The Penguin History Of Britain The Struggle For Mastery

Author : David A. Carpenter
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 9780195220001
Total Pages : 652 pages
Book Rating : 4.05/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Struggle for Mastery written by David A. Carpenter and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2003 with total page 652 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this comprehensive synthesis canvassing the peoples, economies, religion, languages, and political leadership of medieval Britain, Carpenter weaves together the histories of England, Scotland, and Wales.

Author : David Carpenter
Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 014196846X
Total Pages : 461 pages
Book Rating : 4.69/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Magna Carta written by David Carpenter and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2015-01-15 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'David Carpenter deserves to replace Sir James Holt as the standard authority, and an unfailingly readable one too.' Ferdinand Mount, TLS 'An invaluable new commentary' Jill Leopore, New Yorker With a new commentary by David Carpenter "No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land." Magna Carta, forced on King John in 1215 by rebellion, is one of the most famous documents in world history. It asserts a fundamental principle: that the ruler is subject to the law. Alongside a new text and translation of the Charter, David Carpenter's commentary draws on new discoveries to give an entirely fresh account of Magna Carta's text, origins, survival and enforcement, showing how it quickly gained a central place in English political life. It also uses Magna Carta as a lens through which to view thirteenth-century society, focusing on women and peasants as well as barons and knights. The book is a landmark in Magna Carta studies. 2015 is the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta's creation - an event which will be marked with exhibitions, commemorations and debates in all the countries over whose constitutions and legal assumptions the shadow of Magna Carta hangs.

Author : David Carpenter
Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 0141935146
Total Pages : 777 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Penguin History of Britain: The Struggle for Mastery written by David Carpenter and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2004-08-26 with total page 777 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The two-and-a-half centuries after 1066 were momentous ones in the history of Britain. In 1066, England was conquered for the last time. The Anglo-Saxon ruling class was destroyed and and the English became a subject race, dominated by a Norman-French dynasty and aristocracy. This book shows how the English domination of the kingdom was by no means a foregone conclusion. The struggle for mastery in the book's title is in reality the struggle for different masteries within Great Britain. The book weaves together the histories of England, Scotland and Wales in a new way and argues that all three, in their different fashions, were competing for domination

Author : Michael Prestwich
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0199226873
Total Pages : 663 pages
Book Rating : 4.70/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Plantagenet England 1225-1360 written by Michael Prestwich and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2007 with total page 663 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "England of the Plantagenet kings was a turbulent place. In politics it saw Simon de Montfort's challenge to the crown in Henry III's reign and it witnessed the deposition of Edward II. By contrast, and as relief, it also experienced the highly successful rules of Edward I and his grandson, Edward III. Political institutions were transformed with the development of parliament, and war, the stimulus for some of that change, was never far away. Wales was conquered and the Scottish Wars of Independence started in Edward I's reign, while Crecy and Poitiers were English triumphs under Edward III." "Beyond politics, the structure of English society was developing, from the great magnates at the top to the peasantry at the bottom. Economic changes were also significant, from the expansionary period of the thirteenth century to years of difficulty in the fourteenth, culminating in the greatest demographic disaster of historical times, the Black Death." "Embracing politics and government, kingship, the structure of society, France, Scotland, and Wales, as well as areas such as the environment, the management of the land, crime and punishment, Michael Prestwich's survey casts the Plantagenet past in a new and revealing light."--BOOK JACKET.

Author : Brendan Simms
Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 0465065953
Total Pages : 722 pages
Book Rating : 4.50/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Europe written by Brendan Simms and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2013-04-30 with total page 722 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With "verve and panache," this magisterial history of Europe since 1453 shows how struggles over the heart of the continent have shaped the world we live in today (The Economist). Whoever controls the core of Europe controls the entire continent, and whoever controls Europe can dominate the world. Over the past five centuries, a rotating cast of kings, conquerors, presidents, and dictators have set their sights on the European heartland, desperate to seize this pivotal area or at least prevent it from falling into the wrong hands. From Charles V and Napoleon to Bismarck and Cromwell, from Hitler and Stalin to Roosevelt and Gorbachev, nearly all the key power players of modern history have staked their titanic visions on this vital swath of land. In Europe, prizewinning historian Brendan Simms presents an authoritative account of the past half-millennium of European history, demonstrating how the battle for mastery of the continent's center has shaped the modern world. A bold and compelling work by a renowned scholar, Europe integrates religion, politics, military strategy, and international relations to show how history -- and Western civilization itself -- was forged in the crucible of Europe.

