Download or read book 1812 written by George C Daughan and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2011-10-04 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the outbreak of the War of 1812, America's prospects looked dismal. It was clear that the primary battlefield would be the open ocean -- but America's war fleet, only twenty ships strong, faced a practiced British navy of more than a thousand men-of-war. Still, through a combination of nautical deftness and sheer bravado, the American navy managed to take the fight to the British and turn the tide of the war: on the Great Lakes, in the Atlantic, and even in the eastern Pacific. In 1812: The Navy's War, prizewinning historian George C. Daughan tells the thrilling story of how a handful of heroic captains and their stalwart crews overcame spectacular odds to lead the country to victory against the world's greatest imperial power. A stunning contribution to military and national history, 1812: The Navy's War is the first complete account in more than a century of how the U.S. Navy rescued the fledgling nation and secured America's future.

Download or read book The Napoleonic Wars written by Alexander Mikaberidze and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 977 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first truly global history of the Napoleonic Wars, arguably the first world war.

Download or read book Titan written by William R. Nester and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2016-05-31 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the leaders of the French Revolution executed Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in 1793, they sent a chilling message to the hereditary ruling orders in Europe. Believing that monarchy anywhere presented a threat to democratic rule in France, the leaders of the revolution declared war on European aristocracies, including those of Great Britain. For more than twenty years thereafter, France and England waged a protracted war that ended in British victory. In Titan, William R. Nester offers a deeply informed and thoroughly fascinating narrative of how England accomplished this remarkable feat. Between 1789 and 1815, British leaders devised, funded, and led seven coalitions against the revolutionary and Napoleonic governments of France. In each enterprise, statesmen and generals searched for order amid a complex welter of bureaucratic, political, economic, psychological, technological, and international forces. Nester combines biographies of great men—the likes of William Pitt, Horatio Nelson, and Arthur Wellesley—with an explanation of the critical decisions they made in Britain’s struggle for power and his own keen analysis of the forces that operated beyond their control. Their efforts would eventually crush France and Napoleon and establish a system of European power relations that prevented a world war for nearly a century. The interplay of individuals and events, the importance of conjunctures and contingency, the significance of Britain's island character and resources: all come into play in Nester's exploration of the art of British military diplomacy. The result is a comprehensive and insightful account of the endeavors of statesmen and generals to master the art of power in a complex battle for empire.

Download or read book The Monroe Doctrine 1823 1826 written by Dexter Perkins and published by London, Milford. This book was released on 1927 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Wellington Waterloo and the Fortunes of Peace 1814 1852 written by Rory Muir and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-06-09 with total page 761 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The preeminent Wellington biographer presents a fascinating reassessment of the Duke’s most famous victory and his political career after Waterloo. The Duke of Wellington’s momentous victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo was the culminating point of a brilliant military career. Yet Wellington’s achievements were far from over. He commanded the allied army of occupation in France to the end of 1818, returned home to a seat in Lord Liverpool’s cabinet, and became prime minister in 1828. He later served as a senior minister in Robert Peel’s government and remained Commander-in-Chief of the Army for a decade until his death in 1852. In this richly detailed work, the second and concluding volume of Rory Muir’s definitive biography, the author offers a substantial reassessment of Wellington’s significance as a politician and a nuanced view of the private man behind the legendary hero. Muir presents new insights into Wellington’s determination to keep peace at home and abroad, achieved by maintaining good relations with the Continental powers, resisting radical agitation, and granting political equality to the Catholics in Ireland. Countering one-dimensional image of Wellington as a national hero, Muir paints a nuanced portrait of a man whose austere public demeanor belied his entertaining, gossipy, generous, and unpretentious private self.

Download or read book Stay the Hand of Vengeance written by Gary Jonathan Bass and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-28 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: International justice has become a crucial part of the ongoing political debates about the future of shattered societies like Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, Cambodia, and Chile. Why do our governments sometimes display such striking idealism in the face of war crimes and atrocities abroad, and at other times cynically abandon the pursuit of international justice altogether? Why today does justice seem so slow to come for war crimes victims in the Balkans? In this book, Gary Bass offers an unprecedented look at the politics behind international war crimes tribunals, combining analysis with investigative reporting and a broad historical perspective. The Nuremberg trials powerfully demonstrated how effective war crimes tribunals can be. But there have been many other important tribunals that have not been as successful, and which have been largely left out of today's debates about international justice. This timely book brings them in, using primary documents to examine the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, World War I, the Armenian genocide, World War II, and the recent wars in the former Yugoslavia. Bass explains that bringing war criminals to justice can be a military ordeal, a source of endless legal frustration, as well as a diplomatic nightmare. The book takes readers behind the scenes to see vividly how leaders like David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Bill Clinton have wrestled with these agonizing moral dilemmas. The book asks how law and international politics interact, and how power can be made to serve the cause of justice. Bass brings new archival research to bear on such events as the prosecution of the Armenian genocide, presenting surprising episodes that add to the historical record. His sections on the former Yugoslavia tell--with important new discoveries--the secret story of the politicking behind the prosecution of war crimes in Bosnia, drawing on interviews with senior White House officials, key diplomats, and chief prosecutors at the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Bass concludes that despite the obstacles, legalistic justice for war criminals is nonetheless worth pursuing. His arguments will interest anyone concerned about human rights and the pursuit of idealism in international politics.

