eBooks de Historia de los países de Europa, página 12 de 129

Through most of eight hundred years, Somerled of Argyll has been variously denounced as an intractable rebel against his rightful king and esteemed as the honoured ancestor of the later medieval Lord of the Isles, but he can be recognised now as a much more complex figure of major prominence in twelfth-century Scotland and of truly landmark significance in the long history of the Gael. In this book individual chapters investigate his emergence in the forefront of the Gaelic-Norse aristocracy of the western seaboard, his part in Gaeldoms challenge to the Canmore kings of Scots, his war on the Manx king of the Isles, his importance for the church on Iona, and his extraordinary invasion of the Clyde which was cut short by his violent death at Renfrew in 1164. Perhaps most impressive is the books demonstration of how almost everything that is known of or has been claimed for Somerled reflects the same characteristic fusion of Norse and Celt which binds the cultural roots of Gaeldom. It is this recognition which has led its author to his proposal of Somerleds wider historical importance as the personality who most represents the first fully-fledged emergence of the medieval Celtic-Scandinavian cultural province from which is directly descended the Gaelic Scotland of today.

Kenneth Roys panorama of post-war Scottish life begins with the VE night celebrations in the spring of 1945 and ends with the coming onstream of North Sea oil in the autumn of 1975. It was the formative period in the making of modern Scotland, but it is a period little explored in depth and not fully understood until now. Using a wealth of contemporary accounts, the book tells a complex and often disturbing story of a country riven by poverty, struggling for a sense of its own identity, and ill-served by its masters. The Invisible Spirit is unsparing in its examination of the failings of the Scottish establishment. It delivers a stinging indictment of political complacency and judicial incompetence and shows that, too often, the interests of Scotland and its people were betrayed. It exposes how, time and again, the truth was covered up in order to protect the powerful and how the press acquiescently accepted a far from reliable official version of events. The book is also, however, the story of ordinary lives, the aspirations, the hardships and the achievements of the Scots themselves. Richly varied in mood from the controversial to the amusing, The Invisible Spirit is both entertaining and compelling. It provides a unique perspective on Scotland at a turning point in its long history.

Witches in medieval fiction were linked with otherworlds heaven, hell or fairyland. By the later sixteenth century, as witchcraft prosecutions gathered pace, fictional witches were connected more firmly to the Devil and to hell. Writers then began undermining this by treating witchcraft as a topic of ridicule; threatening magic was replaced by harmless folklore. This book analyses fictional and imaginative writings about Scottish witches between about 1450 and 1750. It places literary witches in their historical context, comparing them with real people who were prosecuted and executed for witchcraft in this dark period of Scotlands past. It turns out that literary witches are often very different from historical ones: most are comical characters, and some are not even human. The phrase weird sisters, familiar from Shakespeares Macbeth, originated in Scotland, and there is a detailed discussion of the meaning of the phrase and connections between the Scottish play and Scotland itself. Many of Scotlands famous Renaissance poets and dramatists wrote about witches, including William Dunbar, Sir David Lindsay and Alexander Montgomerie, and their work is also explored. By the end of the book, the discussion turns to Robert Burnss Tam o Shanter (1791) in which literary witches are fantasy fiction as they have remained.

In 1939, when Ian Burumas epic opens, Berlin has been under Nazi rule for six years, and its 4.3 million people have made their accommodations to the regime, more or less. When war broke out with Poland in September, what was most striking at first was how little changed. Unless you were Jewish. Then life, already hard, was soon to get unfathomably worse.By 1943, with the German defeat at Stalingrad, ordinary life in Berlin would acquire an increasingly desperate cast. The last three years of the war in Berlin are truly a descent into hell, with a deranged regime in desperate free fall, an increasingly relentless pounding from Allied bombers, and the mounting dread of the approaching Soviet army. The common greeting of Berliners was now not Auf wiedersehen or Heil Hitler but Bleiben Sie ubrig -Stay alive. And by wars end Berlins population had fallen by almost half.Among the people trying to stay alive in the city was Ian Burumas own father, a prisoner conscripted into forced labour in the war economy along with 400,000 other imported workers. Buruma gives due weight to his and their experiences, which give the book a special added dimension. This is a book full of tenderness and genuine heroism, but it is by no means sentimental: again and again we see that most people do not do the hard thing most of the time. Most people go along. Its a lesson that has not lost its timeliness.

