The story of thirteen modern Empires, a story full of suspense, cruelty, conflict, heroism, great explorations and extraordinary feats of endurance, is told here with a rich profusion of illustrations drawn from a wide range of vivid, colourful, authentic sources. This enthralling account, making use of the huge resources of modern scholarship, raises new subjects - from the differing role of men and women to ecology and food - but also shows us how the maps of explorations, the chronologies of the conquests, the pantheons of explorers, settlers and administrators, the balance sheets of commerce and all else that made up the "Age of Empires" play a key role in explaining the global civilization of today.

This is a major new history of the dramatic and enduring changes in the daily lives of poor European women and men in the nineteenth century. Rachel G. Fuchs conveys the extraordinary difficulties facing the destitute from England to Russia, paying particular attention to the texture of women's everyday lives. She shows their strength as they attempted to structure a life and set of relationships within a social order, culture, community, and the law. Within a climate of calamities, the poor relied on their own resourcefulness and community connections where the boundaries between the private and public were indistinguishable, and on a system of exchange and reciprocity to help them fashion their culture of expediencies. This accessible synthesis introduces readers to conflicting interpretations of major historic developments and evaluates those interpretations. It will be essential reading for students of women's and gender studies, urban history and social and family history.

For nearly one hundred and fifty years before abolition in 1807, Cape Coast Castle on the African "Gold Coast" was, in the words of one of its British governors, the grand emporium of the British slave trade. From this handsome building perched on the shore of the South Atlantic Ocean, men, women and children born in Africa were sold as slaves and carried on British slave ships to the West Indies, to North and South America and to destinations elsewhere.

An examination of Chartist democracy viewed 'from below' Considers which groups were more and less vocal in the movement, how political identity intertwined with craft, ethnicity, gender and class. Questions myths, memories, and identities and will appeal to students of history, sociology and culture challenges the approach of Gareth Stedman-Jones, Patrick Joyce and James Vernon This study explores the development and decline of Chartism as a coherent political identity between 1830 and 1860 and illustrates the creation of Chartist identity from the perspective of plebeian intellectuals and activists in Ashton-under-Lyne and other militant localities of Greater Manchester and Lancashire.