Download or read book The Lost Queen written by Anne M Stott and published by Pen and Sword History. This book was released on 2020-03-30 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the only child of the Prince Regent and Caroline of Brunswick, Princess Charlotte of Wales (1796-1817) was the heiress presumptive to the throne. Her parents’ marriage had already broken up by the time she was born. She had a difficult childhood and a turbulent adolescence, but she was popular with the public, who looked to her to restore the good name of the monarchy. When she broke off her engagement to a Dutch prince, her father put her under virtual imprisonment and she endured a period of profound unhappiness. But she held out for the freedom to choose her husband, and when she married Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg she finally achieved contentment. Her happiness was cruelly cut short when she died in childbirth at the age of twenty-one only eighteen months later. A shocked nation went into mourning for its ‘people’s princess’, the queen who never was.

Download or read book Democracy and Peace Making written by Philip Towle and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-01-14 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy and Peace Making is an invaluable and up-to-date account of the process of peace making, which draws on the most recent historical thinking. It surveys the post-war peace settlements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including: * the Vienna congress of 1815 * the Treaty of Versailles * the peace settlements of the Second World War * peace talks after the Korean War * the Paris Peace Accords of 1973.

Download or read book Studies in History Economics and Public Law written by and published by . This book was released on 1911 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Wellington s Light Division in the Peninsular War written by Robert Burnham and published by Frontline Books. This book was released on 2020-12-14 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A detailed and riveting account of the Light Division and its three regiments, 43rd and 52nd Light Infantry and the 95th Rifles . . . An important book.” —Firetrench In February 1810, Wellington formed what became the most famous unit in the Peninsular War: the Light Division. Formed around the 43rd and 52nd Light Infantry and the 95th Rifles, the exploits of these three regiments is legendary. Over the next 50 months, the division would fight and win glory in almost every battle and siege of the Peninsular War. How the division achieved its fame began on the border of Spain and Portugal where it served as a screen between Wellington’s Army and the French. When it came time pull back from the border, the division endured a harrowing retreat with a relentless enemy at their heels. It was during this eventful year it developed an esprit-de-corps and a belief in its leaders and itself that was unrivaled in Wellington’s Army. Wellington’s Light Division in the Peninsular War uses over 100 primary sources—many never published before—to recount the numerous skirmishes, combats, and battles, as well as the hardships of a year of duty on the front lines. Others are from long-forgotten books published over 150 years ago. It is through the words of the officers and men who served with it that this major, and long-anticipated study of the first critical year of the Light Division is told. “Given the limited scope of the book, covering only one year of the Peninsular campaign, the depth of the study is truly remarkable . . . An excellent history of the Light Division ‘Warts and All.’”—The Napoleon Series

Download or read book Plunder written by Cynthia Saltzman and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of The Christian Science Monitor's Ten Best Books of May "A highly original work of history . . . [Saltzman] has written a distinctive study that transcends both art and history and forces us to explore the connections between the two.” —Roger Lowenstein, The Wall Street Journal A captivatingstudy of Napoleon’s plundering of Europe’s art for the Louvre, told through the story of a Renaissance masterpiece seized from Venice Cynthia Saltzman’s Plunder recounts the fate of Paolo Veronese’s Wedding Feast at Cana, a vast, sublime canvas that the French, under the command of the young Napoleon Bonaparte, tore from a wall of the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore, on an island in Venice, in 1797. Painted in 1563 during the Renaissance, the picture was immediately hailed as a masterpiece. Veronese had filled the scene with some 130 figures, lavishing color on the canvas to build the illusion that the viewers’ space opened onto a biblical banquet taking place on a terrace in sixteenth-century Venice. Once pulled from the wall, the Venetian canvas crossed the Mediterranean rolled on a cylinder; soon after, artworks commandeered from Venice and Rome were triumphantly brought into Paris. In 1801, the Veronese went on exhibition at the Louvre, the new public art museum founded during the Revolution in the former palace of the French kings. As Saltzman tells the larger story of Napoleon’s looting of Italian art and its role in the creation of the Louvre, she reveals the contradictions of his character: his thirst for greatness—to carry forward the finest aspects of civilization—and his ruthlessness in getting whatever he sought. After Napoleon’s 1815 defeat at Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington and the Allies forced the French to return many of the Louvre’s plundered paintings and sculptures. Nevertheless, The Wedding Feast at Cana remains in Paris to this day, hanging directly across from the Mona Lisa. Expertly researched and deftly told, Plunder chronicles one of the most spectacular art appropriation campaigns in history, one that sheds light on a seminal historical figure and the complex origins of one of the great museums of the world.