Published ahead of the centenary of the Queens birth, this beautifully illustrated book uncovers the hidden history of the Crown and how it survived a tumultuous era and two world wars. **Features over 100 sumptuous images**From the birth of the house of Windsor in 1917, its leading women - Queen Mary, the Queen Mother, the Duchess of Windsor and Queen Elizabeth II - faced the perils of abdication and assassination, revolution and the rise of fascism, the threat of invasion and all-out war. Their sartorial decisions, alongside those of their royal husbands, projected power and perpetuity, diplomacy and defiance.In this cinematic story of espionage and exquisite couture, Justine Picardie reveals the undercover lives of the creators behind the façade - including Hardy Amies, Cecil Beaton, Norman Hartnell and Edward Molyneux - and traces the ways in which visual iconography safeguarded the monarchy, even when their reign seemed to be hanging by a thread.Drawing on original research in the Royal Archives and her own experiences at Balmoral, Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace, Picardie explores the family feuds and international conflicts that challenged the Crown, and how royal fashion has long been wielded as a weapon.

This nationally important book reveals the untold story of the Irish tricolour: its true origins, a forgotten heroine, and the emblems it replaced. For the first time, a fully referenced history corrects long-standing myths and slurs surrounding Irelands national flag. It also reinterprets iconic Irish symbols from the harp and shamrock to the tri-spiral placing them within the broader journey toward Irish nationhood and national identity. Along Irelands road to a republic, key figures are restored to their rightful place from Owen Roe ONeill and Wolfe Tone to Thomas Meagher and Padraig Pearse.The book explores crucial turning points the rise of green as Irelands colour, the rebellions of 1642, 1798, 1848, and 1916, Catholic Emancipation, and the flags later use and misuse. A bold, insightful retelling of Irelands story through its symbols.

County Wicklows landscape is dotted with pre-Christian sites Baltinglass is known as the Hillfort Capital of Ireland. Saint Patrick landed in Wicklow in 432 AD and the county also boasts ecclesiastical sites, the most impressive being Glendalough. Following the Anglo-Norman invasion of 116970, Normans occupied the lowlands, but native Irish inhabited the uplands, leading to conflict throughout the Middle Ages. Wicklow became the last county to be shired in 1606.Wicklow witnessed more violence through the seventeenth century, and it was only after 1700 that the elite felt safe enough to build great houses such as Powerscourt and Russborough. Wicklow was in turmoil during the 1798 rebellion. Economic recovery was halted by the tragedy of Famine. Later in the nineteenth century, the Parnells led the Home Rule movement, the Land League and the Ladies Land League. The twentieth century saw war, revolution and hardship before better times arrived after 1960.Meticulously researched, this clear, user-friendly book is an invaluable resource which will appeal to everyone interested in the history of County Wicklow.

"The Bloody Bucket The war where 2,000 men died for a wooden pail" tells the story of the War of the Bucket (War of the Oaken Bucket) in 1325. Tensions were high between the Italian city-states of Modena and Bologna. But the spark wasnt land or religion; it was a raid where Modenese soldiers stole a bucket from a well in Bologna.Historian Julian Smith chronicles the Battle of Zappolino, one of the largest battles of the Middle Ages, involving 32,000 soldiers. Bologna demanded the bucket back. Modena refused. 2,000 men died in the fighting. Modena won and kept the bucket."The Bloody Bucket" highlights the absurdity of human conflict. To this day, the stolen bucket hangs in the bell tower of the Cathedral of Modena, a rotting wooden trophy that cost more lives per splinter than any artifact in history.

"Mothers Ruin The epidemic that made London drunk for fifty years" chronicles the London Gin Craze of the early 18th century. When the government allowed unlicensed gin production to hurt the French wine trade, pint of gin became cheaper than a pint of beer. The result was catastrophic.Historian Charles Jack details the social collapse depicted in William Hogarths famous print Gin Lane. Death rates outstripped birth rates. Mothers sold their childrens clothes for gin; men drank until they went blind. The spirit was so toxic it was often flavored with turpentine or sulfuric acid."Mothers Ruin" explores the first modern drug panic. It analyzes the governments desperate attempts to pass the "Gin Acts" to tax the poor into sobriety and the riots that followed. It is a grim history of addiction, poverty, and the unintended consequences of economic protectionism.

