It is the paradox at the heart of the Dutch Republic: how could a state emerge from resistance to political slavery and subjugation by a foreign power, only to become a colonial empire that promoted slavery all over the world? Slavery and the Dutch State shows how the modern Dutch state and its predecessors were complicit in colonial slavery. It describes the roles of various actors, such as enslaved people, administrators and merchants in the Netherlands and the colonized societies. More tha...

The astonishing story of the ten million books that were smuggled across the Iron Curtain during the Cold War.

A History of the Modern Middle East examines the profound and often dramatic transformations of the region in the past two centuries, from the Ottoman and Egyptian reforms, through the challenge of Western imperialism, to the impact of US foreign policies.

The gripping, untold story of how six epic journeys launched the three communist revolutions that changed world history forever. From the streets of Petrograd during the heady autumn of 1917, to Mao's stunning victory in October 1949, and Fidel's triumphant arrival in Havana, in January 1959, the history of the twentieth century was transformed in dramatic and profound ways by the Russian, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions. In Three Revolutions, the stories of these epoch-defining events are...

Could we ever see Vladimir Putin in the dock for his crimes? What about a Western ally like Benjamin Netanyahu? Putting a country's leader on trial once seemed unthinkable. But as journalist and human rights advocate Steve Crawshaw describes in Prosecuting the Powerful - a blend of vivid reportage and gripping history - a series of remarkable changes in recent years means that, despite many challenges, both scenarios are now a possibility.

Drawing on his on-the-ground reporting from ...