Download or read book Columbia Studies in the Social Sciences written by and published by . This book was released on 1911 with total page 686 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Making of the Balkan States written by William Smith Murray and published by . This book was released on 1911 with total page 676 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Columbia University Studies in the Social Sciences written by and published by . This book was released on 1911 with total page 668 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book In Nelson s Wake written by James Davey and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-17 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Battles, blockades, convoys, raids: An “impressive” account of how the indefatigable British Royal Navy ensured Napoleon’s ultimate defeat (International Journal of Military History). Horatio Nelson’s celebrated victory over the French at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 presented Britain with an unprecedented command of the seas. Yet the Royal Navy’s role in the struggle against Napoleonic France was far from over. This groundbreaking book asserts that, contrary to the accepted notion that the Battle of Trafalgar essentially completed the Navy’s task, the war at sea actually intensified over the next decade, ceasing only with Napoleon’s final surrender. In this dramatic account of naval contributions between 1803 and 1815, James Davey offers original and exciting insights into the Napoleonic wars and Britain’s maritime history. Encompassing Trafalgar, the Peninsular War, the War of 1812, the final campaign against Napoleon, and many lesser known but likewise crucial moments, the book sheds light on the experiences of individuals high and low, from admiral and captain to sailor and cabin boy. The cast of characters also includes others from across Britain—dockyard workers, politicians, civilians—who made fundamental contributions to the war effort, and in so doing, both saved the nation and shaped Britain’s history.

Download or read book Wellington s Command written by George E. Jaycock and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2020-01-19 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A military historian assesses the leadership style of the man who defeated Napoleon. The Duke of Wellington’s victory at the Battle of Waterloo cemented his reputation as a great general, and much subsequent writing on his career has taken an uncritical, sometimes chauvinistic view of his talents. Little has been published that fully pins down the reality of Wellington’s leadership, clearly identifying his weaknesses as well as his strengths. George E. Jaycock, in this perceptive and thought-provoking reassessment, does not aim to undermine Wellington’s achievements, but to provide a more nuanced perspective. He clarifies some simple but fundamental truths regarding his leadership and his performance as a commander. Through an in-depth study of his actions over the war years of 1808 to 1815, the author reassesses Wellington’s effectiveness as a commander, the competence of his subordinates, and the qualities of the troops he led. His study gives a fascinating insight into Wellington’s career and abilities. Wellington’s Command is absorbing reading for both military historians and those with an interest in the Napoleonic period.

Download or read book The Coalitions Against Napoleon written by William Nester and published by Frontline Books. This book was released on 2023-06-30 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Britain alone could not hope to defeat the might of Napoleonic France which, through enforced conscription, had become a nation in arms. But British leaders had a long history of forging alliances to counter their rivals and when revolution ravaged France in 1793 and a levée en masse raised a huge patriotic army, it was through a coalition of monarchies that French ambitions were restrained – a coalition made possible by British gold and British industry. When Napoleon seized the reins of power in France, he too introduced conscription and, once again, it was a succession of British led and funded coalitions which eventually brought Napoleon to his knees. During the years 1793 to 1815, the British Government formed and underwrote seven coalitions that cost Britain £1,657,854,518 as the national debt tripled from £290,000,000 to £860,000,00. Of that, British subsidies to around thirty allies amounted to £65,830,228, along with staggering amounts of war supplies mass produced by British factories and shipped to allies. Britain’s leading role in Europe did not end with Waterloo. Immediately following the Sixth Coalition, and amidst the Seventh Coalition, Britain constructed, with the other great powers, a security system of cooperation and consultation called the ‘Concert of Europe’ that prevented a serious war among them for two generations. Britain’s power to underwrite those coalitions came from a related series of revolutions – agrarian, mercantile, financial, technological, manufacturing, cultural, and political that developed over the proceeding century. For many reasons that happened in Britain and not elsewhere. Of them, cultural values may be most crucial. Constraints were fewer and incentives greater for enterprising Britons to invest, invent, buy, and sell in ways that enriched themselves and their nation more than elsewhere. During the eighteenth century, Britain’s leaders mastered a virtuous power cycle of victorious wars, expanding production, captured territories and markets, and more income. During a speech before Congress in December 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called on Americans to be an ‘arsenal of democracy’ to aid Britain and other countries threatened by the imperialistic fascist powers. Britain played exactly the same role during the Napoleonic era. The Coalitions Against Napoleon explores how Britain developed and asserted the financial, manufacturing, and military power to achieve that goal.