On August 10, 1628, the Swedish warship Vasathe most powerful / expensive ship ever builtset sail on her maiden voyage. She traveled less than a mile before a light breeze caused her to capsize and sink in Stockholm harbor, watched by thousands. Historian Erik Nelson deconstructs this maritime tragedy in "The Ship That Sank Itself."Nelson frames the Vasa not as a mystery, but as a classic case of "Scope Creep" and management failure. King Gustavus Adolphus constantly changed the requirements, adding a second gun deck and heavy bronze cannons that made the ship top-heavy. The shipwrights knew it was unstable but were too terrified of the King to stop the launch.The book details the fascinating salvage operation in 1961 and the ships second life as a museum. It serves as a timeless parable for modern project managers about the dangers of ignoring physics to please a boss.

The Industrial Revolution was not merely technological progressit was a fundamental restructuring of how people lived, worked, and understood their place in society. This book examines how mechanization transformed social relationships, urban environments, and individual experiences across 18th and 19th century Europe, moving beyond factory machinery to explore human consequences.Drawing on workers letters, factory records, parliamentary inquiries, and material culture, the narrative traces how industrialization disrupted rural communities, created new urban poverty, and reshaped family structures. Factory discipline replaced agricultural rhythms, child labor became economic necessity, and pollution transformed cityscapes. Yet workers also organized, negotiated, and resisteddeveloping unions, mutual aid societies, and political movements.The book explores how different social classes experienced transformation: entrepreneurs accumulating capital, artisans losing autonomy, women entering wage labor, children working machines. Through analysis of wage books, housing conditions, and firsthand testimony, it reveals the institutional and personal disruptions that accompanied economic growth. Relevant for understanding how technological change creates winners and losers, and how societies navigate the human costs of progress when efficiency logic overrides community welfare.

Gutenbergs printing press was not simply a technological inventionit was a structural disruption that fundamentally altered how information moved through society. This book examines how movable type transformed the mechanics of knowledge distribution, creating new relationships between authors, printers, readers, and authorities across 15th and 16th century Europe.Drawing on printing house records, censorship documents, and circulation patterns, the narrative traces how standardized texts challenged oral tradition and manuscript culture. The press enabled mass production of religious texts that undermined Church monopoly on scriptural interpretation, while political pamphlets created new forms of public discourse that rulers struggled to control.The book explores how printing networks operated as economic enterprises, intellectual communities, and sites of political tension. Through analysis of early printed books, printer correspondence, and institutional responses, it reveals the social consequences of making information reproducible and portable. Relevant for understanding how communication technologies reshape power structures, from Protestant Reformation debates to scientific knowledge-sharing that accelerated intellectual exchange across borders.

The French Revolution was not a linear path from tyranny to libertyit was a contested process where ideological commitments collided with institutional breakdown, producing both democratic aspirations and systematic terror. This book examines how revolutionary actors navigated the gap between Enlightenment ideals and the practical realities of dismantling an absolute monarchy while defending against external threats.Drawing on legislative debates, pamphlets, eyewitness accounts, and administrative records, the narrative traces how revolution radicalized through stages: constitutional monarchy, republican experiment, and Terror. The analysis explores how competing visions of libertynatural rights versus collective securityjustified escalating violence. Revolutionary tribunals, mass executions, and civil war emerged not as betrayals of principles but as logical outcomes when radical egalitarianism encountered perceived enemies and resource scarcity.The book explores how ordinary people experienced revolution: peasants seizing land, sans-culottes demanding bread, provincial communities resisting Parisian authority. Through analysis of trial records, popular petitions, and regional responses, it reveals tensions between revolutionary rhetoric and lived consequences. Relevant for understanding how political movements transform when ideological purity confronts governance challenges, and how regimes justify violence through claims of defending revolution itself.

