The Long Eighteenth Century
Jane Austen’s England
Even if you’ve never read Jane Austen’s novels you probably have a clear image of what life was like for her characters thanks to excellent adaptations for film and television. Women wore white muslin dresses. Gentlemen wore precisely tied cravats and really tight pants. Red-coats wore, well, red-coats. People went to dances, visited great houses,…
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Shin-Kickers From History: William Wilberforce and the Abolition of the British Slave Trade
Unlike many other shin-kickers from history, William Wilberforce was a card-carrying member of the privileged classes–wealthy, educated, male, white. Born in 1759 to a wealthy merchant family in the Yorkshire port of Hull, Wilberforce spent his teen years and early adult life in what he later described as “utter idleness and dissipation”. While a student…
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Pontiac’s War
Two hundred and fifty years ago, the French and Indian Wars in North America came to an end. The Treaty of Paris redefined British, French, and Spanish colonial territories. France ceded Canada and the French territories east of the Mississippi to Britain and the Louisiana territory west of the Mississippi to Spain. Spain relinquished Florida…
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