A historian recounts the unlikely rise of a world capital, and how its understanding of Asia played a key role.If one had looked for a potential global city in Europe in the 1540s, the most likely candidate would have been Antwerp, which had emerged as the center of the German and Spanish silver exchange as well as the Portuguese spice and Spanish sugar trades. It almost certainly would not have been London, an unassuming hub of the wool and cloth trade with a popu...

Sea Rovers, Silver, and Samurai traces the roots of modern global East Asia by focusing on the fascinating history of its seaways. The East Asian maritime realm, from the Straits of Malacca to the Sea of Japan, has been a core region of international trade for millennia, but during the long seventeenth century (1550 to 1700), the velocity and scale of commerce increased dramatically. Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese smugglers and pirates forged autonomous networks and maritime po...

An examination of why Jews promote a positive image of Ottomans and Turks while denying the Armenian genocide and the existence of antisemitism in Turkey.Based on historical narrative, the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 were embraced by the Ottoman Empire and then, later, protected from the Nazis during WWII. If we believe that Turks and Jews have lived in harmony for so long, then how can we believe that the Turks could have committed genocide against the Armenia...

The historian and expert on Israeli-Palestinian relations offers "a well-written, well-balanced" account of cultural conflicts in the region before WWI (Anita Shapira, author of Israel: A History).When did the Arab-Israeli conflict begin? Some discussions focus on the 1967 war, some go back to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, and others look to the beginning of the British Mandate in 1922. Alan Dowty, however, traces the earliest roots of the c...

"Written with great accuracy, detail, enthusiasm, and insight . . . a new perspective on the well-trodden story of the Arab Revolt" ( Military History Matters on its Book of the Year, Silver Award–winner).Striking where the enemy is weakest and melting away into the darkness before he can react. Never confronting a stronger force directly, but using audacity and surprise to confound and demoralize an opponent. Operations driven by good intelligence, area kn...

For the first time, a scholar reveals the meaning of the marginal images on the Bayeux Tapestry, unlocking a completely new meaning of the work.The story of the Norman Conquest and the Battle of Hastings as shown in the Bayeux Tapestry is arguably the most widely-known in the panoply of English history, and over the last 200 years there have been hundreds of books on the Tapestry seeking to analyze its meanings. Yet, there is one aspect of the embroidery that has b...

A unique tour through British history—from the perspective of the peasants and the poverty-stricken.The past is traditionally told from the viewpoint of kings and queens, politicians and pioneers. But what about the people struggling to survive at the very lowest levels of society?A Pauper's History of England covers a thousand years of poverty, from Domesday right up to the twentieth century, via the Black Death and the English Civil War. It paint...

A fresh and colorful look at Shakespeare's London published on the 400th anniversary of the playwright's death.In A Visitor's Guide to Shakespeare's London, readers can explore the streets of Shakespeare's London and see the sights he saw, while learning how people ate, drank, misbehaved, and had fun. You will discover what it was like to be a tourist in the sixteenth century from the voices of people who came to London during Shakespeare's day. You will t...

A comprehensive study of the pervasive misogyny that left women behind while British society moved toward the Age of Enlightenment.Although the worlds of science and philosophy took giant strides away from the medieval view of the world, attitudes to women did not change from those that had pertained for centuries. The social turbulence of the first half of the seventeenth century afforded women new opportunities and new religious freedoms, and women were attracted...

The 20th anniversary edition of the study that first revealed De Soto's path across the 16th century American South includes a forward by Robbie EthridgeBetween 1539 and 1542, the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto led a small army on an expedition of almost four thousand miles across Southeastern America. De Soto's path had been one of history's most intriguing mysteries until the publication of Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun. Using a new route recon...

Discover some of the Victorian Era's most outlandish inventions—from the world-changing to the simply weird—in this look at nineteenth-century innovation.We all know that some of history's greatest inventions came about in the Victorian age. But in The Ingenious Victorians, John Wade goes beyond those famous advances to explore some of the weird and wonderful ideas and projects that have largely been forgotten. He also offers a new perspective on some of th...

Long-lost letters tell the story of an illegal slave shipment, a desperate Savannah businessman, and the lead-up to the Civil War.In 1858 Savannah businessman Charles Lamar, in violation of U.S. law, organized the shipment of hundreds of Africans on the luxury yacht Wanderer to Jekyll Island, Georgia. The four hundred survivors of the Middle Passage were sold into bondage. This was the first successful documented slave landing in the United States in about...