Medieval womens power operated through channels that traditional chronicles rarely documentedproperty management, religious patronage, trade networks, and household governance. This book examines how women across social classes exercised agency within and beyond legal constraints, revealing a more complex picture of medieval society than male-centered narratives suggest.Drawing on wills, account books, monastic records, and material evidence, the narrative traces how women managed estates during Crusades, controlled wealth through dowries and inheritances, founded religious institutions, and influenced political decisions through kinship networks. Noblewomen negotiated treaties, merchant wives ran businesses, and abbesses governed entire communities with administrative and spiritual authority.The book explores how womens documented activities challenge assumptions about medieval gender restrictions. Through analysis of legal documents, correspondence, and archaeological finds, it reveals economic contributions, intellectual networks, and political strategies that shaped medieval life. Relevant for understanding how power functions outside formal institutions and how historical narratives privilege certain sources while marginalizing others that would complicate simplified stories about womens exclusion from medieval public life.

German reunification is remembered as a triumph of democracy, but for millions it meant unemployment, cultural erasure, and the sudden collapse of every institution they had known. This book traces how East and West Germans experienced the decade after the Wall fell in 1989, moving beyond official narratives to examine the workers who lost careers overnight, families divided by economic migration, and communities struggling to reconcile incompatible memories of the same country.Drawing on personal testimonies, Treuhand archives, social research data, and local government records, the narrative follows reunification through the eyes of those who lived it: Leipzig factory workers facing privatization, West German administrators imposing unfamiliar systems, small-town mayors managing social disintegration, and young people caught between nostalgia for the GDR and promises of prosperity that never materialized for many.The book explores how the Treuhands rushed privatization destroyed East German industry while enriching West German investors, how welfare systems collapsed under pressure from mass unemployment, and how different historical experiencesantifascism versus Vergangenheitsbewaltigung, socialist workplace culture versus market competitioncreated misunderstandings that persist today. It examines the emergence of Ostalgie as both genuine loss and political manipulation, and how reunifications failures contributed to contemporary right-wing populism in former East Germany.Relevant for readers interested in how rapid systemic change affects ordinary lives, how economic transformation creates lasting social divisions, and why official success stories often conceal institutional failures and human costs.

The European Union emerged from post-war idealism as a peace project, but its evolution into a supranational bureaucracy governing 450 million people happened largely outside public debate. This book traces how the EU developed from the 1951 Coal and Steel Community through Maastricht, the euro crisis, and Brexit, examining the gap between integrations architects and the citizens who experienced its consequences through currency changes, labor migration, austerity policies, and sovereignty debates.Drawing on EU Commission documents, national parliamentary records, economic data, and testimonies from officials, workers, and activists across member states, the narrative follows integration through the experiences of those who built and contested it: French technocrats designing institutional structures, Greek pensioners facing troika-imposed cuts, Polish plumbers becoming symbols of labor mobility fears, and British voters rejecting a project they never felt consulted about.The book explores how the euros design flaws created asymmetric crisis responses that protected creditor nations while punishing southern Europe, how Schengens open borders functioned until migration flows revealed absent coordination mechanisms, and how democratic deficitsdecisions made by unelected commissionersfueled populist backlash across the continent. It examines the tension between economic integration that benefits capital mobility and social protection that requires national sovereignty.Relevant for readers interested in how supranational institutions develop beyond original mandates, how economic policy creates political consequences, and why technocratic solutions often generate the democratic resistance they sought to avoid.

The Cold War emerged not inevitably from World War IIs end but from fundamentally incompatible visions of political and economic organization. This book examines how American liberal capitalism and Soviet communismboth claiming universal validitytransformed wartime allies into adversaries whose competition shaped global politics for half a century without direct military confrontation between superpowers.Through declassified diplomatic cables, party archives, parliamentary debates, intelligence assessments, and firsthand accounts from political actors across the Iron Curtain, the narrative traces how ideological commitments hardened into rigid blocs. The book follows key moments: disagreements over Polands government, the Marshall Plans economic reconstruction linking Western Europe to American markets, the Berlin Blockade testing resolve, NATO and Warsaw Pact formalizing military divisions.Beyond superpower capitals, the narrative explores how Cold War logic penetrated domestic politics throughout Europeanticommunist purges in the West, suppression of dissent in the East, neutral nations navigating impossible pressures. It examines how both systems justified authoritarianism through external threat: McCarthyism and surveillance states in Western democracies, show trials and closed borders in Eastern bloc countries.The book analyzes detentes possibilities and limitations, Solidaritys challenge to Soviet control, Gorbachevs reforms intended to save communism that instead enabled its collapse, and reunifications complexities. It questions triumphalist narratives by examining economic exhaustion, systemic failures, and popular resistance that undermined Soviet authority alongside Western pressure.

