History Extra Archives

Courting India: Seventeenth-Century England, Mughal India, and the Origins of Empire

A profound and ground-breaking approach to one of the most important encounters in the history of colonialism: the British arrival in India in the early seventeenth century.

Traditional interpretations to the British Empire’s emerging success and expansion has long overshadowed the deep uncertainty that marked its initial entanglement with India. […Learn More]

Twilight Cities: Lost Capitals of the Mediterranean

Its name means ‘centre of the world’, and since the dawn of history the Mediterranean Sea has formed the shared horizon of innumerable cultures. Here, history has blurred with legend. The glittering surface of the sea conceals the remnants of lost civilisations, wrecked treasure ships and the bones of long-drowned sailors, traders and modern refugees. […Learn More]

Revolutionary Spring: Europe Aflame and the Fight for a New World, 1848-1849

As history, the uprisings of 1848 have long been overshadowed by the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian revolutions of the early twentieth century. And yet in 1848 nearly all of Europe was aflame with conflict. Parallel political tumults spread like brush fire across the entire continent, leading to significant changes that continue to shape our world today. These battles for the future were fought with one eye kept squarely on the past: The men and women of 1848 saw the urgent challenges of their world as shaped profoundly by the past, and saw themselves as inheritors of a revolutionary tradition. […Learn More]

Portable Magic: A History of Books and Their Readers

A history of one of humankind’s most resilient and influential technologies over the past millennium—the book. Revelatory and entertaining in equal measure, Portable Magic will charm and challenge literature lovers of all kinds as it illuminates the transformative power and eternal appeal of the written word. […Learn More]

The World the Plague Made: The Black Death and the Rise of Europe

A groundbreaking history of how the Black Death unleashed revolutionary change across the medieval world and ushered in the modern age […Learn More]

African and Caribbean People in Britain: A History

A major new history of Britain that transforms our understanding of this country’s past

‘I’ve waited so long so read a comprehensively researched book about Black history on this island. This is it: a journey of discovery and a truly exciting and important work’ Zainab Abbas […Learn More]

Vagabonds: Life on the Streets of Nineteenth-Century London

Here is popular social history at its finest and most accessible: Indelibly vivid accounts of Dickensian London’s street denizens reveal the true character of this place and time […Learn More]

Cleopatra’s Daughter: From Roman Prisoner to African Queen

The first modern biography of one of the most influential yet long-neglected rulers of the ancient world: Cleopatra Selene, daughter of Antony and Cleopatra.

“A vibrant, fascinating portrait of a great woman who deserves her place in the pantheon of Roman queens.” —Emma Southon […Learn More]

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

From the author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a page-turning story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth. The powerful narrative reveals the deeper meaning of the events on The Wager, showing that it was not only the captain and crew who ended up on trial, but the very idea of empire. […Learn More]

The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603-1689

A fresh, exciting, “readable and informative” history (The New York Times) of seventeenth-century England, a time of revolution when society was on fire and simultaneously forging the modern world. • “Recapture[s] a lost moment when a radically democratic commonwealth seemed possible.”—Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker […Learn More]