Author : John Darwin
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1620400391
Total Pages : 497 pages
Book Rating : 4.95/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Unfinished Empire written by John Darwin and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-02-12 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Darwin's After Tamerlane, a sweeping six-hundred-year history of empires around the globe, marked him as a historian of "massive erudition" and narrative mastery. In Unfinished Empire, he marshals his gifts to deliver a monumental one-volume history of Britain's imperium-a work that is sure to stand as the most authoritative, most compelling treatment of the subject for a generation. Darwin unfurls the British Empire's beginnings and decline and its extraordinary range of forms of rule, from settler colonies to island enclaves, from the princely states of India to ramshackle trading posts. His penetrating analysis offers a corrective to those who portray the empire as either naked exploitation or a grand "civilizing mission." Far from ever having a "master plan," the British Empire was controlled by a range of interests often at loggerheads with one another and was as much driven on by others' weaknesses as by its own strength. It shows, too, that the empire was never stable: to govern was a violent process, inevitably creating wars and rebellions. Unfinished Empire is a remarkable, nuanced history of the most complex polity the world has ever known, and a serious attempt to describe the diverse, contradictory ways-from the military to the cultural-in which empires really function. This is essential reading for any lover of sweeping history, or anyone wishing to understand how the modern world came into being.

Author : Efraim Karsh
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674005419
Total Pages : 454 pages
Book Rating : 4.14/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Empires of the Sand written by Efraim Karsh and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2001-04-02 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors "show how the Hashemites played a decisive role in shaping present Middle Eastern boundaries and in hastening the collapse of Ottoman rule."--Jacket.

Author : Miri Rubin
Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 0141908009
Total Pages : 625 pages
Book Rating : 4.07/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Hollow Crown written by Miri Rubin and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2005-01-27 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is no more haunting, compelling period in Britain's history than the later middle ages. The extraordinary kings - Edward III and Henry V the great warriors, Richard II and Henry VI, tragic inadequates killed by their failure to use their power, and Richard III, the demon king. The extraordinary events - the Black Death that destroyed a third of the population, the Peasants' Revolt, the Wars of the Roses, the Battle of Agincourt. The extraordinary artistic achievements - the great churches, castles and tombs that still dominate the landscape, the birth of the English language in The Canterbury Tales. For the first time in a generation, a historian has had the vision and confidence to write a spell-binding account of the era immortalised by Shakespeare's history plays. THE HOLLOW CROWN brilliantly brings to life for the reader a world we have long lost - a strange, Catholic, rural country of monks, peasants, knights and merchants, almost perpetually at war - but continues to define so much of England's national myth.

Author : Roger Knight
Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 0141977027
Total Pages : 416 pages
Book Rating : 4.27/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Britain Against Napoleon written by Roger Knight and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2013-10-24 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Roger Knight, established by his multi-award winning book The Pursuit of Victory as 'an authority ... none of his rivals can match' (N.A.M. Rodger), Britain Against Napoleon is the first book to explain how the British state successfully organised itself to overcome Napoleon - and how very close it came to defeat. For more than twenty years after 1793, the French army was supreme in continental Europe, and the British population lived in fear of French invasion. How was it that despite multiple changes of government and the assassination of a Prime Minister, Britain survived and won a generation-long war against a regime which at its peak in 1807 commanded many times the resources and manpower? This book looks beyond the familiar exploits of the army and navy to the politicians and civil servants, and examines how they made it possible to continue the war at all. It shows the degree to which, as the demands of the war remorselessly grew, the whole British population had to play its part. The intelligence war was also central. Yet no participants were more important, Roger Knight argues, than the bankers and traders of the City of London, without whose financing the armies of Britain's allies could not have taken the field. The Duke of Wellington famously said that the battle which finally defeated Napoleon was 'the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life': this book shows how true that was for the Napoleonic War as a whole. Roger Knight was Deputy Director of the National Maritime Museum until 2000, and now teaches at the Greenwich Maritime Institute at the University of Greenwich. In 2005 he published, with Allen Lane/Penguin, The Pursuit of Victory: The Life and Achievement of Horatio Nelson, which won the Duke of Westminster's Medal for Military History, the Mountbatten Award and the Anderson Medal of the Society for Nautical Research. The present book is a culmination of his life-long interest in the workings of the late 18th-century British state.

Author : David Mattingly
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101160403
Total Pages : 684 pages
Book Rating : 4.04/5 ( download)

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Download or read book An Imperial Possession written by David Mattingly and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-05-27 with total page 684 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part of the Penguin History of Britain series, An Imperial Possession is the first major narrative history of Roman Britain for a generation. David Mattingly draws on a wealth of new findings and knowledge to cut through the myths and misunderstandings that so commonly surround our beliefs about this period. From the rebellious chiefs and druids who led native British resistance, to the experiences of the Roman military leaders in this remote, dangerous outpost of Europe, this book explores the reality of life in occupied Britain within the context of the shifting fortunes of the Roman Empire.