In December 1952, a high-pressure weather system trapped the smoke from millions of coal fires over London. Within hours, visibility dropped to zero. By the time the "Great Smog" lifted five days later, 12,000 people were dead. Historian Arthur Penn reconstructs this suffocating tragedy in "The Black Fog."Penn vividly describes a city where cinemas closed because audiences couldnt see the screen, and where funeral directors ran out of coffins. He exposes the initial government cover-up, where politicians blamed the deaths on influenza to protect the coal industry.The book documents the turning point: how this disaster shocked the world and led directly to the Clean Air Act of 1956, the first modern environmental legislation. "The Black Fog" is a grim reminder of the price of industrialization and a testament to the fact that the right to breathe clean air was written in the blood of Londoners.

The Golden Age of Piracy wasnt simply lawless adventureit emerged from the fractures of imperial expansion, where sailors, escaped slaves, and dispossessed colonists created autonomous communities beyond European control. This book traces how Caribbean piracy developed as both economic survival strategy and rejection of the brutal hierarchies governing colonial trade, naval service, and plantation labor.Through admiralty court records, ship logs, colonial correspondence, and rare pirate testimonies, the narrative reveals who became pirates and why: merchant sailors facing starvation wages and deadly conditions, privateers abandoned when wars ended, Africans who escaped enslavement, indigenous peoples resisting colonization. Pirate crews established surprisingly democratic governanceelected captains, shared plunder, disability compensationthat contrasted sharply with the absolute authority on naval and merchant vessels.The book examines piracys relationship to legitimate commerce: how pirates disrupted Spanish silver flows, challenged English and French trade monopolies, and forced colonial powers to negotiate despite official rhetoric of extermination. It follows the establishment of pirate havens like Nassau, where multi-ethnic communities temporarily flourished outside plantation economies and racial hierarchies, until imperial navies systematically destroyed these alternatives.Crucially, the narrative avoids romanticization while taking pirates seriously as historical actors who exploited and perpetuated violence even as they resisted exploitation themselves. Their suppression reveals how European powers consolidated control over Atlantic trade through coordinated naval force, expanded legal frameworks, and elimination of economic alternatives to imperial systems.

Behind Cold War statistics of defectors and refugees stand thousands of individual decisions to abandon homes, families, and entire lives for uncertain freedom. This book follows personal testimonies of those who escaped across the Iron Curtaintheir planning, terror, narrow successes, and frequent failuresto understand what division meant for ordinary Europeans trapped on the wrong side of ideological boundaries.Through escape narratives preserved in refugee interviews, Stasi surveillance files, border guard reports, Western intelligence debriefings, and family correspondence, the narrative reconstructs how people assessed impossible choices. A young engineer calculates risks of swimming the Danube versus bribing officials. Parents debate whether escaping with children increases danger or moral necessity. Artists weigh creative freedom against leaving aging relatives wholl face interrogation.The book examines escape methods across decades: early postwar chaos when borders remained porous, Berlin Walls construction forcing desperate improvisation, sophisticated tunnel networks and forged documents, diplomatic asylum requests, and late-Cold War legal emigration that still required years of bureaucratic limbo. It explores the infrastructure supporting escapesWestern organizations funding operations, underground networks smuggling people, safe houses along routesand brutal suppression efforts including shoot-to-kill orders, minefields, and systematic punishment of failed escapees families.The narrative follows escapees beyond border crossing: refugee camp processing, integration struggles, survivor guilt, and decades spent advocating for those left behind. It includes stories of those caught attempting escape, whose imprisonment and forced separation reveal the systems cruelty toward anyone choosing exit over loyalty.