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"This book examines the career of the notorious Gen. James Wilkinson, the highest ranking US official ever tried for treason and espionage. Wilkinson's military career began during the Revolutionary War, and he served with nearly every president and major military figure during the first forty years of US history. As he rose to the rank of commanding general of the US Army, Wilkinson betrayed virtually everyone he worked for or with to advance his career and finances. He was a handsomely paid spy for Spain, plotted to have western territories split from the United States, and accepted kickbacks from government contractors. His negligence and greed also caused the largest peacetime disaster in the history of the US Army. This book focuses on Wilkinson as a spy and makes unique contributions with its in depth analysis of how Wilkinson survived his 1811 court-martial trial. Cox concludes that the prosecution deliberately lost the case to ensure Wilkinson's acquittal in order to cover up presidential failures"--

Who said that dictatorship was dead? The world today is full of Strong Men and their imitators. Caesarism is alive and well. Yet in modern times it's become a strangely neglected subject. Ferdinand Mount opens up a fascinating exploration of how and why Caesars seize power and why they fall.There is a comforting illusion shared by historians and political commentators from Fukuyama back to Macaulay, Mill and Marx, that history progresses in a nice straight line towards liberal democracy or socialism, despite the odd hiccup. In reality, every democracy, however sophisticated or stable it may look, has been attacked or actually destroyed by a would-be Caesar, from Ancient Greece to the present day. Marx was wrong. This Caesarism is not an absurd throwback, it is an ever-present danger. There are Big Caesars who set out to achieve total social control and Little Caesars who merely want to run an agreeable kleptocracy without opposition: from Julius Caesar and Oliver Cromwell through Napoleon and Bolivar, to Mussolini, Salazar, De Gaulle and Trump. The saga of Boris Johnson and Brexit frequently crops up in this author's narrative as a vivid, if Lilliputian instance of the same phenomenon. The final part of this book describes how and why would-be Caesars come to grief, from the Gunpowder Plot to Trump's march on the Capitol and the ejection of Boris Johnson by his own MPs, and ends with a defence of the grubby glories of parliamentary politics and a thought-provoking roadmap of the way back to constitutional government.

The concept of the 'fiscal-military state', popularised by John Brewer in 1989, has become familiar, even commonplace, to many historians of eighteenth-century England. Yet even at the time of its publication the book caused controversy, and the essays in this volume demonstrate how recent work on fiscal structures, military and naval contractors, on parallel developments in Scotland and Ireland, and on the wider political context, has challenged the fundamentals of this model in increasingly sophisticated and nuanced ways.Beginning with a historiographical introduction that places The Sinews of Power and subsequent work on the fiscal-military state within its wider contexts, and a commentary by John Brewer that responds to the questions raised by this work, the chapters in this volume explore topics as varied as finance and revenue, the interaction of the state with society, the relations between the military and its contractors, and even the utility of the concept of the fiscal-military state. It concludes with an afterword by Professor Stephen Conway, situating the essays in comparative contexts, and highlighting potential avenues for future research. Taken as a whole, this volume offers challenging and imaginative new perspectives on the fiscal-military structures that underpinned the development of modern European states from the eighteenth century onwards.

Waterloo

Originally published in 1967, this book is a concise and ideal study of one of the most important periods of American history and is ideal for A Level students and as an introduction for undergraduates. It discusses the social, economic and political context for Lincoln's meteoric rise and the legacy of his many achievements including the abolition of slavery.

New York Times Editors' ChoiceWinner of the Bancroft PrizeWinner of the Francis Parkman Prize Winner of the Gotham Book PrizeWinner of the New York Society Library's New York City Book AwardJournal of the American Revolution Book of the YearWinner of the David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Legal History Winner of the James Bradford Best Biography PrizeA riveting Revolutionary Era drama of the first published rape trial in American history and its long, shattering aftermath, revealing how much has changed over two centuries-and how much has notOn a moonless night in the summer of 1793 a crime was committed in the back room of a New York brothel-the kind of crime that even victims usually kept secret. Instead, seventeen-year-old seamstress Lanah Sawyer did what virtually no one in US history had done before: she charged a gentleman with rape. Her accusation sparked a raw courtroom drama and a relentless struggle for vindication that threatened both Lanah's and her assailant's lives. The trial exposed a predatory sexual underworld, sparked riots in the streets, and ignited a vigorous debate about class privilege and sexual double standards. The ongoing conflict attracted the nation's top lawyers, including Alexander Hamilton, and shaped the development of American law. The crime and its consequences became a kind of parable about the power of seduction and the limits of justice. Eventually, Lanah Sawyer did succeed in holding her assailant accountable-but at a terrible cost to herself.Based on rigorous historical detective work, this book takes us from a chance encounter in the street into the sanctuaries of the city's elite, the shadows of its brothels, and the despair of its debtors' prison. The Sewing Girl's Tale shows that if our laws and our culture were changed by a persistent young woman and the power of words two hundred years ago, they can be changed again.Includes photographs

When Americans declared independence in 1776, they cited King George III "for quartering large bodies of armed troops among us." In Quarters, John Gilbert McCurdy explores the social and political history behind the charge, offering an authoritative account of the housing of British soldiers in America. Providing new interpretations and...

This edition of Michael Wood's groundbreaking first book explores the fascinating and mysterious centuries between the Romans and the Norman Conquest of 1066. In Search of the Dark Ages vividly conjures up some of the most famous names in British history, such as Queen Boadicea, leader of a terrible war of resistance against the Romans, and King Arthur, the 'once and future king', for whose riddle Wood proposes a new and surprising solution. Here too, warts and all, are the Saxon, Viking and Norman kings who laid the political foundations of England - Offa of Mercia, Alfred the Great, Athelstan, and William the Conqueror, whose victory at Hastings in 1066 marked the end of Anglo-Saxon England. Reflecting recent historical, textual and archaeological research, this revised edition of Michael Wood's classic book overturns preconceptions of the Dark Ages as a shadowy and brutal era, showing them to be a richly exciting and formative period in the history of Britain. 'With In Search of the Dark Ages, Michael Wood wrote the book for history on TV.' The Times 'Michael Wood is the maker of some of the best TV documentaries ever made on history and archaeology.' Times Literary Supplement

Military Diasporas proposes a new research approach to analyse the role of foreign military personnel as composite and partly imagined para-ethnic groups.These groups not only buttressed a state or empire's military might but crucially connected, policed, and administered (parts of) realms as a transcultural and transimperial class while representing the polity's universal or at least cosmopolitan aspirations at court or on diplomatic and military missions. Case studies of foreign militaries with a focus on their diasporic elements include the Achaemenid Empire, Ptolemaic Egypt, and the Roman Empire in the ancient world. These are followed by chapters on the Sassanid and Islamic occupation of Egypt, Byzantium, the Latin Aegean (Catalan Company) to Iberian Christian noblemen serving North African Islamic rulers, Mamluks and Italian Stradiots, followed by chapters on military diasporas in Hungary, the Teutonic Order including the Sword Brethren, and the Swiss military. The volume thus covers a broad band of military diasporic experiences and highlights aspects of their role in the building of state and empire from Antiquity to the late Middle Ages and from Persia via Egypt to the Baltic.With a broad chronological and geographic range, this volume is the ideal resource for upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars interested in the history of war and warfare from Antiquity to the sixteenth century.