examine piracy in the Caribbean and Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and East Asia, asking whether pirates were outlaws or counterculture social bandits. They demonstrate that pirate ships were often microcosms of democracy, and that crews of pirate vessels knew that majority rule, racial equality, and equitable division of spoils were crucial for their survival. The book includes bandw historical illustrations. Pennell teaches Middle Eastern history at the University of Melbourne. c. Book News Inc.
This remarkable work is a comprehensive historiographical and bibliographical survey of the most important scholarly and printed materials about the naval and maritime history of England and Great Britain from the earliest times to 1815. More than 4,000 popular, standard and official histories, important articles in journals and periodicals, anthologies, conference, symposium and seminar papers, guides, documents and doctoral theses are covered so that the emphasis is the broadest possible. But the work is far, far more than a listing. The works are all evaluated, assessed and analysed and then integrated into an historical narrative that makes the book a hugely useful reference work for stu...
Britain alone could not hope to defeat the might of Napoleonic France which, through enforced conscription, had become a nation in arms. But British leaders had a long history of forging alliances to counter their rivals and when revolution ravaged France in 1793 and a levée en masse raised a huge patriotic army, it was through a coalition of monarchies that French ambitions were restrained – a coalition made possible by British gold and British industry. When Napoleon seized the reins of power in France, he too introduced conscription and, once again, it was a succession of British led and funded coalitions which eventually brought Napoleon to his knees. During the years 1793 to 1815, th...
Thomson maintains that the contemporary monopolization of violence by sovereign states results from the collective practices of rulers, all seeking power and wealth for their states and themselves, and all competing to exploit extraterritorial nonstate violence to achieve those ends. She examines the unintended consequences of such acts, and shows how individual states eventually fell victim to nonstate violence. As rulers became increasingly aware of the problems created by non-state coercive tactics abroad, they worked together to curtail this violence, only to find it intertwined with nonstate violence on the national state level. Exploring the blurred boundaries between the domestic and international, the economic and political, and the state and nonstate realms of authority, this book addresses practical and theoretical issues underlying the reconciliation of violence with political legitimacy.