Often overlooked by history, the Franco-Prussian War had a profound impact on both France and Germany. Its military aspects also deserve study, for here was a clash of immense armies and their advanced weaponry, made possible by the industrial revolution. We take an in-depth look at the war that overturned the balance of power in Europe.
Modern Warfare
Back to the Drawing Board: Rifled muzzle-loading artillery (RML)
The mid 19th century saw a revolution in naval weapons technology – smooth-bore muzzle-loading artillery, which had changed little for over 300 years, was suddenly supplanted by far larger rifled guns firing steel armour-piercing shot and explosive shells to ranges far beyond anything achieved even 50 years earlier.
REVIEW – Waiting for War: Britain, 1939 – 1940
Most Britons are proud of their country’s role in helping to bring about victory in the Second World War. There is nothing to be proud of, however, in the way the government and its agencies ran the first nine months of war, from September 1939 to May 1940 – the period known as ‘the Phoney War’.
REVIEW – The Dawn of the Drone
The shock of the early Zeppelin raids initiated a host of unconventional countermeasures, including Professor Archibald Low’s project for a small radio-controlled pilotless aircraft carrying a 40kg command-detonated explosive charge.
REVIEW – Seapower States: maritime culture, continental empires, and the conflict that made the modern world
Andrew Lambert, Laughton Professor of Naval History at King’s College London, has been described as ‘the outstanding British naval historian of his generation’. Seapower States is the latest book in what has been an extraordinarily prolific few years for him, and it is certainly no conventional historical narrative.
The Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution of January 1959, the Bay of Pigs Invasion of April 1961, and the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 were events of worldwide significance. All three of these events were, in very different ways, remarkable military collisions. Marking the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, we take a detailed look at this epic struggle against the odds.
RAF Museum London: into the future
Seema Syeda reviews the newly remodelled RAF Museum. Museums, I thought in a rather prosaic way as I sat underneath the bomb bay of an Avro Vulcan B2 in the RAF Museum’s Hangar 5, usually chronicle the events of the past. Meandering through the corridors of the British Museum, for instance, gazing at the ossified warriors […]
BEHIND THE IMAGE: The Prague Spring, 1968
Fifty years ago, during the so-called ‘Prague Spring’ of 1968, the citizens of Czechoslovakia enjoyed a few brief, tantalising months of liberation from some of the worst effects of Soviet domination.
The Spanish Civil War: a proxy war and a dress-rehearsal
This massive foreign involvement lends credibility to the claim of Manuel Chaves Nogales, a leading Spanish journalit in Madrid during the siege, that ‘Spanish Civil War’ was a misnomer.
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